Category: North Edge Australia 2015

Day 12, happy new financial year!

The dash cam disagrees with us; last night when we tried to move the footage from the day onto the external hard drive, the transfer went really slowly. So I said that once it finished we’ll reformat the micro SD card and put the configuration files back onto it and it should be all good again. A few hours later the transfer finally finished and I went about hard reformatting the little card to an ExFAT format (as FAT32 was not available, and NTFS would definitely not work with the system).

Copied the config files back onto the card and plugged it back into the dash cam. Booted the dash cam and it spoke to us “Please check the SD card”. Damn.

Pulled it out, soft format again and copy the config files back on again. Please check the SD card. Not again!

Try something else, maybe it’s not seeing the card? “Please insert SD card”

Ok so it’s definitely seeing the card, but can’t read/access it.

I’ll save you the long story of “What the?” and “That can’t be right.”. In the end when we got back into mobile reception I googled the issue and within 2 minutes had the card formatted to FAT32. Awesome, now it works!

The rest of the day consisted of driving, driving and more driving! Woohoo!

We actually drove until about 20 minutes before sunset at a rest area called “The Boab Tree Rest Area” on the side of the Great Northern Highway. According to the map we could have gone to “The Big Boab Tree Rest Area” but I’m glad we didn’t. For starters, the boab tree we camped next to was way bigger than the so called “Big Boab Tree” which we passed the next day. Also, I climbed the tree we stayed near, it was awesomely big!

Anyway, Here’s some photos of me in the boab tree and anything else we took photos of today, enjoy!

 

Thanks for reading,

Trav.

Eleven days have passed, eleven bright mornings, cold nights and cocoon-like sleeps I have had since I left home to go on this journey across the top end of Australia. Today was a grand day for me; my dad and I were to go on another walk through the wondrous rock formation known as the Bungle Bungle Range in Purnululu National Park, Western Australia. We set off at 7 am, just after sunrise.

We headed over to the northern walks starting point where we chose to take the Mini Palms Gorge walk. It was a 4.4km return walk; 2.2km in, then the same path 2.2km back out. About half of the walk in consisted of a smooth rocky river bed that had been dry as soon as the wet season had stopped this year.

The other half of the walk in consisted of large boulders that had long ago fallen from up high and blocked the path. The track twisted and negotiated its way through, around, over and in between these obstacles. About 200m from the end of the walk a set of new looking stairs greeted us and aided our climb to the lookout at the end. More of these brand new looking stairs lay before us toward the end.

The view from the lookout was somewhat disappointing considering that there was supposed to be a natural amphitheatre at the end. We took some pictures and headed back down the track and about 200m down we ran into some other walkers who were on their way up to the lookout. We said hello and they said that the walk we were on opened yesterday.

This means that we set up camp the very same day that the walks were officially opened up again; that’s lucky!

Anyway that explains the new-looking stairs on the walking track.

We made it back to the car and drove back to camp at around 9:15am (local time) and when we arrived, the rest of the camp had awoken and were ready to go on the Cathedral Gorge walk. Dad and I said we needed about half an hour to rest before we went on the next walk.

At around 11 am we arrived at the start of the walk and set off toward the Cathedral Gorge. It took about half an hour to walk all the way to the turnaround point. We all walked through the path that was sandy, rocky and at times holey. It was pretty in itself but the Cathedral Gorge at the end was quite spectacular. Extending at least 200 meters above us was a mostly circular hole through the rock that, in the wet season, would have a magnificent waterfall cascading down the smooth side of the hole to the sandy pool at the bottom.

Unfortunately this is the dry season, so the pool at the bottom was green and stagnant; dang.

We took some pictures and video and headed back out towards the car park, taking a small detour on the way back to see “The Domes”. These were smaller rock formations that were all topped with a somewhat domed shape. Not as grand as the Gorge itself but pretty nonetheless.

Once back at the carpark we all had a break and something to eat and at the same time, my uncle grabbed out his quadcopter. This thing is awesome, mostly because of the camera; it’s a 4k Sony camera on a 3 axis gyroscopic stabiliser situated just underneath the main body of the copter. The drone is legally limited to 400 feet (121.92 meters) above the ground directly beneath it, but that’s a whole 394 feet that I can’t see from! The footage looks spectacular.

That’s pretty much all that happened today, here’s some pics, enjoy!

