Welcome to the Top End!
Jul 20, 2023
Good evening from Katherine, a meeting point between 3 traditional owners, the Jawoyn, Dagoman and Wardaman peoples. We made it to the Top End! It's all a bit surreal but very exciting to finally make it to the Northern Territory after so many months / years of dreaming of and planning for this trip.
We had a few more stops in Queensland before we made it over to the NT. On Monday we had a great day Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum, where we learnt all about the very exciting discoveries made in the Winton region over the last few decades.
A bronze replica of sauropods like those thought to have left a fossilised track that was discovered near Winton in 2018. The tracks include footprints of a full sized dinosaur as well as a smaller, possibly baby/child dinosaur.
The dinosaur tracks were uncovered after flooding altered the course of a local creek. Once the track was exposed to the elements it quickly began to deteriorate, so it was excavated and transported to the museum to be preserved and reassembled like a 60 metre long jigsaw!
The tracks are now housed in a purposed built facility at the museum, which was pretty fancy looking!
The museum was built on top of a Jump Up, a common geographical feature in this part of Queensland (and other parts of the outback). It is a low escarpment rising suddenly out of flat plains. Bob says they are called mesas in America, but I like jump up better. This is the view over the plains from the top, with some gorgeous clouds overhead.
We had underestimated the cool wind on top of the jump up early (ish) in the morning, so improvised with a new towel-hoodie to keep Josie warm. She loved it so much she refused to take it off!
We had dinner at the North Gregory, a gorgeous hotel in town with some live music to keep us entertained. The kids loved it - especially the final song about the versatility of the word shit. Toby has been quoting it ever since!
Very flash foyer at the pub.
On Tuesday we got back on the road and continued north west, the first of 3 days back to back on the road. We stopped at McKinlay with our ham and cheese and egg and avocado sandwiches, and unknowingly stumbled into a pub from Crocodile Dundee which was pretty cool. But they wouldn't let us eat our sandwiches as they were serving lunch, so I did not take a photo with the life sized caricature of Mick Dundee in protest 🤣. We arrived in Mt Isa for the night, which was probably my least favourite stop so far - I'd unwittingly booked us into a motel right across from the big mine on the edge of town. It was fine, but not the nicest vibe.
On the Wednesday we started with an early breakfast in town and waited out the front of the Vinnies for them to open at 9 so we could swap some books for the kids, to the annoyance of the lady working the the shop. We had more than 7 hours to drive, so after a solid 4 hours of Harry Potter (we're onto book 3, and the kids are doing ok with the dementors so far!) we cracked out the 3 ipads for individual viewing for the last leg of the journey. We going to try to hold the line that such luxuries are only for the 6 hour plus days, but we'll see how long that lasts!
The quiet that only three individual ipads with paired headphones can bring!
Just after Camooweal we crossed the border into the NT, and drove pretty much straight west for a few more hours till we reached the Stuart Highway, where we turned right to head north. It was a really big moment for me - the connection from Mt Isa into the NT had been looming large in my mind as particularly remote and a bit unknown, as I didn't know of anyone else who had driven it and it didn't come up much in my readings of possible routes. So I was very pleased we got through it so well, even enjoying lunch at the fanciest roadhouse to date at Barkly Station!
We got into Banka Banka station for the night, on the traditional land of the Warumungu and Warlmanpa people, where we enjoyed a lovely sunset from the top of a hill and the kids got to crack out their new head torches. We had planned to use the camp kitchen for a fry up for dinner but couldnt get the BBQ to work, so had to christen our new camp stove. We were pretty impressed with the result, if we do say so ourselves!
Sunrise over Banka Banka
So here we are Katherine, where in a very happy coincidence we've just in time for the Katherine Show and Rodeo, so that's where we'll be heading tomorrow! Will report back on prize winning animals and produce, as well as the quality of the fairy floss!