The Long Haul....

Driving from Kakaudu to Mt Isa was 1200kms and 13 hours of long, gruelling, boring road… There was pretty much nothing going on except for ALOT of road kill.

We spent the night at a rest stop just East of Threeways after a 9 hour drive. To say we were shattered was an understatement, we were delirious!!!! Scraping together enough brain cells to put some Mie Goreng together for dinner was a challenge, and hilarious. We realised after about 20 mins of waiting for the water to boil that there wasn't even any gas in the cooker and no flame…duh!!!! Things went from bad to worse, our lantern went flat so we were trying to cook in the dark and then the drawers got stuck so we couldn't get anything out of them!!! After about 45 mins of Mie Goreng cooking time we gobbled down our noodles and scrambled into our Spider Tent. Little did we know, there was an almighty wind coming through that blew around the tent all night. We didn't sleep….at all. Being totally over tired my mind went into over drive thinking about all the ways we could be killed out here in the wilderness…Axe wielding murderers, a pack of dingos, trampled by a herd of bulls, wild pigs, mammoth spiders, maybe a UFO would come down and we'd be abducted never to be seen again…Counting down the seconds for the sun to come up we packed up our stuff and jumped in the car…not a word was spoken. The trip had suddenly turned into "Ben and Nici's Zombie Adventures!!!"

After stopping at the closest petrol station to fill up fuel, have some porridge, brush our teeth and use the toilet we were on our way again. Our mission was to get to Mt Isa and find a really nice caravan park to stay at so we could have showers and get a good nights sleep.

Pulling into Mt Isa and we realised this wasn't gonna happen. This place was full on!!! It was a bit of a culture shock coming from absolute tranquility in the bush campsites of Kakadu ( apart from our French Tourist friends) to screaming children and even worse..screaming mothers!! Bustling Cars and trucks and Coles and Kmart!! It's basically a mining town and very industrial. As you enter the town you're greeted by what seems a massive bush fire, but moving closer you realise its a giant chimney where tonnes and tonnes of thick smoke is pumped out over the town. Driving past a local baseball game we noticed all the kids had their shirts up over their faces so they could breath….nice. So we decided to keep driving and get to another rest stop, at least it was early and we would have time to set up a decent camp, not to mention the money we would save!!! So we found Fountain Springs rest stop about 70kms out of Mt Isa and this did us just fine.

Ben did what he is happiest doing and built a fire, while I did my daily excersise and then started on dinner, a veggie curry with rice and pappadums. I was determined for us to have a decent dinner after the night before's poor efforts!! It took a while on our little gas cooker but it was worth it. After filling our bellies and watching an episode of our favourite new series 'The Planet' we actually feel asleep. With no wind, no wild pigs and no UFO's…. for 9 solid hours. xxx

Pics of Katherine and Kakadu Pics. x

Katherine and Kakadu. x

We spent Wednesday night in Katherine at The BIg 4 Caravan Park . Ben and I went down to the river there to try our luck at some Barramundi fishing but didn't have the right bait, we could see the bloody bastards swimming up to our lures and literally turning their noses up at them, it was hilarious!!! Luckily we're vegetarian and it didn't hurt too much too walk away from them, hehe.

We went into the town to the camping store there and stocked up on some supplies, including a tiny two man tent that Ben really wanted so we can save time on one night stop overs. I call it the spider tent cause it feels like you're in a web!!! It's really easy to set up and as the lady in the shop explained "It erects in 2-3 seconds!" Whoooppeeeee!!!! haha!

Thursday morning we were up early and made our way to Kakadu National Park, this was something we were both really excited about. We stopped in at the information centre there and asked the lady there lots of questions on where was the best place to stay overnight where we could get a real feel for the place. She suggested 'Gunlom'. This place was about 58km from the entrance to the park and had a beautiful big waterfall right where you can camp. There was also a 2km walking track that took you right up to the top of the falls where there were pools you could swim in.

So we paid our $50 entry fee into the park and got on our way. The corrugated road was long to Gunlom but once there we could see what all the fuss was about, the landscape was bloody incredible with dence forest and massive cliff faces as far as the eye could see.

We set up the spider tent and packed some water and a towel to set off up to the top of the waterfall.

About 10 minutes into the hike my guts turned, I had totally forgotten my fear of heights and as soon as the track turned steep I felt like curling into a ball and crying. There was still so far to go!!! Ben kept asking if I was alright and I felt bad for being such a downer so I tried my best to just suck it up and keep going. Every joint in my body felt like jelly. There was no looking around at the scenic views for me!! I just kept my head down and kept going.

Reaching the top, it was all worth it…100 times over.

Beautiful rock pools and different levels of waterfalls were breathtaking. We kept going a little further to get away from all the other people there and found a bigger deeper pool to jump in. I must say it's a little eery when you don't know whats at the bottom but there are plenty of rocks to climb up onto at any time.

Back down at the more shallow pools, you can go right up to the edge of the massive waterfall and look out over he edge. Think of the most amazing infinity pool and it's better than that!!!

Making our way back down (slowly, hehe!) we just chilled at our camp, Ben set up our hammock for me and he played some tunes on the guitar. Just as i finished making dinner, around 4pm, a big ute came roaring up to our camp blasting gross urban, sleazy, male hip-hop, shit outta there stereo. There were a bunch of fire twirling hippie girls staying near us so we figured that's what had attracted these three french travellers. They were rank, and hilarious, puffing there chests and being loud. We couldn't help but laugh but at the same time we were pretty pissed off that everyones beautiful serene surroundings had been totally invaded by wangs.

Ben and I talked it over and decided that half an hour of packing up and moving to the other side of the camp ground would mean 8 hours of decent sleep, so that's what we did.

The funniest thing out of all of it was after seeing two of the girls making out by there tent we realised that they were all very unimpressed lesbians….Goodluck with that French boys. hehe!!!

After a good nights sleep we left Kakadu and hit the road. It's gonna be a long drive today, we have a lot of ground to cover in the next few days to make it to Cairns. But the prospect of one whole month on the East Coast makes all that driving sound not so bad. x