29^th November (Tuesday)

We had signed up for the Uluru sunrise viewing and the base walk of 12 km around the rock. Unfortunately this meant that we had to be in reception by 4:45am to get our transportation to the viewing area. We were nevertheless offered tea and biscuits at the viewing area and a breakfast pack for the base walk. 

Mike & Sheila at Sunrise

The base walk took around 4½hrs and by the time we had finished the temperature was up to 37C and we had each consumed around 1.5 litres of the water. The terrain is flat and not difficult, although by the last leg it was getting a tad warm. There were a few flies buzzing around but not too much of a bother.  There is quite a bit of vegetation around the rock and even the odd bit of shade.  We even came across a couple of water holes - not at all what we anticipated. We saw some art work on a cave wall but it was very crude compared to what we had seen in Arnhem Land.

Uluru and its terrain

Unfortunately much of the grass is Buffel Grass and this is not the natural grass and very aggressive in colonising the land, difficult to destroy and low in nutrients so provides little opportunity for the native animals to thrive. It is believed to have come to Australia with camels in the 1860s. It is a native of eastern Africa and Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Until 1920s Afghan camel trains carted most of the goods needed by the people settling in central Australia. It is thought that the saddles that the Afghan camel drivers brought with them contained Buffel Grass for padding and that seeds escaped as the saddles got torn or wore out. Many people now believe that Buffel grass is a major threat to biodiversity although the planting of it around Alice Springs has reduced the severe dust storms that plagued Alice in the 1950s and 60s.

There is a limited option to climb up onto the rock at one point but this is not offered every day and one must start early since it can take well over 4-6 hours and can be very hot and windy on top plus it is quite a steep and slippery slope with very limited protection. Generally it is not encouraged but for various reasons it remains in existence.  

28^th November (Monday)

We had an early start this morning with a taxi pick-up at 5:30am to catch a plane to Alice Springs.  The previous evening I had reorganised my luggage so that I could put my jacket into the case.  To ensure I didn’t exceed the 23kg load I had shifted my pack of electronics into my rucksack. Unfortunately I forgot that my Swiss pen knife was in the same bag. This didn’t surface as an issue until I went through the security check with no option to place the knife in my case. Thus I had to bequeath by pen knife to Darwin security staff.  Not the first time this has happened since the same situation arose in Cairns two years ago but on that occasion I became aware of the issue at the check in desk and even though my case had gone through I was able to off-load the knife to a passenger behind me in the queue.

When we landed in Alice Springs what struck us both was the amount of vegetation around, bushes and small trees, and much greener than we had imagined.  Alice Springs has an average rainfall of around 280 mm.

Sheila arrives at Alice Spring

The stopover in Alice Springs to Ayers Rock gave me time to peruse the shops – I found a couple of good front page cartoons on The Spectator and The Economist plus a snake bite kit. 

The Economist

I had purchased a similar type of snake bite kit back in 1969 on my way to America to address the chance of being bitten by a rattle snake – never saw a single one in the whole of 3 months traveling across the USA.  My 1969 kit was however much smaller, about the size of an egg, which split in two, and contained a scalpel, tourniquet, smelling salts and a bandage.

Snake bite kit

We were staying at the Desert Sands Hotel in Ayers Rock, which was very comfortable. In the evening we took part in the “Sound of Silence” event, which included a view of Uluru as the sun set, sparkling wine and canapés followed by a meal outside and a spectacular view of the stars and planets. 

Mike & Sheila at Sunset

27th November (Sunday)

In the morning we drove out of Darwin City and up around the coast to “End Point” a recreational reserve. The tide was out revealing a large expanse of sandy beach. The tide is reported to vary by about 5m. Some of the small trees on the coast have their roots covered with water at high tide.

Sheila at East Point

The beach and water looked very enticing but there were signs warning of crocodiles. Also at this time of year there are small jelly fish that can be fatal to humans.

In the afternoon we walked around the Darwin Botanical Garden to find some shade from the sun. We spotted an unusual Canonball tree with fruit the size of cannon balls - quite an eye catcher.

Cannonball Tree

A beetle of about 1” in length landed on my rucksack .

Beetle

In the town we spotted a very unusual stripped gecko with a very long tail.

Gecko

We ate an evening meal on the hotel veranda on the 3^rd floor and watched lightning in the distant clouds to the north, fully expecting some overnight rain.

26^th November  (Saturday)

Had breakfast and drove back to Darwin (250km) stopping off at a couple of road information areas. One was exceptionally good the “Window on the Wetland Visitor Centre”. The girl at the Centre explained that typically one can tell the venomous snakes since they have non-circular eyes, a bit like a curved diamond. I took a look through one of her books on the subject and the only problem I could see was that the red-bellied black snake is so dark that it was difficult to determine the shape from the dark body.

We saw a number of wallabies on the way back, including a few that had been killed by motorists.  We also saw quite a few birds of prey and a red-tailed black cockatoo.

We are staying at the same apartments (Ramada Suite Zen Quarter) for the next two days  as we did when we arrived. We then head down to Ayres Rock early Monday morning. We have a good view from the 15 floor.

View from Apartment

Just spotted a pamphlet in the apartment on "Cyclone Preparation" so snake bites might not be the only concerns in this part of the world! 

25^th November (Friday)

We took a Scenic Tours Flight over Kakadu National Park. 

Sheila & Mike prepare to embark

We headed all the way down to the Jim-Jim Falls (259m) and the Twin Falls (158m), both of which were currently out of bounds due to the start of the rainy season and even when open only by using 4WD vehicles.

Jim-Jim Falls

The flight provided a good view of Jabiru, our hotel, the Jabiru golf course and the Ranger Uranium Mine.

