Our Wilderness – Places Living Outside of Time

I have been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to travel broadly in my time. It is well known that travel broadens your outlook and widens your view of life and lands. You learn to value what you have and it gives you the insight to see things, which others see as normal in their lives, and yet you can see, in them, something extraordinary. This is our Outback, our Country and the broad land of Australia.

Sea, Sand and Sun WA – Albany

Albany Shire has long held a reputation for welcoming the traveller. She sits on the middle shores of the Great Southern Ocean in Western Australia. Her beaches stretching into inlets and bays are now the precinct of the fisherman and boaties alike. It was once where whalers and sealers hunted, where emigrants passed by following the coast seeking the path to inland gold, the often sad tears of the sun and where traditional natives feasted and followed their Songlines and sandy trails in an endless cycle of surviving the seasons of the sun and wind. It is a region of immense beauty with tall giants settled into her forests and winding tracks of soft and solid sands offering recreational entertainment for the 4×4 enthusiast. The shire is RV friendly with a number of rest area’s, many that could do with a loo or two, yet she sits proud amongst those coastal towns of WA offering welcome within her region and a myriad of activities and entertainments.

Kalgoorlie – RV Friendly and doing it well

Kalgoorlie, or Kal’ to the locals has to be the most RV friendly place we have found. We are currently reacquainting ourselves with the frontier town and thoroughly enjoying the experience. There is simply no place like Kalgoorlie on the entire continent. Not only is it the biggest gold mine in the world but it is a glorious frontier town out in the desert and a gem in its own right. The colonial architecture of the town is a delight and it breathes of the once glorious world of bullocky drawn carts, polished wood and deep verandah’s which shelter you from the fierce desert sun.

Oldies at Large – Icons of the Northern Territory

The vast region of the Northern Territory, which is by no means the largest sector of Australia, but certainly one of the countries foremost frontiers and it has within its boundaries iconic destinations. There are many, indeed everyone has an opinion but there are some that should be on every traveller’s list of ‘Musts’. Some of these icons have faded, others have grown to become gems and so many are truly very much still a magnificent wilderness.

The Gateway to the Frontier Territory – Camooweal

Having crossed the vast coloured ombre’ plains of a thousand ochre shades, we are now taking a moment to rest-up on the banks of the Georgina. We are at the top end and far West in the Gulf Country. Next we will be venturing into the central deserts of the Northern Territory though they are not deserts as you would imagine them. Savannah and grasslands of vast flood plains would better describe the land where we are headed.

The Aussie Savannah – Across the Top

We have been on the Savannah Way now for a week and I have learnt one thing. That is that I love the Gulf country of Queensland. I have always considered the country that travels across the Top of Aus to be very similar. Stretching from East to West it is some 4,000 klm of remote regions and seasonal monsoonal rains that can bring with it vast sheets of flooding water, and long months of baking sun. Not to mention the challenges the Outback can deliver. In some ways the terrain is similar, but in many ways it is made up of many totally different regions I have discovered.

Undara’s Volcano – Kalkani Crater

Kalkani, a place of no water. It sits quiet now; a volcanic cone born in the Dreamtime, one weathered to a shadow of its former self. Once it was a mighty volcano, which scarred the earth across great distances leaving lava flows that today attract those adventurers and travellers who are curious and excited about these things.

Australia’s Volcanic Lands – Soaking atop a Magma Flow

Innot Springs in Far North Queensland is to the west, deep behind the Atherton Tablelands. It is a special place to visit and is to be found between Ravenshoe and Mount Garnet on the Kennedy Highway. You can sink you feet into the light flow of Nettle Creek, burying them in the grainy sands, which have been gathering in an Outback creek since the Dreamtime and it’s a great treat in the dry Outback.

Oldies at Large – Freecamping and The Rules

OK … It is freezing here! The Aussie winter is something again… beautiful blue skies, sun-a-rising and if you can find a spot out of the wind, sitting in the sun, life could not get better but the mornings they are cutting! We seriously need to head north.

Oldies at Large – Yellowstone

It is barely the crack of dawn here. Only the dawn doesn’t crack… in early summer as it is now, the dawn just creeps over the horizon instead. The warmth of the sun will find little fissures through the moist, cold ground mists and tall pine forests later into the morning.