Contact Us

As we will be on the road as it were, the best way to contact us is via email.

If snail mail is your only option send to Jan and Mike Mateljan, C/- 82b MacLeod Road, Applecross 6153

 

Where are we?

…...Continued from “Where we have been” page.

Before leaving Kununurra we visited Mirima National Park, sometimes known as Hidden Valley, just on the outskirts of town. The walks are quite beautiful with lovely contrasting colours and an abundance of birdlife.

Our first night in Northern Territory we camped in Gregory National Park at Big Horse Creek where it meets the Victoria River. Quite a pleasant stay. Our next stop was Katherine where we spent 2 nights, catching up on things like shopping, treating ourselves to an ensuite site, and taking in some of Katherine Gorge. Beautiful place, too many people – the hordes had descended on it. Would you believe they charge a fee for using your own canoe or boat. We didn’t bother and decided they can have it. We moved on to Edith Falls camp ground in Nitmiluk National Park. This was a truly lovely place. Beautiful walks with waterfalls and swimming opportunities, lots of birdlife.

From Edith falls we made our way to the Daly River. The free camping on the river that we had been told about didn’t seem to be happening so we booked in to the Daly River Inn caravan park on an unpowered site - $15 against $25. Unfortunately for us this was not a good place to stay as the Inn attracts the worst of the locals who decided to have a bit of a drinking binge and keep us awake most of the night. Note to selves, don’t stay in places that have a liquor licence open to the public. We found our way to the Woolianna Caravan Park on the Daly. We can’t speak highly enough of this place. The proprietors Georgina and Adrian really look after their clients and pay a lot attention to detail. They also offer moorings at their jetty so you can leave your boat in the water for easy access to the fishing. The Barra were still biting. Adrian says look at the bin near the cleaning table, it speaks for itself, and it did. Some nice size frames. When we returned from inspecting the jetty we found that we had newly arrived neighbours, dave and Jill and their two girls Karlie and Brook. Dave was a keen fisherman and had arranged to hire a boat. As it was only early in the afternoon he helped me get the boat into the water and we went down the river to chuck a few lures about. We came back with two size barra a couple of hours later. Well done us. The rest of our stay proved unfruitful with only undersize barra being landed, but all good fun. By the way, there were quite a few rather large salties in that river.

 

We had heard much about Litchfield National Park and so we headed that way, making our way to the Wangi Falls camp ground where we met John and Cheryl in a shared camp.

This was a delightful spot from where we explored most of the attractions of the park. Glad we had the 4WD as there were a couple of rather deep creek crossings to be made in order to get to a few of the sites. We have now moved on to Darwin and will be here for about a week before moving on to Kakadu.

 

22^nd July, 2006.

 

 

THE TOP END

We had been advised by other travellers that a good place to stay while in Darwin was at Lee Point so that is where we headed. It had a rather noisy road alongside but from all accounts no where near as noisy as other places, all of which are very close to the centrally located Darwin Airport. As it turned out Lee Point is only about 15 to 20 minutes drive from the city, even in peak hour. We wish that Perth’s peak hour was so busy.

We visited the city to do things like, look around, collect mail, attend Church, and generally get a feal for the place. Jan and I agree that Darwin is a very agreeable place. After attending Church at Darwin’s Christchurch Cathedral (Anglican) we were invited to accompany some of the folk for lunch at the Trailer Boat Club at Fannie Bay. Very nice and great company. This was yet another opportunity to find out a little about Darwin from the locals, including some of the interesting sites and things to do.

The original Cathedral building was all but destroyed in Cyclone Tracy, but the foyer has been retained as a reminder of what used to be.

The new building (now some 30 years old) is quite impressive with its contemporary architecture and beautiful furnishings, but more importantly the people ooze with a genuine sense of welcoming. Lunch with the Dean and a small group of parishioners, overlooking the beautiful waters of Fannie Bay was a delight. The food was good too. While at lunch we were told of the WWII gun placements and museum at East Point (ie the point of land stretching from the right in the above photo). We made a point of visiting the place and found it all very interesting. Much of Darwin’s history seems to stem from its vulnerability and strategic location in times of war and other conflict, and of course Cyclone Tracy. From what I can gather resources were meagre for the war effort and gun placements such as this one shown below were used to house large guns that had been purloined from warships—subsequently they are no longer there.

As we meandered about East Point looking at the WWII gun placements and catching up on some of the history behind their existence, we were ever conscious of the views that surrounded us, our remoteness in terms of the rest of Australia, and our close proximity to our northern neighbours of Indonesia, Eat Timor and Papua New Guinea. The steady flow of military aircraft arriving and departing from Darwin was a more tactile reminder of these proximities.

 

As I have said, Jan and I spent a bit of time in the city. The Smith Street Mall is the central shopping precinct, although the shopping seems to be limited to cafes and souvenir shops. On two occasions we enjoyed a lunch at the Deck Restaurant. Very nice and good value—$12 for lunch, which included a glass of beer or wine.

 

We also wandered down to the Wharf to take a look at the restaurants there. We had already had lunch so we just grabbed a tropical fruit smoothy at the ice cream bar—mmmm. There was however a good range of foods to be had along the wharf, especially seafood. Perhaps another time.

Kakadu National Park

Leaving Darwin our next destination was Kakadu National Park. Jan had particularly been looking forward to this part of our journey. We were eventually to spend two weeks exploring the wonders of Kakadu. With its breathtaking waterfalls, dominating escarpments, beautiful billabongs and graceful rivers, along with the diverse flora and fauna and a land steeped in ancient aboriginal culture we had much to keep ourselves occupied. Much of our time was spent driving from one feature to another, followed by the seemingly inescapable bush walk. Being a tourist is a hard job at times. Jan and I concluded that the states and territories are probably offered extra funding for their health budget according to the number of walks they have in the national parks—sic. The following photos are a taste of what we saw. By the way, Jan managed to land a 62cm barramundi whilst trolling in the South Alligator River. Yes we did get to do a bit of fishing here and there, dodging saltys here and there.

 

Now that we have left Kakadu we are heading home to Perth. We have some things to take care of there.

 

Happy travelling,

Mike ad Jan.

 

10th August, 2006