Travel Memories: Litchfield National Park NT

 

 

 

 

Florence Falls, Litchfield National Park NT

Time for another trip down memory lane.

 

 

Litchfield National Park is another one of our "best places" to visit  in the Northern Territory.
It is near the town of Batchelor 100km south of Darwin so it is the perfect place to pop into if we are going up to the airport, or when these photos were taken, towing the caravan on holiday. We set up at Batchelor Caravan Park on the grass,  a luxury in the dry season, put out the solar panels and saved ourselves a few dollars each night on peak time powered site fees. Stayed a couple of days and drove in to the park each day. There are lots of places to go in the park but we love these two the best.

Florence Falls is spectacular, although each time I have to brace myself for the very long set of steps down and the even longer is seems steps up. I reckon someone has it in for me. All the good places require me to climb steps. Up is bad enough, but down does not very nice things to my brain.

Florence Falls, double waterfalls, great swim

We love Buley Rockhole where we sat in the various pools and let the water flow over and past us.




We grabbed lunch at the Batchelor Buttefly Farm and Tea House. Great Food and a walk through butterfly aviary. There was even be a turtle in the one of the ponds.



Good memories

Cheers Sue

A Ferg on the Move.

Things are slowing down here. Or steak, whips and supermarket checkouts.

We had dinner at the Bistro tonight. Our chef, a young Australian lad, is here for his third season. He works the peak tourist time and then does the backpacker thing in our summer in Asia and Europe. Sort of the young person's version of our life. K is working on his car for him at the moment.
Anyway he cooks the best steak on the Stuart Highway, in my opinion. I had to have one tonight cos he is off and away next week.

Gary Booth, guitar, didge, mouth organ and vocals

Model Barramundi created one weekend with local
and travelling children.

The entertainment here is winding down now. No more band, but we do have the whip cracking show for a few more weeks. Nathan Grigg's show is spectacular. He is the Guinness World Record holder for the number of whip cracks in a minute, 530 in fact. His is a consummate showman, and a genuine nice kid (well he is younger than our youngest son) If you ever get the chance to see his show take it.

Check out his website and this video.

This is our favourite time of the year. The place becomes quieter. We can find a space in the Thermal pool and it is still cool in the late evening until mid morning.

Favourite path to Stevie's Hole, Elsie National Park.

Another bonus that the tourist wind down gives us is access to a checkout queue at Woolworths in Katherine. In peak season shopping is an all day job, not counting the 109 km drive too and from. Picture  the checkout area of your local supermarket with 100 trolleys and their attendant couples and families waiting to be served after navigating around each other in the isles.

"You exaggerate," you say. Well actually I don't.
One fine Saturday last season I drove up with a lovely lady from school and several lists from staff and friends to shop. An hour later with two trolleys between us we hit the queue. An hour and a half later having exhausted all possible topics of conversation I left my trolley with my companion and dodged and weaved down the rows counting trolleys. 102!!!! (There's a Facebook post I did that day that has the photo I took of each end of the checkout area.)

So while I am grateful for the tourists, cos K makes his money off them, at least when they leave I can do a monthly shop in a bit less than three hours.



Bush camp south of Broome
  

 

Sometime soon it will be time for us to shed our worker skins, become tourists ourselves and set the caravan free to be its truly mobile self.


Cheers Sue

A Ferg on the Move

Netball, fishing, avoiding crocs and other sage advise

I have just had the delightful experience of watching the Katherine region's under 12 netball final. (200k round trip to the match for players and spectators)
What a match! Transformation of these quiet kids, disadvantaged in so many ways, into confident, passionate and graceful athletes. Wow!

The match attracted a couple who are fellow travellers and in the very few minutes between quarters we discussed the life style. They are avid fishers and spend a few weeks every year camped on the banks of local rivers.


Fishing on the Waterhouse River


I am an avid watcher of fishing. What I mean by this is that he fishes and I watch the river between chapters of my book.  This partnership and wise division of labour has resulted in some sizeable catches, although I wasn't actually there supervising when K caught his first barra. I'm sure the fish would have been even bigger with my input.




What you can catch in the Waterhouse River.
 

I took a class of local kids fishing recently and they were horrified to find that Miz Sue doesn't put bait on hooks and has never killed or gutted a fish.  In my defence Grandpa used to bait my hook and gut my fish when I was their age. They took great delight in dropping a flapping fish at my feet. I did manage to pick it up and put it in the bucket of water. But that's all.

Anyway back to my story. This couple go "remote" and set up camp in a place where there is a considerable drop from the bank to the water and tie their boat up. They climb down to it using a rope ladder to go fishing and drop a pump into the river so that they don't have to be using buckets for water collection.  Why? Salty Crocodiles of course. 

After shuddering at the thought of all this, and needing to change the subject to something less alarming I told them about my blog and asked if they had any advise for us.  Their  solar power  set up is pretty basic and they use a generator a lot but they recommend this blog for info about solar.  

