Hotting up in the NT

When we bought fruit and vegies from a Kununurra orchard,
we were greeted by the family pet.

We left Kununurra, quite reluctantly, but looking forward to new adventures just across the border in the Northern Territory. It was just a short drive of less than 300km to the Victoria River Roadhouse, beside the Victoria River, obviously, with a campground, bar and restaurant.

While we were having a meal that night, we were chatting to the driver of a low loader who’d pulled in. When he heard we’d come across the Plenty Highway from Boulia to Alice Springs, he told us he’d come from that area, worked as a rodeo clown, and in the 1980s had worked on Macsland, a property being run by a cousin of mine.

I told him I had family links to the area and he then astonished me by saying the young fellow 

Spear grass as tall as the truck near Victoria River.

helping behind the bar . . . who was also a helicopter pilot based there doing scenic tours . . . was also from Boulia.

Sure enough, he ambled along soon for a chat and it turns out he lives on the next property to our friends Adrian and Vicky Wells and of course knows lots of my family members. So there we were, in the middle of the Northern Territory, having Old Home week.

Next day we moved on just under 200km to Katherine, but after exploring the town, decided to venture further north on the Stuart Highway, going east from it to Edith Falls, where there’s a simple campground and a cheery woman running a kiosk who makes a pretty decent barra burger. 

Lovely Edith Falls near Katherine.

We spent the night there, rather hot, as there’s no power and our air-conditioning needs 240v, but had a couple of swims in the glorious big pool under the falls. It was too hot to walk up to higher falls but plenty of young people were doing that.

The next day, almost delirious with relief to be back on bitumen roads, we did some real exploring, even venturing onto some red dirt roads! First we went to Pine Creek, a former gold mining centre, where we got some essential supplies and checked out the local railway museum and a display of fabulous old 

If we'd had wings we could have taken off at the WWII
McDonald airstrip.

mining gear.

Then a little further on, we turned off onto a very old bitumen road (would it be WWII vintage, we wondered) which led after 5km to the McDonald airfield and runway, one of the many WWII airfields along the Stuart Highway. We motored right to the end of it, had morning tea, then drove back to the access road and eventually the highway.

We left it again on the eastern side to fine the heritage-listed Grove Hill Hotel, right out in the middle of nowhere. It has a mining and railway-building past, still has big mines all around it so the roads leading there are pretty good for dirt roads, and is the most incredible building, all corrugated iron and iron pipe frames (to stop the termites attacking).

 

Don't laugh . . . it's heritage-listed.

Inside it has a rather dusty museum showing the area’s history, with lots of stuff donated by district people. There’s a wall display of beers still in their cans and bottles and the gnarled old Dutch barman showed us the Grove Hill mug, just plain black, until you put boiling water in it, and all the illustrations and words appear. So we had to have one!



The Grove Hill Hotel mug.

Old tools and junk make up the name on the pub.

There’s camping in the back yard, but it’s surrounded by wrecked cars and blokes living in old caravans. The barman told us they put on a bbq and music the last Saturday of the month, attended by 200-300 people, and already a heap of dongas they have in that back yard are already booked out for the September event.

Even though it’s right beside the Darwin-Adelaide railway line, and a freight train went past while we were there, camping didn’t appeal, so we crossed the highway again, heading west into the Douglas Daly region of the Douglas and Daly Rivers. We are happily established at the Douglas Daly Tourist Park, under huge old mahogany trees with a glorious pool for swimming as the Douglas River beside the park is home to saltwater crocs.

On our way from the highway we passed big plantations of trees, all mahogany we were told, and the people next to us who left this morning in a hu-u-uge motorhome had been in charge of a 1200-acre irrigation system for sandalwood plantings. There’s a whole team of workers living in dongas here who work for the sandalwood company, the same as in Kununurra.

The irrigation head honcho told us this morning his team is now off to a property west of Katherine for about 6 weeks work putting in irrigation for about 400 acres of yet more sandalwood. Then he and his wife will trundle off home to Swan Hill in Victoria until after the wet season when they return to the NT for more work.