Australia Part 1 : April 16 - May 7
Darwin: Sunday, April 16, 2006
Welcome to the Land Down Under! After more than 8 months on the road, we have arrived at one of our favorite places. Like Dorothy, it’s a “return to Oz”. For Deb and the kids this was their second visit and for Brian it was the 5 th. This time we have set aside a full 2 months to explore this fascinating country but even that doesn’t feel like enough. Our journey here from Singapore was pretty uneventful. Before leaving, all of us enjoyed looking around in all the duty free shops at the airport. The national pastime of shopping continued to hold true. No wonder Changi ( Singapore) Airport has been voted the best duty free center several times. The 4.5 hour flight was very smooth and on time. We arrived in Darwin at around 4:10 am on Easter Sunday. Prior to departing Singapore, we had managed to purchase some chocolate at the duty free shops. Debbie was determined that the kids would have Easter chocolate. The cat was almost out of the bag however as we negotiated our way through Australian Immigration and Customs. We were pretty exhausted when we arrived so it was hard to think on our feet. The quarantine and customs officers asked repeatedly if we had any food products. As we noticed active searches of the luggage, we were happy that we had indeed declared food products (without the kids knowing). As the questions came, the kids’ ears began to perk up. It took some fancy dancing to explain the presence of Easter candy to the customs officers without the kids catching on. Somehow we managed to pull it off with the help of a very sympathetic customs officer.
Having arrived so early in the morning, we couldn’t pick up our 4 wheel drive camper until 8:00 am when the office opened. Now Darwin airport was pretty small and we could count the number of chairs on two hands. Somehow we managed to snag 4 of them and while Brian watched over the bags, the rest of the crew eventually fell asleep. Around 7:45 we grabbed a cab and headed off to pick up the vehicle. The plan for the first part of our Australian tour will have us undertaking the 3600 km trek from Darwin south and west to Perth. En route we will be visiting Australia’s wonderful national parks. We rented a 4 wheel drive land rover equipped out as a camper, complete with roof tent, tables and fridge. We rented it from a company called Britz which seems to rent all across Australia.
After a quick intro as to what went where in the camper, we were ready to go. Our rental vehicle was large with a double gas tank. Combined with the fact that it was a standard transmission with a right hand drive and Brian hadn’t driven in over 4.5 months, it could have been an interesting start. We did great however (must have been all that exposure to right hand drive over the last 6 months) and we were soon on our way. As it was still too early to check into our hotel, we headed off to find some breakfast and some shopping malls. We needed to provision ourselves for the next 3 weeks on the road.
After 2-3 hours in the mall we had pretty much pulled everything together that we were going to need except for the food. (Also we didn’t find any new shorts for Brian, much to Debbie’s chagrin.) We decided we also needed to purchase a cheap soft sided ice chest that we would take with us over the rest of our travels in Australia and New Zealand. Also on the list was a new sim card for our cell phone. We are now in cell communication with the world again. In Thailand we purchased an adapter for our IPOD, designed to allow us to hear the music on the car radio. Up till now we hadn’t been able to try it, so in 30C heat there was Brian plugging things in to make sure it worked. We now have our own tunes for the rest of the trip!
By this time we were all beginning to feel a bit bagged from our red eye flight. It was time to check into the hotel, the Crowne Plaza downtown. Now that we are in Australia, it is much easier to get rooms with two queen beds. While the kids are not thrilled with sharing a room with their parents, it is sure a lot easier on the pocket book. The kids immediately began to hit the game boys and books, while Deb crashed on the bed for a couple of hours. Brian soon got bored of checking out his new road maps and headed out for a walk around town. His objective was to find a liquor store. We were in Australia and he wasn’t going to miss out on wine on his first day here. After an hour of walking in the sun, he hit pay dirt (most things were closed on an Easter Sunday). He returned very hot and very sweaty to the hotel room but also very happy.
