Travel: Savannah Way, NT

By Ron and Viv Moon

The Savannah Way crosses the top of Australia from Broome in WA to Cairns in Qld. It's a dirt road route for much of the way but you can still tackle it in your van or camper. We drove through much of it on our last trip across the top.

Broome is a pretty hard place to leave, no matter how many times you have been there, but the growing town doesn't grab me like it used to.

The coastal areas to the north, among the Aboriginal lands of the Dampier Peninsula, have been opened up to passing travellers and we enjoyed them for a week or so on our latest trip.

With Broome behind us, the words of the song by local band, the Pigram Brothers, were buzzing through my head: 'Feelin' like going back home; Soon I'll be dreamin' of Broome'

Maybe that's the power of the sun-drenched Indian Ocean town - you just want to keep going back.

By the time we arrived at Halls Creek, we had had enough of the bitumen humming underneath our vehicle and while the Savannah Way heads north to Kununurra and then across to Katherine, we opted to head across to the Stuart Highway on the Duncan Road and the adjoining Buntine Highway.

Our route passed through the scantly clad hills around Old Halls Creek, which had been opened up by gold prospectors looking for their fortune back in the 1890s.

Gold is still found here by tough loners working pegged claims who, we found, don't speak much and certainly don't tell you if they have found any gold.

Others swing on metal detectors looking for a chance discovery. A couple of brothers who we came across having lunch near the only surface water for miles, showed us their bounty - a couple of nice nuggets weighing just under an ounce between them.

The main road continues to wind through the hills before climbing a steep jump-up, which brings you onto the vast grassy flats of the Nicholson Plains. Here, the tallest living objects are the black shape of cattle, grazing on the rich golden grasslands.

The dirt road was in pretty good shape even though for the first couple of hours we drove through unseasonable rain, the mud piling up in wheel wells and coating everything in brown. We cruised along effortlessly, pulling up to camp somewhere around the border.

The next day we joined one of the alternate routes of the Savannah Way at Top Springs.

These alternative routes, which give an additional option to the main route or take you to obscure points of interest, are well worth investigating.

The track we found takes travellers from Timber Creek through Jasper Gorge and past Victoria River Downs or 'VRD' as it is more commonly known.

VRD is probably the most famous cattle station in the NT, with its own postcode, and a great general store. There are about 100 people living and working on the station, which reportedly has the eighth busiest airport in the state.

At Top Springs, crossroads of the Buntine and Buchanan Highways, we turned off the bitumen again - which we had been on since the Aboriginal community of Kalkarindji - and headed east.

For the most part this route passes across flat plains covered with thick scrub and finding a spot to pull over and camp is difficult.

We then headed south, having already travelled the alternative route which takes you along the sealed Carpentaria Highway to Borroloola, a small town on the banks of the mighty McArthur River.

This town, which has improved greatly in recent years, was considered to be the wildest in Australia in the 1880s. Guns, grog and smuggling were the things that kept the town humming until a police post was built in 1886.

Nowadays the place isn't so debaucherous, even though the council website states, "Today the town is still a bit wild and unruly at times".

What attracts most people here though is the fishing and King Ash Bay 30km away, a holidaying Mecca attracting thousands of travellers each year to the banks of the McArthur River.

Think of a fishing camp and enlarge it a dozen times, crowd it in a higgledy-piggledy fashion with boats, trailers and caravans, throw in a general store and a fishing club where you can buy a refreshing ale, mix a few tall stories into the blend and you have King Ash Bay.

Whether you love it or hate it will depend on if you're a fishing sort of person.

For dedicated travellers of the Savannah Way, the main route gets to Borroloola from Katherine via Mataranka and Roper Bar.

From Roper a dirt road heads south crossing a number of streams and offers plenty of opportunities for camping and fishing, as well as accessing the proposed Limmen National Park and the remote property of Lorella Springs, before getting to the bitumen just east of the Gulf town.

East of Borroloola the road turns into dirt once more and crosses a number of streams as it heads for the border. Once again there's a couple of remote properties a short distance off the main road which offer camping and fishing.

These include Greenbank Station and Pungalina, while the famous Wollogorang, which straddles the NT/Qld border, has unfortunately closed its doors to travellers.

