The Road That Never Ends....

9 July 2017

Today was about getting from Point A (Nhulunbuy) to Point B (Murwangi Camp) by the shortest possible route -actually, the only possible route.The total distance is about 450 km - all of it, apart from a few short sections of bitumen at river crossings, is on gravel of varying quality. The fact that the estimated time of travel, including lunch and comfort stops, was 9 hours, should have been fair warning that we weren't going to be travelling on a bitumenised highway...

Morning tea break

On board the coach

We departed Walkabout Lodge at about 8 am and headed south for about 30 km before turning onto the Central Arnhem Road - the main road from the Gove Peninsula to Katherine. Even though road maintenance was under way after the Wet, road conditions varied from bumpy to bloody bumpy as we made our way west to the Goyder River crossing for a very welcome lunch stop under one of the three new bridge spans. On the way we passed a serious road accident that had occurred the previous night, where a car carrying 4 indigenous people had collided with a buffalo. Sadly, as we later found out, one occupent died - a relative of the indigenous guides at Murwangi.

A brief stop at a river crossing

Goyder River bridge

The Cental Arnhem Road might have been rough but that was just the entree. Once we turned off the Central Arnhem Road onto the road to Ramingining, the bone shattering commenced - and, because of the permit conditions applying to our travel, we couldn't stop anywhere on this road to stretch our legs and re-attach our dislocated bones (this was due to the large number of sacred sites along this stretch of road).

Eventually we rolled into Murwangi on the edge of the enormous Arafura Swamp at about 5:20 pm to be welcomed by complimentry champagne and hors d'ouvres.

Murwangi was an old cattle station, but not a particularly successful one. There were several attempts to establish a station here but all eventually failed. The early attempts showed little respect for the local people and there were continual skirmishes between them and the pastoralists. Outback Spirit has acquired a lease over the homestead area and installed 12 comfortable, air conditioned safari tents, all with ensuites. Luxury in the outback!

Before leaving home we had read about the rare palm that grows on the edges of the swamp. The Arafura Palm has an unusual life cycle. It lives for about 60 years and never flowers or fruits in that period. Then it sends up a huge, branched flowering stem, produces an enormous number of seeds and promply dies. We were pleased to see several of these palms just near our tent, one of which had just produced its flowering stem.

Arafura Palms

Full moon over Murwangi