News from up North in bl**dy big country
Greetings,
I know you'll all be pleased to hear Brucetta made it to Darwin! We actually drove just over 7400km to get here thought the map says it's only about 4500! (longest day was just under 1200km, car didn't enjoy it one bit unfortunately). Just to make sure we got the most out of the car then did an extra 600km to go to Kakado for a few days, however didn't stay too long as the entire national park (the size of switzerland) is entirely dry of off licences!
Reason for the extra few thousand km over the 4500 is that we went in search of the biggest cliffs we could find and threw ourselves off them! Best we found were some water falls in gorges in Karijini National Park and a cliff over Katherine River (jumping a little over 12m and diving about 9m - looks v. high from up there and didn't half hurt the old head when hitting the water when diving). Also found a few big rocks to jump off in Litchfield NP but the biggest and most dramatic were closed for swimming as they hadn't been able to remove a few big crocs that were seen there so had to practice forward and back flips into the smaller gorges.
No amazing animal eating to report on, had a few BBQs with giant steaks and cooked up a few roos but no emu just yet. The total count for dead kangaroos on the road form Perth to Darwin was 206 (one every 36km), didn't look like being anywhere near that high until a 50km straight bit of road just south of Broome provided 80 in a little over 30 minutes! Other than the roos we had 7 cows and loads of birds and small animals. I didn't manage to hit anything the entire way but Dave got 3 birds and gave a roo a glancing blow (doubled back to check the damage but it had hopped off into the bush without leaving so much as a drop of blood to mark the encounter).
Other live spotting include loads of crocs, dingos, lizards, snakes, emu, more ostrich and hundreds of storks of all shapes and sizes. I've also now eventually seen a live leopard though only in captivity and even then I had to climb a fence and sneak round the enclosure to see it as the cages were closed for repairs! The leopard was at a croc farm were they had thousands of crocodiles of all shapes and sizes as well as lions, tigers, monkeys - all in cages that were far to small unfortunately (not quite Africa I'm afraid!)
Other highlights form the drive north was surfing at Broome, surfing and snorkeling nr Exmouth, a magnetically aligned termite field, 20,000 year old Aboriginal rock art and loads of amazing waterfalls, rock pools and gorges. Dave heads for Alice by plane tomorrow and I'm hoping to find a couple of new car mates to drive south and east with (will be meeting and American and an Italian so we'll see) or selling up and flying in a similar direction so I'll let you know what happens next next time I reach civilization (apparently could be quite a long way away!).
Hope all is well back in the mother land (and everywhere else)
TTFN
Jonathan
Internet cafe
Backpacker
Darwin
Northern Territory
Australia
I know you'll all be pleased to hear Brucetta made it to Darwin! We actually drove just over 7400km to get here thought the map says it's only about 4500! (longest day was just under 1200km, car didn't enjoy it one bit unfortunately). Just to make sure we got the most out of the car then did an extra 600km to go to Kakado for a few days, however didn't stay too long as the entire national park (the size of switzerland) is entirely dry of off licences!
Reason for the extra few thousand km over the 4500 is that we went in search of the biggest cliffs we could find and threw ourselves off them! Best we found were some water falls in gorges in Karijini National Park and a cliff over Katherine River (jumping a little over 12m and diving about 9m - looks v. high from up there and didn't half hurt the old head when hitting the water when diving). Also found a few big rocks to jump off in Litchfield NP but the biggest and most dramatic were closed for swimming as they hadn't been able to remove a few big crocs that were seen there so had to practice forward and back flips into the smaller gorges.
No amazing animal eating to report on, had a few BBQs with giant steaks and cooked up a few roos but no emu just yet. The total count for dead kangaroos on the road form Perth to Darwin was 206 (one every 36km), didn't look like being anywhere near that high until a 50km straight bit of road just south of Broome provided 80 in a little over 30 minutes! Other than the roos we had 7 cows and loads of birds and small animals. I didn't manage to hit anything the entire way but Dave got 3 birds and gave a roo a glancing blow (doubled back to check the damage but it had hopped off into the bush without leaving so much as a drop of blood to mark the encounter).
Other live spotting include loads of crocs, dingos, lizards, snakes, emu, more ostrich and hundreds of storks of all shapes and sizes. I've also now eventually seen a live leopard though only in captivity and even then I had to climb a fence and sneak round the enclosure to see it as the cages were closed for repairs! The leopard was at a croc farm were they had thousands of crocodiles of all shapes and sizes as well as lions, tigers, monkeys - all in cages that were far to small unfortunately (not quite Africa I'm afraid!)
Other highlights form the drive north was surfing at Broome, surfing and snorkeling nr Exmouth, a magnetically aligned termite field, 20,000 year old Aboriginal rock art and loads of amazing waterfalls, rock pools and gorges. Dave heads for Alice by plane tomorrow and I'm hoping to find a couple of new car mates to drive south and east with (will be meeting and American and an Italian so we'll see) or selling up and flying in a similar direction so I'll let you know what happens next next time I reach civilization (apparently could be quite a long way away!).
Hope all is well back in the mother land (and everywhere else)
TTFN
Jonathan
Internet cafe
Backpacker
Darwin
Northern Territory
Australia
posted by JP at 4:36 am
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