30th May 2013
Catch up
We enjoyed seeing Lisa for a few days last
week while she was up in Darwin for her work and we were able to spend some
time with her on the Saturday and Sunday morning prior to her flying back to
Brisbane. Apart from the obligatory visit to Mindil Sunset Markets and a tour
of the city, we also took her to the Adelaide River (east) about 80 kls out of
town on the Arnhem Highway, here we embarked on a jumping crocodile boat trip.
Lisa said she would like to try and see crocs in their natural habitat and not
in a compound like a zoo. Jumping Crocodile Cruises are the only people
licenced to feed crocs, so from the safety of a double decker oversized punt we
watched as crocs appeared out of nowhere to swim out to the boat where a pork knuckle
was dangled on a light rope from a pole. As the croc lunges for the dangling
chop a deck hand lifts it up in the air causing the croc to miss its meal, they
do this about three times before allowing the croc to actually grab the chop
each time enticing the great brutes further and further out of the water so
they are basically leaping up out of the water past their back legs, the sound
of their massively strong jaws slamming together is amazing.
Black Hawks and Sea Eagles are also fed at
some stage showing off their acrobatic prowess as they swoop down and grab
morsels out of the water. At one point the skipper eased the boat into the bank
alongside a six metre plus male croc so we could all see it up close and
personal. Well over twenty feet in the old measure of prehistoric monster,
these things have survived through power and cunning and are certainly not to
be messed with. During the trip a running commentary is given by the knowledgeable
skipper with some very interesting and alarming statistics about crocs, the
environment and Northern Territory generally, all very enlightening.
Apparently the closing force of a six-metre
croc is estimated to be about 4 tonne and I have seen people fishing in car
topper tinnies less than four metres long and weighing about 85 kilos???? Then
again some people go sky diving for a hobby.
27th May 2013
Leaving Darwin on Monday following Lisa’s
departure our next stop was the Adelaide River (west) war cemetery just off the
Stuart Highway. This grave site is dedicated to the fallen of WW11 from this
region.
Extract:
Historical
Information
During the
Second World War, Adelaide River was the headquarters of a large base, and the
war cemetery was created especially for the burial of servicemen who died in
this part of Australia. It was used by Australian General Hospitals Nos. 101,
107, 119, 121 and 129, and after the war the Army Graves Service moved other
graves into it from isolated sites, temporary military burial grounds and
various civil cemeteries in the area.*
ADELAIDE
RIVER WAR CEMETERY now contains 434 Commonwealth burials of the Second World
War.
Within
Adelaide River War Cemetery will be found the NORTHERN TERRITORY MEMORIAL,
which commemorates members of the Australian Army, the Royal Australian Air Force,
the Australian Merchant Navy and the Services Reconnaissance Department who
lost their lives in operations in the Timor and Northern Australian regions and
in waters adjacent to Australia north of Latitude 20 degrees south, and who
have no known grave.
Walking through this peaceful setting one
can’t help think about the total wastefulness of young innocent lives, kids
with rank of nineteen and twenty flying fighter planes and bombers doing their
duty. No doubt leaving devastated parents, too old to produce more children.
Did you know during WW11 more bombs were
dropped on Darwin than on Pearl Harbour:
Extract:
The bombing of Darwin on
19 February 1942 was both the first and the largest single attack mounted
by a foreign power on Australia.
On this day, 242 Japanese
aircraft attacked ships in Darwin's
harbour and the town's two airfields in an attempt to prevent the Allies
from using them as bases to contest the invasions of Timor
and Java.
The town was only lightly defended and the Japanese inflicted heavy losses upon
the Allied forces at little cost to themselves. The urban areas of Darwin also
suffered some damage from the raids and there were a number of civilian
casualties.
This event is, on occasion, referred to as the
"Pearl Harbor of Australia".[2]
The Japanese raid was unlike the attack on Pearl Harbor
in that it was launched against a nation that had already declared war
on Japan (on 8 December 1941). It was similar to the attack on Pearl Harbor in
that it was a successful aerial surprise attack on a naval target that came as
a great shock to the attacked nation. Although Darwin was a less significant
military target, more bombs were dropped there than on Pearl Harbor.[3][4] The Australian government downplayed the
damage from the bombing raids on Darwin, believing its publication would
represent a significant psychological blow to Australians.[5] The raids were the first and largest of almost
100 air raids against Australia
during 1942–43.
At 9.35 am Father McGrath of the Sacred
Heart mission on Bathurst Island, who was also an Australian coastwatcher
sent a message using a pedal radio to the Amalgamated Wireless Postal Radio
Station at Darwin that a large number of aircraft were flying overhead and
proceeding southward. The message was then relayed to the Royal Australian Air
Force Operations at 9.37 am.[27] No general
alarm was given until about 10 am as the RAAF officers there wrongly judged
that the aircraft which had been sighted were the ten USAAC P-40s, which were
returning to Darwin at the time after reports of bad weather forced them to
abort a flight to Java via Kupang, West Timor. As a result, the air raid sirens
at Darwin were not sounded before the raid[28]
It’s surprising how many people I have
spoken to that are completely amazed by the extent of war involvement
throughout northern parts of Australia particularly Darwin. There are numerous
historical sites with information marking the many forces camps and airstrips
several hundred kilometres south of Darwin. In several places right alongside
the present highway WW11 airstrips can be identified and still look useable for
smaller planes.