Thanks for reading,

Trav.

By 7:30 am on day 10, we were packed up and moving toward one of the first big attractions in WA for this holiday: The Bungle Bungles. We rove about 2 hours, one of which was spent on a dirt road headed into Purnululu National Park. We registered our camp spot for 2 nights and got the pick of the park to camp in since we arrived at around 10am.

The nice lady in the visitor and registration centre gave us advice on what walks to do and when to do them to get the most of this beautiful land formation. We heeded her advice and set up camp with a bite to eat then headed straight back out again to a walking track named “Echidna Chasm”. The lady had said that between 11:30 am and 1:30 pm the gorge would look very nice indeed. So we headed on over to the walking track and brought our cameras and some water and headed on in.

What awaited us on this walk was vibrant red and orange rock faces, interesting honeycomb like holes in the rock faces and many plants and thin gaps to squeeze through. Throughout the walk I took many pictures of the amazingly high walls of the chasm. Once we reached the end we took a few minutes to soak it all in, it was quite amazing to behold!

Once we did all of this we ventured back to the car to grab some food for afternoon tea. We all were just about finished when my uncle requested we charge one of his batteries on our inverter (for those of you that don’t know, an inverter converts the 12V DC from your car to 240V AC just like a mains outlet). I grabbed the charger and went to plug it in, but before I did, I noticed that the little status lights for the other chargers we have plugged in were not alight. Alright so I checked if the inverter was plugged in, and it was. Uh oh, we have a problem.

Once we made it back to camp I grabbed the inverter from its usual position and took it out to have a better look. First we tried letting it cool off for an hour before plugging it in again, no dice. I ended up just removing the circuit board from the device for a visual inspection, I couldn’t see anything obvious; All of the caps were fine, no burn marks on any tracks or components, and we couldn’t smell any electronic smoke.

This is odd, so we turned it on again and waited to see if anything happened, and it did; a small tail of smoke arose from a pair of load resistors. Ok this is not good obviously we are getting power to that point on the output, but its being grounded or otherwise discharged.

Long story short, one of the FETs was faulty and had shorted the resistors to ground. We took the FET out and now we are going to leave it until we get home to fix that inverter, as we are going to just buy a new one when we get into Broome in a few days.

After all of this we all sat down and had general chit chat until the sun went down and it got cold. The national park does not allow any camp fires, so we had to go without. We had a nice warm dinner and shower and headed off to bed.

Here’s some pictures from the walk, enjoy!

Thanks for reading,

Trav.

Hello again its day 9 and I’m running in and out of service, so these blog updates will definitely be delayed!

After the good sleep from last night we had a short and simple breakfast, packed up everything and headed off toward Kununurra which is about 50km west of the Western Australian border. Taking pictures of the rock formations on the way we finally hit the border woohoo!

The border has restrictions on some foods, in particular soil like on potatoes and onions, and also honey. You can buy WA approved heat treated honey that you can take across the border but we just didn’t have any honey anyway. The border control man did take our snow peas and cherries, which my mum was a bit sad about but we would be able to pick some more up when we got into town.

A few minutes later my dad suggested we go and have a look at Lake Argyle, since it was less than 60km off of the main highway. So we went down the dirt road down towards the lake. I’m really glad we did because when we got there an amazing spectacle rose out of the land before us. Lake Argyle has a lot of interesting facts, a few of which are printed onto this nice stubby cooler I got from the visitor centre there.

Some of the facts are:

– 1000 km squared surface area, with 2100 km squared in flood

– <insert more facts here>

After we ogled at the size of the lake and had some lunch at a little park near the outlet of one of the walls, which was quite pretty, we continued on out of the place. We drove further westward to Kununurra in hopes of grabbing fuel and groceries. The rest of the day is full of driving and finally stopping for the day at a little causeway which was once part of the Great Northern Highway but had since been outdated by a new shiny bridge. The camp spot was called Muluki rest area and it was quite nice, however it was very cold at night, dropping down to 3.6 degrees Celsius. That was our coldest night to date!

Here’s some pictures of day 9, enjoy!

Thanks for reading,

Trav.

Day 8 arrived with splendour and a nice toasted chicken salad roll from the visitor centre at Katherine Gorge.

We left Katherine Gorge at 10:15am (local time) and headed south west back toward Katherine city where we would complete the final shopping for some fruit and vegetables. We filled up with a whole 168.65 litres of diesel and headed on our way westward (again) to the camp spot we towed my uncle’s broken car back to and where all of our plans unravelled.

