Local boys enjoy a dip at Fitzroy Crossing. Picture / Dennis Richardson
Shafts of soft morning sunlight pierce the tropical foliage, striking through pellucid blue water to highlight an underwater terrain of pale limestone terraces and subaqueous gardens. Long fronds dangle into deep, clear pools; fallen logs are bridges of clinging vegetation, while other plants sprout from the water.
We are at Bitter Springs in the Northern Territory, where a poignant recording on an interpretive sign has sent shivers up my spine.
"Yaba nu-nyanga. Majerni-yi nganu-lon." The disembodied voice rings through the fan palms and paperbarks. "You people have come here. I am happy for you - I welcome you."
In the Dreaming, Bitter Springs, or Korran as it is known to the local people, was dug out by a flock of black cockatoos. Each cockatoo dug until it was exhausted and then its place was taken by another, then another, until the water started to flow. We slip into the tepid water and I imagine the spirit ancestors of the Black Cockatoo Dreaming Place watching benevolently as we drift through a channel lined by rampant flora, while honeyeaters, finches and cockatoos chatter in the boughs overhead.
Aborigines have known this place for thousands of years but it was a pastoralist's wife who put the area on the modern map. Bitter Springs is 395km south of Darwin in Elsey National Park near the township of Mataranka. The area was the setting for the Australian classic We of the Never-Never by Jeannie Gunn, which describes her life on Elsey Station in the early 1900s. The movie of the same name was shot on location in 1982, and Mataranka calls itself the Capital of the Never-Never.
While her stay was relatively brief, Gunn felt a spiritual connection to the area, which she described eloquently in the prelude to her book: "a land that bewitches her people with strange spells and mysteries, until they call sweet bitter, and bitter sweet. But we who have lived in it, and loved it, and left it, know that our hearts can Never-Never rest away from it."
And I'm inclined to agree, because we had also been drawn back to this lush oasis in the middle of the Australia's arid interior.
Twenty years ago when the term Savannah Way wasn't even a blip on the tourism marketing radar, a boyfriend and I set off on a six-month camping odyssey across the top of Australia. Our plan was to leave the east coast at Cairns in far north Queensland and hit the west coast at the historic pearling town of Broome in West Australia, wandering wherever the whim took us.
From the lush rainforests and glistening beaches around Cape Tribulation and Cairns, we headed through the fertile Atherton Tablelands, where we fished in enormous dams and swam under pounding waterfalls. At Innot Hot Springs we soaked our travel-weary bones, watching curls of steam swirl into the cool night air.
We fossicked unsuccessfully for gems near Mt Surprise then continued along the Gulf Developmental Road through a flat, arid landscape of tall, wispy grasses and red termite mounds. Tiny Outback towns became overnight homes as we forged onwards to the prawning town of Karumba on the Gulf of Carpentaria. This part of the route wasn't sealed back then (it is now) and bone-jarring corrugations and clouds of red dust were our constant companions.
Realising the limitations of our ageing station-wagon, we didn't tackle the unsealed road that would take us through Burketown and Borroloola to Mataranka. To stay on the bitumen we reached Mataranka via a 1500km detour that took us through Mt Isa and Tennant Creek - a deviation that still applies today if you don't have a 4WD.
North of Mataranka we canoed through the spectacular Katherine Gorge, then it was time to tackle the vast expanses of West Australia, ending in my boyfriend's home town of Perth.
That boyfriend is now my husband and the joy of drifting through the uncluttered landscape on our great Australian road trip has stayed with us. For the past two decades we've often longed for the open spaces of the savannah and dreamed of bathing in an emerald pool beneath a cluster of fan palms or the pitted red walls of an ancient gorge, or hooking a tasty barramundi from a sluggish river.
And not long ago, we did just that when we re-visited the section of the Savannah Way between Darwin and Broome. This time our schedule was tighter, but on the plus side we had a better vehicle - a rugged Britz Bushcamper made for getting off-road in safety and relative comfort.
Bitter Springs was our first stop, and next it was time to test the vehicle and our powers of endurance as we headed off the bitumen on the Buntine Highway, which darts straight and flat through the savannah, past immense cattle stations such as Wave Hill and Victoria River Downs.
