I'm finally here in Darwin after one and half weeks on the road. We drove through the Savannah way around 2800kms towards Darwin and also did part of the Gulf Track which was an 650km unsealed road going through aboriginal communities and has many creek crossings. The starting point to the Gulf track was in the Normanton and after a while thinking only two of our four cars decided to take the shorter and unsealed Gulf track towards Darwin.
So we filled up my van and the Jonas' and Andy's Holden panelvan with water and bought some spare parts in case something would go badly wrong. One of the best buys was a quality towing rope which I hopefully remember to describe in more detail later on. The temperature was somewhere around/above 30 degrees so we were expecting a nice adventure ahead of us.
The track itself wasn't too bad since it was the end of the dry season and the river crossings were still passable with a 2wd car. The only shitty thing was occasional corrugated parts of the road and the driving was sometimes more like being in big blender. We also experienced why the Australia is called the Red Country. The roads were mainly covered with red dust which kept on coming in through the sealings of my tailgate and also through windows. We didn't even consider driving windows closed and I got a really nice tan on my right arm during the 3 days on track. Jonas got also really tanned but when we eventually got into shower it turned out that all his tan was red dust which then got washed out. Haha.
We drove through some of the aboriginal land areas and it was strictly forbidden to go into actual communities since we had some alcohol in our cars. We usually then camped outside the aboriginal lands but still found great places next to creeks and enjoyed the campfire in the outback under the bright stars.
So we filled up my van and the Jonas' and Andy's Holden panelvan with water and bought some spare parts in case something would go badly wrong. One of the best buys was a quality towing rope which I hopefully remember to describe in more detail later on. The temperature was somewhere around/above 30 degrees so we were expecting a nice adventure ahead of us.
The track itself wasn't too bad since it was the end of the dry season and the river crossings were still passable with a 2wd car. The only shitty thing was occasional corrugated parts of the road and the driving was sometimes more like being in big blender. We also experienced why the Australia is called the Red Country. The roads were mainly covered with red dust which kept on coming in through the sealings of my tailgate and also through windows. We didn't even consider driving windows closed and I got a really nice tan on my right arm during the 3 days on track. Jonas got also really tanned but when we eventually got into shower it turned out that all his tan was red dust which then got washed out. Haha.
So we had to make couple of river crossings which was a great experience since you had to go into water first to check out the depth and there was also big warning signs about crocodiles who live in these creeks. Fortunately all the creek crossings went fine and I started to believe we could make the track without problems. I didn't quite make it to the end though since as I was speeding my way through the last km's of the dirt road I got stuck in the soft sand. Luckily there was a roadwork just next to my pitstop and I got pulled out by 6 wheel caterpillar. No worries mate!
As we arrived to sealed road we met Canadian James who had took his van a longer sealed road and managed to get ahead of us. One of our four cars left from the group in Mt. Isa so we had 3 cars heading towards Darwin anymore. We stopped and camped in Daly Waters and I realised how shitty I was after driving 3 days through the dusty road. I had also clean up the whole car since everything was covered in dust.
Next bigger stop was going to be the Katherine national park with it's famous gorge.
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