From Darwin to the Western Australia border

3rd to 9th September 2021

Oh my! It’s been a while since we’ve written anything on the blog… Sorry to all of you who are actually reading this stuff! We have no good excuse… So let’s jump straight back to the story! Remember? Last time, we were stuck in Darwin waiting for Aga’s bike to be repaired.

After over a week in Darwin, we were finally ready to go. That week also happened to be also a week of an unexpected heatwave and daily temperatures reached over 32 degrees Celcius. A reminder for us that summer was coming quickly in the North and with it, scorching temperatures and lots of rain. We still had some time, but couldn’t linger for too much longer this far North. And so, our journey towards Western Australia has started. First stop – Kakadu National Park, about 260km away from Darwin.

Here is your daily Wikipedia knowledge: Kakadu National Park is the largest Park in Australia. It covers over 20,000 square kilometres. That’s like half of Switzerland! It’s also inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage for its unprecedented natural and cultural values. Kakadu has been home to Aboriginal people for more than 65,000 years. About 2000 Aboriginal people lived in the Kakadu region before the arrival of the British. Now, about 500 Aboriginal people live in 18 outstations. The Park protects many important rock art sites, with some of the paintings being up to 20,000-year-old! It is also home to about 2000 plant species, 1/3 of all Australian bird species and about 1/5 of all Australian mammals. The landscape within the Park varies from mangrove-lined coastlines, majestic stone escarpments and vast floodplains and wetlands.

Once we left the city, which by the way is very small compared to other state capitals in Australia, we quickly found ourselves back in the wilderness. Vast wetlands and forests started to dominate the landscape. We made a short break at Corroboree Park Tavern to buy park passes and have a look at the map to find our campsite for the night. We unexpectedly arose the interest of several tourists travelling in a big air-conditioned bus. Not for the first time, we were told how cool our travel was and how they’d wished they’d done it when they were young. Well, I guess this only confirms that we’re doing the right thing? Although I must say in 30 plus heat this air-conditioned bus looked very tempting!

Yan wanted to trade his bike for this Toyota, but it turned out it had no fuel 😉
kakadu motorcycle adventure
Made it to the Park entrance!

For our first night in the Park, we set camp spent near an Aboriginal rock art site of Ubirr and a croc-infested river crossing known as Cahills Crossing. The river wasn’t flowing much, but we still managed to spot a few saltwater crocodiles (or as an Aussie would say – “salties”) in the water. Ubirr – the rock art site, was a journey in time, making you think about the people who lived here before and how their deep knowledge of this country helped them thrive. Among the paintings, there was one depicting a thylacine (Tasmanian tiger) extinct from the Australian mainland about 2000-3000 years ago (thylacines survived in Tasmania until the 1930s). Our walk among ancient rocks covered in paintings ten thousand years old ended up on a top of a rocky escarpment. From there we could see the amazing variety of Park’s landscape – one the one side endless flood plains coloured yellow and orange by the setting sun and on the other huge rocky escarpment where, according to the Aboriginal stories, live powerful spirits.

Cahills Crossing. To go across the river you need a special permit.
A thylacine or more commonly known as a Tasmanian tiger)
Watching the sun slowly set on the wetlands
Spotted a few "salties"
Many of the paintings represented local fish like barramundi, catfish or mullet.
Rocks, wide rivers, wetlands, forests - Kakadu's many landscapes

On the next day, from Ubirr, we headed to Jabiru – the only town within the Park – to fuel up and see if we could get some supplies at a reasonable price. We also agreed to stop around midday and wait for the heat to drop. Our European bodies aren’t used to riding or even walking in these hot and humid conditions! On our way to the town, we made a surprise encounter. At one point, in the distance, we noticed a little black dot moving along the road. Too slow for a car, but too fast for someone walking on foot. A thought crossed our mind, that Craig, the cyclists whom we met back in Queensland in the Yungaburra hostel, mentioned he wanted to visit Kakadu at some point. Could this be him? We approached a bit closer and…surprise, surprise it was him! What are the odds of meeting each other again in the country size of Australia, bah even in a National Park size of Slovenia! A side of the road in the middle of nowhere under the hot sun may be a good place to have a catch-up chat for some but for the three of us, it was not. Craig still had many kilometres to cycle that day, and we were already, pardon my rude expression, sweating like pigs in our adventure gear. And so, after a brief talk, we continued on our way to town, hoping that ours and Craig’s paths would cross again. We decided to wait for the heat to drop in the Park’s Visitor Center before continuing on with our exploration. Turns out several other travellers had a similar plan. There was Bert from Hungary travelling around Australia in his 4×4 and Italian girl courageously riding across the Outback in an old car clearly not made for fighting Australian corrugated roads. After a few hours, Craig joined us again. The time passed quickly while we chatted about travels and reasons for doing them.

Surprise encounter

In a more bearable afternoon sun, we headed to another rock art site – Burrungkuy (Nourlangie). A walk between tall ancient rocks hiding paintings of spirits, animals, rituals and even encounters with first white men and their technology ended with another magnificent view on the vast plains and rocky escarpments. One of them is home to a powerful creation ancestor – a lighting man (Namarrkon).  For the Bininj/Mungguy people (who are the people living in the Kakadu area), the creation of art is an expression of cultural identity and connection to their country. The act of painting is generally more important than the painting itself. That’s why older paintings are often covered by younger ones. Another common feature of rock art in Kakadu is the so-called “x-ray painting”. It’s a technique where the artist paints not simply the external shape of the subjects (i.e animal, a person), but also its internal structure (i.e bones, skeleton etc.).