Red dust and corrugations rejoined us en route to Top Springs roadhouse, where we squeezed between some huge road trains and joined a hardy bunch of truckers for an Outback-style (that's lots of steak) evening meal. It proved to be sustenance for the next gruelling day, when we tackled the 4WD-only Humbert Track.
The 60km track passes through Gregory National Park, following an original packhorse trail through scant forests and undulating grasslands, which sweep away to rugged ranges and escarpments. It was late in the dry season and the riverbeds and vegetation were bone dry. Black plumes of smoke stained the horizon and when we reached our intended campsite in Limestone Gorge, the grass and railings were aflame. We retreated hurriedly to a camp beside the Victoria River - safe from fire, but with crocodile warning signs reminding us of other dangers lurking in the depths.
At Keep River National Park on the Northern Territory/West Australian border, a huge red rock sat in the middle of our campsite, looking as if it has splintered away from the fractured hills behind. This attractive national park has many significant Aborigine sites, and walks of varying difficulty radiate out from the campsites.
Lake Argyle and Kununurra are just over the border in West Australia, and on both trips we found this a great spot to stop a few days and take a break from driving. Lake Argyle was formed when the Ord River was dammed to capture the water excesses of the wet season for irrigation purposes during the rest of the year. It's now Australia's largest man-made lake and, as well as providing life-giving water, it offers many water-based activities.
A sunset champagne cruise is one of these activities, and the shadows were lengthening and the surrounding cliffs were glowing red as our boat slipped quietly onto the deep green waters. We cruised past islets where sea eagles perched in dead trees, and paused under a craggy cliff to observe short-eared rock wallabies.
In a region of stunning geological formations, the astonishing Bungle Bungle Range in Purnululu National Park stands out as unique. These weird black and orange striped domes were formed by 20 million years of erosion and water movement. From Kununurra we took a flight over Lake Argyle, the massive Argyle diamond mine and the Bungle Bungles, which spread below us like a city of giant beehives.
The flight gave us an overview of the scale of the formations, but it wasn't until we completed a three-hour grind over a 55km track to the base that we felt the power of this remote, incredibly atmospheric location.
This area of West Australia is known as The Kimberley, much of which is covered by a Devonian Reef system - a 350-million year old barrier reef that once rose from the bed of a tropical sea. Today remnants of the reef form a broken string of low, rugged ranges that rise sharply from the vast Kimberley floodplains, creating magnificent gorges where cross-sections of the reef embedded with marine fossils are clearly visible.
Our sightseeing options in the gorges were as varied as the sights - from a self-drive boat on Chamberlain Gorge at magnificent El Questro Wilderness Park, to an informative boat trip with a ranger on Geikie Gorge at Fitzroy Crossing. At Tunnel Creek we floundered through knee-deep water in a dark cave, wondering whether our splashes would attract freshwater crocodiles, and whether the whispers around our ears were ghost bats or the ghost of Jandamarra, an Aborigine rebel who was killed at the entrance to his favourite hideout.
Windjana Gorge, just north of Tunnel Creek, was another of Jandamarra's hiding places and shares its moving past. Today it's a place of haunting beauty, with towering cliffs overlooking limpid pools where dozens of freshwater crocodiles bask near the surface. Willowy trees offer shelter for cheeky corellas, and further along the gorge, fruit bats squeal and squabble, dicing with the jaws of death as they dip their breasts into the cool waters.
Our visit to this serene gorge was tinged with melancholy as it marked our last stop before journey's end at Broome, where we arrived in time to see a striking west coast sunset from atop a camel on Cable Beach.
Race day at Halls Creek
Not much usually disturbs the peace and quiet in the tiny Outback town of Halls Creek in West Australia but on the day we stopped, the town was abuzz with the annual Halls Creek Picnic Race Meeting. The event was a fundraiser for the Derby-based Kimberley School of the Air, which provides distance education for kids across an area of 450,000sq km. The children live on huge cattle stations or other rural holdings, or in small Aboriginal communities. Thus many families had travelled thousands of kilometres to meet the teachers and students of their on-air community.
