Melissa and Klas's Journey: July 2008

About Me

We both like to travel, especially to visit family and friends around the world. Coming from Australia and Sweden and having family in Texas and California, most of our trips are to these places. And now we've embarked on a very long trip, visiting about 30 countries, so we thought we'd share our journey with you...

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Crikey, It's a Croc!

First we wanted to say thanks for all of your comments. We didn't know if people were still as interested in the blog since we've been travelling for over a year now. We are always excited to read the comments - and we had five on the last post!

We just finished travelling through the Northern Territory. After touring the Red Centre, we hit the national parks in the north. On the way to Kakadu National Park (N.P.), we stayed at a cattle station that we had been told about. It was a unique experience but 'good fun' with a slideshow presentation about the station and a couple of cows roaming between the caravans and tents. It was only $12 so it was great for the budget.

We spent three days in Kakadu. This land is owned by the aborigines. We had a great camp site the first night, with beautiful rock pools to swim in nearby that you will see in the photos below. The second day involved more swimming, wetlands and aboriginal rock art that was thousands of years old. The night was awful with mosquitoes swarming us when we tried to cook outside and take a shower. I (Melissa) even got bitten on the bottom when I used the bathroom. The camp site was called Merl's Campground so you should avoid it at all costs. We took a boat tour on the third day with an aboriginal guide and lots of crocodiles. Finally we got to see crocodiles in the wild...and we're glad that we were safe inside the boat.

After a quick stop in Darwin, and much-needed haircuts, we stopped at Litchfield N.P. This mainly consisted of waterfalls and a patch of magnetic termite mounds that looked like a cemetery.

Finally, after much debate, we decided to add an extra day and visit Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge) N.P. It ended up being a good decision even though I was so tired after walking 17 kms to various gorges. At night, our camp site was full of wallabies, which look like mini-kangaroos. It was really cool as they were very close.

We just crossed the border to Western Australia yesterday. It felt like we were entering another country as we had to go through a quarantine control point because fruit, vegetables and honey cannot be brought across the border. Luckily we knew about this ahead of time so all we lost was a little bit of honey.

Kakadu N.P.

First night at Gunlom

Day 2 - Maguk (Barramundi Gorge). We didn't bring our swimmers so we went in the water in our underwear. It was too beautiful not to swim.

Rock art at Nourlangie

Nourlangie

Ubirr

Arnhem Land

Day 3 - Crikey, it's a croc! East Alligator River

East Alligator River with views of Arnhem Land in the background

Litchfield N.P.

Klas swimming at Wangi Falls

Magnetic termite mounds

I might become a birdwatcher with these kinds of birds everywhere!

Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge) N.P.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

First Taste of the Outback at the Red Centre

It's been about two weeks since our last post. We've been through a lot of remote towns lately so internet time can be a bit pricey. For example, it cost A$12 per hour in Yulara (Ayers Rock Resort) so we've waited to post again until we were in a bigger town.

Now we're in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, or the Red Centre of Australia. It took us five days to get to this area from Cairns. As we headed inland from Cairns, we found that people were giving us the finger. No, I don't mean that they were sticking up their middle finger. Instead, with both hands on the steering wheel, they would raise an index finger as a way to say hello. Since we've had so much driving to do, some times we pass the time by seeing how many people in a row that we can get to 'give us the finger' by raising one ourselves. So far we are up to six in a row but I'll let you know if we beat this record.

The day that we left Cairns, we drove across three different landscapes in one day. It was amazing. First we were in the tropical rainforest area. Then we drove through the Atherton Tablelands, which reminded us of the rolling green hills in Ireland. Finally we entered the Outback. How many countries have such extreme changes in landscapes?

I (Melissa) was ignorant of the Outback thinking that it would all look the same -- desert with not much to see. However, the landscape throughout the Outback varies a lot from the different types of plants to the colour of the sand (yellow or red) to whether it is flat or hilly.

The highlights of the last week in the Red Centre have been Uluru (Ayers Rock), Kata Tjuta (The Olgas), Watarrka (Kings Canyon) and the West MacDonnell Range. While it took a lot of driving to get to these places, it was well worth the effort. We had originally planned to see the first two sites but so many people that we've met the last few weeks strongly recommended the last two sites so we're glad that we listened to them. The way the colours change at these locations during sunrise and sunset was spectacular. We also did quite a lot of hiking with beautiful views along the way so that was right up our alley of things we like to do.

If you are wondering, yes, we are still camping. We've camped for four weeks. Klas has used many bottles of hand sanitiser -- just kidding; the camp sites feel cleaner than some of the other accommodation that we have stayed in elsewhere.

Now we are going to head north again to the top-middle section of Australia before heading west. Since we weren't able to upload many photos in the last blog post, we've added a lot of photos below so we hope you enjoy them. We just realised that we have taken more than 10,000 photos on this trip.

New South Wales (mid-eastern section of Australia)