So, roll down the invisible hill again, straight outta Darwin, to Katherine. Or just get straight Outta Katherine if you’re already there already. Like you didn’t know to (get Outta Katherine, that is). Head west, which means south, but those people got it all upside down already, because this time it’s Western Australia that you have in your sights, which is of course West, but the road from the Katherinites perspective somehow departs from Katherine South. Go West - where the big brown land gets bigger and browner and like a gameshow in the outback the rising escarpments say “Come on Down”.

The boab tree, nearly as funny as the Western Australians

So get set for adventure, boab trees (you’ll like this one) and the best weird post-Brutalist sculptures on any roadside ever. Anywhere. Guaranteed.

Onward to the post-brutal West

As you get some kilometres under your belt speeding in a westerly direction along the mighty Victoria Highway away from Katherine and its Hot Springs and Gorge, etcetera etcetera, then you’ll notice the landscape slowly start to rear up and buckle some. Hills are the hot new thing out here, and pretty soon it’s catching on: Big hills are the go and when the rolling wide spaces get the hang of that there are escarpments.

Timber Creek sets the heart a-moving, not for its Wayside Inn nor the quaint little houses on little stilts at the nearby Indigenous community, but for the great towering wall of rock that somehow resembles a giant red piano with its top aloft, ivories etched vertically into the face greeting you as you come over the rise. After flat for breakfast, flat for lunch and, yes, flat for dinner for so long, it’s great to see somewhere take some initiative and stand up for itself and really do something different.

Sure there’s an escarpment in Arnhem Land, out at Oenpelli (Gunbalanya), and another down from Darwin at Hayes Creek. Even Katherine has a gorge and a 20-metre drop into the river bed from the bridge over north of town. But as the landscape’s canvas gets pretty stretched the further west you go, its spots like as this that manage to stand out by virtue of their grand singularity. Or something like that.

Pick your jaw back off your lap, because you’ll probably run into some kind of steering problem with it hanging down there, and get on down the road as Gregory National Park comes beckoning your way. Heck, its got the annual Devil’s Claw Festival (starting May 21 this year) and if that doesn’t go off like a bucket of weeds in the sun then what does? If memory serves me correctly then Gregory is also the second-biggest national park in the Northern Territory, largely because we haven’t crossed the Western Australia border yet, and being big there’s bloody heaps so why not just go there and save the precious paragraphs for that roadside wonder!

Keep River National Park

Pack your swag and keep on west and Keep River National Park will wander by your wheels. A nice stop, there’s lots of national parky goodness and that usually entails a bunch of space, trees, wet bits like creeks et al, and some bits with animals and clumps of dirt. You get the picture?

And, reeling in back in my recliner and reaching for my pipe, I care now to reflect on the trip after New Yeah’s 2002 (that Was a new yeah, ask in Darwin) when we burnt across the border, pursued by nightly displays of thunderheads and lightning all the way to Kununurra. If you’ll allow me a moment more, I shall recall how in Keep River we stood under a covered area some 15-metres wide, bereft of real shelter as the approaching cyclonic winds rendering tent a funny way to use to T’s, and somehow the rain managed to fall horizontally, wetting the ground and us when the odds said we were undercover. (So mental note, January = wet, but subnote: spectacular.)

Suffice to say we packed the van again and drove through puddles that would score a mention on some maps as new formed lakes, as we skipped the last bit across the highway, missing much of Keep River NP’s natural splendour.

An interesting to point to note at this stage, much as the order you find out as you approach the WA border: that load of fresh fruit and veggies you bought back in Katherine to see you through the next two weeks - forget it. Make an omelette, curry, stew, meal or two right now because just for crossing an invisible dotted line you lost the right to own it. Quarantine restrictions mean NO biological matter (they’ll even take beeswax candles) can go across the border. Sad but true. And rumour has it these guys don’t even like fruit or veggies, preferring a steak to anything and scurvy is just another kind of necktie to them.

Beef Road Monument: Does it get any better???

And crikey! In all that interstate excitement I forgot clear about the wonder of the North itself, combining three of the most important words in the Australian Language: Beef Road Monument. Like some alien Monolith without the adoring apes, or even a runaway Picasso, this mighty block of concrete sporting the unique corrugated iron style is a Must for any family holiday. Damn, I rushed out of the car and hugged it I was so happy to see something that finally settled all my yearnings for beef, roads and monuments in one. It’s not clear how it relates to any of these things, but something inside of me just Knew. You’ve seen brutalism in architecture, there’s “post-“ just about everything as you’d know from any decent late-night campfire postulations (post-structuralist, post-modernist, post-arrivalist) and this thing is so post, that its pretty much post-post-Brutalist its so post-like and Brutal at the same time.

Do yourself a favour, go there and hug it so you know what true, unflinching gratitude can be.

Oh yeah, from there you can drive over the border and on to about one third of Australia’s land mass where you can find the Kimberleys in all their large and resplendent glorious, um… splendour. Rivers with wild crocodiles, gorges beyond description, boab trees (funny things) and Western Australians (even funnier). That’s if you find the need to tear yourself away from the Beef Road Monument. It should probably have National at the start of that, just so we can hang a flag there. I think I’m weeping…

–Jack Brown

Planning a trip? We think Jack is suggesting you check out things to do in Perth, Broome and the splendor of Western Australia, including the Kimberley. But you just never know with Jack.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 12:15 am and is filed under Australia & Pacific, Destinations, The Art of Travel, Travel Inspiration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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