A range of activities was on offer - a kids' costume parade, a gymkhana, sack races, a tug o' war and three-legged races. Women dressed in city style competed for best-dressed and best hat, while the men dusted off their Akubras in case the judges' eyes turned their way during the search for a male fashion icon.
Meanwhile, friendships were made or renewed over a champagne luncheon or a cold beer, and anticipation mounted for the weekend's highlight - the Presentation Ball.
We didn't attend the ball, but judging by the comings and goings at the motel, I can confirm that the revelries continued until the small hours. The next morning guests looked a little the worse for wear, but that's the price you pay when you cram a year of partying into one short night.
Ghosts AND gorges - the story of Jandamarra
It's dark in the cave, the kind of profound darkness that swallows vision and amplifies sound. It's an ancient darkness, a heavy shroud that has harboured spirits for tens of thousands of years. No wonder then, that torchlight can hardly penetrate the depths of Western Australia's oldest cave system at Tunnel Creek National Park, in the state's remote Kimberley region.
There's light chatter and a slight displacement of air as something flits softly by, but it's impossible to spotlight these creatures of the cave. It's the domain of five species of bat, including the shy ghost bat, but the unseen being could be of a more ethereal nature, for Tunnel Creek is haunted by acts of treachery and bloodshed.
The concealed entrance to Tunnel Creek is where Jandamarra, a notorious Aborigine leader, was killed after a protracted police hunt. Outlaw to some, hero to others, Jandamarra led a cloak-and-dagger style armed rebellion against pastoralists who intended to turn the tribal lands of his Bunuba people into stations.
His ability to vanish into thin air gave him an aura of mystique, and allowed him to thwart the police time after time. Even his own people believed that he was the embodiment of a spirit that lived in a waterhole near Tunnel Creek, and that he could only be killed by another Aborigine with similar powers.
And that's exactly what happened. The police hired a well-known Aborigine tracker who had the bonus of possessing magical powers. He hunted Jandamarra down and killed him outside the entrance to the "Cave of Bats", or Tunnel Creek, on April Fools' Day, 1897.
Windjana Gorge, north of Tunnel Creek, was another of Jandamarra's hiding places, and its shores are stained by the blood of settlers and Aborigines. In 1894 Jandamarra attacked a group of would-be pastoralists, killing two. The incident marked the first time that guns had been used against the settlers in an organised way, and retribution was swift. Police and settlers attacked Jandamarra and his followers, who lay in wait at Windjana.
Jandamarra was thought to have been killed in the conflict but he initiated one of his vanishing acts. His death three years later effectively ended the rebellion, and the Bunuba lands became pastoral holdings.
TRAVEL NOTES
Getting there
Qantas offers daily connections to Cairns via Sydney and Brisbane, to Darwin via Sydney and to Broome via Perth.
More information
The Savannah Way is a 3500km adventure drive that links Cairns in tropical North Queensland with the pearling town of Broome in Western Australia, through the Northern Territory. It's possible to explore the route in sections from the main access points of Cairns, Darwin or Broome, which are the main pick-up and drop-off points for rental vehicles. The best time to go is during the dry season of May-September, you'll enjoy pleasant daytime temperatures. Nights can be cool, especially inland.
With forward planning you could stay in roadhouses, motels, cabins, lodges and resorts. However, campervans and/or tents give you more flexibility, especially if you plan to get off the beaten track.
The longer the time you have, the better. At least three to six weeks are needed to complete the whole route.
Is it safe?
The Outback is a vast, unpredictable place, so even if you are not venturing far off the beaten track, carry extra water and provisions and make sure your vehicle is in tip-top condition. If you're going bush, be prepared with extra fuel and safety equipment. A satellite phone or Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) is recommended. Tell someone of your plans and expected date of return. A rugged 4WD with long range fuel tanks, a winch, an extra spare wheel and other safety features is advisable.
Useful Websites
www.savannahway.com.au has maps, suggested itineraries, and extensive information on different regions and towns. Or hire a professional tour guide:
www.savannah-guides.com.au.
www.travelnt.com,
www.westernaustralia.com
'We can make three days feel like a week,' one expert said.