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Australia, Kings Canyon, 28 – 29 July 2021

Posted on Thursday, 29-July-2021 by Chris Desmond

Alice Springs to Kings Canyon via the Meerenie Loop road. This road passes through Aboriginal land therefore you must get a permit from the Alice Springs Visitors Centre for $5.

I made a short detour to see the Gosse Bluff Meteorite Crater, the road which is quite rough takes you into the middle of the crater and being very big and old it looks like you are surrounded by a range of hills. Unlike the Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater which is clearly visible when you stand on its rim.

Gosse Bluff Meteorite Crater

From above Google Maps

Frome the Crater to Kings Canyon was on the Meerenie Loop road which needs to be graded it is in poor condition.

Kings Canyon.

The countryside

Kings Canyon

Kings Creek

The Path

Kings Canyon

The End

The Rim Walk

Birds

Kathleen Creek

Kathleen Springs

Easy walk

Cattle Yard

Broken Rock

Water for the Cattle

The Path

How did it get up there

Trees

Bridge

The End

Noisy Birds

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Australia, Daly River Pub, Devils Marbles, Alice Springs, 24 – 27 July 2021

Posted on Tuesday, 27-July-2021 by Chris Desmond

AliceSprings

21,055 kms so far

From Jabiru I drove South to the Daly River Pub in the middle of nowhere on the Stuart Highway. The Pub itself is the attraction being decorated with all kinds of rubbish and is considered a must see for tourists. Everything is overpriced and it is packed with tourists.

A van towing a car

Termites

Roadworks

Daly Waters Pub

Junkyard

Daly Waters Pub

Horse walk through

Next stop on the way South to Alice Springs was Devils Marbles.

A steady stream of Road Trains

A Town

An Accident

Rolled over and caught fire

Another town coming up

Devils Marbles

Burger, very good

The Stuart Highway which runs from Darwin to Port Augusta through Alice Springs is mainly one long straight road 2,834 km long, yet it is littered with wrecked cars.

Alice Springs, last stop to stock up on supplies for my journey through the desert. Altitude 545m and a dry climate, comfortable in winter during the day and sometimes freezing at night.

One of many wrecks

Not Flat

Mini Moke convoy

A hill

Straight Road

Roadworks

Another wreck

Alice Springs

Murals

Todd Street Mall

Murals

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Australia, Litchfield and Kakadu National Parks, 20 – 23 July 2021

Posted on Friday, 23-July-2021 by Chris Desmond

Litchfield National Park is just over an hours drive from Darwin and has some small waterfalls and swimming holes. The most interesting thing I saw were the Magnetic Termite Mounds, they are flat and oriented North South so they receive the sun in the morning and evening while being protected from the midday sun.

Solar Power

Back to Camping

Big Frog, it froze under my torch

Magnetic Termites

Boardwalk

Normal Termite Mound, how does something so small build something so big with no tools or machines

Buley Rock Hole

Florence Falls

Spot the Humans

Tolmer Falls

The Lookout

The View

Tolmer Falls

Roots

Wangi Falls

Sacred Site, no swimming now

Kakadu National Park, the main attraction for me was the Rock Art or Murals from the Past. A spray can was gargling the paint and spraying it out of your mouth, paint and brushes came from the bush.

The park is on Aboriginal Land and you must buy a $30 Park pass, valid for 7 days. Alcohol is banned, I was issued a pass at the Caravan Park to enable me to buy alcohol at the bar.

Jabiru, the place to stay

Hot and Dusty

Alcohol Card

Dingos wandering around

Ubirr Art

Tasmanian Tiger, what is it doing here

Spot the Tasmanian Tiger

There it is

Ubirr Art

Underneath

Looks like the head of a ??

Ubirr Art

Underneath

Ubirr Art

Bowali Visitors Centre

Jabiru Murals

Artist at Work

The Artist

Jabiru Murals

Nourlangie Art

Tour Group

Nourlangie Art

Snake skin next to my tent

Black Ibis next to my tent

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Australia, Darwin, Northern Territory, 03 – 19 July 2021

Posted on Monday, 19-July-2021 by Chris Desmond

Darwin – population 147,000, capital of the Northern Territory and the northermost city in Australia. It does not rain here during the dry season from May to September with a day night temperature range of 20 to 30 degrees celsius. A perfect place to wait out the school holidays as many of the city people are in the countryside filling up all the accommodation.

Darwin Military Musuem – Darwin was bombed several times by the Japanese during the 2nd WW and was the base for Allied Forces fighting in the Pacific. There are currently around 5,000 military personnel based in this area.

