Wildlife – alive and dead

We have now made our way to the top of the Kakadu National Park which is about as far north as we are going. We are spending 6 days here going on various tours, attending talks and slideshows and going bush walking whenever the temperature drops sufficiently.

Animals – alive and dead

Even when we are in remote and hostile areas, there is a surprising variety in the wild life. Apart from numerous cattle and the occasional kangaroo, the great variety of birds we have seen includes

a flock (if that is the collective noun) of pelicans whom we found living in a waterhole with the local cattle. Where they found enough fish to live off, we do not know since the waterhole gradually disappears during the dry period. This Rifle Paradise Bird which joined us whilst we were having lunch one day

below is a Kookaburra whose call is so distinctive

this bush turkey came to visit us every morning at one camp site

the Australian Magpie Lark (which is just as cheeky and bold as its English counterpart) 

 

Peacocks seem to be quite frequent as well

We have seen numerous kangaroos, wallabies and wallaroos

plus of course crocodiles

Recently we came across a peaceful river scene which encouraged

bathing only to be put off by the notice that was affixed just where you might think of getting into the water:

One characteristic of the Australia landscape are termite mounds – these mounds are built as homes by millions of termites and vary in size from a few cms to a few metres tall.

to much taller (and we are told taller still). It seems to be the case that the further west we go, the taller and larger the termite mounds get, they have

also changed their orientation to become what are known as “magnetic mounds” in that the long sides face east west (for heating and cooling reasons we are told) . Inside they are a honeycomb of tunnels

These are “Grass Termites” and they are responsible for the mounds made from red soil, grass and spiniflax root juices. There are two other main categories – soil (which live underground) and wood who live in trunks and branches and whose eating results in the didgeridoo (they eat the inside of a branch leaving it hollow).

Termites cause major problems to buildings since they eat the wood in them. Hence some of the early buildings rest on piles made from Iron Wood (too hard for termites) and have caps on the top to stop the termites climbing higher (a bit like the stone mushroom pillars used on early English grain warehouses to stop rates entering the warehouse). A major innovation when they were building railways in the late 19th Century was to

use Iron railway sleepers because the termites ate the wooden ones.

A less welcome discovery was the Green Tree Frog (this mammoth specimen a good 15cms long  was hanging on the shower curtain whilst I showered at Undara)

We have got used to checking toilets and showers for frogs and other animals, particularly in the middle of the night. Frogs have a habit of living in toilet bowls and seem not to be able to be flushed away, they just sit in the bowl looking upwards whilst you do your business!

On the fish front, I have covered sea fish before. There is one fresh / sea water fish however local to the northern region which attracts fishermen from far and wide – the Barramundi.

These fish grow up to a few metres in length (if they are lucky) and are much prized by fishermen for the fight they put up when caught on a line and the taste when cooked (strong and just like fish used to taste in the UK). There were some living in a pond near one campsite and we went to see them being fed – they silently slid towards their prey (a dead pilchard)

and then suddenly lunged at it with tremendous speed. A most ferocious fat and ugly looking fish.

We are used to seeing road kill in the UK (rabbits, badgers, the occasional deer) so seeing it here should really be no different.  The Road Trains seem never to stop and anything they hit, be it bird, kangaroo or cow is definitely dead. No doubt many cars also hit animals and some of the birds which then feed on the road kill are enormous and quite interesting. There is a vulture / eagle like bird we frequently see feasting on road kill which we are trying to identify.

Our experiences are so far are mainly with cattle which can seem to be incredibly stupid and stubborn – hence we slow right down whenever we see cattle on the side of the road because they are very prone to deciding to cross the road or just to stop in the middle of the road and look at you. I shall refrain from providing illustrated examples of typical road kill and leave it to your imagination. Needless-to-say, the quantity and volume was so large on one main highway that the local council had a lorry which was used to clear up the road kill every morning – you cannot just leave a kangaroo carcass in the middle of the road.

PS – we reserve the right to be wrong in any of our wildlife identifications, if you know then tell us.

