The Big Heat and the Top End

Camel Riders on Cable Beach Broome

As we have travelled north so the temperatures have increased, until here near Darwin they are an uncomfortable 40 degrees during the day, and generally not dropping below around 28 degrees at night. Hence we tend to visit places morning and evening and travel during the middle of the day when the car's air-conditioning provides relief from the heat.

Deserted outback road

From Karijini National park we headed to Broome on the coast for a couple of day's relaxation and enjoyed lovely coastal scenery and visited the 100 year old outdoor cinema where the latest Hollywood blockbusters can be enjoyed under the stars.

Beautiful peaceful Windjana Gorge

Freshwater Crocodile

Having stocked up on food we headed north to the Kimberley which has some spectacular rugged sandstone scenery, with red vertical cliffs rising out of the plains and cascading waterfalls into deep cool plunge pools, many offering a chance to cool off.




The sandstone heights are frequently cut by deep narrow gorges which remain shaded and cool during the day. NW Australia is the home of the Boab tree - very similar to the Baobab of Africa with huge bloated trunks supporting a few short branches. The trees are just coming into leaf heralding the start of the wet season. Our first stop from Broome was Windjana Gorge where we enjoyed a spectacular thunderstorm overnight, followed by a glorious clear day when we walked through this peaceful gorge in an ancient Devonian barrier reef. The river through the gorge is inhabited by dozens of small (up to 3m long) freshwater crocodiles (freshies), which are claimed to be relatively harmless, unlike their bigger cousins the saltwater crocs (salties) which grow to 7m and can be very aggressive. Further along the same road is Tunnel creek - a natural river tunnel which winds 750m through the barrier reef which can be walked and waded through provided you have a good torch.

Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater

A detour took us to Wolfe Creek crater - the second largest meteorite crater in the world which is almost perfectly circular and rises out of a completely flat plain. It must have been a huge impact. 

Purnulu National Park is home to the Bungle Bungles, which provide some strange rock formations with banded black and red sandstone domes rising from the plain. The sandstone is fissured providing a number of canyons ranging from the intimate Echidna Canyon which in places is only 1m wide, to Cathedral canyon which opens to a wide amphitheatre with a dramatic overhang under a wet season waterfall.

The Bungle Bungles



Echidna Gorge

Cathedral Gorge

Pentecost River Crossing - Gibb River Road

North again is El Questro Park with a series of stunning swimming holes set in deep sandstone canyons and encompassing several large rivers including Pentecost River which the Gibb River road crosses in a 200m long ford. From Western Australia we have crossed into Northern territories and headed north to Darwin, a reasonably large city in the "Top End" which has an amazing number of WW2 airfields and defences, as well as being adjacent to the Litchfield and Kakadu National Parks.

Aboriginal Rock Art in Kakadu

Litchfield has some lovely walking trails through lush tropical valleys, while UNESCO listed Kakadu spans a wide range of habitats from coast, through swamp and floodplain to sandstone cliffs. Two excellent sites containing a lot of ancient Aboriginal rock art are set in the Park providing a glimpse of ancient Aboriginal culture, and the rock shelters they used for millennia.

 

One feaure of the NW is the number of birds of prey and the prolific and spectacular bird life in general, from the beautiful to the ugly.


The beautiful Comb Crested Jacana

Masked Lapwing

Having caught our breath in Darwin we are planning to head south through the centre to Alice Springs and Uluru.

Too hot for Kites

A friendly spider trying to eat a beetle

 

Driving hazard - 60m long road trains

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

G'Day Australia

Pastoral SW Australia

Arriving in Perth after 5 months in Indonesia came as a shock. Not only are the roads incredibly good, there is no litter, the supermarkets are loaded with western goods, with especially good meat, and wine, and the weather is cool - in fact at times cold. Spring is just arriving and the weather has just turned from cold and wet to more Spring like resulting in the spring flowers being at their best. While waiting for the container to arrive we hired a car and have spent a couple of weeks exploring the south west corner of Australia, which in places looks just like the UK - rolling green hills where sheep graze, with small woodlands, and further inland large areas of wheat and a very rural feel.

Kangaroos grazing

It is only when you look closely at the trees and realise they are mainly eucalypts of some sort, and when kangaroos hop across in front of you, or graze in the evening light in the fields that you realise this is Australia. The weather has been fantastic, warm sunny days and cool nights - we even had a frost! September is the beginning of the whale migration along the coast so we have spent several days walking the coastal areas along empty sandy beaches and through colourful coastal scrub keeping an eye out for the tell tale whale blow, or splash when one has breached.

