Australasia > Australia > Northern Territories > Darwin > Articles > Darwin to Perth in a Campervan

The 100 metre walls of Windjana Gorge are lit up like the heart of a flame. Behind them the sky is crowded with tawny clouds floating on an ocean of pink. As the sun dips imperceptibly on the horizon so the mirror-image of the glowing walls and the burnished background grows ever more perfect in the dusky water below.

Then, like a tableau slowly coming to life, the reflection ripples and one by one, a dozen diminutive Johnson crocodiles nose into view. Overhead, meanwhile, a wedge-tailed eagle hovers on the breeze and a posse of corellas flee in a flurry from tree to tree, their bar-room squawk amplified by the walls of the Gorge.

For the next half-hour we stand alone at the edge of this evolving scene convinced we are the only people on earth. The more the sun wanes the more lustrous become the colours of the encroaching night until the entire picture is suffused first with magenta and finally saturated in deep blue.

This is just one small moment from half-way through our trip four-wheel drive campervanning from Darwin to Perth, every single day of which was a highlight. In fact, reaching the end of a journey like this is a bit like coming out of an intensely-affecting film, only a hundred times more powerful. You want to say something about it, to share some of your personal experience of it. But you are also aware that you could gush on until you are purple in the face about how wonderful it has been, about what an extraordinary country Australia is and about how to you, places like Windjana and the Kimberleys in general, and others like Katherine Gorge, the BungleBungles and the Pinnacles are every bit as ethereal and awe-inspiring as the Great Cathedrals of Europe we travel so far to see.

Suffice to say, then, that many of my experiences from this trip will live deep and long in the memory, from the moment we cool off in the Edenesque rockpool at the foot of Wangi Falls in Litchfield National Park (two hours drive south of Darwin) on our first evening to the final night we spend - avoiding the big city streets for just a few more hours - beside a gently-flowing Margaret River.

Travelling by four-wheel drive campervan brings all of these experiences virtually to our doorstep and enables us to stop in some of the country’s most remote National Parks and wilderness areas. Each day we are on the road draws us closer to shedding our city skins completely, our senses becoming ever more engaged by the nature surrounding us. It is common not to see another human face for hours on end, and even then, like a mirage, they are gone in a flash of dust, their vehicle heading past in the opposite direction.

We find the four-wheel drive component invaluable on and around the unsealed 670 kilometre Gibb River Road through the Kimberleys, even in a parched November. It gives us easier access too to National Parks like Keep River on the Northern Territory/West Australia border and Cape Range in the extreme north-west. It also helps to make the trip more adventure - we often wonder whether we’ll blow a tire in the middle of nowhere - than holiday. We are astonishingly lucky with our one or two predicaments. Firstly, when 60 kilometres short of Broome - despite two 90 litre tanks - we run dry of diesel, we are rescued by a passing local bearing a can of fuel and secondly, when we become seriously bogged in Yardie Creek in the Cape Range National Park. Right behind us, in another four-wheel drive, probably the only other vehicle within thirty kilometres of us at that time, are Perth couple Peter and Nola Rigby, carrying, even more fortuitously, the requisite shovel and tyre compressor to help get us out.

Otherwise it is a case of learning to cope with the sapping November temperatures - we do much of our driving in the heat of the day to take advantage of the air-conditioned cab and sometimes rise as early as 4.30am to enjoy the cool air and the lemony light of sunrise - and tolerating the odd unwanted bedfellow. In fact, I have to admit that I call on more than one occasion for a total world-wide ban on insects, especially those with an inordinate fondness for your mouth, nostrils and eyelashes. Whether it is flying ants at Keep River or orange centipedes the size of snakes in the Kimberley, we must meet nearly all of God’s most unlovable creatures somewhere on our journey. At night, we rig a mosquito net to the back of the open van and apply RID assiduously. But generally it is a joy to be outside, eating dinner, cooked either on the campervan’s small gas cooker or a campfire, as light fades and the day’s heat diminishes. When we need a break from the road, we take one, half-way through our journey at Broome, where we recuperate by a pool overlooking the turquoise Indian Ocean, at the Mangrove Hotel.

There’s no question that this is a long drive - when we finish we have clocked up over 6300 kilometres in total - and there are occasional extended stretches which can be demanding, especially that between Broome and Port Hedland, described by the Lonely Planet guide as “probably Australia’s most boring highway”. It goes without saying that having regular breaks is crucial, as is carrying plenty of water (a minimum of twenty litres) and diesel.

From our first night at Wangi Falls in Litchfield National Park we journey next to Katherine Gorge. Here, in musky heat and later a squall of warm rain, we first paddle a little way down it by canoe and then, on a gleaming dawn, take a helicopter flight over the entire length of its thirteen gorges. This is 25 minutes of pure thrill as we buzz and swoop to within metres of the Gorge’s ancient rust-coloured walls.

Only two mornings later we are airborne again, this time on a scenic flight over the 360 million year old BungleBungles (Purnululu) out of Kununarra, emerging from a thick doona of drizzly cloud to the sight of these unusual bug-like shapes, striped orange and green/black, protruding from the barren wilderness surrounding. We fly back over the mammoth man-made Lake Argyle and the nearby Argyle Diamond Mine, which produces 35% of the world’s diamonds and which, with its superannuated terraces is almost as bizarre to behold as the BungleBungles.

While much of this trip is about movement, many moments paradoxically stand out from it for their stillness and serenity. There is our stroll at dusk, for instance, among the eerily hushed boulders at Gurrandalng, 15 kilometres into the Keep River National Park. Also memorable are sheltering from a broiling afternoon in the jacuzzi-like Zeebedee Springs in the eastern Kimberleys - a pocket of giant fan palms and serenading tropical birds in the heart of the semi-desert - and, swimming in Bell Gorge, further West along the Gibb River Road, encircled by primeval-seeming rock mirrored perfectly in the water.

Extraordinary sunsets loom large in our journey too: that, blazing tangerine and crimson over the Indian Ocean, shared with a train of wobbly camels on Broome’s famous Cable Beach, and those, dazzlingly yellow that accompany us for the length of our drive down the west coast from Exmouth to Margaret River. Equally unforgettable is the late afternoon light, near journey’s end, when we reach the limestone columns of the Pinnacles, each remarkable formation - some tiny, some large, a few like druid’s hats, others like scabbards - lent an equally distinct silhouette by the waning sun.

Even the few people that we meet along the way contribute considerably to our experience. At beautiful Ellenbrae Station on the Gibb River Road we encounter the nomadic 70 year olds Norm and Shirley Johnston, who divide their year between Tasmania, Sydney and the Kimberleys, living for the most part in their small tent. Later we run into two infectiously garrulous Aboriginal women - Anna and Lizzie - who we rescue from their broken down car somewhere on the long highway between Broome and Darwin. As we give them a lift to their community, 150 kilometres down the road, they offer us the low down on everything from spearfishing for rays to local Land Rights issues. To thank us for the ride they make us a present of the hugest watermelon I have ever seen. Tragically, due to intense heat, this subsequently blows up in the back of the campervan, lending the vehicle a sticky sweet aroma for the remainder of the journey.

Arriving at the BritsAustralia depot in Perth on our final day, my partner and I just know we have done a special trip. Maybe it is the thickly ingrained red-dust which pervades the campervan which tells us that or the fact that we are both almost wordlessly weary. But most probably it is the feeling that on this journey we have seen, heard, sensed and smelt the spirit of this wondrous land.

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