Campervan Living

We are now at Pine Creek south of Darwin and about to turn North East into the Kakadu National Park for a week.

The idea of living in a 4WD campervan for three months and touring this large continent seemed easy when we first discussed it. The reality has been something of a shock and has forced us to rapidly adjust the way we live, manage day-to-day tasks and even how we interact with each other.

The sales blurb for the van provides the following encouraging general view and day and night time usage drawings:

 

Our home is about 2 metres wide, 2 metres high inside when the roof is put up and about 5 metres long (if you include the cab of the van). It would be incorrect to describe it as compact, it is very compact. We suspect that even an estate agent would have difficulty in choosing words that suggest space, although we are proud to say that after a couple of weeks living in our tiny home, we are coping well.

Opening the spacious rear door with integral fly screen, one ascends a

short staircase through the foyer into the compact air conditioned (and partially appointed) integral galley kitchen with fridge / freezer,

living room, and storage area and immediately notices the high level bedroom two metres further down.

the corridor. The compact fold out double bed provides handy additional storage space when not in use or can function as a day rest area.

Handy laundry drying facilities are available close to the bedroom

Mood lighting (i,e.dim) adorns one wall. The roof can be raised a further 50

cms in order to accommodate anyone taller than 1.25 metres. Clever use

has been made of all available areas to provide storage space. Additional storage space for an outside table and two chairs will be found behind the seats in the front cabin as will space under the seats..

Cooking facilities (and external lighting) encourage an “al fresco” lifestyle (i.e. the twin burner gas cooker is on the outside of the van, as is the sink). On sunny (or rainy) days, the integral sunshade can be unrolled to cover the kitchen.

Additional lockable storage space for fuel, water, cooking gas, power cables, and other supplies will be found all around the outside of this mobile dwelling which is equally at home driving (using any of its 20 gears) through rivers up to 1 metre deep as it is up hills with a gradient of 1 in 3 or on unpaved roads. The whole residence has been stabilised against the types of ground subsidence which may be experienced when travelling.

In reality, this means:

• the vehicle is high off the ground so that you can drive through rivers and along rough tracks, hence the steps to climb up into the rear cabin.
• inside there is a largish and very efficient fridge / freezer (one or the other but not both at the same time) and the top of this forms a useful work surface.
• adjacent to this is a surface top (which supports the bed when in use) and under which are cupboards.
• the bed folds out to double in size (as does the mattress) and two people can easily sleep on it  although it has to be unfolded and made-up every night. It also forms a useful day settee.
• there is a fierce rear cabin air conditioner which rapidly brings down the internal temperature on a hot day
• the banquette seat can be folded out to form a third bed although we wonder how three people could ever survive in a van this size.
• the gas burner stove folds down from the outside of the van and there is space in the kitchen surface to fit a plastic bowl as the sink
• two gas bottles, 40 litres of fresh water and a 40 litres of spare diesel each have their own storage compartment on the outside of the van
• there are further storage compartments on the outside for emergency water, the power cable for use when at a “powered site”, tins of food (or anything not affected by water)
• the spare tyre is stored under the van and there is a compartment containing an “exhaust airbag” for use as a jack if you have to change a tyre whilst on sand or rough ground. The theory is you plug the bag onto the exhaust, position it near the flat tyre area and rev the engine – the exhaust gases then inflate the bag raising the vehicle off the ground. We also have a shovel for digging our way out of sand!
• there are two gear sticks close together where the normal single gear stick would be in a car. iI you are driving off paved roads, using the left gear stick you select high speed four wheel drive, on sand or up hills or through rivers, you select low speed 4WD, and on normal roads you select high speed two wheel drive. Then you choose your driving gears using the right gear stick which operates in the normal way (five forward gears, neutral and reverse). To go into low you have to stop first, the high speed positions can be selected whilst moving. It sounds complicated but is very easy.

