Carnarvon Gorge

After saying goodbye to Koondoo we joined my family out at Carnarvon Gorge, which gave me the opportunity to actually catch up with them as it was so hectic over the party weekend with so many people. We had dinner in the restaurant both nights, but had a far bigger appetite on the second. We all set out walking up the gorge at the same time but shortly split up as we wanted to go further up the gorge than some. Ben, Jacqui and I set out to walk up to the Cathedral (an almost 20km round trip), I fear that I just slowed them both down considerably but I like to take my time and didn’t want to overdo it. I’m really bad with names but we went up into some caverns up to the right with a charming set of waterfalls and ancient and almost extinct king ferns(?). We got back around 4pm and I was very sore (Ben was fine), but it was worth it!

We had a really great week and a bit with family and friends and it came at just the right time in our trip to give us a little time apart, not that we drive each other crazy but it’s nice to talk to someone else for a change. We almost made a scene saying goodbye (love you mum) but we pulled through and departed for Townsville.

An Extended Weekend in Blackall

Just a quick note on a great week with many friends and family in Blackall and out at Koondoo.

We had an absolute blast. The party was great fun (as was the pre-party and the after-party), catching up with everyone was even better and we can’t wait to see everyone again for another round soon.

Congratulations again Steph and Andy!

Ben's Pub Crawl (ever continuing)

This section was our journey down to Blackall where we stopped at every pub we came across, of course this “pub crawl” is ongoing and I can’t say I don’t like it. We kicked it all off with a dip in the Mataranka hot springs and journeyed out to the homestead, home to the cabin reconstructed for the movie The Never Never, great to have a look at the history and a book I will definitely be picking up once we’re home. Further south we stopped in at Larrimah, home of the ‘big stubby’ and the pub is also known as the Pink Panther Hotel, with some great insignia around the front. The Pink Panther also laid claim to the highest bar in the territory, they even raised the level of the top of the bar to make sure. Daly Waters was our next stop for the afternoon and it has to be seen to be believed, what one could call junk is really more “left behind souvenirs”. We spent over an hour reading and looking about the pub before we headed off down to road to find a camp for the night somewhere down the highway. We rocked on down to Tennant Creek the next day to check out the local attractions and went back up to Three Ways Roadhouse for a beverage and fuel before heading west along the Barkly Highway. We stopped at the Barkly Homestead for another quick beverage and found camp further along closer to the border.

Then back into Queensland!!! We went straight through to Mt Isa where Ben was thankful to wash and vacuum the car. We also stopped at the Buffs Club before heading out of town. We were due to stay at the Ernest Henry mine camp that night so we travelled to Cloncurry and had a quick beer in the favoured local before meeting up with some of Ben’s mates for dinner and drinks at camp. We  had an early start the next morning to get down to Blackall for that afternoon. Ben had planned to visit the Blue Heeler Hotel in Kyuna and the Walkabout Hotel in Mckinlay but unfortunately our early start meant that neither would be open at time of passing. Ben Plans to make this up by a detour on the way home.

Kakadu

Trying to do this catch up really quick so I can post on what we’ve been doing more recently, short but sweet in a few instalments and I will hopefully be able to go into more details and update the posts later on.

By and by we travelled on into Kakadu country, our first stop was at the Window to the Wetlands discovery centre, which gave us a little more ecological background on the area. We travelled on to the Bark Hut Inn where we learned there had been a big accident about an hour up the road, although it didn’t affect our travels too much as we had decided to take a 4WD track through the heart of Kakadu. The 4x4 track led us back out to the highway after a while and we ended up travelling into Jabiru to stay for 2 nights. From Jabiru we based ourselves to go out to Cahill’s Crossing, Ubirr (when Dundee did his thing), Anbangbang and visited Katherine O’Reilly working at the mine camp just out of town. After a couple of days exploring from there we travelled down to Jim Jim and Twin Falls, a good little journey down we stayed the night at the campsite and headed down to the falls the next day. Both of the falls were spectacular and we had a good time exploring. From there we headed out to the highway started to head south, the next part of our journey.