Just another day - Northern Territory

Driving in Australia often means covering a lot of kilometres a day, especially when driving trough the Outback. Petrol stations are usually 100km apart, if not more, and towns are even sparser. So does it get boring? Yes and no.

When planning our trip, we really wanted to drive through the desert, because part of that experience is to let the relative monotony ease your mind and your senses. I do say relative monotony, because there is a lot of variety out there, it's just more subtle, and sometimes holds unexpected surprises. 

So let's describe a random day out there, the 25th of August we drove from Barrow Creek to Daly Waters, some 650km. Now Barrow Creek really is a petrol station in the middle of nowhere. We parked there for the night because it was 5pm and we weren't sure we would make it to the next one before dark. There was really nothing there besides fuel, beer and cow patties. 

We made breakfast in the campervan (fried eggs) and drove off around 8:30. As usual Rodie drove the first bit. Our first stop was a our an hour and a half later at the Devils Marbles. This is a rock formation that has eroded in a manner that it now looks like there are giant marbles heaped together. According to the first explorers these must've been the devil's own. The indigenous people call them Karlu Karlu: eggs of the rainbow serpent.

Devils Marbles

All these sites have some information like the history, geological formation and cultural significance, on a shaded sign. Most of them have (long drop) toilets and some have a rainwater reservoir. A few have an emergency phone, since mobile phone coverage in the outback is nonexistent. And this one had satellite internet! Which we didn't use, you had to give your full personal details, and we couldn't be bothered.

Internet options

It took another hour to get to Tennant Creek, which was suprisingly big. It has about 4000 inhabitants, shops, hotels, and 4 petrol stations. In our minds this is now big... We bought lunch (freshly baked bread!) and chocolate at the supermarket and petrol at the BP. We are very alert that our rental company does not allow us to tank Opal fuel, but we must buy premium. So we got BP Vortex 98 at $1,69 per litre instead of Opal 91 at $1,29. Just as we filled up, we saw that this station also had Unleaded 95 at $1,50! That's a few dollars wasted...

We aren't used to this much choice, usually we're happy if they sell anything other than Opal. Anyway, we switched seats and headed north. 

As we drive, the landscape changes continually. Today is definitely a termite mound day. The number of trees varies, the landscape goes from yellow to brown and green, it's sometimes burnt black al around, but we continue to see thousands of termite mounds. We're also in cattle country,  we don't just see the signs warning for wandering cattle (roads are invented) but we sees little herds of cows beside the road too. And quite some dead ones as well. They've dried into bags of skin with some bones insite. Lots of birds of prey circle the sky. 

Dead tree with dark dangly things

Around 2pm we stop for a late lunch and some petrol in Elliot: a general store with extra petrol station type of town. We park the van in the shade, and eat our sandwiches. While we eat we suddenly see a huge flock of bats emerge. In broad daylight! 

We take a closer look, and they seem to come from a bunch of trees, and take flight every time there's a loud sound. We walked closer and saw dead trees full of dark dangly things. And the live trees had them too. Hundreds, if not thousands of bats. I reckon flying foxes. Some of them just hung there, others clawed for branch to branch and others flew around, you could see through their sheer wings in the bright light.

Flying foxes?

After this little intermezzo, we switched places again and continued north. We discussed how much further we would go today, and we decided on Daly Waters. We wanted a shower, so no free camping tonight. And Daly Water, at the crossing of roads north, west and south, has two campgrounds. After checking the Campermate app we decided on the Wayside Inn as opposed to the hyped Daly Waters Pub. A good choice, it felt like a little oasis with grassy sites with a nice view. Little wallabies grazing in between termite mounds, and galahs, lapwings, crows, willy wagtails, and neon coloured parrots at the horses drinking spot. Some kites and hawks slowly circled low in the sky.

Our view from the campsite

We went to the inn for our complimentary beer, but decided we shouldn't order dinner here. We're spending so much money on petrol these days, that we are structurally over budged. And we rather eat out in an actual restaurant than in a roadhouse, so we'd better make dinner from our 'outback stash'. We chose our microwave meals, and they weren't all bad. That night we spotted our first cane toad, and didn't kill it...

Rainbow lorikeets

Salty scenes - Lake Hart

Driving on the Stuart Higway from Woomera to Cooper Pedy we saw something glittering in the distance, it looked like water. As we came close we realised is was indeed a lake!

Remnants of times long gone

We parked the car and walked closer. The lake's shores glittered in the sun, they were covered in a thick layer of shine white salt.

Salty shores

The salt crust was so dry and thick, we didn't even leave footprints in it while we walked to the lake.

Big flakes of salt

Close to where we stood was a jetty with the remnants af a little boat, and even those were encrusted in salt.

Frozen in time and salt

Opal capital of the world! - Coober Pedy

We've made it to this 3rd leg of our trip: our journey north trough the Australian Outback from Adelaide to Darwin. Well, actually, we started in Port Augusta, and we're already a week into our journey as I'm writing (spoiler!) But we did stay in Coober Pedy, and there's no escaping that Coober Pedy is all about opals. 

