Top End road trip in search of the real Australia
Our luxury guru takes a road trip he never thought he’d take - a three star one - and finds the real Australia.
“Don’t have the souvlaki.”
But then, why would you? We are a long way from a Greek taverna. In fact, we are in Kakadu National Park on a boat cruise along the Yellow Water wetlands, heading back to the dock when, naturally, discussion turns to what we should do for dinner.
Restaurants in this part of the Northern Territory are thin on the ground and book out, so planning is essential unless you want to have corn chips in your cabin for dinner. There’s a total of three places to eat near where we are staying in Jabiru, and we’ve already dined at one of them twice.
“What about the golf club?” S asks.
“Oh, the golf club sounds nice, let’s try that,” says R, no doubt imagining an upscale airconditioned interior with wicker furniture, club sandwiches, Long Island iced tea and views of the fairways.
Then Trish, another tourist on the boat who is seated in front of us, briefly turns and says, “I wouldn’t”. S leans forward and asks why not and Trish then offers us her review of the souvlaki she ordered. “I don’t even think it was lamb,” she said and then turned to face the front again. I raise an eyebrow and mouth to S: “Souvlaki? WTF?”
The four of us – J, R, S and me – had been on the road in the Northern Territory and Western Australia now for almost a week at this point and we knew what to expect from the restaurants in the area, which is to say not much. The food here is underwhelming at best and there’s plenty of it – especially barramundi and as much as I like barramundi, well before week’s end I never want to see it again.
But we didn’t embark on a Top End road trip for a culinary adventure (Subway is included in a list of best restaurants in Kununurra I found online). Or a fine wine experience (“We have sauvignon blanc,” is the response from a waiter when I ask if they have a wine list). Or for the luxury accommodation (I sent a photo of me working on my laptop from outside my room at the Timber Creek Hotel to a colleague and she asked why I was sitting outside a public toilet).
We came here for the scenery and to explore a part of Australia we had never been to. We came for the wide-open spaces and as an escape from the city between lockdowns. The four of us live near each other in the inner city of Sydney and the long, straight, traffic-free roads with their 130km/h speed limits, the ever-changing landscape and the foreignness of the region to us were a thrill. We scrambled over large boulders to reach a spectacular swimming hole at the top of Emma Gorge, hiked in the Keep River National Park and didn’t see another person for hours (heaven), flew over Purnululu (aka the Bungle Bungles) and couldn’t fathom that the rock formations were only discovered by white people in 1982 and experienced sunsets that took your breath away.
We were a long way from Darlinghurst and didn’t care about fine dining or thread counts. Our road trip in a rented Toyota LandCruiser covered nearly 2000km between the four Ks: Katherine, Kununurra, the Kimberley and Kakadu.
We did our research. Well, J did the research and we obeyed. We decided to go in the last week of May, after the wet season. Of course, that’s when a lot of other people also planned to go, so we had to compromise a little when it came to our accommodations. A boom in Australians seeing the Top End for the first time while international borders were closed, and a lack of hospitality workers thanks to the pandemic, means some things are just not open and others are short-staffed and operating on restricted hours or offer limited services. Because of that, better than Google in these parts is word of mouth – specifically from the grey nomads who have been on the road for months and know it all and are very happy to share their wisdom.
Take Pat as an example. We met Pat on our first night – she bequeathed us her spot by the pool at the “resort” we were staying at. Pat and her husband had been on the road for some time when we meet her. She tells me where they’ve been and shows me photos on her iPad and I volunteer our itinerary in an effort to make polite conversation – she gave us her spot by the pool after all.
“Kakadu? I’ve heard mixed reports about Kakadu, I’m not sure I’d go there.”
Mixed reports about the World Heritage-listed site I’ve been keen to visit since I was a child and that people travel the world to see? Clearly, unlike with Trish, we chose not to take Pat’s advice.
When the others arrive at the pool and see me talking to Pat, I introduce her. “This is Pat, she’s heard mixed reports about Kakadu,” I say. J, S and R are speechless for the second time in less than an hour.
The first time was when we arrived at our accommodation, the Nitmiluk Chalets, just outside Katherine. We drove past the “chalets” three times because we didn’t think the collection of demountable buildings on the edge of a dusty camping ground fitted the description of a chalet. They looked more like builders’ offices on a construction site.
R, trying to put a positive spin on our digs, says he doesn’t know why people are so down about demountable classrooms. “It’s just Modernism,” he says. Later that night R got stuck in the shower cubicle and had to be freed by J. That’s what being married is all about.
At Edith Falls we find an open swimming spot that is deemed to have a “very low crocodile risk”, according to a sign at the entrance to the path that leads to the falls One by one, J, R and then S take a cautious dive into the water. I let the others go before me and think to myself, I wonder where the car keys are. But it’s hot – really hot – and the water in the small but picture-perfect lake looks so inviting I decide to concentrate on the words “very low” and not on the fate of Rebecca Gilling in the 1983 TV miniseries Return to Eden, which I watched a few weeks prior.
Then Maureen, a grey nomad sitting on a log just where the others enter the water, introduces herself and says: “It’s totally fine, there’s no crocs in there, we’ve been swimming here many times over the years.” So I take the plunge. The water is as heavenly as it looked. When I surface, Maureen says: “Mind you, a couple of years ago they pulled a big saltie out of here.”
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