Back in the Northern Territory

We de-camped early from our campsite alongside a billabong (waterhole) located just 1 kilometre outside of the small town of Camooweal and hit the road.  As the driver I was happy that we were headed west which mean’t I didn’t have to squint into the early morning sun.  Just 13 kilometres later we reached a sign welcoming us to the Northern Territory.

Welcome to the NT!  It was nice to be back!

The Northern Territory (NT) of Australia is located in the central and central northern region of Australia.  It is bordered by Queensland to the east, Western Australia to the west and South Australia to the south.  Look to the north and all you can see is ocean.  If you jump in a boat and travel far enough you might run into Timor or Indonesia.

The NT is large and largely unpopulated...
but don't think you will have the place to yourself!

It is a big place at 1.42 million km2.  By way of comparison, the Northern Territory is over twice the land area of Texas (696,000 km2), and is larger than all of the Canadian provinces and territories with the exception of Nunavut (2.09 million km2) and Quebec (1.67 million km2).  On the other hand, when it comes to population it is pretty much empty with fewer than 250,000 people living there.  Of these folks, 145,000 live in the capital city of Darwin on the northern coast of the 'Top End'.  Darwin also happens to be our target destination for a couple of weeks in June.  The next couple of blogs will let you know a bit about what we encounter along the 2,000 or so kilometre route we take to get there.

As mentioned above, there is a whole lot of empty space in the NT.  Once we had stopped for a photo of the border sign it was another 250 kilometres until we came to the next sign of human life in the guise of the Barkly Roadhouse.  I thought about topping up the fuel tank but with the asking price for diesel being $2.00 per litre, I quietly muttered “WTF?!” to myself before WTF? - Where are The Farrows?, chose to drive right on by feeling quite happy with themselves having installed a long range fuel tank in the ute and knowing we would easily make it to a fuel stop with less gouging tendencies!

Another couple hundred kilometres down the road and we came to the intersection with the Stuart Highway.  The Stuart Highway is the main highway running N-S in the Northern Territory - it runs right up the middle from the SA border to Darwin.  Our Free Camps app was advising a camp known as ‘The Pebbles’ existed nearby and was just a few kilometres off of the Stuart Highway so we decided to make that home for the night.

We thought that because of the emptiness of the NT and all, and the fact that we were 6 km off of the highway down a dirt road, that we would have ‘The Pebbles’ to ourselves - a private campsite, if you will.  This was looking to be the case until a couple of hours before sunset when about 11 vehicles appeared within the space of an hour.  Oh well!  We chose to find the silver-lining associated with having to share with others and thus took a ‘Safety in Numbers’ point of view of the situation.  

Kunjarra or 'The Pebbles' campsite was located
near the base of some granite boulders.
When we arrived we had it to ourselves.
Same when we departed.
Overnight was a different story!

Following a quiet night our ‘private’ camp emptied out as rapidly as it had filled the previous evening.  WTF - Where are The Farrows? were first to arrive and last to leave!

In the next post, we follow the ribbon of sealed road known as the Stuart Highway northwards towards the ‘Top End’.  WTF? - Where are The Farrows? come across natural hot springs & waterfalls just begging us to take a dip (but are there any crocodiles in residence?).  The termite mounds we see appear to be getting ever larger and one of our Bush Pubs turns out to be part of an unsolved murder mystery!  Stay tuned for more tales from the Never Never...