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.
In a few days we will be crossing the Queensland border into the Northern Territory. We have been travelling the Gulf country where the lands a flat, broken by distant and ancient ranges and the jump-ups of the Australian stone country. The season is kind at the moment and while the temperatures are climbing into the mid and high 30’s C, the humidity has not yet blanketed the land and the night can still be chill. The threat of the monsoon sits across the land but its breath is still held.
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.
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.
Jan Hawkins Author 