Lighting out for the Territory

There’s something very middle-aged about driving a campervan around New Zealand – you see them trundling along the road, a long string of drivers behind them fizzing with road-rage, and you just know that the main thought in the occupants’ heads is where to stop for the next cup of tea. It’s all so tamely domestic.

Change the scenario to Australia, however — specifically the Northern Territory — and suddenly it’s an adventure.

It begins with the big road sign on the outskirts of Darwin that reads ‘Alice Springs 1479km.’

The historic Stuart Highway links this frontier town in the tropical north with cultured Adelaide on the other side of the continent.

The briefing at the Britz depot helps to set the tone; emphasising essential water supplies, staying with the vehicle in case of breakdown, the dangers of bull dust, how to engage four-wheel drive…

Once on the road, however, and despite the threatening appearance of mining trucks and road trains — around 50m of tractor and three trailers thundering along on 60 wheels at 100kph — it seems that fatigue is the biggest killer, judging by the frequent reminders that ‘Drowsy Drivers Die.’

Boredom, unexpectedly, is never a factor, even when the road stretches straight and empty all the way to the horizon.

There’s always something to look at, whether its wild donkeys grazing, kangaroo road kill, flood markers two metres high beside the shallowest of dips in the road, or unattended burn-off fires crackling alongside – the blue smoke filtering the light and saturating the Territory’s signature colours of orange and cobalt.

And there are plenty of temptations to break the journey. In Litchfield National Park, for instance, to see the curious flat, grey magnetic termite mounds, unerringly constructed along north-south lines.

Or, the inviting water-holes where cascades fall into deep pools and the signs reading ‘Please do not interfere with the crocodiles’ make them seem suddenly uninviting — although the locals splashing about clearly aren’t bothered.

At Adelaide River there’s a moving war cemetery and in the pub a huge water buffalo that doesn’t move at all, since it’s stuffed — but it did, when alive, have a literally big part in ‘Crocodile Dundee’.

Katherine has the novelty of a traffic light, a quirky museum and the School of the Air where children on million-hectare stations, hundreds of kilometres apart, can be heard at choir practice.

In Katherine Gorge, ancient Aboriginal rock paintings are as mind-boggling as the water-mark left high on the cliff-face from the Wet season. At Bitter Springs, the water is heated to 33 degrees by the surrounding rock, blue and clear like Bombay Gin – a bath edged with purple lotus flowers.

But best of all? Bumping along off-road and locking the hubs to plough through a stream up to the wheel-arches, bow-wave breaking against a crocodile warning sign, on the way to a deserted swimming hole surrounded by palms and ferns where a waterfall plunges over a cleft high in the shiny red rock. Now that’s adventure.

Pamela Wade travelled as a guest of Tourism Northern Territory and Britz.

Pictured (from top to bottom): Offroading at Sandy Creek in Litchfield National Park