Darwin Military Museum

Aircraft Drop Tank

MAscot

Ships sunk

Cheap pistol then

Expensive now

Japanese Ships

Nurse

Join the War

Join the Fight

Military BAses

Truck

The Original Jeep

Bare bones

Darwin Coastal Defense

Big Guns

Big Tree

Scout Car

Soldiers

Japanese Ambitions

The Bombing of Darwin

Lunchtime

Murals of Darwin

Legislative Assembly

Fannie Bay Gaol – a very relaxed prison and where the last hanging took place in Australia in 1952.

Fannie Bay Gaol

Inside the Prison

Crimes

Juvenile Prison

Cell

Main Prison

Inside

Cell

Inside

Ablutions

Smith Street

The Crime

The Clues

The Punishment

The Last Hanging

Gallows

News

Darwin Museum and Art Gallery

The Museum

Art

Big Crocodile

Snakes

Birds

Dinosaur

Goanna

Dinosaur

Cyclone Tracy

Fisherman

Chinese

Police

Man and Wife

London to Darwin

Prisoners

Scary

The Wild North

Pearls

Boats

Aviation Museum – interesting place with the only B52 bomber in the Southern Hemisphere.

Aviation Museum

London to Darwin

and on to Adelaide

B52

B52

B52

Poetry

Japanese

Money

Looting

B25

B25

Bomber Guns

Inside a Belly Turret

Religion

Spitfire

Sabre Jet

Mirage

Gunship

B52 Belly Film

B52 Landing Gear

B52 Engines

Charles Darwin Park

Jingili Water Gardens and the Botanic Gardens

Nightcliff Jetty

Spot the Girl and her Dog

Jingili Water Gardens

Art

Botanic Gardens

Mohawk Bird

Enchanted Seat

Big Crocodile

Did the Red fish escape

Waterfall

Dragon

with little feet

Birds having fun

Bush Fire

Darwin Waterfront Precinct

Christ Church Cathedral

Scooters

Government House

First Undersea Cable 20 Nov 1871

Stokes Wharf

Not Busy

Darwin Bombing

Waterfront Precinct

Art

Wave Pool

Wheel

Beach

Mindil Beach and Harbour Cruise from Cullen Bay

Mindil Beach

Mindil Beach Casino

Cullen Bay Marina

Lock for the 8m Tides

The Boat

The Bridge

Top Deck

Navy

Boats

Gas Export Jetty

The Wedding Cake

Fishing

Gas Export

Low Tide

Stokes Wharf

Sandbank

Navy Base

Lighthouse

Cullen Bay

Cullen Bay Marina

WW2 Fuel Storage Tunnels and Craft Breweries

Fuel Storage Tunnels

Lyons Cottage

Water Storage Tank

Art

War Memorial

USS Peary Memorial

Beaver Brewery

One Mile Brewery

Posted in Australia | 2 Comments

Australia, Normanton, Hells Gate, Borroloola, Mataranka, 27 June – 02 July 2021

Posted on Friday, 2-July-2021 by Chris Desmond

Cairns to Normanton
It rained for the first two hours ascending to the Atherton tablelands, tortuous winding road, up to Ravenshoe, highest town in Queensland at 930m. Then down to the plains and the road straightened out, fuel stop at Georgetown, after that single lane road alternating with 2 lanes, lots of road kill and eagles on the road and a big goanna crossed the road. About 250 km out of Normanton on a one lane road caravan coming in the other direction threw up a stone, small crack in the windscreen. This time I have windscreen insurance included in my policy, this is a must if you plan on travelling in rural areas.

Heading out of Cairns

Towing a car

One Lane

Passing

Crack in Windscreen

Clouds

Georgetown

The Big Barra, Normanton

The Big Croc, Normanton

The Shooter

Art

A Town Like Alice

Art

Art

War Memorial

The Purple Pub

Normanton to Hell’s Gate Roadhouse
Definitely in the Wilderness now hardly any traffic, road alternated between paved and gravel. Hells Gate is not a town just a Roadhouse with a Caravan Park and some rooms. Fuel $2/litre most expensive so far. Cold at night 16c no flies or mosquitoes and reasonable Telstra signal so I decided to stay for two nights. Applied for the Northern Territory visa from here and it was granted immediately. Read about the lockdowns in NSW and WA, once in the Northern Territory I should not have to worry about crossing borders again for a few weeks. Two small planes landed and picked up a group of tourists travelling between outback stations by air and taken on tours from each stop by road and then back to the plane. Watch the video, this is how you get around in the bush. Darwin lockdown until 1300 Friday, 02 July and the NT school holidays started on 26 June and go for three weeks until 19 July. They are the only state to have 3 weeks holidays all the others have 2 weeks.