Continuing south to Katherine we filled up
with fuel before heading south west on the Victoria Highway, pulling up for the
night at a free camp spot about 50 kls from Katherine and lucky to get a
reasonable spot as the place was pretty full.
To this point we had travelled through
typical savannah country fairly uninteresting but a good road and flat. Here we
made friends with another travelling couple who turned out to be dairy farmers
from Gippsland near Lakes Entrance in Victoria, so we got the low down on how
tough it is for our Australian farmers particularly trying to compete against
cheap imports. So now we buy Devondale milk products.
Timber Creek is the only permanent
settlement between Katherine and Kununulla and was our next stopping point. The
servo come caravan park and the pub come caravan park were the only
fuel outlets so fuel was selling at an exorbitant price because they could. We
decided we could just get through to Kununurra with what we had so didn’t
contribute to their greed. One caravan park had some sort of convention going
on and looked like tent city, the other caravan park was alongside the dubious
looking pub and looked equally as dubious and needless to say there were a lot
of originals hanging around the pub and like it or not they are bad news when
they get on the grog.
We booked a glossy brochured spectacular
sunset river cruise for that evening and pushed on out of what is called a town
10kls to a National Park reserve. The place was packed so we were extremely
lucky to get in. These places work on an honesty system put your money in an
envelope fill out your details and pop it in a secure box, place a tear off
section on your dash for proof of honesty. This entitles you to park there
overnight, long drop toilet, no power or water, hot as hell.
We wandered down a short track to where the
Victoria River boat cruise jetty was and boarded a big tinnie, there were about
18 people and I guess the thing could cater for about 24. The owner/skipper
told us to hold onto our hats and hit the throttles until we were rocketing
down the Victoria River at some ungodly rate for about thirty kilometres he
then pulled into an anchored pontoon and we had nibblies and soft drink. He
caught a couple of cat fish and fed a sea hawk and then we returned stopping
halfway to photograph a pleasant sunset. During the trip the skipper gave a
commentary that went like “last week we saw a croc attacking a brahman bull,
over there you can see where wild pigs have come down to the water, crocs like
them. It’s a bit early in the season so the crocs don’t come out of the water
to sun themselves, we usually see a lot of wild life on the river banks but the
tide is a bit high at the moment”. I did see one wallaby. So in short it was
the biggest rip off we have come across and the scenery for what we went for
was non-existent. I guess the moral is, don’t take on anything unless another
traveller tells you it is worth while. I guess the highlight was, some upperty
looking sort at the front of the boat was about to slurp on a glass of wine
when the skipper hit the throttles and she wore the lot all over her and up her
nose to boot much to the amusement of everyone sitting behind her. Nasty lot
aren’t we.
Kununurra
Basically evolved through the construction
of the Ord River scheme that started in the early 60’s although discussions for
a water catchment had taken place from the 19th century when the
Duracks first stocked the pastoral areas. I believe the permanent population is
usually around 7,000 and swells to about 10,000 with itinerant farm workers
(back packers) during the appropriate seasons.
Distance to markets is still a controlling and
limiting factor as to what is grown here and a couple of large concerns are the
growing and processing of Sandalwood and seed growing, ie; all sorts of crops
are grown specifically for seed collection. We visited the Sandalwood place and
a little rum distillery that was quite interesting.
Other sight seeing things we did during our
stop in Kununurra, we visited a mine site where they quarry Zebra rock, Lake
Argyle on the Ord river and did some bush walking in an area known as the mini
Bungle Bungles. Also spent a day driving up to Wyndham.
Wyndham, population 800, is the
oldest and northernmost town in the Kimberley region of Western
Australia it is located 2,210 kilometres northeast of Perth. It was established in 1886 as a result of a gold rush
at a town called Halls Creek half way down the road between Kununurra and
Derby. I’m not sure how much activity is seen in this once busy port when
several thousand miners came for the gold rush but they do ship out iron ore. I
get the impression from what I could see, that they truck the ore in from
mining operations in huge road trains that thunder along at 100kph working 24/7
the ore is stockpiled and I think taken out to a ship anchored in deep water by
barge. Live cattle is transported from here also and I believe fuel comes in,
but it is not a big show like some of the ore exporting ports down the line
further. Wyndham is also known for the fact five important
rivers meet, Pentecost, King, Durack, Forrest and Ord, these empty into the
Cambridge Gulf and eventually the Timor Sea.
I also spent a lot of time in the post
office trying to track down a parcel that Lisa sent to us while we were in
Alice Springs. Australia Post is so slow it didn’t arrive before we left Alice
Springs and was forwarded onto Darwin, we spent two weeks in Darwin and it
still hadn’t arrived by the time we needed to move on. Now Aus Post is investigating
to try and track it down, it will probably end up back with Lisa.
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