Dinner was at a pizza place up the street; afterwards Deb and the kids caught a movie (Ice Age II) at the local cinema. Brian headed back to the room to journal and to pull together the menu for the next couple of days. The movie was a big hit and Brian got to get really creative with the journal and his wine! Tomorrow we intend to explore the city a bit more and to pick up the last of our supplies before heading out to Kakadu National Park on Tuesday.
Monday, April 17, 2006: Darwin, Australia
It may have been a combination of the 2 hour time zone skip plus the overnight flight, but it was after 7:30 when Brian woke up. We thought that the car had to be moved by 8:00 so Brian had to rush out. As he got to the vehicle he noticed how quiet the streets were for 8:00 am. After checking with the concierge at the hotel, he was informed that down under “Easter Monday” is an official holiday. Not only were most of the stores closed, but parking was free for the day.
Getting back up to the room, Brian expected to find the rest of the family up and preparing for the day. They claimed they were getting up in “2 minutes” as he was leaving. It wasn’t until after 9:00 when they decided to get up and get going. The first order of business for the day was to figure out how we were going to get all our stuff organized into the camper along with food for several days etc. After shuffling things around in the truck, we were pretty comfortable that we would be able to fit everything back in. The day was starting to warm up considerably already (an indication of things to come), so we were anxious to be on our way and to start exploring Darwin.
We began on foot and headed for the walking mall behind the hotel. As luck would have it, we ran across a used book shop that Brian had seen the day before. The kids are just motoring through any reading material we can get to them. Without TV and faced with extended travel times some days, they can sometimes consume a book a day. We managed to restock our library somewhat for less than $6 USD and headed out again. In hindsight this should have been our last stop of the day! Next up was the wharf district which was located down the hill. This was a terrific spot, covered in all sorts of historical plaques outlining the events of World War II and the role Darwin played in it. Early on in the war, the Japanese hit them with a surprise air raid that destroyed the harbor, the airfield and most of the government offices including the hospital. To put things in perspective, historians figure that during this raid, Darwin had twice the number of bombs dropped on it as were dropped on Pearl Harbor. At least 243 people were killed in those attacks. Following the raid, Darwin saw a huge build up in military presence and several new airfields were constructed throughout the Northern Territory.
Further out along the wharf were several small restaurants and food kiosks. As we had skipped on breakfast everybody was ready for an early lunch. Three of us quickly settled on “Barra and Chips” which was pretty cheap considering all the other alternatives. Barra is the term for barramundi the very large fresh/salt water fish that inhabits the rivers and estuaries around the Northern Territory. It was excellent and hit the spot! Sierra wasn’t convinced about the fish and when she spotted chicken schnitzel, there was no changing her mind. Debbie tried to convince her to try the crocodile schnitzel but Sierra wasn’t that adventurous. From the wharf we wandered our way back through the now destroyed Chinatown district back up to the waterfront park that fringes the downtown core. We spent considerable time looking at all the information kiosks that showed how the town grew up and the results of the big hurricane that hit Christmas Day, 1974 .
Having completed our tour of the town we hopped back into the car and headed out several kilometers past the botanical gardens to the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. This free museum was terrific and a must see for anybody visiting the town. It gave a super overview on aboriginal art along with the geological history of the region. It kind of put things into perspective for us before we took off to “parts interior”. The museum also had a large wing dedicated to the hurricane and its aftermath. After seeing the damage that was done (basically Darwin was wiped off the planet) it is no wonder that people are tracking the weather so closely now.
Having had our fill of touring, it was time to stock up on groceries for our next several days. We located a large market and with a little “help” from the kids we filled our baskets and got things transferred out to the vehicle. The surprising thing was that all the stuff fit! It was then off to the pool for some quality water time before getting chased out by some vicious late afternoon thunderstorms that seem to be a regular occurrence here. Tomorrow Kakadu!