Whales

Lookout Tree

We were fortunate to see one a couple of hundred metres off the headland where we were chatting to volunteers who perform an annual whale migration census. This SW corner of Australia was once covered in eucalyptus forest much of which has been cleared to plant wheat, but large areas have been kept in National Parks where some of the huge 400 year old trees can still be seen. We passed on the opportunity to climb 65 metres up metal spikes driven into a tree to reach a fire lookout, and instead walked round the valley of giants where particularly large trees are more abundant.

Tulips in Botanic Garden

A week ago we returned to Perth as the container arrived and we wanted to be on hand, however customs randomly selected our container for X-Ray so it was delayed on the wharf by 4 working days, and we have spent the time using the excellent public transport system to visit some of the sights in and around Perth and Freemantle, including the botanic gardens, which had fine displays of tulips and banksia trees in flower. Last Friday the container was eventually released and has been cleared by Customs, so we are now waiting for an appointment with Quarantine inspectors so we can unpack it and they can inspect for cleanliness - hopefully today or tomorrow. They frequently request additional cleaning before it is released and we can take it for its roadworthiness inspection. So we will likely have to spend another week in or around Perth.


 

Banksia Flower

SW Coast

Emu

Heading North in Australia

Stockyard Gully Tunnel

Our vehicle was eventually released to us after being held by customs for 10 days for a random check, and then after a 5 minute examination by the quarantine officer we were declared clear. The final pieces of the jigsaw were to get the car serviced and then tested by the Dept of Transport, who also OK'd it so we were then free to drive. Having provisioned ourselves we immediately set off north from Perth and have spent the last 10 days visiting many of their fabulous National Parks en route. We spent the first night in the van in nearly six weeks in Yanchep NP, 70kms N of Perth where we were entertained by a pair of male kangaroos fighting. From there we have visited Pinnacles NP, where remarkable limestone pillars have been left in a sandy desert, Leseur NP to see the Spring flowers, Stockyard Gully where we walked through a 250m long natural limestone tunnel, once used by herders to hold their cattle.


Natures Window Kalbarri NP

Following the Indian Coast Road has meant we have been able to cut off to the coast to camp and enjoy the long sandy coastline. As we progressed north sections of the coast have become rocky with some spectacular headlands and cliffs. We drove to the most westerly point of Mainland Australia at Steep Point crossing a couple of sand dunes en route, but were alos rewarded with visiting some fantastic blowholes in the cliffs  where we could hear the air being forced up from 100 ft below. When there is a real swell in the sea at high tide they discharge fountains of water, despite being 100ft above sea level.   

Heading N back into the Tropics

We have become very conscious of just how big Australia is, the roads are excellent with relatively little traffic, a real contrast to Indonesia, but the distances are huge. Communities are separated by 100's of kms so it is essential to keep a close eye on fuel levels, it may be 150kms to the next fuel station, even on a main road. The landscape also changes slowly with large areas of scrubland, and as we have travelled further north increasingly arid landscapes with sparse grass and small trees / shrubs. It is amazing that these areas are used for grazing with cattle and sheep straying over 10's of kms

Western Tip of Australia

One highlight was an evening whale watching trip from Exmouth where we were privileged to see around a dozen humpback whales, many with calves, displaying most of their antics, breaching, fin and tail slapping and beautiful tail fin dives. I was fantastic to be near to these huge and docile creatures. From a population of fewer than 1000 migrating along this coast in the early 1960's there are now around 30,000, with the population still growing.

Breaching humpback whale

The following day we were sitting in a beach car park about to have lunch when a group of 3 kangaroos decided to rest in the shade of our van, it was the only shade around, so we ate lunch while these inquisitive visitors watched or snoozed around 3 ft away. We have now travelled sround 200kms inland and spent the day in Karijini NP - a huge area of undulating scrubland cut by numerous deep and often narrow gorges. Trails wind down into the gorges where there are several tranquil pools ideal for swimming.
A fantastic country with lots to see and do, but also huge distances to cover.

Blowholes



Chilled Kangaroo

Canyons in Karijini NP

Walking a narrow canyon

   

Goodbye Indonesia

Back in Surabaya we have spent the last two weeks thoroughly cleaning the van in preparation for shipping it to Australia. Australia have very strict bio-security regulations and the vehicles are thoroughly inspected by a special team looking for any insect or soil / dust contamination. Thorough cleaning involved taking everything out, including anything relatively easily unboltable like the fridge, front seats and flooring and the front bull bars. These were all thoroughly cleaned before being replaced and after having the outside of the van cleaned by a local company spent two days underneath with a pressure washer before the whole of the underside was undersealed to make it look like new.
Every item removed from the van was cleaned and then replaced. Eventually after nearly two weeks it was all back together and we carefully drove it to the shipping yard where it was loaded into a 40ft container which was then fumigated. By now it should be safely loaded onto the ship and on its way to Perth via Singapore.
We now have a couple of weeks before the van arrives in Perth so once we have collected the carnet and bill of lading we are heading to Australia to enjoy some cooler weather.

