As we gleefully left the Isa, there was heavy and unseasonal weather crossing northern Australia from west to east.  A perfect opportunity to bypass Camooweal, to forsake Queensland for the Northern Territory and, at the same time, to drive through the rain band.  Along the way, we encountered various timid souls, their demented eyes glued to the BOM app, hunkering down for the onslaught or altering plans so they stayed on the major highways, and generally demonstrating “no ticker”.  We, on the other hand, had been recommended to stop for a gourmet meal and satisfactory overnight stay at Barkly Homestead (don’t be fooled – it’s a roadhouse) by some travelling Sandgropers back at Corella and it was also just the right distance along the way to our next destination, The Heartbreak Hotel.

At the roadhouse, there was a huge and crowded parking area for campers which quickly turned to very red but not-too-deep mud as it poured overnight.  This was a big operation with their “Grill” seating maybe 250 patrons – the Barramundi (wild caught, they claimed) was good, even if the ambience was no different to ordinary pub dining 👍.

According to the aforementioned timid souls, the road north from here was heavily trafficked by road trains and besides, it was black soil country, virtually guaranteeing getting bogged.  But <RoadReportNT> told us that it was, in fact, a single lane bitumen strip called the Tablelands Highway and was deemed to be OPEN.  Well, a Highway!  Who could resist?

In Dickensian terms, it was the best of drives, it was the worst of drives!*  The single lane of bitumen was indeed, just one narrow lane. That lane was full of potholes.  Those potholes were full of water.  That water was from the rain pouring down and that meant that visibility was low for much of the 400km trip, zero when a road train passed.  It was blowing a gale and the temperature never topped 10°C.  Brrr!**

But the best of drives – everyone on the road was careful, considerate and sensible.  The few road trains were on their radios and gracefully acknowledged when we said we’d pull over to let them by.  There was decent gravel on the road side, so no black soil bogging.  Various other travellers like us were also using their radios to communicate:  “Come on through; We’ve stopped in a wide floodway; All good!”  A long, difficult drive but, buoyed by our fellow fools and a little sunshine late in the day, we rolled into the Heartbreak Hotel at Cape Crawford  The plan was to stop here and take a helicopter tour over the “Lost City” in Limmen NP.  A quick call told us that “chopper’s not started yet” and a look at the hotel sign suggested maybe just as well. 

Cape Crawford is in fact some 150km from the nearest sea but is at the end of the Abner mountain range, hence it’s called a cape.  I had vaguely heard that the Lost City was worth a trip so, helicopter absence notwithstanding, we took the Landcruiser into Limmen and went in search of the City.  It was fabulous!

A surreal landscape of eroded sandstone “skyscrapers” led us through a bushwalk (including a stop for lunch which I’d remembered this time!) that wound in and out of these amazing tilted rocks.  I know they’re just rocks but it was beautiful and different to anything else we’d seen, topped off by yet another spectacular day (weather front long gone).  A combination of weathering sandstone, leaching silica and the wet and the dry is geologically responsible. It was all in one concentrated area of maybe a square kilometre with one other similar area on the other side of a gorge.  Another 100km of dirt back to ATGANI, a quick bite at the pub and a successful trip to Cape Crawford thereby completed. Excellent!

Slightly scared and scarred by the Tablelands Highway, we chose not to take the all-dirt road through Roper Bar (but I still reckon we would have made it.)  Instead we conservatively aimed for Mataranka, and to Bitter Springs (thanks to Gill Taylor) where we had a swim in the crystal clear 30° water bubbling out of the ground around here.  We (with a couple of hundred other people) paddled around in this beautiful warm water and wished we’d had foam noodles – it’s a cast-iron fact that no-one goes swimming anywhere in inland Australia without a bloody noodle!  People wandering aimlessly in almost desert-like bush still have noodles poking out of their backpacks.  And yes, of course we’ve succumbed!

There were further thermal springs here but they were a bit cooler and a bit more developed around the edges (so, even more peeps) and we saw much the same thing in Katherine a bit later.  Probably the most amazing thing in all these places is the complete and absolute clarity of the water.  Spectacular and refreshing – a winning combo!

Our direction had changed to up-the-page now, as Kakadu was calling.  We also very much wanted to see Katherine Gorge merely because it gets a mention in all the brochures.  Consumer reports on the caravan parks in Katherine were dreadful and the one actually located at the Gorge fared even worse.  No matter, as we drove past, they all had “park full” signs anyway.  We chose to stay in another, but better, paddock at Kumbidgee, Chris McManus’s unlikely but terrific restaurant 10km out of Katherine (for those who know it, reminiscent of Matt Dillow’s Verandah at Lovedale).  After a long hot day exploring the Gorge, and a helicopter flight over it, we dined there very happily.  I’m guessing the best in Katherine by some margin👍. (Regional score👍👍)

We’d been pretty slack about the amount of hiking we’d been doing.  There always seemed to be a reason why we might drive or just-have-a quick-look.  However, hike we did at Katherine Gorge – a quick little 6km number with a few hundred metres up and down in what turned out to be 35° heat.  Worse still, after the first km and a sensational outlook across the gorge, it was as dull as dishwater. Even the lads having a beer in the carpark thought it was a “punishing time” to be walking. Reckon there’ll be lots of hiking to come?

We’d also failed to get a spot on a boat cruise on the gorge due to lastminuteitis but this turned out well.  Why not take a helicopter trip?  Weirdly, they weren’t all booked out!$!  So much better than the cruise – we saw how the entire gorge system fits together, we saw people at the end of a 3 day hike swimming in un-infested water, we saw cascading waterfalls and country that would kill you in half an unguarded day.  All in a Bell 47 which looked like it would disintegrate at any moment but history shows, they seldom do!

All of this was just prevarication.  We had given ourselves a week’s stay in Kakadu and were hoping that the curmudgeons who call it Kakdon’t were hopelessly wrong.  By now, thanks to the NT’s focus on crocodile disasters, Lesley had developed an unwavering focus of her own – NO crocodile areas at all and NOT even anywhere near a crocodile area!  I, on the other hand, believed there was a spectacular and certified safe swimming hole at Majuk, just 30km inside the Kakadu border.  “We should go there”, I said. “What could possibly go wrong?”

* For heaven’s sake Mr Dickens, make up your mind!
** It’s scarcely been under 30° ever since.