Devils Marbles, Mataranka Springs & Litchfield NP NT (July - 6 days)

The last six days have seen the Smeads travel 1,700 kms north to some incredible places on the map. Our first stop off was the famous Devils Marbles. We were all in awe of these incredible boulders so called ‘cottage cheese’ and ‘cheese rounds’ (?or rings) because of their stacked formations. The boys scaled these rock towers with ease, while Kate found it hard to keep up with even the girls. The colours were amazing at sunset and we climbed until it grew dark. We watched the dingoes come and go over dinner outside. We were all in a state of climate shock as after the mild days and nippy nights in Alice we were all feeling rather hot at the marbles, shedding our layers at night. The flies in the mouth and nose were the only drawback, thank goodness for fly nets – thanks Garnie and Poppy!!

The next day we drove north to the unremarkable road stop of Daly Waters where the only one of two remaining powered sites we could get was along side the trucks and road trains! We were grateful for the power and water to cool our warmish fridge and top up our water tanks after ‘roughing it’ at the marbles. Tim celebrated his birthday morning at this roadhouse stop off, but we soon hit the road to get to Mataranka Springs to enjoy more of his birthday. After trying one dodgy van park in Mataranka, we found probably the friendliest and one of the best parks we have stayed at on the trip. A sprawling grassy van park with a lily covered dam where we watched barramundi being hand fed and caught…..peacocks that wandered freely and congregated outside the Smeads van to be fed by 3 very enthusiastic children hoping for ‘the prized feather’….a great country bistro on site where we enjoyed dinner. From here we visited the two local thermal springs – Bitter and Mataranka Thermal Springs. We had such fun here – snorkelling and floating down the former and just relaxing in the Mataranka Springs. The constant 34deg water was initially a little disappointing when we felt quite hot, but was delightful in the morning and late afternoon.

From Mataranka we drove to Berry Springs (approx 50kms out of Darwin). This has been our base for exploring Litchfield National Park today. We all loved the waterfalls and swimming holes where we swam and snorkelled with the fish, and tried our best to balance in the water on slippery rocks. We saw amazing fields of magnetic termite mounds and ‘The Lost City’ rock formations. It was a great day! Tomorrow we will move a little closer into Darwin to explore the city.

All travelling very well again. The kids are champions coping with these repeatedly long distances!

Alice & The Red Centre NT (June & July - 21 days!!)

We have all really loved our time in the ‘Red Centre’. We have found Alice Springs to be quite captivating and certainly very unique. The landscape has been spectacular…gorges, water holes, breathtaking escarpments and canyons across the east and west Macdonnell ranges. Uluru and Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) were definitely a highlight. We admired the ‘rock’ from the ground, refraining from the climb out of respect for the Anangu peoples wishes (and not to mention our mutual fear of heights). We were awed by the magnitude of Kata Tjuta and walked in marvelling at the towering rock walls. Kings Canyon wasn’t quite what we were expecting, but we didn’t get the view from the top, being only able to do the base walk with the kids. We did have a great night there though celebrating Harrison’s 7th birthday out for dinner, which was fun.

We thoroughly enjoyed our time with Garnie and Poppy (Tim’s parents) and were all quite teary (Hannah howling actually) at the airport farewelling them. We have since enjoyed some great catch-ups with Kate’s sister Jane holidaying with a friend who lives in Alice.

We have been in the new van for 10 days now and all is going well. It’s virtually the same, so it’s hard to believe when we sit in here at night recording these thoughts that we ever had that horrible couple of weeks at all! We feel so grateful to be back on the road again, able to continue this amazing journey around oz!

Georgie is finally starting to take off with her walking, and can now take around 5-6 steps at a time before joining us in squeals of delight at her achievement! She continues to entertain us every day and has even learnt to do somersaults on the ‘jumping pillow’ at the caravan park, care of the big kids coaching.

We leave Alice tomorrow and begin our journey towards Darwin (also Kakadu, Litchfield N.P., Katherine etc.).

