Traveling Australia – Oldies at Large

Discovering Australia and Her Lore

Touring is now a way of life for The Man and myself and it is a life that we have come to love. We travel the ribbon of tar, often venturing off the track and down along the dusty reaches of Country, finding those hidden places and discovering over and again the secrets of this beautiful and challenging country. You can follow our journey here, but as we have been journeying for a number of years now and back beyond that, it is an ongoing and growing thing. I have compiled our experiences, while we have travelled throughout 18 months, into a travelogue of time and journeys. These are listed on Oldies at Large for simple reference. These experiences also make up a tome that will be freely available for download at Amazon.com for a short period, this celebrating the anniversary of our retirement. Discovering Australia and Her Lore is the tale in the beginning of our journey into retirement and our travels. It will be available for free for a few days only in the beginning of Nov 2015.

Camping Tales

Having just experienced the tropic savannah wilderness of Litchfield NP in the Top End, I find myself sitting on the edge of the ocean, to the roll of the endless waves against a sandy beach. We set the swag up last night, just north of Darwin, to watch the lights of the city and those of Casuarina from a beautiful spot called Gunn Point.

The Savannah Way – The Wilderness NT

The Savannah Way is made up of many alternative routes, from the tame tar to the corrugated tracks. It has many pitfalls, from crocodile infested rivers to deep bull dust holes hidden in the track and the endless trial of corrugated roads on the Development roads. The Way stretches from Cairns to Broome but the later part in WA has been tamed mostly to tar as has the stretch from Cairns to Chillagoe… in between remains the dusty Development roads for which the Savannah Way gained its reputation.

The Savannah Way – Channel Country

We have travelled vast distances in the last few days, across The Top End, headed to a pre-arranged rendezvous. We are travelling fast, sleeping under the stars in the swag at night and settling up for longer breaks in the tough little camper trailer. In places we are revelling spotlighting for croc’s, enjoying the birdlife, the dancing brolga’s and breathtakingly majestic eagles feasting on varied offerings of varied road-kill on these dusty Outback roads of the Channel Country in the Carpentaria’s Gulf. We have been enjoying the wildlife along the dusty tracks, the wallabies, emu and so many others along with the fattened cattle healthy from the lingering Wet season… the Stations are preparing to muster.

The Savannah Way – Carpentaria Qld

We are in Far North Qld, headed west once more along the Savannah Way. This time however we are travelling many of the Development Roads. The Savannah Way is a composite highway that stretches from Cairns on the East Coast (sunrise side) across the continent to Broome on the West Coast (sunset side). It is some 3700 klm long, varying according to the path you take. There is a tar ribbon, which is the most favoured track, but there are also a network of Development Roads which wind their way through the rolling savannah, the Carpentaria or Channel Country, and they are all part of the Savannah Way. The rougher Development roads travel on into Arnhem Land and through vast tracts of wilderness as they wind their way west. These Development Roads to the east of Western Aus’ are those that we choose to explore during this trip into the centre of Australia.