The camp spot was an overnight stay and was named East Baines Rest Area. The spot was surrounded by long dry grass and various types of drought resistant plants including Boab trees. My dad and I went searching for firewood so we could light a camp fire and get some coals so we could cook the roast lamb we had in the fridge. We did that and started the fire with a piece of newspaper and a single match, the wood was so dry and so small that it caught quickly and within half an hour we had coals to cook on.

About an hour into cooking the roast something amazing happened; a voice on the radio appeared that had been gone since Friday afternoon. It was my auntie and they were in range of UHF radio, so they called in and announced their arrival! Once they pulled in near us at the camp spot they jumped out and shared their story of travelling from Darwin to here. They got a flat tyre but the rental company took care of that so it was no extra cost to them which was great news.

We all sat down with beer and cheese and enjoyed the afternoon before us. Not too much longer and the roast was ready to eat, yum! We cut it up with roast potato, carrot, onion and gravy, dished it out and chowed down on this most tantalising of meals. Once all was said and done we washed up and jumped into bed for the night.

The day tomorrow would be one of driving in parts of the country that we have not yet seen, woohoo!

Here’s some pictures from today that I took out of the window on the way to the rest area, enjoy!

Thanks for reading,

Trav.

Today to soak up some time we all went for another half hour drive north east out to Katherine Gorge which is situated in the Nitmiluk National Park. There are many nature trails to walk along that are well signposted in the area. I took the Baruwei walk which was a 5km looped walk that started and ended at the visitor centre. The visitor centre has various displays and a nice café connected to it.

I went for the walk by myself with my day pack filled with a bottle of water, some snacks, two GPS trackers, a handheld UHF, stills camera and even a first aid kit! I have to keep testing out the setup I have with this bag as I will be using it for the Mitchell Falls walk later on in the trip. Mum and dad stayed out on the veranda at the visitor centre and had a coffee and some cake; they’d been on a similar walk before last time they were here.

I started out on my walk and passed about half a dozen people on the flat section. Once I came across the stairs part there was nobody in sight so I took some pictures of pretty much anything that caught my eye including the stairs themselves. I then came across a nice lookout overlooking the river at the bottom of the gorge. As it so happens I hit the lookout at the same time the river tour boat floated up the river past me.

I gave it a big wave and quite a few of them waved back so I took some pictures and took in the scenery. After all of this I packed the camera back into my bag and took off further up the mountain. About 5 minutes later a big sulphur crested cockatoo swooped past me and landed on a tree not 5 meters away from me. I tried to get the camera out in time to take a good picture but the bird moved on before I could get a good shot. It continued to hop from tree to tree peeling bark off of them, sort of odd I thought but that’s just what they do I suppose.

A few more minutes of walking led me up to the local water supply and purification plant, right on top of the hill. There was a water bubbler there for tourists to take a drink from so I took a mouthful and continued on again. For the remaining half an hour of the walk I continued to take pictures of whatever caught my eye including different coloured mountain sides, sunlit winding tracks and lots of different plants.

I got back to the visitor centre at around 9:45 am (local time) and was just in time for the breakfast menu at the café there. The food was pretty good and the people were very friendly, I would definitely recommend spending some time here.

Here’s some of the pictures I took, enjoy!

 

Thanks for reading,

Trav.

 

During the afternoon of day 7 we (my mum, dad and I) decided that we would go and have a short walk to see some rather picturesque waterfalls and flowing water. This is about a half hour drive north of Katherine and it is known as Edith Falls.

Once we arrived at the car park for the walking track I pulled out the day packs that we are going to use for the Mitchell Falls walk. I figured that we might as well trial them to see if they were comfortable enough for a lengthy walk. We all carried our own packs with our own water and snacks including torches, handheld CB radios and two GPS trackers to track our journey with. The GPS trackers are mostly for my own interest to see what the track looked like on a map.

I took pictures most of the way up the mountain following the track and walking ahead of mum and dad. The scenery was that of natural beauty; the rock formations in the afternoon light set a red glow alight through the valley.

Once over the ridge of the mountain the track headed down the side toward the waterfalls. I took a few pictures wherever I found an interesting view. Once we reached the splitting point of the track that went either down further to the falls or to the lookout viewing the valley, I chose the falls and they chose the lookout.