You may have noticed that there is no mention washing or toilet facilities – there are none although there is a solar shower for use on hot days. This is a large black bag which you fill with water and hang out in the sun until it is warm enough to shower with – we have not tried this yet. Going to the toilet in the middle of the night means getting dressed (or not depending on the urgency and temperature) and going outside (with torch to spot wildlife) to the camp toilet or the “long drop”  toilet (if camping at a roadside campsite) or into the desert with a shovel. Going outside at night presents it challenges, apart from the ever present frogs and the occasional snake, there usually are kangaroos or wallabies on the path to or in the toilet.

The toilet block at one camp site had doors to it in order to keep them out, needless to say that on one trip it was “Paul exeunt toilet left pursued by a wallaby”

Storage space is particularly at a premium for us because we have had to bring clothes for two different weather climates, hot in the north and cold and wet in southern Australia when we get there as well as a certain amount of diving gear. It has taken us over a week to ensure that everything has its own space. Day-to-day life requires us to put away everything as soon as it is no longer needed and we have had to accept that in order to get one thing out, you often have to get many other things out first (and then put them away).

Damp is a bit of a problem on cold mornings (deserts are usually very hot during the day and freezing cold at night) because the moisture in our breath condenses on the cold surfaces of the cabin and a first task on waking up is to dry these surfaces to stop condensation dripping onto everything.

The van is capable of supporting life on the side of the road or on the beach as well as at camp sites. If we are staying at a camp site, we try to get a “powered pitch” which means that when we arrive we plug the van into a nearby mains electrical socket. This will then power the cabin air conditioner, our toaster (!) and electric kettle, fan heater (for cold mornings) and also recharge the cabin battery and provide power to recharge / run the numerous electrical items we have. If we are out in the wilds, then a heavy duty rechargeable battery will keep the fridge and lighting running for a day or so before we have to drive (or plug into the mains) to recharge it.

Although the fuel in the main tank plus the spare 40 litres gives us a range of about 1000 kms, we fill up whenever possible because there is no certainty that service stations will have fuel when you get there. The warning on the road we have just driven is blunt:

and when we got to our destination the roadhouse was restricting vehicles to a maximum of 50 litres because of shortages – not a problem to us because of our tank size but it could be to others. This is similar to filling up in London and the next service station being in Newcastle which will sell you enough fuel to almost get to Edinburgh.

If the above does not sound attractive to you and you are thinking that we are mad, we admit we are mad -  but we are really enjoying it.

Our last overnight stop at Daly Waters was interesting but hard in that the toilet and washing facilities were worse than basic – more on camp sites in a later blog. Today we are at Mataranka Homestead about 100K south of Katherine and are heading northwards towards Pine Creek which is an old mining town at the gates to the Kakadu National Park.

The interesting thing about the Homestead is that it contains a replica house as lived in by the early pioneers. There is a famous (to Australians)

book which was written and based here called “We of the Never Never” which details early pioneer life and the homestead was built to feature in

Elsey Homestead – actually a film set but said to be accurate

 

Homestead living room

Homestead Washhouse

the film of the book. Over the past few weeks we have gained a greater understanding of the challenges of early exploration and subsequent settler life here and have some feeling of how it has shaped the Australian character. We are less informed about historical and current Aboriginal life but nothing we have seen has made us feel any more comfortable.

Also at Mataranka are the “Hot Springs” – natural springs coming to the

surface at a temperature of 33C. Along with numerous other travellers, we spent a contented hour or so in them soothing away some of the aches induced by three weeks of travelling and sleeping in a hard bed.

One night we were made “Billy Can Tea” by the Australians on the pitch next to us, we were told that the “Billy Can” is part of folklore (along with the swag and damper bread).

Pine Creek (about 180 Kms further north and the southern gateway to Kakadu) is an old mining town and typical of numerous towns across Australia which have risen and fallen equally rapidly over the past hundred years. It now has been bypassed by everything and is only known for the number of preserved buildings made

 

out of corrugated iron – said to be invaluable because it can be reused easily.

