Coast to coast

The Kimberley region, of which Broome is the main hub, has two seasons – wet and dry, with very little temperature difference between the two. We arrived towards the end of “the wet”. With temperatures around 38 Celsius and 100% humidity, we wisely checked into a backpacker's hostel with air-conditioning! In fact we ended up sleeping in hostels for much of our trip across the top end. To be honest, we had expected the hostels to be pretty steggy, but as it turned out they were generally clean and comfortable. And we weren't actually the oldest people there as I had feared!

As appealing as Broome's beaches were, it is still box jellyfish season up here, so swimming is inadvisable.

As most of the attractions in the top end are still inaccessible for the wet season, we decided to make short work of it and get across east coast to spend more time there. Indeed the only road open in the top end was the main sealed road between east and west coasts. So in Broome we restocked the van in preparation for the epic 3500km journey ahead.

Our first day on the road was our longest – a 1050km sprint from Broome to Kununurra near the Western Australia/Northern Territory border. We recuperated the next day by exploring Mirima National Park. The undulating sandstone formations, which formed through uplift over the last 25 million years, are also known as “the mini Bungle Bungles” - they made a good consolation prize for not being able to see the real Bungle Bungles, due to the long wet season.

As we drove across WA and NT, the roads were lined with fine examples of boab trees.

With their bulging trunks and stubby branches the boabs are an icon of the untamed north-west corner of Australia.

Our next stop was 500km further on in the shabby crossroads town of Katherine, NT. Here we went on a cruise up the spectacular Katherine Gorge.

The humidity had seriously dropped off, as we were well inland, so our morning on the water was most pleasant.

The cruise broke for lunch and a swim in a tranquil waterfall plunge pool. The top end being crocodile country, we hadn't swum in anything other than hostel pools for some time. Although the plunge pool was safe for swimming, according to our guides, Andy did actually spot a pair of eyes watching us from the shallows at one end of the pool. When we got out for a better look, it turned out to be a wee baby croc of about 75cm, which had probably plunged over the waterfall from the marshland above!

The road then turned south for 700km between Katherine and Tenant Creek. Somewhere between the two the country dried out, becoming a sparse scrub-land. Tenant Creek is considered to lie in the dry “centre” rather than the seasonally wet “top end”. Temperatures were low enough here at night that we reverted to camping in Edna. The highlight of our 12 hours in Tenant Creek was most definitely the nightly show put on in our campground by “Jimmy Hooker the bush-tucker man”. For the princely sum of $3 each, we were treated to poetry and bush-tucker prepared by Jimmy: one of those indestructible old-timers who has worked this impossible terrain as miner, farm-hand and miscellaneous for more than half a century. That night the bush-tucker special was witchetty grub cooked on hot coals – the consensus was that it tasted like fried egg!

Heading 700km east from Tenant Creek, we arrived in Mount Isa, Queensland. I have approximately nothing to say about this charmless industrial town. We over-nighted there before driving 500km north to peaceful Normanton. After a night there, we headed 650km east to the Atherton Tablelands, where out transcontinental dash came to an end just 50km from the east coast in delightfully cool tropical rainforest. The photo shows the “curtain fig” - one of the more spectacular examples of the omnipresent strangler figs in the rainforest.

Our first full day in the rainforest was my birthday, which we celebrated in the picture-postcard town of Yungaburra. We stayed in the camp-ground of a beautiful hostel, where we had a good old Aussie barbie with good old Aussie plonk. We even saw a platypus in the local creek – our first sighting of a monotreme! Echidnas and platypuses are the only species left on Earth of that weird egg-laying branch of mammalian evolution that is the monotreme.

We went for what we thought was going to be a hike at nearby Granite Gorge. In fact it could be better described as a scramble through a vast field of granite boulders -fun but hard work!

Among the boulders we came across some cute rock wallabies.

From the tablelands, we headed north to the Daintree National Park. Here we took a short cruise on the croc-infested Daintree River.

We spotted this 2.5 metre female saltwater croc hanging around at the bank. As our guide pointed out, she's a real tiddler – the big males around here get to 5 metres in length.

As we continued towards Cape Tribulation, we stopped to walk numerous boardwalks through the thick rainforest. The signs asked you to stay on the path to protect the forest. They really needn't have asked – everywhere you looked there were spiders as big as your hand and equally horrifying insects adorned every nook – there was no chance that I would be stepping off that path!

Where the rainforest meets estuaries and the sea, it becomes thick mangrove swamp. The mangroves trap sediment in their convoluted root systems, gradually advancing the shoreline, with the rainforest ever-encroaching at the mangroves' rear.

Driving the narrow windy road to Cape Tribulation, with the rainforest forming a tight arch over our heads was a real treat. When I was here 10 years ago with Dad and Sarion, this was the end of the sealed road in northern Queensland. Since then, they have built a sealed loop of road round to Cooktown, further north, but they haven't managed to dull the romance of coming to the end of the road in Cape Trib.

On the way back down the coast towards Cairns we stopped at the Rainforest Insect museum to get a closer look at some of those horrifying insects I mentioned.

Some of them actually turned out to be quite cute in their own green and scaly way!

We have now arrived in the civilisation of Cairns and the hospitality of my aunt Jenny and uncle Hugh. It's all south from here on in.