Farewell to the Tropics

We haven't seen much of the Internet lately. We've covered a lot of ground.

Near Broome there is a bird observatory. It's a delightful place and we met some lovely people there. We also saw some nice birds at the bird baths. What a pity we didn't have time to stay and do the tours.

The trouble was we had already booked a date to see the Bungle Bungles and we had to drive to the Turkey Creek Roadhouse. It took two days. Then we were ready for the tour at 5:20 the next morning. Ugh.

The road into the Bungle Bungles is rough even for a 4WD, so taking our campervan and driving ourselves was not an option. The tour was 2 days of air conditioned 4WD drive bus and walks around the most interesting spots in a geologically very remarkable area. The distances were not long, but both days were over 40 degrees C in the shade. Most of the walking involved following fissures in the rock formations and at least part of them were in the shade, thank goodness. We diligently followed the instruction to drink lots of water.

Day 1 took us to Mini Palms Gorge and Echidna Chasm, then back to a rather luxurious bush camp, with permanent tents, showers and even a bar. The camp also had a little bird bath where we saw many finches, honeyeaters and even some quail. Day 2 was Picaninny Creek and The Cathedral. LOTS of photos. We were then delivered back to Turkey Creek and our camper.

From there we continued back towards Katherine. In Kununurra we visited the Hidden Valley and had the great good fortune to see a bower bird displaying by his bower. He flunted a purple crest, picked up choice treasures from his mound, sand, bounded around and apparently got a mere "Ho hum" from the female.

Later in the valley we came across an English twitcher (obsessive bird watcher), who had seen one of the rare white-quilled rock pigeons that live in the area. The wretched bird did not reappear for us BUT the twitcher did not see the bower bird display, nor had he seen the even rarer cinnamon-quilled rock pigeon in Kakadu that we saw two of. Neener neener neener.

From Katherine we visited the gorge in Nitmiluk National Park and did the 3-gorge cruise. The guide was not a local. That accent had to be acquired in South Auckland! A very, very lovely gorge system and a warm swim.

Then we headed South for some heavy-duty driving. It's 1166 km from Katherine to Alice Springs. That's not to say we didn't see some nice places along the way. At Mataranka there are "thermal" springs. They are not geothermal as we have in NZ, but the ground water temperature is 32C. The setting was very picturesque, too. The campground has resident peafowl and two agile wallabies came hopping by in the evening, hoping for a handout.

Much further South we visited a desert mango farm and bought chutney. We also sampled and purchased their mango wines! And they are growing grapes on the same property. We didn't know they could be grown in the tropics.

On the last stage into Alice Springs we were surprised by a good, solid period of rain. The first we have seen since we arrived in the North and most unexpected. Rain in the desert brings out the flowers and also, in thsi case, the cops. I was randomly breath-tested just before we arrived in Alice. Lucky it was such a small taste of mango wine!

It is also surprisingly cool here. We (i.e. Eve) have done a huge pile of laundry and booked some tours around the town. Hopefully there will be time to post some more news on this blog before we leave.