And this one from the same author about documents you should carry when caravanning.  In case of rope ladder climbing crocodiles I suppose.



Cheers Sue

A Ferg on the Move

 

 

Travel memories .. The Grotto

We recently found our stash of photos hiding on K's laptop. There had been a bit of panic because we both thought we had backed all of these photos going back to before we bought the caravan onto a portable hard drive.  Once located a pleasant evening was spent reliving the wonders of our first 6 week expedition up the centre of Australia from Adelaide and then across to Northern WA and back down and over the Nullarbor to SA.

It is funny the things that stick in your mind. I remember the utter disgust on K's face when we ran out of water even though the second  tank was reading full, and discovered that the monitoring system was compromised by having one set of wires crushed against the chassis in an inaccessible place.  Repairs effected by K drilling through the floor of the van under a drawer, soldering a bypass and reconnecting.

I try not to remember the time I almost fell over a wallaby and joey who had taken refuge from a camper's dog under our van  and popped their heads up as I stepped out, sans glasses so I was effectively blind, dropping my coffee, and doing an elegant 180 over the head of the animals.

Friends we  made, sunrises and sunsets, wonders of creation ...... Our first real encounter with  indigenous culture at a corroboree in Derby. I nearly lost K to a lovely indigenous lady who was so impressed with his polite and helpful manner she was ready to take him back to camp.


We discovered some  pretty great photos that we have never done anything with so I have decided to revisit these memories every now and again.


Today's memory is 'The Grotto" a hidden wonder on the road from Kununurra to Wyndam in the Kimberly. We pulled the caravan and car off into a car park. A stone sign, a few bottle trees and over a hundred steps down into the earth and this is what you get to see.

(I was still sore from climbing up the steps at Kings Canyon and again at Edith Falls so it took a bit of persuading to get me out of the car and down, and of course up again...... Worth it? Yes indeed. )




 

One hundred steps down to the Grotto.
That is the path  on the left of the photo.

 

The Grotto in WA. Almost triangular in shape with
a water fall at the point. The water is clear and cold.
That's me shivering on the left. I had to have a swim.

Large monitor sunning on the rocks. Two of them
and they didn't even put their heads up at all.

Reflections on the water at the Grotto WA.
You can just make out the water monitors on the rocks.

On the way back up the steps of the Grotto.
How do things grow like this?

Bottle tree growing into the cracks of the walls of the Grotto WA
Very Kimberly sight

Ah!! The memories.

Cheers Sue

A Ferg on the Move

A comfortable frugal Saturday

I love Saturdays here in the caravan park.  A quiet lay in. Coffee in bed, with the place to myself as K works a half shift on Saturday. Then slide into the Saturday's routine jobs.

There is a certain comfort in the routine of these essential and frugal tasks.


The portable twin tub washing machine has swished away cleaning a week's worth of clothes and the results are dancing on the line rigged up in the annex. In between loads the floor got swept and washed and all the debris of the week tidied away. Takes about an hour working around the washing. No wonder I love this life.

Cheapest drier around.
Washing dancing in the breeze through the caravan annex

The yoghurt is setting in the EASIYO thermos. The boiling water for the thermos was heated on K's latest find and fix project, a camp stove with a cracked fitting that he has cleaned up and repaired. Now that it has passed its working test this will go to a worthy and loving home. 
Cos we don't need it!

Kettle and wire frame camping toaster.

A new batch of butter spread is in the fridge and there is a loaf of gluten free bread cooling in front of the fan. The bread proofs really well in the car which is the hottest place I can find. Doubles in about 35 minutes.
I am really impressed with this new bread mix. It is the closest to real bread that I have found. Check it out here.

F G Roberts Gluten Free Cottage Loaf Mix
Fantastic

This week's gluten free sweet treat is bread and butter pudding. K puts the ends of the gluten free bread, mine or the bought stuff, in the freezer and when I have enough it gets made into pudding. This week the eggs are the ones Jo gave me from her chooks and I've chucked in the last of the dates that I didn't use in the batch of sticky date pudding.

Gluten free bread and butter pudding
Buttered bread, four eggs, sugar, made up powdered milk, and a bit of cream if you have some
150 degrees for 1 hour until set.j

So as the day warms up I have retreated to the annex for a morning coffee. Its going to be really hot today so I intend to enjoy what's left of the cool breeze before the Thermal pool is the only nice place to be. Might stay in the water for the rest of the day.



Here comes K. "Enjoying your coffee, dear?"


Cheers Sue

A Ferg on the Move.

A Cape with no ocean

To continue my description of the part of Australia we call home at the moment...........

Recently I ventured out towards the gulf to Boroloola, a remote town famous for its spectacular fishing and a popular tourist destination. The moon was still up as I left just after sunrise from home.



