From: "Pete" <[email protected]>
To: thegang
Subject: ....and in Darwin it's 31 degrees....
Date: 30 July 2001 05:18
Well, hello once again from another internet cafe in yet another town. We've put some kilometres on the odometer since I last wrote to you all and we are currently up at The Top End. Anyhow I think I left off in Cairns...
I'm not sure what I told you about in Cairns but I know I hadn't taken my outer reef trip which is probably the highlight of my journey thus far. I finally discovered what all of those David Attenborough documentaries and National Geographic fold outs were fussing over.
The day got off to an excellent start with me managing to locate the boat, before it left, in spite of the fact that it was before eight o'clock in the morning and I was hungover and on my own in a relativly unfamiliar city. So it actually took about two hours of sailing in open water and through relativly rough seas in a smallish boat, which bobbed about like anything, before we actually reached the reef and I battled the sea sickness manfully, I thought, while weaker folk threw their guts over the side at fifteen minute intervals (one or two making the extremly unpleasant mistake of forgetting to check the wind direction first).
The first stop was Hastings reef which was really a jaw dropping experience (except that with a snorkel in your mouth dropping your jaw isn't really a good idea with all the salt water and everything). As you jump in the water it's really like nothing else - none of this 'it's very nice but slightly disappointing' feeling I'd suffered further south. You find yourself in 60 feet of crystal clear water with towers of coral of all shapes and colours that rise up on all sides and just break the surface at low tide. On closer inspection they are swarming with schools of small brightly coloured reef fish as well as silvery ocean fish that glimmer around the surface. There's larger fish hanging around about six feet down, some a strange turquoise blue, some a deep velvet black. It really is an incredible place. I also took a ride in the glass bottomed boat which allowedd us to get directly over the top of the coral where it was too shallow to swim. The fish were few and far between but the erie shapes of bright blue coral were something incredible.
Our other stop for the day was Michaelmas reef which is shallower, although no less alive. We were promised turtles which we never saw. I was most impressed by the giant clams. They are about four feet wide with a grey-brown shell and a shock of lurid purple flesh exposed while they are open.
So from Cairns we headed South to Mission Beach, and got the tent out for the first time. The plan was to stay a few days, since Paul had seen a holiday program about the place and thought it looked incredible, but although it had a beautiful beach and was a pleasant little laid back place, we really were getting sick of beaches and it really didn't grab either of our interest at all. At the end of the day it really is just another bloody tropical paradise.
So then it was back down the track as far as Townsville (past a Big Crab and The Big Melon, both of which were small enough for me not to have noticed them on the way up). At Townsville we turned right and then drove. First night we stopped in a tiny little place called Julia Creek. Second night we went thirty klicks out of our way to Tennant Creek so that we could avoid spending the night in Threeways, which consists of a Roadhouse and a monument to the founder of the Royal flying doctor service and nothing else.
Then we headed north. The difference in country as you head inland is noticable almost immediately. We were only twenty minutes out of Townsville when it first became obvious. There is patchy brown grass, with scattered grey-green gum trees and exposed red dirt at the side of the road. As you get further inland the grass gets patchier and the dirt gets redder. Once in the Northern Territory you start to see burnt patches at the side of the road where bush fires have struck. The first termite mound isn't far away. The termite mounds also get bigger the further north you get.
We broke up the big drive with a trip to Katherine Gorge (although by then we were only a couple of hours from Darwin). The place captured our attention in a way that Mission Beach had totally failed to and we ended up camping for three nights. We took a cruise up the river to look at the Gorge itself and were well impressed. Wide as far as gorges go, the place has very high walls of orange-red sandstone with black markings where it reacts with the water trickling through it. Gum trees and the occasional palm grow along the top of the wall. The gorge twists and turns and on two occasions we had to get out of the boat and walk along the bank past the rapids to the next gorge where another boat was waiting. There are 12000 year old aboriginal paintings on the walls of the gorge, although only the red pigment remains, because it reacts with the rock, whereas all the others washed away. I also saw my first wild crocodile (only the freshwater kind thank goodness) and my second, third, fourth...etc. Ironically the best place to see the crocs is on the bank directly opposite the public swimming area where we spent several happy hours the day after. Perfectly safe we were assured, the gorge is made inaccessible to esturine crocs (that's 'Saltwater' to most people but we were told off for using that at the croc farm in Cairns because they much prefer fresh water) by the rapids. We saw some freshwater turtles there as well.
The Katherine river is the first permanent water feature north of Alice Springs so the gorge is something of a miracle place when you reach it after two or three days driving through nothing but scrub.
So now we are in Darwin. Enjoying the dry season weather. It's 31 degrees in Darwin, but then it's always 31 degrees in Darwin. Every Australian weather forcast I've seen it's been 31 degrees in Darwin (actually it does get up to 33 sometimes). The local Met office must have the most boring job in the world.
For six months of the year it's 31 degrees and rainy and for the other six it's 31 and dry.
We went to the Darwin Beercan Regatta yesterday. It's an annual event where the locals build boats out of beercans and then race them. It was actually really great, not least because we actually met some locals (although our group consisted of a South African, a Canadian, a Swissman and an New South Welshman as well as me and Paul). It was really interresting to talk to real territorians. There was this one guy, leathery as anything, just in town for a few days usually he works on his parents million acre cattle station a few days southwest of here. The land is apparently so bad it's only worth a dollar an acre and they run under a thousand cattle on it (I think the exact figure was 600 but we had been drinking for four hours by then). All in all a fantastic day.
Anyway, I'm off to watch Tomb Raider with the same cosmopolitan little group so I've got to go now.
No Worries!
Pete
