Why is the Northern Territory still just a territory and not a state? This question has bugged me for ages, and after our recent trip to Darwin, I'm still non the wiser.
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| Florence Falls, Litchfield Park |
For our Easter break we decided to take a trip up to Darwin, even Barnadi had never been to the Northern Territory before, so it was going to be a new adventure for both of us. Getting off the plane it felt like we had touched down in another country. Leaving behind the cold wet autumn in Melbourne to arrive in the tropical humid heat of Darwin, we could have just as easily been in Indonesia.
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| Darwin |
We had hired a car as part of the package, although Darwin itself is small enough to walk around in a couple of hours it was not the main attraction for our visit. In fact after just one night it was clear Darwin as a place to visit had very little going for it. Historical buildings don't really exist as much of the original town was destroyed during the war or by tropical storms. The CBD that exists stretched out on a peninsula between two harbours is growing with new tower blocks emerging all over the place, but there is a complete lack of any heritage buildings such as you would find in most other state capitals. Despite being the capital city of the Northern Territories it seems everything shuts down on public holidays and Sundays leaving the place feeling more like a provincial town. The few places that did open charged a significant premium for doing so and seemed to mainly cater for the enormous backpacker community. The same backpackers that left Mitchel street feeling more like a Spanish island resort, with drunken louts clogging up the streets all night.
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| Magnetic Termite Mounds |
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| Cathedral Termite Mound |
We get up early the next day, our first diversion was to Litchfield park. The closer of the two national parks we had planned to visit this trip. Litchfield is a mere one and a half hours out of Darwin and boasts many beautiful waterfalls and colossal termite mounds. The roads in the Northern Territories are some of the emptiest and fasted roads I had driven on in Australia, speed limits extending to 130km/h in some areas, the drive was long and tedious but well worth it (and still only a short ride compared with what we were about to attempt), our first stop was at the magnetic termite mounds, so named as their flattened structures all aligned perfectly north to south. There were of course plenty of the Cathedral mounds to admire as well, incredible to think something so small could construct something so big. Once we had seen enough termites we continued on through the park to Florence falls the only waterfalls that we visited where it was safe to swim in the plunge pool. Crocodiles are endemic to most of the waterways in the NT, fresh water and salt water making swimming a very treacherous past time. The number of people already swimming at Florence falls however reassured me that if a crocodile was present, it would surely have had its fill by now. After enjoying a swim in the deep clear waters we dried out on the rocks and ate a small lunch before we continued once more on our Journey. The next waterfalls we stopped at were the Tolmer falls and we could only admire them from above, as there was no route down to the bottom, we didn't stay too long there before we got back in our car to our final waterfall of the day, the Wangi falls. The Wangi falls are usually open for swimming, but due to high water levels the risk of crocodiles had forced the park rangers to close the area. We attempted to do a circular walk here, but that path was closed too as the heavy rain had damaged one of the bridges. So we just sat and admired the water so tempting to swim in, but so deceptively deadly. We had dinner at a stake house that served crocodile, so I feel suitably assured we got our revenge.
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| Wangi falls, Litchfield Park |
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| Rock Art |
The next day, Easter Sunday we took on the challenge of driving all the way to Kakadu national park., world heritage listed and possibly the NT's second biggest attraction after Uluru. The world heritage status however is under threat thanks to one foreign invader, the cane toad. The drive just to get there takes a good three hours and as the park itself is so vast you've still got another hour or so driving just to get somewhere. The drive is not too dull as it passes through a variety of landscapes including forests, flooded wetlands and it crosses several giant majestic rivers, The amount of dead Wallabies on the road however reminded me how important it was to get back before dark. The most exciting spot along the road was the dingo, I haven't seen a wild dingo before so to just see one trotting along the side of the road casually turning his head to watch us pass was a real treat. I'd picked two main areas I wanted to explore in Kakadu, Nourlangie Rock, a site of ancient aboriginal cave paintings and Yellow water a good spot for a cruise and some crocodile spotting. The road to Yellow water unfortunately was closed due to flooding so we ended up with only one proper stop. Luckily Nourlangie was worth the trip all by itself. Before getting to Nourlangie itself we stopped at a neighbouring rock, which we climbed and were blessed with views of not only Nourlangie, but the vast flat plains bellow and the dramatic vast sheer cliffs that followed the horizon right down to where the Jim Jim falls would presumably be. The rock art at Nourlangie was interesting and the cool shelter between the imposing rock faces made it an obvious choice for those early nomadic tribes to call home. But as is usually the case in these matters, where man has done something impressive, nature has always trumped him. The end of the track around the paintings took us on a climb to a lookout so stunning we could have stayed there all day, that is if the heat and the flies didn't force us to retreat back to the car and its life saving air conditioning.
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| Nourlangie Rock, Kakadu |
We then spent what we thought was going to be our last night and day in Darwin. Our flight wasn't until 6pm so we had a whole day to kill. After checking out of our budget hotel we did a little drive following the coast North. We took stops at the Botanical gardens and the Darwin museum, which was free to get in and so was well worth a visit as an air conditioned diversion.
As we arrived at the airport that evening, we dropped off the keys to the hire car and made our way to check in only to hear our flight had been cancelled. Now Darwin really is the arse end of nowhere and there were no alternative flights we could get, and as driving would take several days longer than simply waiting for a replacement flight the next day we were completely stranded. The airline did at least put us up in a nice hotel and provide dinner vouchers, so all was not lost as we guiltily made the most of an extra night in Darwin, knowing we should be feeling bad for missing a day of work. Luckily both our bosses were understanding of our situation, not that there was anything that we could have done if they weren't. More worryingly we had to arrange extra care for Jessie and Goofy.
21 hours later than planned we finally left Darwin. All in all a good trip, but 2 important lessons were learnt in case we ever ventured to the top end again.
1. Go in the dry season
2. Don't stay in Darwin
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