The road out is mostly one lane like many of the "highways" here. So you have to keep an eye out for oncoming and over taking traffic and move out onto the gravel verge with enough time to let people by. Sometime the drop off is a bit deep and getting the wheels back on the bitumen can be a bit exciting. The wise traveller pulls completely off for caravans, trucks and road trains. I spent a lot of time off on the gravel so I must be really wise!

 

On the way I stopped at Cape Crawford a remote stop at the junction of the Carpentaria Highway and Tablelands Highway.  Given its name you would expect water, and there was some spraying out over the lush lawns.  However Cape Crawford is about 200 kilometres from the ocean. It is named for a drover called Lindsay Crawford.  He was a drover and came across the  Lost City, in the nearby Abner Ranges in 1880. Apparently  the Lost City has towering sandstone formations that look like skyscrapers and are spectacular from a helicopter. (K got me into a plane to fly over the Bungle Bungles in WA. Not sure about helicopters though)

Garden area at Cape Crawford NT
Old Machinery and the helicopter in the background

I bought the most delicious sandwich at the Heart Break Hotel. A pleasant  surprise given that it was the only choice for lunch for over 300km. Didn't buy diesel however.  $2.00 plus per litre!!!!!!!

Cheers Sue

A Ferg on the Move

 

Shattered tablet and things electric

This blog is a bit harder to write than usual. Not because of the topic, but because my touch screen notebook computer has a couple of nasty cracks in its screen. I had it attached to its keyboard and it was in my bag. I'm sure I didn't drop it, although the mobile phone hit the deck twice yesterday.

But when I opened it up in class yesterday strange things were happening on the screen. Little bubbles of what looked like air were drifting across the lock screen and nasty flashes of light were happening.

 

Disaster!

 

Carefully holding the screen with one hand so it didn't move I was able to copy off the files for morning classes.

 

So no blogging last night for me.

 

 

A very helpful person suggested I use sticky tape to hold the cracked screen .

 



 



 

 

So I am typing now with big strips of tape all across the left of the screen. So far so good.  K ordered a new tablet and key board online last night, which turned out to be cheaper and faster than getting a new screen sent from overseas.

 

Just blew a few weeks pay! And probably added another piece of equipment to Mr Fix It's pile of things to be rescued.

 

Any way I thought I would tell you about  some things we have done to make battery power easier to manage.  ( K has promised an explanation of our power set up, solar and wind power as well as our batteries.) 

 

Now I am not good with volts and amps and such. I know I studied it all in high school Physics, which I passed quite well, but I never really got how it all works.What I do know is that normal household power in Australia is 240V AC and my caravan battery set up outputs 12v DC.   And therein lies the problem. Some things just don't work of the batteries.....and we spend up to three months of the year off grid.

 

Here are my favourite electric fixes.

 

Most wonderful is the ability to charge mobile devices whether we are plugged into 240v power or not.  K installed a car lighter type socket near the fridge. This beats running out to the car and turning on the car to charge my phone. Of course this useful outlet is in great demand and I have seriously thought of creating a timetable to control access during peek charging times.

 

The 12v fan can also be run from this socket. Great for warmer days at free camps.

 

 

 

 

 

The next fantastic addition to our electric supply kit is the 2000w pure sine wave inverter which magically turns the power stored in our batteries into 240v power just like the mains power in your house.  It has two power points, one of which can power the essential things like the coffee machine, the microwave (tiny 770w one), my stick blender, the crock pot and a computer charger. (Not a kettle or a toaster since they go over 2000w, and not all at once or for long periods of time) 

 

Now, I can get by without these devices. Ok not the coffee machine, but the others, if I have too. But the addition of the inverter to our battery bank and solar/wind power generation increases our capacity to live normally, yet be off grid.

 

The batteries' charge only lasts so long if I use the power too much. K used to be diving under the bench seat to check the charging levels of the three batteries all the time. Off would come the seat cushion and whatever was on the bench, the bits would go all over the bed and he would frown and/or smile depending on what the numbers on his testing thingy said. Sometimes I would precipitate this exercise by asking the question, "We got enough power for the microwave or do I fire up the BBQ?"

 

Then he discovered this useful device. It displays the exact voltage of the batteries at all times. It is placed in a overhead locker and he can lift up the door and look at the numbers to his heart's content. In fact many an hour has been spent monitoring the power generation and consumption without the bench seat being lifted at all. 

 

 

 

 

And then there are these essential outdoor safety features. I cannot see at night. Not at all. Never could. I can't tell the difference between shadows and holes in the ground and I can't see pegs or ropes. I have permanent scars on my knees from this "disability'.

So while it might look like we have pretty lights on the annex roof and around the edges of our camp, they are in fact important safety features designed to keep me out of hospital. Solar powered of course.

 

 

 

 

Sick of chasing the pointer over the screen. Catch you soon

Cheers Sue

A Ferg on the Move