triplog

Last week we spent in luxury - we rented a holiday house at Cow Bay in the Daintree with Matt, Bec, and Lesley and, Matts sister and her partner flew up for a few days too. The house was massive, an open-plan all timber construction surrounded by lush vegetation and wildlife. It also had a pool table and swimming pool, and about a million cosy nooks, chairs or hammocks to just relax and read in.

Last weekend we headed out of Townsville and up into Paluma Range National Park, camping first at Crystal Creek, then at Lake Paluma. The ranger there told us about a family of platypus (platypii?) on the other side of the lake, so at dusk we canoed over - and managed to see them. They’re very shy little creatures, we had to be completely silent and just drift the canoe - the footage above was shot on the second night we went out to see them.

After our stay at the Daly Waters pub, we headed onto a dirt road again - the Savannah Highway, which runs from the NT through to the Queensland east coast in Cairns. We finally crossed the border on Sunday (the 7th of September), passing from the Northern Territory into true cane toad country and the land of Four X.

The cane toad - when we were heading through the Kimberley and the top end of WA, there seemed to be a lot of concern about the impending cane toad invasion. Now that we’re in the NT, you can see how unstoppable they are - whereas the parks in the west of the Northern Territory such as Keep River National Park had traps in place to try and stem the flow, here in Kakadu it’s too late - the toad is well and truly here.

We finally caught up with Matt and Bec at Bell Creek, off the Gibb River Road. They’d managed to score one of the secluded creek-side campsites, so we had a sweet little camp setup with access to a little swimming/wading hole. The two rangers managing the area, René (Ernie Dingo’s nephew!) and Jarred (spelling?) were awesome blokes, and would drop by for a yarn every day - we learnt heaps from them.

Bell Gorge itself is magic - a series of three waterfalls and swimming holes. The water is crystal clear and icy cold, perfect for swimming. The first two waterfalls are pretty accessible, but to get to the third one you had to hike out and around the gorge, dropping back in from the other side - we did this on the third day there. It’s the biggest and deepest of the swimming holes, and also the coldest.

We also managed to bump into Jane’s friend and workmate Kay, who was traveling the Gibb River Road in the other direction (from Kununurra to Broome) with her husband Dave and kids. That night we went to their camp at Stone Creek for dinner (roast vegies on an open fire) and drinks. Actually, it’s worth noting that the whole stay at Bell Creek was characterised by gourmet dining - Bec made an incredible curry on the first night, and Matt did a sushi feast another night; leftover sushi rolls also make an excellent hiking lunch, especially when their packed into an esky-bag with some ice-cold beers.

Wildlife including birds and water monitors were everywhere and on our hike to the third waterfall, Jane startled a snake - he stuck his head up from between some rocks, watched us for a while, then high-tailed it for the water; whatever species he was, he was an ace swimmer.

As an aside, it’s here I learnt that a ‘killer’ is the name given to unbranded (and hence not owned by anyone) cattle - geddit?