I must start by apologising to anyone who taken an interest in our travel blog for the lack of updates of late. It is an altrustic idea that it will be a great thing to have your own blog, full of the great places you have been, people you have met and the wonderful things that have been done. The reality is that they are very time consuming to say the least. With this in mind I have decided that I will write short posts and stick our pics on slide.com so that you can see them there. So I will give a brief rundown on our trip since Mataranka and get you through to Broome as quickly as possible.
Our run from Mataranka took us through Douglas Daly Nature Park, the home of Butterfly Gorge and the Douglas Daly Termal Pools. Butterfly Gorge is worth a look even though it is a dreary drive through not very much. The gorge consists of a lake that appears stagnant, but if you can pluck up the courage to swim it, you will be rewarded with frogs, carnivorous plants, an eagle nest and other fish life in the rock pools perched above the lake and through the gorge. Our next stops were Litchfield NP and Katherine Gorge. Both these places offer vastly different landscapes with Litchfield being primarily swimming places with very few walks of any length to Katherine which is almost entirely walking or distance trek in kayaks up the the gorge itself. From here we moved to Darwin and LeePoint Caravan Park which became our home for the next two weeks.
Darwin gave us time to repair, restock and refresh from our time up the centre. The car got new tyres, new oil and a wash. Trinity also thought the ground was getting a bit boring and decided she would start 2 legged locomotion, yes she walked. After the sights of Darwin, we moved on to Kakadu, full of Aboriginal rock art, big fish and crocodiles. Not to mention the odd mossie. Some of these pics will be put up later so stay tuned. We enjoyed a tour of the Ranger Uranium Mine, Ubirr and Nouralangie rock art and Yellow River. The crossing into Arhnem Land at Cahills Crossing provides great entertainment as cars cross with croc’s just centimetres away.
Back to Katherine and preparations to leave the NT and cross into WA. Kunnunurra was our first town stop and we met Tony and Cheryl from Trangie on the road through. We spent the next few days with them in El-Questro Resort and the Bungle Bungles. We enjoyed their company and once again caught up with Dave and Kim in the Rapid Creek road stop just outside Bungle Bungle NP. They were heading back to travel the Gibb River Road but it was nice to see them again. Onto Derby and the highlight was the trip we took to the Horizontal Falls. Jodi and Trinity didn’t come as they don’t take under 3’s. We will just have to do it again when she is old enough. From Derby we also did Winjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek and we actually used the camping equipment that has so far made the trip as ballast. Back to Derby to prepare for our last stretch of remote WA and into Broome. Arriving in Broome we found the Cantwell’s and joined them for Shinju Matsuri the Broome Festival of the Pearl which Dennis and Jacinta played part of the Dragon.
