From Broome To Katherine

Monday morning came quickly and after another terrible sleep due to the heat we were quite sluggish and it took us ages to pack up all of our gear. Normally this would bother me but since we had to wait for the post office to open anyway it wasn’t a big deal. By the time we had sorted things out at the post office it was nearly 10:30 when we finally hit the road. We had nearly 1900km to travel before making it to Darwin and wanted to make it there in three days so I set a lofty goal of making it to Kununurra (1,044km) on that first day. I knew this wasn’t going to happen since we left so late in the day but I decided I would be happy if we made it anywhere remotely close to there.

If memory serves it was a fairly uneventful day on the road. We drove for hours and hours without much happening. We drove past a turn off for Wolfe Creek; a place Jesse has wanted to visit for years but decided to give it a miss as he thought it would be two expensive.

We spent the night at a rest stop on the side of the road about 100km from the Wolfe Creek turn off (about 200km from our goal). Thankfully this time wasn’t nearly as scary as the last time we camped on the side of the road. There were several other people already camping when we arrived so I think that helped to calm my nerves. The constant mooing of a cow however had me pretty stressed out. I was convinced he was right behind us and was going to trip over our tent in the dark and squish us. The fact that every time I managed to fall asleep despite the sweltering heat the cow would moo and I would wake up certainly didn’t help matters.

When we got up in the morning Jesse decided he made a mistake and he needed to go back to see Wolfe Creek or he would regret missing the opportunity. We drove 60km towards our original destination to fuel up then back 100km to where the turn off was. Wolfe Creek is approximately 130km down a dirt road so it took forever and a day to get to.

Jesse has been talking about this place since before we left and I have read a little about it as well but it is not at all what I expected. It is a large crater believed by aboriginals to have been created by a giant rainbow serpent as he came out of the ground. It is also the location for a bizarre murder that has since been turned into a movie that is allegedly terrifying. I tried to block out the stories about the murder that Jesse had told me and tried to think only of the crater. I imagined a dry and desolate looking hole in the ground so I was surprised when we climbed to the top of a hill and looked down on a lush valley full of greenery. Jesse was slightly disappointed as well and by this point I felt like we had completely wasted the day. We could have been in the Northern Territory by now!

After an entire day on the road we made it to Kununurra, I couldn’t help but feel slightly disappointed as we pulled into a caravan park and set up for the night. My disappointment turned to anger when we found a man sleeping on the floor in the camp kitchen so we were unable to use it. I was even angrier the next morning when I saw him smoking and drinking, if you can afford those things then you can pay for a campsite!

The next morning we stopped by the Wild Mango café for some smoothies before hitting the road. We were only kilometres away from the state border. If we didn’t cross into the Northern Territory today I was going to cry. Luckily we made it through the day with no dilemmas and made it to Katherine a town that is not only in the Northern Territory but also only three hours from Darwin.

We had been camping since we left Exmouth a week ago and hadn’t been getting much sleep so we decided to spoil ourselves for the night and booked a private room at a hostel. It was so nice to have a bed to sleep in and the air conditioning was incredible. The fact that the Big Brother finale was on TV was just a bonus. Jesse and I had gotten quite addicted to the show during the time we spent being unemployed bums so it was nice to see how it turned out. We also had some yummy Eagle Boys pizza for dinner so Jenna was a happy panda when she went to sleep that night.

The next day I thought it would be fun to suggest a visit to a national park to Jesse; he loved the idea I just wish I had done more research first. I wanted to visit Katherine Gorges National Park and check out the sights. Little did I know that none of the park is accessible by road and you have to hike if you want to see anything. We talked to someone at the information centre before setting out and she told us that the temperature at the top of the escarpment would be ten degrees hotter than the car park. I almost burst into tears. It was already a million degrees outside. Now I think I know how the person manning the info desk is Kananaskis must have felt when my friend Jennie and I asked them if they rented bear saddles.

I’m pretty sure Jesse wanted to smack me and tell me to man up during our short hike because I was the biggest cry baby ever. We had to climb up a million stairs, it was a billion degrees, and flies were swarming me. I was ranting and raving like a lunatic and he just wanted to check out the views. It was a struggle but we finally made it to the lookout point at the first gorge. It was absolutely beautiful and totally worth the effort but I really just cant handle the heat.

On our way back down Jesse jumped into the safe zone of the crocodile infested river and then jumped right back out again just in case it wasn’t really as safe as the signs said. We headed to the car and headed back into town where we stocked up on groceries, preparing for our journey into the big smoke.