Yacht Envy "HAPPENINGS": KKK No 6 Alice Springs - Katherine

“K K K”

(‘Kimberley Karavan Kapers’ - Bruce and Audrey)

No: 6

Alice Springs - Katherine - Kununurra

Thursday 29 May 2014: Day 54. Alice Springs: We’re up early again in the dark to get packed for departure but decide to (finally) visit the Araluen Cultural Precinct, the premier cultural experience in Alice Springs. An initiative of the NT government, Araluen comprises an Arts Centre, the Museum of central Australia, an Aviation Museum and Craft Displays.

Araluen Community Centre

We did last minute shopping then called on one of Bruce’s previous work colleagues, Jock McPherson ex Primac, Roma, who set up his own successful rural agency business here, ‘Territory Rural McPherson’, several years ago. His clientele are scattered in a radius stretching many hundreds of kilometres out from AS.

It’s 3pm when the ‘KKK’ combo depart, leaving ‘Alice’ as a diminishing spec in the rear view mirror, heading northward up the Stuart Highway, and an hour later we pull in to our previously visited abandoned roadworks gravel pit 2km up the Plenty Highway - a restful night assured, though a few spots of rain awoke us around 4am. Heavy noisy spots, but only very few.

Hitchhiker!!

Back out to the main highway by 8.30 next morning and drove north on the Stuart thru mile after mile of monotonous Mulga scrublands until we reached Aileron Roadhouse, where we inspected aboriginal paintings in the local Art Shop, ‘cheap and touristy art’.

Aileron Roadhouse

Then on another 59km to Ti Tree Roadhouse where we stopped for smoko, and continued on thru more stunted flat Spinifex scrublands, fading to distant hills, until we arrived at Barrow Creek with its restored Overland Telegraph Station, which we pulled in to inspect. The Overland Telegraph Line with its series of Morse code repeater stations was completed in 1872, spanning 3600km from Adelaide to Darwin, and was Australia’s first telegraphic link to Britain.

Another 92km and we passed through tiny Wycliffe Well with its UFO Centre, the background of which we didn’t stop to discover, then a further 17 klicks bought us to Wauchope, another whistlestop roadhouse. About 10km north of here is ‘The Devils Marbles Conservation Reserve’, an 1,800ha area of gigantic rounded granite boulders of immense spiritual value to the 4 traditional local aboriginal tribes, and discovered when surveying the overland telegraph line in the 1860’s.

The Devil's Marbles

It’s a popular camping spot, as attested by the 35/40 campers already there, and we joined them for the night, after walking around photographing the sights.

The discovery of gold by a O/T linesman in 1925 quickly led to the establishment of Tennant Creek, (pop 3000) which was the morning’s destination, a regional town a further 105 km up the Stuart, famous for its old Gold Mine just out of town, which we visited, with its now closed Battery, though gold is said to still exist. We patronised the local Supermarket and Butcher and were rewarded with the best beef sausages ever!!

Aboriginal Art Tennant Creel

Just north of town we stopped to take a look at the old Tennant Creek Overland Telegraph Station, again well restored, before heading 12km west up a dirt track to make overnight camp at another sacred aboriginal site, ‘Kunjarra’, also known as ‘The Pebbles’. A quite scenic area of eroded granite spheres, though smaller than the Devils Marbles. Like most NT Nat Parks it offers no water or power, only compositing Toilets.

From midnight on, on 1^st June, a very fresh breeze sprang up the south-east, (which continued on for many days), quite gusty at times, causing some concern regards our flapping sun awning, so I got up and checked it, which bought back memories of windy nights on ‘Envy’ when I had to get out of bed to check the anchor at 3am in the morning.

Following our Sunday ‘religion’ of an eggs and bacon breakfast, we left ‘The Pebbles’, soon passing the well known ‘Threeways Roadhouse’ where the Barkly Hwy to Mt Isa joins the Stuart, continuing on a further 105km to “Banka Banka Station” campground, passing through much more interesting grazing lands along the highway, a mix of moderately timbered open forest, well grassed stony ridges and Mitchell grass Downs, well capable of fattening cattle in this good season. Livestock look good everywhere.

“Banka Banka” was an important camp for both Aussie and American soldiers building the Stuart Highway during WW2. Owned by the American Nelson Bunker Hunt for some years, it then became part of the huge AMP owned Stanbroke Pastoral Co, and has since changed hands to indigenous ownership.