Mt Isa QLD, Tennant Creek to Alice NT (June - 4 days)

From Lawn Hill we were headed for Mt Isa when our most unfortunate turn of events occurred….You know the details…. Everybody fine in body, shaken in spirit, but overwhelmed by God’s goodness in sparing us from injury or worse. Van totalled and beyond repair. Car damaged, but driveable. With the help of some extremely kind fellow travellers Tim got the van to a towable state and we limped it through a slow 250kms to Mt Isa, collecting an obscene amount of red dirt along the way (through our now unsealed van walls etc).

We saw very little of Mt Isa sadly, as we were in recovery mode, staying in a motel and doing our best to resurrect our goods from the van, have it assessed, planning the way forward etc. The children were fantastic through this whole ordeal, helping out when asked and for the remainder occupying themselves beautifully with what they had. They really pulled together for one another at this time. Reflecting on it they squabbled very little through these first few days after the accident, probably sensing their need to keep the sibling peace.

With the purchase of a trailer and the news that we would be paid out for our poor van, the journey continued across the outback, south to Tennant Creek and now we are here in Alice Springs (a massive 1,200km’s across 2 days!!). The landscape was pretty monotonus on these days and petrol hit a $2.10/lt high at the Barkly Roadhouse. Here we are all delighting in our reunion with Tim’s parents, are still dusting ourselves and everything off and are now awaiting the arrival of our new van from Sydney… Kate’s parents have very generously assisted in helping to get the van to us, with next to no notice. (Towing the new van hundreds of kms!).

We have been still staying in motels (shifting our gear from one to the next). The last few days we have been very fortunate to be staying in a two bedroom unit that Tim’s company has in Alice for its out-of-town workers. The space has been so welcome (and the Jason recliners, washing machine, bath etc haven’t been bad either!).

So far the red centre of the country has been very unique. Extremely dry, red, rocky and rather interesting. None of us have lived alongside so many Aboriginals before, and are quite fascinated by their culture and communities. We attended the annual ‘Beanie Festival’ with displays of a vast array of beanies of all sorts, handmade by locals and from around the world. Live music and community celebration gave us a bit more of a feel of this town. It was really quite fun! We have visited the Olive Pink Botanical Gardens and enjoyed great coffees there. The kids have handled snakes and lizards at the reptile centre. It has been wonderful catching up with some old friends from Sydney days who now live in Alice with their three little children. We enjoyed a fabulous barbeque dinner at Rainbow Valley (1hr, 15min) south of Alice, watching an incredible sunset on the rainbow escarpment. The star gazing was the best yet….with the Milky Way clearly evident.

Tonight we have just finally got the kids into bed (9.15pm) after much excitement watching fireworks from every window. It is Territory Day in N.T. and residents are free to buy and set off their own fireworks. We were treated to a fabulous spectacle with huge fireworks very close. At one point we had to hurry the kids under cover as firework shrapnel was falling onto the patio. The event bought back childhood memories for Tim and I and it was certainly a real highlight for the kids.

Off To Uluru in the new van in a couple of days….Yippee!!

Normanton and Lawn Hill National Park QLD (June - 4 days)

After a night in small-town Georgetown and a visit to ‘Terrestrial’ (an amazing gem and crystal display from around the world) we headed to Normanton for two nights. Here we felt truly outnumbered, being the only young family at the caravan park (or so it appeared!). We were put next to a very grumpy and intolerant older couple who looked quite distressed when we pulled up with four young children. We tried to be polite and smile etc…but they were stony faced. The only communication came when the husband very gruffly informed me that our mobile phone had been ringing while we were cooling off at the pool. We then went to the small local library to escape the heat and do some schoolwork, but were clearly not completely welcome here either! At night the frogs and toads were out and the kids had loads of fun spotting them with torches. It was a different story when the kids wanted to use the porta-potti at night and could hear the frogs rustling through the dried leaves at the back of the van!