The landscape around Coober Pedy

About 60km south of Coober Pedy the first signs appear: watch out for mining machinery on the road. And about 30km south of town the molehills appear. From driving trough endless plains for the last few hundred kilometres, you suddenly drive through a bizarre landscape, soil turned and heaped. When you reach the turnoff into town, you've passed many warning signs, varying from 'no acces' to 'do not run' to 'don't walk backwards'. This, is mining country. 

Be careful?

We expected Coober Pedy to be not much more than a petrol station and some campsites, and very touristy of course. Which is partially true, but it has not 1 but 4 petrol stations! And 2 supermarkets. One of which sells mining equipment, chain saws and plastic flowers too. And it even has a roundabout! Imagine our surprise. 

Opal mine museum!

After we refuelled our campervan, we only had 10% left due to erroneous fuel consumption expectations, we parked at the Opal Inn Campground. We walked to the supermarket, passing the Opal Bar, the Opal Cave, the Umoona Opal Mine and the Opal Beetle on the way. They proudly advertise Coober Pedy as Opal Capital of the world! 

So on our way back we booked a Desert Tour at the Opal Inn. We spend the rest of the day soaking up the warmth of the winter desert sun. Just lovely.

Downtown Coober Pedy

We continued the next morning doing exactly the same thing, soaking up that lovely sun, since our tour started at 2pm, in order for the midday arrivals to join. No tourist stays voluntarily in Coober Pedy for more than one night, except for us of course, so tours cater for that. We were in a tour with mostly grey nomads ("Adventure before dementia"), but had fun.

 

Not claustrophobic at all

We started our tour with 30minutes at the opal shop, 100m from our campsite, where we became absolutely sure that we do not like opals. Then we drove another 20m to the opal mine and museum, where we saw some of the fossils, an underground (dugout) house, and then descended into a former mine that had been set up for tourism. Luckily that wasn't too claustrophobic, and certainly interesting.

Here the greens are blacks, and that hill is the first tee

We than drove via the golf course and one of the mining fields. Basically all the heaps are the contents of a shaft about 30m deep. Most shafts are about 50cm diameter, hence all the warning signs. The shafts are tests to see if that bit of land has opal. 

We then headed for the Breakaways. These are tabletop mountains, in the middle of endless plains, that used to be an inland sea in prehistoric times. The mountains look like the broke away from the rest. The colours are just amazing. You'd never imagine how many shades of yellow and red can be visible in rock formations. They reminded us a bit of the landscape at the Flaming Cliffs in the Gobi.

Breakaways

After we got cake and hot chocolate, we drove off to see the Dog Fence. This is one of the longest constructions on earth, built to keep dingos on the northern site of it, so sheep are safe south of it. It's incredibly more than 5.500km long, so pretty immense. And each section of the fence has its own custodian, and must be patrolled, and maintained if needed, every fortnight. But as fences go... It's not that impressive.

To get back to town we drove across the Moonplain. This was the ocean floor of that prehistoric sea. A barren landscape, apparently used in quite a few movies. I think it's time that I watched Mad Max 3? 

Barren Moonplain

Our final stop was the underground Serbian Orthodox Church. Because of the desert heat, many of the dwellings are underground. Or more exact, dugouts. Half of a hill is removed, and in the remainder a cave is made, usually with multiple rooms. The cave is decorated and equipped with amenities as electricity and running water, a facade is put in front of it, and there you have it: a classic Cooper Pedy dwelling. 

Living room of a dugout

These dugouts have a very constant temperature of 19-23'C, and thus far more comfortable than a traditional building. Walking through town you see chimneys and ventilation shafts sticking out of most of the hills. The churches are made much the same way, and the Serbian apparently is most impressive. And it was pretty special. 

Serbian Orthodox Church

The next morning we made sure we had enough water, and hit the road again, heading north!

Alligator Gorge - Mount Remarkable National Park

We've made it to our 4th Australian state; very aptly named South Australia. At the border we chucked al our fresh produce (4 carrots and an avocado) into the quarantine bin, and, as we found out that evening, crossed over to a new time zone. That day had 30 minutes extra. 

Our first stop was Victor Harbor, an uneventful, but cheerful little place. We walked over the Esplanade to town, circled Granite Island, did our laundry, and Rodie caught some Pokemon. We had planned to go to Kangaroo Island next, but we opted out in the end. With our campervan (that is over 2.5m high) we could only book a 6am ferry, which meant we had to drive there before sunrise. Or book an expensive tour and leave the campervan on the main land. After some contemplating, we decided to drive to Adelaide instead. Unfortunately we can't do everything in our limited time here. 

On our way to the Flinders

After Adelaide we headed to the Flinders Ranges. We started at the South Flinders, Mount Remarkable National Park. Alligator Gorge to be exact. We found a campsite in Wilmington, just at the entrance of the acces road to the gorge. We were kindly invited by the owner join him for his sunset possum feeding. And even though we are wel aware that he totally corrupts the possums, it was lovely to see them up close.

