On the Road Through Australia’s Top End : Rocks, Crocs, and Blacktop

Its proper name is the Stuart Highway, a 2,000-mile blacktop lifeline thrown north to south across the continent from Darwin on the north coast to Adelaide in southern Australia. To locals, it’s still simply “the track,” and “Headin’ up or down?” is the standard greeting along the way.

The northern half of the track traverses Australia’s diverse Northern Territory or “Top End”--home to real-life Crocodile Dundees and three-trailer trucks called “road trains” that thunder across the desert. At its northern terminus, the capital city of Darwin is a lot closer in climate, life style and actual miles to Southeast Asia than to Melbourne or Sydney. At midpoint, almost 1,000 miles to the south, the town of Alice Springs lies in the dusty red heart of the continent. In between are crocodile-filled tropical rivers, 20-foot termite mounds, eerie desert monoliths and the easy-going friendliness that seems to come with a population density of one person for every seven square miles.

To drive the track from Darwin to Alice Springs is one of the great outback adventures. Although tourism and the country’s fastest growing economy is bringing the Northern Territory out of long isolation, it remains Australia’s last frontier.

It’s a trip we’ve done three times in the last 25 years.

Less than a decade ago, 600 miles of the route south of Alice Springs was still a horror stretch of corrugated dirt road for which we had to carry extra gas canisters in the trunk. These days, the drive can be done in comfort and safety by rental car or motor home.

We began our most recent journey in July of last year by flying from Sydney and picking up a rental car at the Darwin airport. Our trip would take us a week and cover about 1,500 miles, with a detour early on to Kakadu National Park.

A city of 70,000, Darwin is Australia’s newest. The original was literally blown off the map on Christmas Day, 1974, when Cyclone Tracy destroyed more than 90% of the buildings. Offices and hotels now rise above palm trees and electric colored bougainvillea, but Darwin clings to its eclectic ambience, both folksy and cosmopolitan; at last count the city had 45 different nationalities. Community newspapers are published in Thai, Laotian and Vietnamese.

The Mindil Beach market every Thursday is our favorite place to soak up Darwin’s quirky character. A casual affair set up along the beachfront, the market is Asian-style with stalls pitched under strings of lights serving up every conceivable cuisine from Aussie barbecued “snags” (sausages) and lamb chops to Philippine snacks and Indian curries. The Darwin Home Birth Group serves dessert and coffee while local bands provide entertainment on the lawn.

Two seasons dominate the Top End of Australia. “The Dry,” which brings rainless balmy days from May to September, making it the most comfortable time to visit, and “The Wet” from November to April. Then, summer temperatures and humidity soar with the torrential downpours of northeast monsoons that cut roads and flood vast plains and river systems. It’s during the long, parched “Dry” that Darwin earns its thirsty reputation as having one of the world’s highest per-capita consumptions of beer--60 gallons.

Darwin does have a more refined side. An excellent museum at Fannie Bay displays the artifacts of the northern Australian and New Guinea aboriginal tribes as well as the Northern Territory’s often bizarre natural history. The museum’s reptilian piece de resistance is a ferocious-looking 16-foot saltwater crocodile named Sweetheart, whose predilection for attacking boats on the Finniss River landed him stuffed in the museum.

Our first close encounter with big, live “salties”--the infamous saltwater crocodile common to Southeast Asia and India--was the Darwin Crocodile Farm, where we turned tables on the man-eaters by sampling a croc burger. Low in fat and cholesterol, the meat had a texture similar to chicken and a flavor like veal. It came from farm-bred animals, as wild crocodiles are a protected species.

Out of Darwin we also took a day-trip through the eerie world of mangrove forests that fringe most of the Northern Australia coastline. Screeching fruit bats hung from trees and pelicans fished for mullet in the estuaries, but lunch was the highlight. A beachside table was decked all-you-can-eat style with succulent, meaty mudcrabs (similar to Florida’s stone crabs) and the freshest barramundi--one of Australia’s best eating fish.

After several days in Darwin, we headed south on the Stuart Highway towards Alice Springs. After driving only about half an hour, we sidetracked 125 miles east to 7,500-square-mile Kakadu National Park.

The detour took us through a surreal and ancient landscape, where Asian water buffalo wander amid towering termite mounds oriented north-south to catch the shade (for which they were once known as the “bushman’s compass”).

We crossed the Adelaide and South Alligator Rivers, which have some of the densest populations of saltwater crocodiles in the world, and boarded

one of the regularly scheduled boat trips to see salties in the wild.

Soon, out of the swirling, mud-thickened waters, a long snout sporting a pair of beautiful golden-flecked eyes drifted innocently past the boat. Moments later it emerged as a 12-foot saltwater crocodile that opened its jaws to reveal its spectacular dental supremacy and hissed without amusement at our boat.

Where does the closest living relative of the dinosaur and the largest and most dangerous of the world’s 22 species of crocodilians sun himself? Anywhere he likes, mate.

Besides being one of the world’s last wilderness strongholds for these magnificent predators, the park’s vast wetlands, flooded by seasonal monsoons, support millions of birds. As the wetlands shrink in the dry months, hundreds of thousands of birds crowd into lagoons like Kakadu’s Yellow Waters to await replenishing rains.

We joined a group of amateur ornithologists on an early morning boat trip and spotted everything from thumb-sized azure kingfishers to red-combed jacanas hopscotching over giant lily pads to white-breasted eagles and the elegant brolga, Australia’s only stork.

Within Kakadu lie some of Australia’s most spectacular aboriginal rock-art sites. We made the short hike into the rugged wilderness towards Ubirr and Nourlangie rocks. Sheltered beneath these outcrops’ craggy roofs, haunting galleries of paintings crowd the walls, one era upon another, a visual history in ochre that stretches back at least 22,000 years, making them among the oldest rock art in the world.

