Australia - Northern Territory

A new country, a new continent, a new experience beckoned - the Northern Territory in Australia. Both of us having been to Australia (Oz) before, neither of us had been in the Outback. And that is where the Northern Territory (NT) is!

This became apparent on arrival in Darwin, which with 75,000 people is the Territory's largest city, but with three main roads nothing more than a provincial town in many respects. Having landed at 04.30am local time and picked up our car, our plan to stroll the streets of Darwin before getting breakfast was quickly abandoned - there are no streets to stroll to fill 3 hours. So, in the cosiness of our car, we debated our plan for the next few days, as one bit of information we got at the car rental location had somewhat messed up our planning:

Two days before we arrived, the NT was hit by a massive tropical storm, leaving all the roads to Kakadu National Park and all of its sights bar one inaccessible. This situation was to last for about a week. And we had intended to go to Kakadu National Park.....

Fortunately, NT is big, very big, incredibly big, so there were other parts that were accessible. A quick session at the Visitor Information Centre in Darwin helped us to re-plan our route, but the floods were to remain a key part of our trip:
- the holiday park we stayed at, had been covered in a meter of water by the flood, so it was damp;
- the swimming holes were all closed, partly due to the strong currents that the high water causes, partly due to the fact that saltwater crocodiles ('salties') could have swum up the river;
- some parts of the road were missing or covered in potholes and
- every next rain shower (and there were quite a few, even though most part of the days it was over 35 degrees and sunny!) caused a new flooding, meaning that we had to navigate massive pools with our normal road car.

However, all of these are mere impracticalities that can be overcome, especially given what the NT has to offer ..... Massive, vast National Parks with stunning scenery (bright blue skies, deep red soil, vibrant green from all the plants that sprung up, white foam on the waterfalls) and amazing wildlife (toads, lizards (small and large - we saw one that was 1.5 meters long!), birds - such as cockatoos and Loree's, wallabies, kangaroos, dingoes) - we saw it all.

Also, this is the land of the Aboriginals. Their influence is seen in the naming of the main sights and the stories that are being told about the history of some sights, but it was disheartening to see so many of them wandering the streets, displaced in their own territory.

But, back to wildlife - wise from our lesson in Sarawak, we went first to a sort of safari-park, where all NT animals can be seen in real-artificial habitats. This way we could at least claim that we saw them. Fortunately we were also lucky enough to see them all in 'real life'. And we were lucky NOT to see any crocodiles - a visit to a crocodile farm had made us familiar with the 'salties' and the freshwater crocs ('freshies'), and neither of us was too keen to be re-acquainted in the wild.

One final word on the 'outback' - it is an amazing place, where the distances are enormous (in three days we travelled 1,200 kilometer, only to see five places of any significance, but strangely encouraged by the road signs that indicate places that are more than this distance away!) and the population is sparse (one of the more densely counties we travelled through had 1534 inhabitants on 1,650 square kilometre - now compare this to the Netherlands!).

Four days in Oz flew by. When we came back to Darwin from exploring the Outback, it was strange (and a pity!) to think that we would leave the country already. However, another amazing experience is awaiting us - New Zealand. About which more in the next posting.....