Reflections on Indonesia - a fantastically varied country both in terms of scenery and cultures. Lasting impressions are: soaring volcanoes; crashing waves on empty sandy beaches; intense agriculture, and high population density on Java and Bali, but miles of empty undeveloped places on Sumatra, Sumbawa and Flores; extraordinary wildlife on Sumatra and Java; vast cultural differences on different islands, Islam on Java, South Sumatra and Lombok, Hinduism on Bali and Christianity on Flores and North Sumatra; a huge programme of building mosques; traffic congestion; motorbikes everywhere; friendly inquisitive people; heat and humidity on low ground;
An extraordinary country where we have only really scratched the surface, there is so much more to explore.   

Fabulous Flores

 

 
Flores, named by the Portuguese "flowers", is a wonderful varied island which is just seeing the development of tourism, particularly at the western end near to Komodo Island (home of the Komodo Dragons). Our two weeks on the island enabled us to explore places off the beaten track, which we had not visited on our previous visit three years ago. The trans Flores highway runs the length of the island and twists and turns up and down the mountains which form the backbone of the island. It has been rebuilt over the past three years, joins the main towns and now provides a relatively easy, though not fast, route across Flores. To either side of this main route the roads have not been maintained and so few tourists venture into these areas. Having our own vehicle enabled us to explore some of these areas.
The south coast of Flores consists of rocky shores where the mountains meet the sea, with occasional white sandy beaches facing the crashing surf from the southern ocean. These are virtually completely deserted offering that Robinson Crusoe feeling of only seeing your own footprints in the sand. We spent several nights by one beach at Repi where each evening the local water buffalo walked along the beach to their overnight resting place amongst the dunes.
Camping by other beaches it was fascinating to watch the morning arrival of the fishing boats to offload their catches, some at formal jetties, others by young boys swimming from the boats with large barrels of loose fish which they passed to waiting motorbikes, or small pickups for onward transport to market. All along this south coast fishing is a significant occupation.
The central mountains are home to many small villages and we visited both a traditional village built on a fantastic hillside location, and the cave where the Flores Hobbit (an early hominid Homo Floriensis from 60,000 to 100,000 years ago) was discovered in 2003. There is still much debate over this dwarf Hominid and whether it represents a dwarf Homo Sapiens of a separate branch of Hominid. Although there is a little museum (sadly closed) it was easy to imaging the hominids living in the cave and exploiting the fruits and wildlife of the valley, which is still relatively undeveloped.


Heading further north the mountains become steeper, and the once tarmacked roads considerably worse (thank goodness for, high clearance, 4 wheel drive and low ratio gears) with some steeply terraced hillsides for rice production, until to the north of the mountains the scenery suddenly becomes very dry. This is another undeveloped area where the government is just starting to put in irrigation to allow year round crops and the relocation programme is bringing in people from Java and Bali. The coast is mainly mangrove interspersed with undeveloped sandy beaches facing a very gentle sea lapping at the shore. Again few people and very peaceful.
One feature of all these beaches is the variety of shells and on Flores in particular beautiful coloured sea washed stones in greens, blues and reds. They are so attractive we ended up collecting lots of extra ballast for the van, which we will need to ruthlessly sort before long.


All along Flores are volcanoes and we revisited Kelimutu which has three craters each containing a different coloured lake. We had planned to camp in the car park to climb and see the sunrise, but were told we were not allowed to, so had to settle for the sunset from the top and sunrise from part way down - but still a beautiful sight.

Flores has presented the most spectacular sunsets, with fantastic colours most evening ranging through beautiful pastel colours to vivid orange and red skies.
So now we have taken a 26 hour ferry ride back to Surabaya on Java (the city where we entered Indonesia) and have booked for the van to be shipped to Perth Australia in two weeks time, so we will have to spend the next fortnight cleaning the van inside and out to be like new. Australia has very stringent bio security requirements so there must be no grease, oil or dust, or insects etc anywhere.

          

Lombok and Sumbawa

Mekaki Bay - Lombok

The last two weeks have been spent exploring the islands of Lombok and Sumbawa, and we have just arrived in Flores.