By the time you reach the Hells Gate Roadhouse, 53km inside the Qld border, the road is in generally better condition and you'll come across sections of bitumen between there and Normanton, 400km further east.

The area is called Hells Gate because in the old days it was where travellers and cattle drovers heading west said goodbye to their police escorts and faced 500km of unlawful wilderness.

When the border had been marked in 1886 by Lawrence Wells and his party, he stated that there was probably more danger from renegade white men than from Aborigines.

The road from Hells Gate heads towards the Doomadgee Aboriginal community close to the banks of the Nicholson River, passing the track to Kingfisher Camp, which is one of the best spots to stop for a few days in the Gulf country.

Located on the upper reaches of the Nicholson River, Kingfisher Camp gives a reprieve from the dust and heat that is part of a Gulf trip, to enjoy a bit of canoeing and fishing.

The station on which the camp is situated is owned by the McGinnis family. The trials and tribulations that brought the family to this property have been eloquently portrayed in two best selling books, Pieces of Blue and Heart Country, written by Kerry McGinnis, who still lives at the homestead south of the camp.

On our latest 'across the top' trip we found yet another route of the Savannah Way at Gregory River, a pleasant spot to stop if camping is still allowed on the edge of the stream next season.

The local pub didn't have any beer or grog when we were there in August 2005, so hopefully other travellers will have more luck on their trip.

As we headed to Burketown we discovered that the Escott Barra Lodge on the lower reaches of the Nicholson River had been closed.

The lodge and camping area has long been a favourite with not only fishing folk but also those wanting to travel the Gulf country, and its loss will be sorely felt.

Hopefully by the time the keen traveller can get to the Gulf in 2006, Escott will be open again.

Burketown, on the edge of the marine plains, is more than 30km from the Gulf proper although water laps at the town's back door during high tides in the wet season.

The drive across the flats to the mouth of the Albert River is only possible during the dry season and is not to be attempted by the foolhardy.

One of our favourite camps south of Burketown is at Leichhardt Falls and most times there is at least one stream of water spilling over the wide cliff line that makes up the falls.

There's always plenty of bird and animal life around with kangaroos and fruit bats in abundance. We counted more than 30 bird species in the vicinity of our camp.

Normanton, at the south-east edge of the Gulf, was the biggest town we had come across since leaving Halls Creek and we stayed for a while, enjoying the hospitality of the town's three pubs and the facilities of shops and service centres.

As we've done previously, we took a ride on the Gulflander - the historic railway that has regular outings during the tourist season and runs between Normanton and Croydon once a week all year round.

From Normanton the Savannah Way heads east along the blacktop through Croydon and Georgetown and is close to the fabulous Undara Volcanic National Park and the famous Undara lava tubes.

As you may expect, there are a few alternative routes. One is from Normanton, which heads north leading across the fairly well-maintained Burke Developmental Road.

Even though it does have its fair share of bulldust patches, it goes all the way to Chillagoe and Almaden before meeting the main route near the lava tubes.

The second is a shorter route from Georgetown south to Forsayth and Einasleigh before again meeting the main route near Undara.

From here the country changes greatly as it leaves the vast savannah plains that become a constant companion for much of the way across the Territory and Gulf country.

Rainforest and lush farming land, cut by flowing rivers and marked by waterfalls and lakes, provide the scenery all the way through the vibrant Atherton Tablelands to the rainforest village of Kuranda.

A winding drive through lush forest drops down the edge of the Great Dividing Range into the tourist haven of Cairns.

Your journey across the top of Australia finally ends at the waters of the Pacific Ocean. What a trip!

Our Jayco Expanda gets dirty
We travelled across from Broome to Cairns with our Jayco Expanda providing us with accommodation and shelter.

With just a few hundred kilometres of dirt road behind us before Broome, we clocked up a thousand or more by the time we got to Cairns where all we did was stay overnight before heading back west!

While the van was covered in mud there was no water or mud on the inside. The canvas roof areas over the beds remained waterproof and we stayed dry during the times it rained - we had more than an inch at Halls Creek.

Dust was only a problem if we forgot to seal up the vents around the van for the dirt road sections.

The suspension performed faultlessly the whole time and it was surprising how well the van towed over the dirt sections.

We had a couple of door and drawer latches let go on some rough patches of road which dropped goodies over the floor but that was all we could complain about.

Savannah Way Fast Facts