Wilmington is one of those tiny towns in this area of the world. They'll have general store / petrol station / information booth combined and maybe a post office. Wilmington tops all that with a café (where they 'do all types of coffee!'), a toy museum, and... yes really... a puppet museum! We managed to skip those last three, but bought our park permit at the petrol station. 

Gently sloping track

We read warning at a few places that the road to Alligator Gorge is very steep, and not to be done with caravans or busses. We asked locals, and they said we'd be fine, so we went. And yes it was steep, but very feasible, we've done much worse. And it's full of wildlife. So many emus and euros (a type of kangaroo) that we had to brake a few times, in order to not hit them. Which usually doesn't happy that much in broad daylight.

And we decided that an emu does not run very graciously, in case you were wondering.

Scattered trees

Once arrived at the car park we had to pick our walking route. Most hikes in Australia are one way, and then you retrace your steps to return. We prefer to do circuit hikes, and that usually significantly lowers our options. In this case we had 2: the Alligator Gorge Ring Route Hike (4-5 hours) or the Gorge Circuit Hike (2 hours). We chose the latter. 

We decided to walk against the described direction, because you should start with descending about 250 steps. And I rather walk up than down. Or more accurately, my knees hate walking down steps. The first 20 minutes were slightly downhill, and then we hiked over some rocks to Alligator Creek. This next stretch is called the Narrows. Well named, since it is a narrow gorge. You can see how the water must whirl through it when there has been serious rainfall. The evidence of scattered  trees is abundant. But luckily no rain fell during our walk.

We just walk-step-jumped this bit 

We did have to cross the creek every few meters. There were stepping stones to do that. Sometimes we had some trouble identifying the correct stones to step on, but that was part of the fun. And the water was just 30cm deep at most places, so had we misstepped, and we didn't, it wouldn't exactly have been life threatening. But after 40 minutes or so the stepping stones didn't cross the creek, but kept to the middle! 

This was the narrowest part of the gorge, and the only way through was where the creek was. We had some near-misses, but made it through with only wet shoes. A good thing we wore waterproof shoes. The water level was really at its maximum height to be able to walk this bit.

Spot the euro!

We walked another 15 minutes in a beautiful valley, and almost bumped into one of those euros! After another creek crossing we reached the bottom of the stairs, and could start our final ascent. Is was really a wonderful hike, and we regret not doing the longer ring route. But hey... If you'd know everything in advance life would be pretty boring right? 

The final stretch...

Wonderland walk - Halls Gap

From the Great Ocean Road we headed north, to the Grampians. We decided to base ourselves in Halls Gap, a tiny village. And with a great campsite too; clean amenities, good camp kitchen, living area with fire place.

On the meadow adjacent to the campsite live emus and kangaroos.

I spy an emu eye

Now the Grampians are known for their grand views and hiking trails. After talking to the tourist info we opted for the Wonderland Loop, a medium to hard track, 9.6km, about 4-5 hours. Qualified for 'fit and energetic walkers'.... I've never thought of myself as that, but let's give it a shot. We set off at 10am. 

Nice bit of defined track

The first stretch from Halls Gap to the Wonderland carpark was relatively easy, but uphill at times. The track was mostly next to little creeks. It did surprise us that we sometimes had some trouble identifying the track. It's the first time that has happened since we're in the country. It did feel like genuine bush walking, since the track was not always obvious.  But that would get worse later on...

Up, up we went!

From the carpark we chose to do the route through 'The Grand Canyon'. That was a slightly exaggerated name, but impressive nonetheless. And where the steep ascent really began. 

'Grand Canyon', can you see the stepping stones?

We continued on the route to the Pinnacle. Most of the route was over rock flats and through little canyons. At the top of the plateau we had some trouble with the route, but after a few minutes we saw a little yellow arrow.

See the yellow arrow? And the carpark?

Some 2.5 hours into the walk we arrived at the top, with a great view. But very, very windy. We found sheltered spot where we ate our lunch, before we started our decent. We walked down on the eastern route, next to the cliffs. It's just funny how the upper cliff was completely fenced off, but you're can easily slip off 10 meters further... 

View over Halls Gap from the Pinnacle

The walk down took another hour and a half and wasn't very spectacular. It was a spectacular number of stairs though! My knees didn't like that one bit... But we made it! 

On our way down

When we walked back into Halls Gap at 14:30 a mob of kangaroos were lazily grazing, and very photogenic at it. After we had coffee and cake in the café, we drove back to the campsite. 

Kangaroo. Or wallaby?

To ease our tired muscles we had a soak in the hot outdoor pool. What a treat at 38'C while the day's temperature was only 5-10'C! We watched the resident flock of cockatoos while we bathed. 

Yellow crested cockatoo

P.S. We stil love the comments, but we'd love them even more if you added your name ;-)