Mecure Crocodile Hotel

On the way out of the airport we took a wrong turn and ended up at the side of the open cast Uranium mine.

Ranger Uranium Mine

In the afternoon we decided to play a round of golf at the Jabiru Golf Club.  We almost gave up on the first tee as we were bitten to death by a swarm of mosquitoes. I promptly dived back into the club house to apply copious quantities of insect repellent.  This did quell the onset of the mosquitoes but some still persisted. Quite distracting going to hit ball as a mosquito buzzes around your face.

This must be the first golf course where one finds termite mounds on the fairways, some 2-3 feet high! There is no mention of this in the local rules.  However, one can lift and drop within one club length a ball lying in a buffalo hoof print! Not that we saw any buffaloes.

In the evening after a meal we watched a video of the Kakadu National Park and the work of the rangers. We had watched part of one of the two CDs a previous night but didn’t finish the CD. Well none of the hotel staff could find the correct controller so in the end we downloaded an app of the internet called “Sure” and successfully controlled it from my mobile phone.

24rd November (Thursday)

We took a cultural tour in a 4WD vehicle into Arnhem Land. This is an extremely large area and five times larger than Kakadu National Park and was offered to the aborigines as a reserve exclusively for them. The area we explored includes large areas of valleys that will be flooded when the wet season starts in earnest. 

Arnhem Land

The whole place will be closed down within 2 weeks of our visit. We visited many areas where the aborigines over the years have drawn on the rock faces. Some of the art work stretching back over 6000 years. There is also one painting which is estimated to be 100,000 years and is quite a mystery as to its origin. 

Aboriginal rock art

We were fortunate to see a female wallaroo, which is unique to the Arnhem mountainous region and not found anywhere else. The males are black and the females grey.

Wallaroo

While in the region we also visited the Injalak Art Centre in Gunbalanya that has been set up to help the local community develop new skills particularly screen printing.

Artist at the Injalak Art Centre

23rd November (Wed)

In the morning we walked to the Bowali Visitor Centre across a 2km stretch of savanna cover with lots of grasshoppers along the way and quite a few mosquitoes. The main reason for the visit was to pick up passes for the Kakadu National Park. Whilst at the Centre we managed to acquire some mosquito repellent spray from the girl behind the desk, although it was a DEET based repellent. However, the shop at the same visitor centre sold a repellent that uses natural ingredients, which we bought since DEET has an adverse effect on plastic watch straps.

In the afternoon we drove about 40km down to the Cooinda Lodge along the Kakadu Highway to catch a two hour Yellow Water Cruise.  

Rain Storm seen in the distance from the Yellow Water

On the cruise we saw plenty of crocodiles and eagles, a few Jabiru plus many other birds including a king fisher, a yellow tree snake and wallabies.

Lurking crocodile

Jabiru (Black-necked stork)

Kingfisher

The trip didn’t finish until around 6:30pm, nearly sunset, so with a 40km drive back to Jabiru we lost no time to take to the road. It soon got dark and my worry was that we would be liable to hit a wallaby on the journey doing serious damage to the car – fortunately we got back without incident.

22nd  November Darwin to Jabiru

We picked up a car to cover the time in Darwin and the following days in the Kakadu National Park.  In attempting to get my Garmin navigation system working I discovered that the data on both my Australian and European micro-SIM cards had been erased, possibly because they went through an X-ray scanner at Heathrow 2. These were in the hold luggage while others in my two phones, which were in my hand luggage, were fine.  We thus had to use Google maps on my Samsung mobile phone to guide us out of Darwin and onto Jabiru in the Kakadu National Park. 

A give you an idea of the scale of Kakadu National Park it is 1/3 the size of Switzerland.

There were fairly straight roads down to Jabiru with lots of termite hills in the land surrounding the road. The temperature on the route down was around 37C,which isn't an issue with air conditioning in the car. There were  a number of small road kills evident along the way. 

We booked into the Mecure Crocodile Hotel in Jabiru, which is shaped like a crocodile, see later image from our flight over the national park.

Jubiru was first established for mining uranium and this will continue until 2021 but after this time the licence will be withdrawn and the community of 6000 will be reduced and many of the shops, few that there are, will be impacted. The uranium mined powers 10% of the world’s nuclear power stations.

We had tremendous thunder storm and lightning during the nights.

21st November - Darwin

We walked around the city and along the promenade to get our bodies into the right time zone.  I purchased a Telstra SIM card for the trip. I previously discovered that this was a better option than Opus when travelling outside the main cities since Opus appeared to have less coverage than Telstra.

We visited the Royal Flying Doctor Museum on Stokes Hill Wharf, which also houses an exhibit of the attack of Darwin by Japanese planes during WWII. The latter is visualised by a virtual reality system used on a swivel chair – a great idea for the technology.

18^th/19^th/20^th  (Friday-Sunday) November Hotel & Flights

We took the train and underground to Heathrow and stayed overnight at the Radisson Hotel. This was comfortable, a good price and only 15 minutes from Terminal 2.

The Singapore Airline flight to Darwin, our first port of call for the Australian visits, went to Darwin via Singapore and Melbourne. This wasn’t our original intention but our direct flight from Singapore to Darwin was cancelled leaving us with no option other than a two day delay or the long flight via Melbourne and 8 hours of extra flying. 

On the flight I watched a couple of good films: Eye in the Sky, The Man who knew Infinity (real life story of the famous and very unconventional Indian mathematician called Srinivasa Ramanujan) and a TV series: “The Durrells in Corfu”.  All are worth watching, and the latter will need to be revisited on the way back since I have 1½ episodes to finish the 6 part series.

We eventually arrived at the Ramada Suite Zen Quarter apartments in Darwin late on the Sunday evening at around 23.30.