Top End Travels - Darwin to Ngukurr (Roper River)

Friday 24 May 2019   (A to B on the map)

Breakfast call was for 6:30 with our bags down and ready to leave. So I had a normal breakfast of meuslie, fruit and even toast, at my normal breakfast time of 6:30. A much better start to a morning.

We left the hotel by 7:15 and headed southeast out of Darwin on the Stuart Highway. On our way I spotted some Red-Tailed Black Cockatoos and some interesting plants included Cycads, short Livistona palms, a golden fine-leaved Grevillea, Callitris intratropica and lots of Pandanus.

Map of My Journey - Darwin to Cairns - Click this link to see the map larger in Google Maps

We stopped for morning tea at Adelaide River at the war cemetery. Next to the cemetery is a huge mowed shady picnic area so there was lots of opportunity to walk around spotting birds - Red-winged Parrot, Rainbow Bee-eaters, and even some other unidentified parrots flying around. There were lots of Grass-blue Butterflies and the huge tree under which we had our morning tea was an African Mahogany.

Further on we spotted Brolga, Jabiru and the yellow flowers of the Kapok bushes. The termite mounds are many and varied.

Lunch was under another interesting tree (Mallotus or Baloghia in the Euphorbiaceae) at the helicopter airfield at Katherine. We met the pilot who will be taking us up tomorrow (Tristan).

On south to Mataranka Springs where we had a very short time slot of half an hour for a dip in the thermal pools but I decided I'd rather walk than end up spending all my time changing then getting dry and dressed again.

From Mataranka we turned east on the Savannah Way towards Roper Bar (Ngukurr pron. Nooka). The road was mostly single lane bitumen for some time. There were lots of places close to the road which were being control burned or had been a few days before.

Near Mt Cook we saw our first Triodia. After Roper Valley East we hit dirt road but it was reasonably well maintained. Along this stretch we saw Bustards, Budgies and Buffalo.

We arrived at Ngukurr at sunset and settled into our motel quickly before having dinner provided by the local store out under the stars.

Ngukurr is within Arnhem Land and is an aboriginal community who are trying to be as self sufficient as they can so have set up various businesses and industries in the area. No-one can stay in the town without an invitation and apparently Outback Spirit is the only tour company allowed to stay. We were given a rundown about how the community works and a bit about various culturally sensitive behaviours.