We rejoined the Stuart Highway, soon leaving behind the tropical fringe of Northern Australia and driving into the dry bushland of the interior. Near the outback town of Katherine, about 190 miles south of Darwin, the noonday sun was darkened to a dull copper by the smoke of roadside bushfires that occur spontaneously, and usually harmlessly, during the dry season. Black kites swooped along the fire-front, pouncing on fleeing prey.

We camped at Katherine Gorge National Park and explored the lower reaches of the park by canoeing through 13 sheer gorges. Portaging the jumble of rocks that separate the gorges in the dry season, we swam in cool waters beneath the canyon walls, where only harmless and shy freshwater crocodiles inhabit the river.

That evening, at the Springvale Homestead, an old cattle ranch which is open for visitors, members of the Jawoyn aboriginal tribe lit their campfires with traditional firesticks to perform tribal dances.

The next day, about an hour’s drive down the track from Katherine, we swam in an oasis of thermal pools alongside the Roper River. Lined in palms, the warm waters of the Mataranka oasis bubbled so crystal-clear from the sandy bottom that fish appeared to be suspended in mid-air. Flocks of noisy parrots--sulphur-crested cockatoos, and pink and grey galahs--flew in at twilight to gather in the trees.

As the miles rolled by, shaggy desert oaks and clusters of brittle yellow spinifex grass covered the red sand of the outback. Sometimes this country sees no rain for years at a time, but in the wake of rare rainfall several weeks before our visit, the desert was carpeted in bright wildflowers and the air filled with perfume and butterflies.

We were approaching the sunburnt center of Australia, a vast region that covers most of the continent’s 3 million square miles and carries dozens of nicknames--”the Bush,” “Never Never” and “Back of Beyond.”

About 400 miles south of Mataranka, we began to encounter some of nature’s stranger playthings in a landscape beyond flat. Scattered on both sides of the track were hundreds of huge, round boulders, called “the Devil’s Marbles,” propped against each other at incredible angles.

Dozens of tiny towns are strung along the track, some no bigger than a pub with a gas pump out front. The social centers of the outback, pubs were usually the first buildings to go up at a settlement, with the rest of the town sprouting around it.

Usually a big, shady porch keeps the heat and flies outside; inside is a cool, frendly oasis where a traveler can soothe a parched throat and catch up on the local news. One of our favorites is the Daly Waters, roughly halfway between Darwin and Alice Springs and the oldest pub in the territory. In the one corner of the pub stands the town post office.

Although “The Alice” is now a modern city complete with casino and first-class hotels, in Australian minds it still symbolizes the indomitable spirit of the outback--and some of the town’s old and odd traditions linger on.

The annual Alice Springs Camel Cup in May usually turns into a free-for-all when the stubborn creatures decide to sit down or head off in opposite directions. (Camels were imported into Australia in the 1800s to help build telegraph and rail lines, and their descendants now roam the outback in such numbers that there are more camels in central Australia than in Arabia.)

About a five-hour drive from the marbles, Alice Springs lies in the shadow of the MacDonnells, the low, worn, red remnants of a once-towering mountain range. To the west, ancient rivers sliced dozens of gorges through the ranges--from Simpson’s Gap with its tame colony of rock wallabies to far-off Glen Helen Gorge, the last place in the country you would expect to find one of Australia’s top three restaurants.

In the unpretentious surrounds of a 1911 homestead, Jill Scott and Di Byrnes run Cloudy’s, which serves up award-winning dishes such as steamed seaweed rolls with sweet ginger sauce, filleted sardines rolled in coconut with guacamole and venison, and chinese mushroom pie with orange and juniper sauce. Though 85 miles west of Alice Springs, the nearest town, the restaurant is often booked weeks in advance.

Twenty years ago when we first climbed landmark Ayers Rock, it was an adventure just covering the 280 miles of mostly bone-jarring dirt track west of Alice Springs. And when you did arrive at the bright red symbol of the outback you had to be prepared to rough it.

These days you can fly in or drive on a paved highway, arriving in time to watch the sun set from a luxury hotel crouched amid the red sand dunes. The Yulara Tourist Resort is a $160-million complex that can accommodate everyone from campers to those who prefer the comforts of a four-star hotel. The village-style resort has shops, restaurants, pools and bars.

But it’s nearby Ayers Rock set in Uluru National Park--Australia’s first wholly aboriginal-owned park--that visitors come to see. They come to explore its 5 1/2-mile base riddled with caves whose walls are covered with rock paintings or to tackle the steep trek to the 1,000-foot summit.

To Australians, the climb is something of a pilgrimage and has inspired its own brand of nuttiness--cricket matches have been held at the top and one dedicated and obviously long-winded Scot played his bagpipes all the way up.

On our last climb eight years ago, we reached the summit to the strains of “Ride of the Valkyries” played on a slide trombone by a musician from Queensland. This time we found a golfing fanatic from Sydney teeing off into the never-never with his 9-iron.

Every evening, a crowd gathers at a viewing area nicknamed “Sunset Strip,” all eyes fixed on the gigantic pebble that rises abruptly from the flat Australian desert. As the sun nudges the horizon, the most famous of outback shows begins.

Slowly, eerily, the Rock is transformed for a few minutes into a fiery red dome and thousands of camera shutters click their appreciation. Then, quickly, shadows douse the glowing fire and we sit alone, after the tour buses have departed, with a most fitting and enigmatic symbol of the Northern Territory silhouetted before us in the twilight.