One of several Hindu processions

Lombok - the island east of Bali remains relatively unspoilt in the south, though there has been a lot of development in the north around the Gili Islands, however they have ambitions to attract tourists away from Bali and have built a large new airport and are putting a lot of effort into developing Kuta on the south coast, with the whole seafront being paved to create a large promenade. However it is still early days and Lombok offers fantastic deserted sandy beaches along the south coast. As a result of the government relocation of people from areas with high populations there are some interesting mixes in villages, with one half of a village Muslim, from people relocated from Java, and the other half Hindu, with people relocated from Bali. These villages have generally ben created in areas on Lombok, and Sumbawa where there is little population, and the countryside has not previously been used for agriculture. In addition to the building of some infrastructure, mainly roads, there is also some development of irrigation which is essential for these areas to develop. Several times we have driven along beautiful new roads - with signposts, and white lines, to find they suddenly end in the middle of nowhere and we have to backtrack.


Ebony Langur

Looming over Lombok is Mount Rinjani, the second highest volcano in Indonesia and a popular trekking destination. For a few days the top was unusually clear - it normally attracts a shroud of cloud, and on its slopes are rainforests. We were fortunate to see a troupe of ebony langurs as we drove over the shoulder of Rinjani on our way to Terjun and Sendang waterfalls.


Sendang waterfall

Sumbawa comes as a complete contrast to the previous islands, as it is very dry, with mainly sedimentary rocks rather than deposits from volcanoes. The central area is very mountainous and almost completely undisturbed supporting a much drier forest, many of the trees showing autumnal type colours as we are in the dry season here. The south coast of blessed with extensive deserted white sand beaches, and on west facing shores more excellent surf.  There had been very little tourist development so we always attract a lot of interest as we pass through. The north coast is very dry, and undeveloped, but again transmigration is planned with some roads laid out for new towns but with no houses. The ground supports little natural vegetation, but where it has been cleared and irrigated lush crops grow. Huge areas have been roughly cleared, but now need the manpower to create the paddies and plant and manage crops. Around Bima on Sumbawa is a huge area of salt farming, where shallow "fields" are flooded with sea water and left to evaporate with the salt scraped off the base manually using wooden rakes. Again very labour intensive.
Yesterday we caught the ferry to Flores, arriving in Labuan Bajo in the late afternoon after sailing past Komodo Island.





Dry landscape of Sumbawa



Houses for transmigration

With no rubbish collection - some roads are blighted



Bima salt farm



Sumbawa traditional houses

    

Back to Bali

Southern tip of Bali

After a wonderful four weeks in the UK, culminating in our youngest son's wedding we arrived back in Bali at the end of June. We have spent most of the last two weeks on Bali as we have been waiting for an extension to our Carnet for the car, so have managed to relax and recover from a hectic four weeks in the UK, and explore some of the lesser known areas.

Filming cigarette commercial

We found a great place to camp at the southernmost point of Bali where we spent a couple of nights, including one with Javi and Ines, (fellow travellers across China) and a couple from England, Aldo and Vera who are planning to ship to Australia in Mid July. It was great to catch up and share experiences before we each had to go our separate ways. We were nearly in a commercial for Lucky Strike cigarettes which when we woke up we found was being filmed on the road past our campsite. The location manager came and chatted for half an hour making sure we were out of shot.

Tiny temple for 6 houses by crater lake

As a mainly Hindu island Bali is very different from other Indonesian Islands, and is also very much more developed with western style shops and goods available, and a huge amount of traffic. There are thousands of temples, from tiny serving a few houses to large famous ones. We were surprised at how many ceremonies are held, especially at the period of the full moon, with one village where we stayed holding three days of celebrations which involved several thousand people from the village and adjacent villages. In other places where we camped were smaller ceremonies either for a community or for an individual family, all of which include quantities of offerings of flowers and fruit in small wicker baskets.
To avoid the crowds we headed for the centre and the north of the island. We spent two nights on a campsite, the only one we have found in Indonesia, by a crater lake and enjoyed wandering along the lake shore to a typical tiny temple for a community of half a dozen huts. As it was the school holidays there were lots of youngsters each night enjoying singing round campfires, so not the quietest of places at night, but very peaceful during the day.

Family ceremony

The north and east coasts are much less developed with very few tourists, mainly divers for the few ship wrecks and at Amed a very low key pebbly beach with a coral garden just by the beach, so great for snorkelling.
As soon as the Carnet extension arrived we wasted no time in stocking up on western essentials we are unlikely to see again in Indonesia and headed to the ferry for Lombok, where we were the last vehicle on, but packed in so tight we had to climb out of the passenger window.

Beach campsite

We are now on Lombok, a much more relaxed island with beautiful stretches of white sand and not a person, or hotel in sight. Desert Point - a basic surfers location at the end of a 4km rough track has one of the longest surf waves and surfers come from all over the world when the swell is up. Camping by the beach we were treated to the sunset over the rolling surf.

Boats on North Coast of Bali