Banka Banka Station

Apart from its nice green grassy campground, the original homestead built by the Ambrose brothers, of mud bricks and bush timber in the 1920’s remains, magnificently restored by Stanbroke in 2002, under the direction of John Cox (a fellow BBC school-boy), during his time as CEO.

Just the one night there and next morning, 2 June, day 58, bright, sunny and windy, we’re on the move north again, passing through ‘Helen Springs Station’, part of the famous Kidman pastoral empire when, in his heyday (1920/30’s) Sir Sidney Kidman was the biggest private land owner in the world, with massive pastoral holdings, mostly all situated in the arid or semi-arid areas of central Australia.

Elliott is a tiny town, albeit the second largest town of the Barkly Tableland, 155km from ‘Banka’, and an important host to the great droving legends along the Barkly Stock Route over 100 years ago. We filled up with petrol here before driving a very rough dirt track12km out of town to our next campsite, “Longreach Waterhole”, a picturesque 200 metre wide stretch of water covering a few kilometres along Newcastle Creek, and currently home to perhaps 150/200 Pelicans, with obviously sufficient fish stocks to sustain them.

We set up camp just a few metres from the shady water’s edge, with wading birds in an anabranch behind us, together with about a dozen or so others campers spread over half a kilometre of foreshore, under still very windy skies. The Pelicans provided much interest as they went about their never ending feeding routine most of the day, a very graceful performance I’d not seen before.

The Pelicans worked in groups of 10 to 20 paddling as a bunch then, like well trained water ballerinas, they form a circle and, simultaneously, raise their wings and tails upwards as they plunge their long necks and beaks underwater for a period before resuming their normal position with raised beaks to swallow their catch. A performance as well choreographed as the Bolshoi Ballet! Gracefully amazing.

After three days of peaceful R&R we depart Longreach Waterhole at 8am June 5^th and continue 25km up the Stuart Hwy to visit the remnants of old Newcastle Waters town, surrounded by the 10,353 sq km cattle station of the same name, another of the famous “old name stations” of the Northern Territory, now held by Consolidated Grazing.

A highway hoarding farther on boasted the famous meat pies of Dunmarra Roadhouse somewhere up ahead, so after a period of indulgent gastronomical anticipation, we finally arrived only to discover there were no “world’s best” pies left, so we left Dunmarra in a mood between sulking and sorrow.

Another 50km brings us to Daly Waters with its famous old Pub that we’ve been hearing wonderful stories about since first arriving in the Territory, with its ‘Beef and Barramundi’ BBQ Dinners a “must do”, and by midday Campers and Vans were streaming into the Pub’s campground, parked cheek to jowl.


Daly Waters Pub Campground

Ready for the 'Beef n Barra' Dinner

The Daly Waters Pub runs a one-man nightly dinner-show, a performance by “Chilli” of ‘outback song and bawdy humour’ and we fortuitously arrived at the right time for a special treat. An Aussie film crew were shooting a movie “Last Cab to Darwin”, live, and we were all ‘extras’ in this un-staged performance, which we’ll look forward to seeing in Cinema perhaps later this year! A great night of food and fun and laughter – the stuff memories are made of.

'Extras' Ready for the Floor Show

Film Crew Working

Both days and nights continue very windy from the SE, but the weather’s still warm when we depart next morning, ever northward, destination Katherine. The countryside is loosing its semi-arid ‘red centre’ scrublands appearance as we cruise at our usual 85/90 kph through open forest grasslands, but still the ubiquitous red anthills, many of them cleverly dressed, by scallywag travellers, with T shirts, skirts, knickers, bras and hats.

Anthill Models

We drove into Larrimah, just another whistlestop of perhaps 10 buildings whose only tourism feature is its Pink Panther Hotel & C’van Park with most everything painted Pink. How it survives I know not, a dot on the road map living its past glory as an important WW2 army staging dump.

Larrimah's Pink Panther

Just out of Larrimah we stopped at “Fran’s Teahouse”, lured by several others already there, and her signage of ‘homemade’ cakes and pies. ‘Old’ Fran came and sat with us in a quiet moment, told us she’s been baking her roadside treats for over 30 years, and inquired as to my enjoyment of the Buffalo meat pie I’d just eaten. Actually, quite tasty!!

About an hour later we were at Mataranka where we stopped for a picnic lunch at Bitter Springs, one of several natural springs which this area is noted for. The pure spring water flows underground for hundreds of kilometres from the Barkly Tablelands before emerging here, clear as crystal, and so swimmingly inviting.