Kangaroo and a hunter
Nourlangie Rock

For our second night in Kakadu, we wanted to stay at what, according to our app, was supposed to be one of the top free camps in the Park. There was one problem though: the way to it included some sand… But we thought we would give it a try. Yan managed alright. But I was so tired by that time of the day, that the second I saw the deep sand I just abandoned completely, I was too tired to even make an effort. After dropping my bike two times, we turned back and set camp nearby in a more accessible camp spot. Not 5 min after parking the bikes and removing our helmets, the headache that I’ve been struggling with for the past few hours, got even stronger, and on top of that nausea kicked in. I knew that these were the signs of heat exhaustion. Even with all the precautions we took: drinking lots of water (the recommended amount by the Park authorities is 4L per person per day!), avoiding riding and walking during the hottest time of the day, the heat still got me. After drinking some electrolytes, vomiting them straight away all around our camp spot (I call it marking our camp territory, hehe), I went to sleep. There wasn’t much more to do, just needed to wait for it to pass.

Sand fail
Don't underestimate the heat

In the morning I felt alive again, and we could continue our exploration of the Park. We took a short walk along the Yellow Water, a part of the South Alligator River floodplain to admire the vast floodplains, hoping to spot some crocs or water buffalos. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any. We then started heading to our next camp spot located near Maguk Waterfall. The sign on the turn off to the camp warned us about the rough road ahead, but according to our intel, the road was not that bad. And it wasn’t for the most part…But the last 2km of the road had some sandy patches and one big deep sand stretch just 1km before the camp. Yan is always the courageous scout when we’re riding off-road together, so he rode straight into the sand head-on (literally!). He lost control of the bike and fell (luckily sand makes for a soft landing!), breaking his indicator, mirror and mysteriously detaching the windscreen. Seeing Yan’s fall, remembering my sandy adventures in Queensland that resulted in a broken toe and still thinking about the previous day when I dropped my bike twice, I was certain I was not going to ride through this patch. To avoid the risk of dropping and picking up the bike in 30+ heat, we decided to push it through. Finally, we reached the campsite, among the trees and in the middle of nowhere – perfect. From there we went on a short walk to the waterfall for a well-deserved cold swim. Underneath the waterfall, we met Craig again, who was also camping in the same spot as we. I think at that point we bumped into him 3 or 4 times in the last two days!

Water buffalos have actually contributed to the environmental degradation in Kakadu.
Maguk Waterfall

Our perfect serene campsite was ruined by a big group of backpackers who decided they owned the place and played obnoxiously loud techno music until 2 am… Sad that people cannot appreciate the silence of nature. After a rather sleepless night, disappointed with peoples’ lack of respect for this beautiful place, we woke and left in the early morning, casting bitter glances at the backpackers’ campsite, full of beers cans. Sigh… That day was our last day in Kakadu. We weren’t able to reach all of the sites we’d like to see. Some of them were closed and some just too far away on the 4×4 tracks to be riding there in the scorching heat. So Jim Jim and Gunlom Falls, maybe will see you another time.

From Kakadu, we headed to Katherine where we found a mechanic to have Yan’s broken indicator and mirror repaired. Well, kind of. The indicators would never stay in place ever again, but worked “good enough”, as for the mirror…have a look… ->

We spent that night in Katherine, enjoying local hot springs. They were not as good as the Mataranka ones but still refreshing and with crystal clear water.

What do you think of the left mirror? 😉

From Katherine, we had about 470km to the Western Australia border. What we thought would be a rather boring journey turned out to be quite enjoyable in the end. After the initial 200 or so kilometres of boring falt landscape that we’ve become so familiar with, we entered an area surrounded by huge rocky cliffs – Gregory National Park. We’ve never heard about this park before, and if it wasn’t for the heat we would love to have explored it a bit more.

Lunch break
Road passing through Gregory National Park
A boat in the middle of a desert?
Drone time!

On the road, we bumped into Bert again – the Hungarian guy whom we previously met in Kakadu. He was also heading to WA and we decided to free camp together nearby Timber Creek. Bert makes a lot of videos of his trip (he’s more organized about this than we’re ) and he even interviewed us for his YouTube channel. Check it out here. We suggested to Bert to keep travelling together until WA, but unfortunately, his car broke down and he had to be towed to the nearest mechanic, who actually turned out the be in Western Australia. But more on that next time!

Aga's bike hit 50,000km!
Meet Bob the Termite Mound
We'll never get bored of the Outback nightsky

We spent our last night in Northern Territory at Keep River National Park which is only about 5 kilometres from the Western Australia border. The Park is often referred to as the Territory’s hidden gem, and rightly so. It protects some truly unique rock formations, found only in this part of the world. After riding for 30km on a super corrugated (surprise, surprise!) road we reached a campsite in the north of the Park. We were completely alone there, no noisy backpackers or campers with generators. A welcomed change after our Kakadu experience!

Aga's new favourite trees - baobas.
And more baobabs!
Walking around these ancient rocks makes you feel very small.
There are many sacred sites in the Park
View from the lookout
Mini Bungle Bungles, a unique sandstone beehive rock formations. Or an ancient city?

In the next post, we’re finally crossing the WA border, meeting up with Bert again, taking an almost 600km detour and testing out the Royal Flying Doctors Service from the middle of nowhere. Hopefully, it won’t take this long again to write about our next adventures!

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