We thought we would bypass Kurumba as we couldn’t tee up any accommodation and didn’t want to face the midges again so soon. So we headed further west to Adel’s Grove, our base camp for visiting Lawn Hill National Park. Here at the Grove the man at the check-in desk laughed at Tim’s genuine request for a grassy site. The whole campground was just dirt and leaf litter, but there was good shade and it was really quite peaceful. Harrison delighted in the camp fire we had next to our site, collecting wood for it, lighting it and stoking it endlessly. We all enjoyed charred marshmallows and the warm glow of the fire at night.

We spent a day and a half walking through Lawn Hill National Park, canoeing down it’s breathtaking gorge and swimming in a lovely billabong (where we kept one eye out for freshwater crocs). The colours of the red escarpment, yellow savannah grasses, smooth white gums and splashes of green were a stark and amazing combination. We visited ‘Wild Dog Dreaming’ a sacred Aboriginal site (that we were not permitted to photograph) where we looked at remnants of Aboriginal camps and very old artworks on the rock formations. The kids found it hard to appreciate the significance of this site at first, a little disappointed that the ‘artwork’ did not resemble in any way the precise and brightly coloured dot paintings they were familiar with. Canoeing the gorge was eerily quiet, especially for Kate (as the children opted for Daddy to escort them on their ‘turn’). It was magical being dwarfed by the sheer red walls of the gorge and hearing only the native birds and the gentle lap of water under the paddle.

Lake Tinaroo, Innot Hot Springs and Georgetown QLD (June – 5 days)

We began our westward journey with a stop off at the Australian Coffee Centre just out of Mareeba. We had a much longed for good coffee and the kids enjoyed their various treats while we looked over the gorgeous valleys from the centre set high on a hill. We spent two nights just out of Atherton at Lake Tinaroo. Apparently Barramundi heaven but following our success so far we caught nothing but reeds! We did a day drive around the lake which was just beautiful!

On route to the springs we drove the ‘waterfall circuit’ around Millaa Millaa, Queensland’s dairyland in the tropics. The views at every turn of this trip were just breathtaking with vivid green pastures, on perfect hillsides and plump, happy cattle. The waterfalls were gorgeous, one of which has apparently been used in films. We visited the massive Hypipamee crater with sheer 80m walls, which was filled with water covered in fluorescent green duck weed (mind blowing!!). The children had great fun tossing stones over the safety rail and watching their descent and disturbance of the thick weed. The crater is apparently twice as deep underground as it is above!! We also marvelled at amazingly old figs (Curtain and Cathedral). We stopped and listened to the whirr of enormous turbines at Windy Hill (power plant).

We finally arrived at the Innot Hot Springs after a lot of sight seeing. The caravan park didn’t look much but we were so glad that we stopped. We enjoyed many dips over our two days there in 6 mineral thermal pools ranging from cold to bitingly hot (where Tim and Kate competed with who could stand the heat the longest). Children were not allowed in the very hottest pools but certainly enjoyed the warm ones and more so at night when the steam rose from them into the chilly night air. The best part of the springs was probably the creek that ran adjacent to the park in which flowed varying temperatures of water, some hotter than the pools at the park! We had to leap into the centre of the creek as the edges were often so hot that you would flinch automatically. You could even dig new little pools in the creek bank or widen sections with a shovel, creating new spots to lay and soak up the warmth. The sandy creek banks were warm just to walk and sit on.

To give our water soaked pruny skin a break, we thought we would try our luck at fossicking. The children took to this with great enthusiasm and didn’t want to leave our dig site. We drove along our most hairy 4WD track (to date) to find the ‘Glittering Star’ dig site. Here we all sieved copious amounts of dirt while Tim dug an impressively big hole and Kate kept one eye out for snakes! The kids delighted in their finds of small topaz crystals and quartz and have since set up ‘gem shops’ in the ensuite tent selling and trading their finds. We had such fun altogether here at Innot….it was just such a unique and unforgettable experience!

On our way west we stopped off at the Undara Volcanic National Park and took a tour of the lava tubes. This was again another amazing experience walking through some of these tubes which go for great distances underground, of which you can see very little evidence of on the surface. We were dwarfed by the magnitude of these tubes and were impressed by their colourful and varying formations. The ground above is mostly pink grantite which is covered by vast savannah grasslands. By stark contrast there are some pockets of rainforest where the tube ceilings have collapsed.

