Australia
Our fight to Darwin was on a full-sized plane with just 17 passengers so it didn’t take long for inflight service to be completed, then the crew took their seats for the rest of the flight! We arrived at about 21.00, went straight to the hotel and checked in. Next morning we were picked up at 06.00 for a three-day trip to Kakadu National Park and Katherine Gorge, it was still dark when we left the city, we hadn’t seen Darwin in daylight! Continue reading Darwin
Our ‘local correspondent’, Terry who lives in Brisbane, sent an interesting response to our post expressing a little disappointment on our visit to the Great Barrier Reef. We found his comments very interesting and he has kindly agreed to us sharing them with you all – in case you are interested too. Continue reading From Our Australian Correspondent
Our time on the East coast was spent in Cairns and at the small holiday/marina town of Port Douglas about 75 minutes north. We arrived in Cairns and transferred to the Bay View hotel, our home for 4 nights, the hotel had a tropical feel with lush gardens and two courtyards filled with palm trees and tropical shrubs. It also had an award-winning Balinese restaurant voted best speciality restaurant in Australia in 2015, we made a mental note to investigate during our stay. Continue reading Cairns and Port Douglas
We spent the last few days in the centre of Australia in Alice Springs; we had no excursions booked and decided to visit some of the sites and services the town is famous for. On our first morning we walked, slowly, into town along the bank of the Todd River; it was very odd to see the bone-dry river bed flanked by flood markers showing depths up to 2 meters. We found the tourist information Office and asked for advice on key sites and local transport, it turned out that most of the things we wanted to see were outside of town and there was no public transport. The very helpful lady in the tourist office said some people ‘enjoy’ walking 4km out to the to The Telegraph station (it was 42⁰C) but she suggested we get a cab – good advice. We formulated a plan for the two days we had in town and went to find a cold drink to celebrate.
Although we had flown from Alice Springs to Ayres Rock we made the return journey by coach. The trip from Ayres Rock direct to Alice is over 500km, and takes about 6 hours with a couple of stops, however our itinerary included a 500km detour for a night at the Kings Canyon Resort and a ‘scenic climb’ at the canyon. We caught the bus and drove for 2 hours along the Lassiter Highway stopping for coffee at Curtain Springs Station, a cattle station which has a simple service station offering food drink, fuel and toilets for people travelling through the outback. Along the way we got a view of Mount Connor, another huge rock rising out of the desert, equally as impressive as Uluru, it is very curious that everyone knows about Uluru but the other rock features never get a mention. At the junction with Luritja Road we rendezvoused with two other coaches for a passenger swap; people heading direct to Alice Springs joined another bus leaving just four of us on the 58-seater heading to Kings Canyon. We moved up to take the seats immediately behind the driver, Tony, who proceeded to entertain us with stories and information about the roads and local characters. One person he told us about was a guy called Len Beadell a surveyor and road builder appointed by the Australian Government to set up a series of rocket testing sites in the 50’s. Tony played a recording of an after-dinner speech Beadell Made in the 80’s, he had an amazing story to tell and a great sense of humour, the journey to Kings Canyon flew past. Continue reading Red Centre – Kings Canyon
Mark And Kim's Adventures 