Texas Longhorns

Bicycle

Ant Hills

Mama and Baby

Make up your mind Mum

The Road

and on

Burketown

Full up

and on

$2.00 a Litre

Tour Group

Savannah Way

320km to next Fuel

Hell’s Gate Roadhouse

$18 Burger, they ran out of Buns and $8 beer

Self sufficient

Hell’s Gate to Borroloola
This road is gravel all the way to Borroloola after about 50km I crossed the border into the Northern Territory and the road deteriorated immediately with one deep sandy patch about 100m, corrugations and many dips with a few creek crossings with water in them, had to pass a road train early on after following for about 15min came to a creek crossing saw it on gmaps and knew the guy would have to slow down and zipped past, then a couple of very slow vehicles, caravan and a van otherwise most of the traffic was coming the other way. Ran over a big dead snake again and a wallaby ran across the road in front of the car very close. Telstra signal in Borroloola but very slow, almost unusable for anything other than email and messaging.

Cattle Grid

The Road

Welcome

Cattle

Corrugations

River

Creek

One Lane

Hotel now a Supermarket

Borroloola to Mataranka
One lane paved road all the way to the Stuart Highway which is Northern Territory’s one main road between Darwin and Alice Springs. Once again lots of vehicles coming the other way, only a few going in my direction. The Mataranka caravan park was full but there is always place to pitch a tent. The weather was pleasant and cold at night, not a bad place to relax for a couple of days. Due to the number of people staying they had live entertainment every night at the restaurant.

Bing Bong to the Right

The Road

and on

Welcome

Caravan Park Pet

Regal

Colourful

The Man

The Restaurant

Needs Workers

Not so Colourful

Entertainment

Pea Hen on the BBQ

Posted in Australia | 1 Comment

Australia, Cairns, Queensland, 20 – 26 June 2021

Posted on Saturday, 26-June-2021 by Chris Desmond

Cairns – Clean, broad streets and does not feel crowded even if it is the 14th largest city in Australia. The climate at this time of the year (winter) is perfect if a little humid at times. A good place to relax and do nothing. The main reason for my stopping here was to get the 15,000km service done on my car and a Wheel Alignment, Balance and Rotate.

Cairns Central Shopping Centre

Sightseeing

Hemingway’s Craft Brewery

The Brewery

Inside

The View

Art

Sauce Craft Brewery

Fish and Chips at the RSL

The View

War Memorial

Cairns Foreshore is a Mudflat

Rusty’s Markets

Grand Hotel

Inside

I visited the Armour and Artlillery Museum whic has a large collection of machines from the First and Second World Wars, very interesting.

Russian T-54

British Chieftan

US PAtton

Driving Sprocket

Inside a tank

Russian T-72

Mine Sweeper

Russian BMP-1

US APC

From Tank to Farm Machinery

Japanese Light Tank

German Panzer

The Tank from “Fury”

Cable Car to Kuranda and the Train back is one of the touristy thing to do in Cairns.

Cable Car

Looking Down

Stop 1, a boardwalk

The View

Barron River

Stop 2, Barron Falls

Barron Gorge

Kuranda Hotel

Coral Sea, Craft Beer

Shops

MArkets

The way back

The route

Welcome

Inside the Carriage

Barron Falls from the Train

Cable Car and Viewing Platform

Looking down

The Train

Cairns Botanic Gardens – a gardeners dream come true, spread over a large area, I wandered around for a couple of hours, you need a day to see it all.

Cairns Botanic Gardens

Fat tree

Can you see the ants

All Natural

Ferns

Ants live inside this plant

Spot the Ant and the Beetle

Millions of years ago

Bent

Artists

Serene

Posted in Australia | 2 Comments

Australia, Weipa, Queensland, 16 – 18 June 2021

Posted on Friday, 18-June-2021 by Chris Desmond

Cooktown to Weipa about 650km of which 200km is gravel. It alternates between paved and gravel. The first 200km to Laura is paved and the roughest bit is between Laura and Coen, after that the gravel is quite smooth all the way to Weipa. I bypassed the “Tip” of Cape York having been there in 2006 on my bike. I could not believe how many vehicles came past me the other way most towing trailers or boats and one or two towing caravans. The last time I was here I would have been lucky to see half a dozen cars a day, now hundreds. This means driving through clouds of dust and overtaking can only be done on the paved sections. Once again book ahead or you will be camping in the bush.

On the way there I saw a Goanna crossing the road so I stopped and took a video, it followed the road and then crossed back again. On the way back I saw the same guy and he waved out to me and I saw his brother who was careless and got run over. Next I saw a fairly big black pig (looks small in the video due to the distance) crossing the road and then a family of Emus.

Weipa – this is a mining town, it has one of the largest deposits of Bauxite in the world and it is owned by Rio Tinto. An unusual feature of this mining operation is that the conditions of the mining lease specify no fly in, fly out workforce. If you want to work here you must live here which has led to it being the biggest town in the Cape York Peninsula. All supplies are brought in by a weekly ship from Cairns. Another condition of the lease is that 50% of the Bauxite ore must be processed into aluminium in Australia.