Long Roads

When we set up our satnav the other day for the day’s drive, it told us to go straight ahead for 382 kms to the end  of the road, then turn left and our destination would be 2 kms further on our right. (it was correct) and today it said go straight ahead for 675 kms and then turn left. Distances are large and we are currently in a phase of the trip where we are driving a very long way to get from one interesting place (the tropical rain forests and volcanic planes of the east coast) to the next place (the Kakadu National Park) where we hope to learn more about the early aboriginal owners of Australia.

The countryside can be less than interesting. This photograph (taken with a wide angled lens) shows all that there is to see across to the horizon -

absolutely nothing in all directions. An alternative landscape is that of thousands of termite mounds.

Every few hundred kilometres or so, one encounters a Roadhouse – these are synonymous with long distance road travel in Australia and provide essential supplies such as fuel, food and accommodation (both rooms and camping) together with things you never knew you wanted at a price proportional to the distance from the competition and at a quality inversely proportional to that distance.

 

As well as travellers such as ourselves, they also provide a rest stop for drivers of the famous “Road Trains” – this one has 62 wheels, is 55

 

metres long and everything about it is big including the noise it makes and the speed at which it travels.

Mount Isa, where we stayed on Wednesday night on our way west (and eventually north) is a company town based around the largest lead and silver mine in the world (plus a lot of copper). You can judge the quality of the town by the appearance of the mine which occupies the whole of one side of the river.

We went to an exhibition which described the history of the area and sat through a promotional film made by the mining company. One of their workforce described why he enjoyed working for the company - “the job I have lets me work up a good sweat, drive big machines and make a lot of noise” – it seemed to us to be a typically Australian response to the way they have approached this vast continent. Of more interest was the account of early life here (1950s!) when they lived in tin huts and really had a very hard time taming the landscape and developing the mine. It made us realise how new the country is and also how tough life must have been for many of the £10 migrants (including perhaps my relations who emigrated here in the 1950s).

The general speed limit on the open road is 110 km/hr but when we went from Queensland into the Northern Territories (NT),

a poor photograph of us taken on time delay from the van bonnet at the NT border

the speed limit increased to 130 km/hr (actually having a speed limit in the NT is a relatively new idea) and the clocks went back 30 minutes (and those in Queensland say that modern civilisation goes back by a number of years as well).

The more we drive, the remoter we get. The Heartbreak Hotel at Cape Crawford (fuel 1.85 per litre as compared with 1.14 per litre at Mount Isa) is about as remote as it gets in the Northern Territories. It is actually quite a reasonable road house with shady camping available and helicopter

Sam we took this picture of the heli for you

flights over the cliff formations nearby on offer.

We have however promised ourselves one helicopter flight (or plane – which is not yet decided) this holiday and that will be over the Bungle Bungles in Western Australia – one guide book we read said “if you only do one helicopter flight in your life, do it over the Bungle Bungles”.

The next nearest “town” is Borroloola about 110kms up the track. We heard that there was an aboriginal celebration there the following day so we drove there to see what might be happening. To describe the town as “run down” is not to get down far enough. The local museum (get the key from the car breakers next door) was the Police Station in times

gone by and our reading of the displays within the museum not only educates us about the early exploration of the area and the hardships endured by the explorers but also increase our unease about how the Aboriginals were treated. Because we sensed some hostility towards us as tourists, we left without searching out the event.

Despite its rundown nature and isolation, the town does have a concrete runway at the airport and the medivac plane took off whilst we were there taking a couple of people to the nearest hospital at Darwin. Such a commitment to access to critical services is essential if isolated towns like this are to survive.

Further west on our way up towards Kakadu, we stayed at the famous Daly Waters pub on the Stuart Highway. Practically everyone stops here on their

 

way north or south and the pub trades on its quirky nature, encouraging you to leave underwear behind the bar or a badge or flag somewhere in

the pub. The pub entertainer did a surprisingly good impression of Johnny Cash but his piece de resistance – singing with chickens on his head was

probably not copied from Mr Cash.