Bitter Springs Crystal Clear Waters

A further 110 km into Katherine; quite a sizable regional centre of 8000+ with a large aboriginal presence. All four expected articles were awaiting our collection at the Post Office but the only Honda repair shop was too busy to service our sick Honda 240v generator - a major priority - so with a long holiday weekend looming we elected to forgo Katherine’s tourism offerings and headed off for the NT/WA border.

Being by now late afternoon, we pulled into the derelict WW2 Manbulloo Airstrip beside the main Victoria Hwy 18km west of Katherine for the night. A long airstrip for heavy Liberator Bombers, the strip remains quite intact notwithstanding its long abandonment since 1944.

A recent bushfire had left the area black and dirty, so we parked on the concrete floor of the long gone 72 year old Officers’ Mess building which, following a little house-keeping, proved to be most acceptable overnight spot amongst these historic ruins. A quiet and peaceful night under a canopy of bright blazing stars. Ah, the joys of bush camping.


WW2 Manbulloo Airstrip Ruins

East Baines River

We’ve noticed that huge tracts of the Northern Territory, all the way back from Renner Springs northwards, have been controlled burnt, which we understand is an annual occurrence here. Also of note is that there have been very few bush flies through this same area, and we’ve seen almost no wildlife, or road kill, anywhere in the Territory.

Keeping an Eye on us!

The 265km drive west of Manbulloo Airstrip to Timber Springs is a long drive with no towns and few points of interest, the main one being the significant Victoria River which drains much of this area and in whose upper reaches is located the iconic “VRD”, the ‘Victoria River Downs’ Cattle Station, a household name in the NT grazing fraternity. Lower downstream the highway crosses the Victoria River, on whose southern bank is the popular fuel stop Roadhouse that bears the same name.

Victoria River

Much of the country dissected by the highway is open Savannah grasslands, presently enjoying a good season, as reflected again in the condition of the many herds of excellent quality Brahman cross cattle, with fat cows suckling big sappy calves.

Quality Braham Cattle

After the Victoria River we passed through more red stony country with numerous flat topped eroded jump-ups and on through mostly aboriginal owned land, as is about 70% of the entire NT.

Topped up with fuel at the Timber Springs Roadhouse then continued on 9km to the Big Horse Campground on the banks of the crocodile infested Victoria River, where we booked in for two nights, luckily getting the last available site in this small NT Nat Park. The adjacent boat ramp was popular with local fisherman going Barramundi fishing.

Big Horse Campground

The following morning we enjoyed the sights from nearby Mountain Lookout offering panoramic views over Timber Springs village, the Victoria River and southwards over the rolling hills of Gregory National Park.

Victoria River from Mountain Lookout

Western Australia enforces stringent Quarantine Control measures over fresh fruit and vegetables so Audrey spent time here making up a huge Stew to use up our supply of these, and by now our anticipation of WA adventures was paramount.

So next morning, we drove the last 150km of the Northern Territory, through open forest grazing country, had a trouble-free border crossing and arrived at the Kununurra Showgrounds Campground late morning, setting our clocks back 1 ½ hours to WA time.

Kununurra Township was ‘born’ just 50 years ago, being the service centre for the newly developing Ord River Irrigation Scheme in 1963, has a population of around 7500, and is a well equipped modern town.

Australia’s largest artificial lake was created in 1972 by the damming of the Ord River across the southern end of Carlton Gorge, to provide water storage for the Ord River Irrigation Area (ORIA), 14,000 hectares of irrigated crops, including melons, mangoes, pumpkins, sandalwood, chia and seed crops, and with a further 13,000 hectares currently under development. They’re big numbers in any agricultural language!

We checked out the local tourist attractions of Kelly’s Knob Lookout - with its scenic views over town and Ord Valley, Celebrity Tree Park – an arboretum planted by visiting celebrities, Lily Creek Lagoon and the Kununurra Museum.


Kununurra from Kelly's Lookout

Boab Tree

A highlight of the entire trip occurred yesterday when, in perfect weather, we took a scenic Seaplane flight over the Bungle Bungle Range with a landing on Lake Argyle for afternoon tea. Bruce sat beside the Pilot snapping photos, but difficult shooting thru the windows. The following are a few snaps to give you an idea, in haste, since we want to send this off today before departing tomorrow, Sat 14 June, on the start of our real Kimberley adventure.