What I found at the base of the track was unique in the way that you will see it a lot but never get tired of it. The natural formations of the rocks, the flow of the water and the combination creating the miniature rapids were glistening into my ears and eyes. It was wonderful to behold and hence I took quite a few pictures of everything and anything I could see.

I then took a short climb up to the top of the other side of the ridge which encompassed the flowing water. When I reached the top I peered over the edge to see what must have been at least a 30 meter drop to refreshingly icy water. I took yet more pictures and a short video while I was there, focusing on the radiant red of the rocks around me.

After all of this I made my way back to the lookout and we all walked back to the start of the track. While we were there we noticed that the pool at the bottom of the falls could be accessed so we took a short walk. The water there was quite still so I attempted some more interesting photos using the reflection of the water against the high walls of the mountain.

Here’s some pretty pictures, enjoy! Also, I’m sorry I didn’t individually label any of them, there’s just too many.

Thanks for reading,

Trav.

Day 7, its morning; the birds are singing, the people are walking and talking and I’m still in my bed all cosy and warm. I continue this wondrous splendour until the ripe time of 10:15 am (local time) where I slide gracefully onto the floor exactly the way a bowling ball slips out of an amateur bowler’s hands; quickly, and with a single small bounce upon impact.

Breakfast time struck me like a hand in hot water; not painful but I know it will become uncomfortable if left too long. So I walked over to the kitchen and pulled out a pancake shaker put in the allotted amount of water and shook it like a bee hive; excitedly, but always wary of the insides coming out. Fired up the gas stove and put on a frying pan getting ready for the consumption of this most delicious breakfast treat.

After ravenously devouring the edible mess that was once considered a pancake stack I joined the rest of the present company and listened in on what the new plan would be. Since the second car would not be fixed for another 2 weeks at least, they had a few options.

1. Call it quits and send everything home and fix it there.
2. Attempt a repair up in Darwin and try to continue on their second trip, leaving us to do the rest of the current trip alone.
3. Repair the car in time for the second trip, but hire a rental 4×4 to continue the current trip with us.

We all went for option number 3 and went about changing dates and finding a rental car. After a while we found a Britz vehicle rental place in Darwin and found a camper based 4×4 available for pickup this Saturday (the 27^th – tomorrow). How to get to Darwin?

The first idea was to get my uncle, my dad and I to drive up to the rental place which was about 3 and a half hours drive away. I would drive up then dad would drive his car back and my uncle his new rental. This plan would work but it would cost a small fortune in fuel which we do not have.

The next idea is the winner and it went as such. My uncle and auntie would catch the very next Greyhound Bus ride to Darwin from right here in Katherine. They would find accommodation close to either the rental place or the bus depot and drive back here as early as they can on Saturday.

As I type this my uncle and auntie are most likely settling into their accommodation choice for the night (10:00 pm local time). While we are attempting to do the same back here at the camp site.

I’m sure you’ve all seen what a small caravan park looks like, but just in case you haven’t here is a short description:

There’s a perimeter fence, one entry/exit and sectioned off rectangles of grass that you pay absurd amounts of money to drive your car to and set up your tent. The bonus is that you get hot showers and a washing machine!

Thanks for reading,

Trav.

Day 6 is afoot, a step and a few hundred kilometres at 80 km/h as we creep along behind a big tow truck with my Uncle’s broken car and trailer attached to it.

For five hours we drove west bound back toward the city of Katherine with my auntie in the back seat of mum and dad’s car with me. We made three stops in total, all filled with the relieved sighs of passengers in want of a break from the ongoing repeated scenery – now in reverse!

The final stop was at the Toyota dealership just outside of Katherine where we off loaded the broken car to the maintenance department. We sorted out the belongings to go with us back to the camp site which would later be booked at a very comfortable 5 minute walk from the natural hot springs!

We transported the campers to the site which was about a 2 minute drive down the road into town and set up camp in spaces right next to one another. After all of this took place we all sat down and had an hour or so to relax and think clearly about what to do next.

The night didn’t draw on for long as we all grew tired rather quickly from the intense and rather expensive day that trailed us. Tomorrow will be a better day with clear minds and a fresh perspective. Everything will be sorted by afternoon tea time, the new plans will be in place and the trip will continue!

No pictures today!

Thanks for reading,

Trav.