We drove through a couple of small towns before we could press on no further and have stopped tonight at Georgetown. Which brings you, our dear family and friends, up to date after a long ‘blog free’ period due to very minimal phone and internet reception in these parts.

We are all on a steep learning curve now as we are heading through some more remote territory. We now know what red dirt is, what road trains are, what single lane highway passing is like, what ‘small town’ means, and what its like to be told “sorry we have no bread”. We are becoming wiser and now know that in some places we need to pre-order our loaf or milk.

Cairns QLD (June - 9 days)

We spent 9 days in Cairns to catch our breath before heading west. We stayed about 15 minutes out of the city at the foot of the rainforest and misty mountains that sit behind Cairns. The outlook was beautiful and the walks we did at nearby Crystal Cascades were just spectacular. We enjoyed swimming in one of several waterholes at the cascades and Georgie was delighted with her nudie dip! We had a great day going to and from Kuranda (very touristy) on the Skyrail. Viewing the forest canopy, river, falls etc. from the heights of our suspended cable car was the highlight of the day. We enjoyed some beautiful boardwalks, looking at the Barron Falls etc. We were very excited to revisit Trinity Beach some 11 years on (almost to the day), where we spent most of our honeymoon! It certainly brought back some special memories for the two of us.

Port Douglas,The Daintree and Cape Tribulation QLD (June - 7 days)

From Mission Beach we ended up driving straight through to Port Douglas with the plan to head south to Cairns before we head west. We enjoyed a few quiet days in Port Douglas going to markets, for drives and walks etc. From here we visited beautiful Mossman Gorge where we all swam between the boulders in crystal clear (freezing) water, navigating the faster flowing sections! The kids loved the suspension bridge over the gorge and took great delight in swinging it as Kate squealed and decided it was “far too dangerous!”

We took a day trip to Cape Tribulation and The Daintree and loved it so much on this visit that we took the van up for a further two days. This was just such a unique environment where the ‘rainforest meets the reef’. We had such a great time going on (sometimes lengthy) walks, discovering very secluded swimming holes, fishing and shell collecting on gorgeous beaches fringed with coconut palms. We also went on a cruise on the Daintree River and spotted five crocs which was quite thrilling. One of these was only very little – one of the newest additions to the river’s population apparently. After seeing croc warning signs at most inland waterways that we pass up here it was great to finally lay eyes on some crocs in their natural habitat. We all marvelled at the lush rainforest which was truly spectacular in places. The climbing vines, strangling figs and fan (umbrella) palms were amongst our favourites. Just driving along this section of the coast is divine, catching glimpses of the blue, blue ocean through breaks in the forest.

From Cape Tribulation we drove straight through to Cairns where we are now staying for 10 days. We are actually staying approx 15 minutes west of the city itself in a great van park nestled at the base of the tablelands in a rainforest setting. We are very close to the picturesque Crystal Cascades (series of waterfalls and swimming holes). The backdrop is truly spectacular and no sandflies or mozzies which is a treat! The only adjustment has been the heat (only 27-28 degrees, but the humidity factor has made it feel much, much hotter! (nappy-only weather for little Georgia).




One disappointment this week was that the shutter seized up on our camera and will need to go in for repair. In the first 7 weeks Kate managed to click away 1400 times, which will total something like 7,000 pics for the whole trip if this trend continues! Kate is obviously having withdrawals and Annabelle has been very gracious in sharing her new camera with her Mum!

It seems to be that we encounter some new creature or living thing to ‘beware of’ on each new leg of the journey…..stingers, sandflies, crocs, cassowaries (which can apparently pose some danger to humans) and the stinging tree, so far. There will undoubtedly be more to come. We feel very blessed to live in Port Macquarie with beautiful beaches and koalas (which pretty much keep to themselves!)

Georgie continues to delight us all and brings much laughter to the family! She never misses out on a little ice cream treat and now unzips herself out of her camp cot with ease. Tonight doing so and proceeding to make herself comfy on the couch for a DVD with the ‘big kids’.