Tuesday, April 18, 2006: Kakadu National Park, Australia
We managed an early start this morning, and were on the road by around 7:30 am. Kakadu National Park is located around 250 km east of Darwin. It is incredibly large as parks go and is especially famous for its aboriginal cave art which dates from 20,000 to 10 years ago. Its limestone geology has also made for some interesting rock formations along a steep escarpment that was home to the early inhabitants of the area when the seas were much lower than they are today.
En route we decided to stop in at a small town (really the only town it seems) between Darwin and the park. The town was called Humpty Doo, population 927! We were stopping initially to pick up some motion sickness medicine. As the pharmacy was not yet open however Deb decided it was finally time for Brennan to get a haircut. Thirty minutes later both she and Brennan managed to get back to the car with their “New doos from Humpty Doo” and a box full of gravol!
The road into the park was pretty straight forward and incredibly flat. We were surprised at the huge amount of water covering the land and frequently overflowing from the ditches and spilling across the roads. It wouldn’t take much to wash this road out. It turns out that the “wet” or monsoon season here that typically ends by mid March was running over a month late. The additional rain on top of already waterlogged land had nowhere else to go but to accumulate on the surface. The park itself was almost 2/3 underwater! And this is a park that is somewhat over 60,000 sq. km. We had a 4 wheel drive, not a boat which is what we really would have needed in order to explore the park this week. Most of the roads, campgrounds, and hiking trails were all closed, and the large Estuarine Crocodiles that the park is famous for were now well disbursed back into the bush making for near impossible viewing.
Despite the conditions however this is an incredibly beautiful park. In the dry season the animal life is much more contained making the daily boating trips up and down the rivers a must see event. Without the crocodile viewing we had to settle instead for our share of Wallabies (no Kangaroos yet), Goannas, huge flocks of cockatoos and storks, snakes and bats! The park itself is huge, and despite our early start, it was early afternoon before we pulled up to the visitor center located on the eastern portion of the park. The museum here was run by the local aboriginal peoples and gave a very unique cultural perspective on the land and their traditions. It was certainly one of the best cultural exhibits we had seen on the trip. By this time the temperature was topping 36 in the 98% humidity range, and nobody was really interested in undertaking anything too strenuous.
We opted instead to check into our accommodations for the night. As nearly all the campsites were under water, we got a small tented bush bungalow (really a large glorified tent on a solid base) at one of the local resort accommodations. It came with fans, fridge and the famous Australian “Barbie” but no air conditioning. Once the temperature started to become slightly more bearable, Deb and Brian headed off for a tour around the lake. Debbie loved all the wildflowers and huge dragonflies but not the flies that drove them back after about 30 minutes. We had bug dope which kept them at bay somewhat but the sheer numbers of them made for a pretty miserable time in some locations. Around a still water lake was certainly one of those locations.
Back at the camp once again we started to whip up some dinner (Chicken cutlets, salad and noodles with a bottle of wine chaser). We were all starved by this point so nobody complained over the slightly burned cutlets. Once the sun had gone down, the temperature had finally dropped to something more tolerable (26C) and the bugs had headed to parts unknown. We broke out the flashlights to do a little night critter hunting but other than a few bats we had nothing much to show for our efforts. After getting back to the bush bungalow we spent some much needed time to plan our next day’s activities. Our original plans had called for us to spend several days in the park. During the dry season it would have been very easy to spend 3-6 days hiking and trekking around. With all the water however the number of hiking options was reduced and we decided that the chances of seeing crocodiles on the boat tours would be pretty low (turns out that was true as the guides hadn’t seen any in over 10 days). We thought it would be best if we did the major aboriginal site hikes the next day and gradually work our way out of the park down towards Katherine. Our other motivation for doing this was that another large cyclone was bearing down on the Cape York Peninsula to the east and was scheduled to hit the region in a couple of days. Not wanting to get stuck in the interior with flooding roads we wanted to try and stay ahead of the storm. It was an early night and despite the heat we all managed to crash into a pretty sound sleep.( NEXT PAGE )