Darwin 2012–Alice Springs to Home

Well, Unfortunately the trip had to come to an end. On the way up i took heaps of photos and tried for a blog post per day. As what seems my normal trend on the way home, considering we are again traveling the reverse route, i have not taken as many photos, or updated the blog as much.

G’Day Mate turned out to be a great, quiet park with clean amenities. We stayed here 2 nights and really enjoyed the break from driving. We gave it a rating of 4/5.

Leaving Alice springs was nothing like when we arrived. On the way up to Darwin it was around 38/39 deg but as we left to go south it was only 17deg and raining. The rain was to stay with us for most of our drive south to Melbourne, and rather than the highs of 41deg on our northward journey we did not see the temperature rise above 21 deg on our journey south.

We ended up heading straight home rather than venture out to new areas, however we tried to target new parks. We stayed at Cadney Park station again, and surprisingly considering the Nomad traffic heading north, we were only one of 3 vans at the park that night. The flys were still there but not in their previous numbers. One highlight of this trip was having to pull right off the Sturt Highway to make way for some wide loads, 8.5m of houses. We encountered 4 of them heading into Port Augusta. We also managed to obtain the Colorado’s first stone chip in nearly 20,000km of trips.

On the second night we stayed at Port Germein. This is where we had lunch on our second day north. Unfortunately the rain set in and it blew a gale all night. That said the park was great, nice and clean and close to a nice little pub where we enjoyed a great, recommended, meal. I was planning to do a bit of fishing but the weather was bad. It was raining, very windy and the water was very choppy. I believe the jetty would not of been a very nice place to be.

From Port Germein we headed through Adelaide and on to the Bordertown caravan Park where we made our last stop. This campsite proved to be the nosiest for the trip as it was situated right on the main road. Other than  the noise the park was good with very clean amenities.

From there it was a short trip home. The Colorado performed flawlessly throughout the trip, however we took a big fuel economy hit on the last couple of days due to heavy head winds. The final figures from the Gas Cubby app are below.

 

Thank you for following the latest of our Caravan Holidays.

Darwin 2012 - Katherine

We have been in Katherine for a week so far. Its not much of a town but we have family here.One of my sisters, Rachel, lives on the RAAF base at Tindal, and the other, Rebecca, lives in Katherine itself.

Katherine is a fairly major town for NT with all of the service you would expect of a regional town. It is also the gateway to the Kimberley. Otherwise there is not much to do here excepting the normal tourist type stuff so we are having a great catch up with the family (including the 7 niece/nephews )

I have been back out to the Katherine River low levels for a bit of a look as i am trying to convince the brother in-laws that we need to go fishing for Barramundi, but the river is still flowing heavily due to the “Wet” just finishing. We did go down to set some traps to catch Cherabin, a local freshwater prawn. We set these at around 6pm one night and went back down at 11:30 pm to retrieve them. A good survey of the water was required first in case there were any large reptiles in the area but we did not see any. We managed to catch 7 large Cherubin thinking we would have a god snack the next day. Unfortunately they were left in the bucket overnight and therefore died. We will need to catch some more if we are to taste them.

See the logs stuck in the branches of the tree from the last flood above.

 

My first Barramundi dish for the trip.

I also took the parents out to the Katherine Gorge. Mum was not interested in a river boat tour so it was a quick look only. I have been out in he past and will look up some of those photos to add when i get home.

Everything's closed due to high waters and Crocodiles

Below is the fuel usage so far for the trip. You can see the usage fluctuating between 15.5 and 17.5 L/100Km which would be due to drivers and headwind. Otherwise, for the load we have been towing i expect this usage is OK for Petrol.

We are off to Darwin on Friday before returning to Katherine for a few more days then home

Darwin 2012 - Cadney Park Station to Alice Springs

Mums birthday today. Happy Birthday Mum.

Good news, the air conditioner managed to run all night and not leak so hopefully I have fixed it. We will see how it is in Alice springs when we get in.

We had a great sunrise this morning but we were greeted at the door of the van to the hoard of flies and 32 deg. After a breakfast of last nights curry we took off to Alice Springs.

The road is surprisingly quiet so we must be just inform of the northbound grey nomad wave. We spent most of the day leap frogging a bus load of backpackers and a greyhound service. They would overtake us then we would pull in to a stop and find them there.

We also made a stop at the border for the customary photos. One of the items on this trips todo list was to purchase bread at erldurunda station as we did both ways last time. Unfortunately there was no bread available of any type this time around.

Lunch was had a bit further up the road where we found a great stop with some shade. We needed the shade due to the 41deg heat. After this we made the last 200km run into Alice Springs. The scenery has changed again as we move into the macdonald ranges.

We are starting to move into what might seem fantastical country. As you can see the surrounding landside is flat and you can see for miles, yet on the Left we have a floodway depth indicator hat shows we “could” be 2m under water at this point. Hard to believe but the roads north of Alice Springs were blocked only 2 weeks ago.

Fuel has increased in price again with today's maximum paid price of $1.94/L and I saw LPG at $1.26/L at the same station. We had a headwind most of the way into Alice Springs

We will be in Alice Springs for 3 nights.