I went on a mine tour and basically all they have to do is scrape off a top soil layer of about 300mm and then under that is a 3000mm layer of Bauxite which is scooped up, there is no blasting. The Bauxite pellets about the size of a pea are separated from the soil they are embedded in by washing them through a seive and then shipped out. The top soil is replaced and reforested.

Apparently the company prefers women drivers for their huge machines because they report faults with their machinery more readily than men therefore leading to fewer breakdowns on site.

Most visitors come to fish as the Gulf of Carpentaria is closed to most commercial fishing and there is a catch and release policy during certain seasons so the fish are plentiful.

From this point on I will start heading back West after I have the 15,000km service done in Cairns.

Perth to Weipa

Police near Laura

One lane bridges

Road works

Corrugations

Hahn River

Rivers

Diesel

Coen

No fruit and vegetables

Creek crossing

Archer River

Big Machine Crossing

Weipa

Tours, book ahead

Tour Bus

Bauxite

Crocodile catcher

Dredged shipping channel

Shipping Lights

The view

Bauxite Layer

Crocs lurk here

The road

Monument

Aluminium

Kaolin Monument

Mahogany

Longest One Lane Bridge

Bauxite Train

Park between the blocks

Belly Dumper

Dumping a row

Scooper

Side Tipper

Rear Tipper

Conveyer System

Waiting to load

Camping crowds

Black ibis

No swimming

All set

Birds

Beer

Woolworths

The Alby

Inside

The View

The Locals

Bauxite Mine

Cooling off

Army

4m deep in the Wet

Now a stream

Palmer River RH

Inside

Pretty Patterns

Posted in Australia | 1 Comment

Australia, Cooktown, Queensland, 13 – 15 June 2021

Posted on Tuesday, 15-June-2021 by Chris Desmond

Cooktown – This is where Captain Cook spent seven weeks repairing his ship in 1770 after it struck the reef. And it is also where the word Kangaroo originated,

“Joseph Banks met and spoke with the local people, recording about 50 Guugu Yimithirr words, including the name of the intriguing animal the natives called gangurru (which he transcribed as “Kangaru”). Cook recorded the local name as “Kangooroo, or Kanguru”

I first came here in 2001 when it was a village with a dirt road leading to it and I was riding a GTR1000 a big touring bike hahaha, still I made it back to Cairns in one piece. The road is now paved and very nice which means there are Hotels and Resorts and four caravan parks, all full. If you want to visit now you need to book ahead of time. There was also a festival of some sort going on but there did not look like there was much activity.

Ingham to Cooktown wet and windy

Bananas

Big Watering system

2021 camping

2001 camping

Mount Cook

The View 2021

The View 2001

Cooktown

The Festival

Bowling Club

Captain Cook Memorial

Musical Ship

Stories

Pavement Art

Boats

Guess Who

War Memorial

Old Tank

The Locals

Cooktown Hotel

Inside

Outside

The Locals

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Australia, Queensland, Ingham, 12 June 2021

Posted on Saturday, 12-June-2021 by Chris Desmond

Townsville to Ingham and then Wallaman Falls took 2:15 hrs on a cool and overcast day. The drive from the highway to the Falls is quite steep and shrouded in mist on a narrow winding road. Arrived at 10:45 am and the Falls were completely obscured by mist. There were a few other people there and many of them left, I nearly left as well but having nothing else to do decided to wait and see if the mist would disperse. I checked a couple of times but still could not see a thing and then to my great surprise the mist cleared at 13:00 to reveal the Falls, magnificent, all the more so because I thought I was not going to see them. They are the tallest falls in Australia at 269m.

Ingham

Sugarcane Wagons

Local Traffic

Under the clouds

Cassowary

Wallaman Falls 269m

The Lookout

Where are the Falls

Emerging from the mist

Sugarcane

Next stop was the “Pub with no Beer” made famous by Slim Dusty, an Australian singer and icon, a fun stop.

Lee’s Hotel

True Story

Slim Dusty and …

Inside

Guaranteed not to run out again

Any excuse for a Festival

Jackroo on the roof

War Memorial

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Australia, Queensland, Townsville, 10 – 11 May 2021

Posted on Friday, 11-June-2021 by Chris Desmond

Mackay to Townsville was through sugarcane country. There are special minature and very long trains that carry the sugarcane around and there are many road crossings.

Sugarcane Train Croissing

The BIG Mango

Steel Bridge

Sugarcane Train

Townsville – the biggest city in the North of Queensland, it is quite modern and it has Parking meters and signs. I wandered around following the Street Art trail and I also visited the Army Museum. Townsville was a hub during the Second World War and has the largest Army Base in Australia.