Into East Arnhem Land

At Mainoru Station, from a camp chair at five in the afternoon, I did the maths on the next day’s drive.

The first 250 kilometres out of Katherine, on a road that was still partly sealed, had taken us close to four hours. The next day we had another 500 kilometres ahead, on dirt the whole way, and if the pace held that meant eight hours or more behind the wheel. There was no fixing that from where I sat, so I put the number away and left it for the morning.

East Arnhem Land is not a place you simply drive into. The Central Arnhem Road crosses Aboriginal land, and travelling it means permits, approved dates and an approved route — all organised months earlier, back in Sydney. Katherine to Nhulunbuy is around 750 kilometres, more than 600 of them unsealed, and for us the trip effectively started with paperwork long before we ever left home.

Katherine to Mainoru

We had briefly talked about doing parkrun in Katherine on the Saturday morning, but between running, finding a shower and then packing properly for a long driving day, it did not add up. I did our own jungle-gym session instead. We showered, had breakfast, packed Roger and left for a road neither of us had driven before.

The dirt started before long, and with it came the corrugations: not dramatic like a deep and long river crossing, just relentless, the kind of shaking that finds every loose bolt and bracket in the car. We lowered the tyre pressures further to soften the ride, and that was where a small Katherine purchase paid off. We had bought four tyre-deflator pins before leaving. Screw them onto the valves and all four tyres come down together, instead of crouching at each wheel in turn with a gauge. It sounds like a minor thing. On a day like that it was an awesome win.

Mainoru Station was, as far as we could tell, the only official place to camp between Katherine and Nhulunbuy, and it turned out to be a good stop: a laid-back bush camp with some green, a river nearby and plenty of room to spread out. The showers were cold, so they only charged us twenty dollars for the night, which we were happy to take. Daytime temperatures were back up around thirty degrees; the nights sat around sixteen to eighteen, mild compared to further south and comfortable for sleeping.

We could not be bothered collecting wood, so there was no fire that night. Instead we texted friends in Sydney and video-called family in Germany. The longer we are on the road, the more I notice what I actually miss: not big things, just ordinary ones, like dropping by someone’s place for dinner or sharing a bottle of wine without organising it three weeks in advance.

The Long Day to Rainbow Cliffs

We woke to fog after a good night’s sleep. Some of our neighbours were already packing up, which had the useful effect of getting us moving without anyone saying anything, and we were on the road just before eight. I was not looking forward to the 500 kilometres ahead. Based on the previous day’s average, eight hours sounded about right, maybe more, and there was not much to do except get into it.

The road surprised us. It was still dirt and gravel, not smooth by any normal measure, but far better than the day before, and Roger sat comfortably at 70 to 80 kilometres an hour for long stretches. We knew better than to push it faster. Above a certain speed on dirt, the strain on the car goes up a lot faster than the time you save.

We changed drivers every hour, which turned out to be the right rhythm: long stretches that let you settle into the road, short ones that kept concentration from drifting. Whoever was in the passenger seat drank water, looked around properly, or just watched the road without being responsible for it. The one thing that got on my nerves was oncoming traffic, even though there was very little of it. These roads were quiet, and slowing down for a passing car costs almost nothing, but a few drivers came through at well over 100 kilometres an hour without moving off the centre of the road, throwing stones and dust as they went.

There were almost no rest areas across the whole 500 kilometres. When lunch became necessary we just pulled over on the verge and ate there, then got back into the driver rotation. Nothing eventful happened, which by early afternoon was starting to look like the best possible outcome: the road stayed good, the car ran fine, and the eight-hour estimate from Mainoru was turning out to be pessimistic.

We reached Rainbow Cliffs just before three in the afternoon, hours earlier than I had allowed for. We set up well before dark instead of scrambling in the last light. Site four, the one we had booked, was the furthest one down and looked good; campsite two might have been better again, but that was not the site we had.

There was one complication. When we got there, four boys were already set up on our site, cooking a lamb stew over a timber chimney they had built themselves, something like a Swedish fire lay cut into a log with a chainsaw. It was a clever setup. It was also our booked site. We had every right to be annoyed about it, but a long day of corrugations had used up whatever patience that would have taken, so we gave it a bit of time and let it sort itself out, which it did.

That evening we cooked chicken curry over the fire and watched a good sunset over the water. The beach looked promising for fishing. I had no bait, which is a fairly regular problem for me.

Rainbow Cliffs

The next morning I watched the replay of Germany’s World Cup match: a 7-1 win, from a camp chair looking out over the ocean. It was a strange way to watch football, without a pub, a crowd or anyone to argue with about the tactics, but it was also the first World Cup match I had ever watched from a campsite, and I was not about to complain about the view.

Later we walked along the beach and found several sets of turtle tracks in the sand, likely left by hatchlings making their way to the water. We did not see the turtles themselves, only the evidence they had been there. It was the first time East Arnhem Land felt like more than a road: the tent was up, the car was parked, and we could just look around instead of counting kilometres.

Nhulunbuy

We drove into Nhulunbuy that afternoon. Given the permits and the restricted access, I had half expected the town itself to feel visibly different, more obviously shaped by Aboriginal culture in some way a visitor would notice straight away. It was not like that, at least not on the surface. Nhulunbuy read more like a Western outback town built around mining: ordinary streets, shops, fuel, industrial yards, even a Woolworths. That probably says more about how little a few days as a passer-through actually shows you than it does about the town itself.

We drove around and looked at a few beaches, all of them good-looking and none of them safe to swim, which was familiar by then. Diesel was $2.68 a litre, not bad for how far out we were.

We had hoped to do an Aboriginal cultural tour while we were there. The only one on offer was an overnight trip that did not fit our schedule, which was disappointing. Between that and around 90 percent humidity in thirty-degree heat, we did not do much else in town that day.

The art centre made up for some of it. It was worth the stop on its own, the kind of place where you start doing impractical arithmetic about whether a piece could fit somewhere in a car that is already full. We did not buy anything, mostly for lack of space and budget. In the background, the centre was playing films about Aboriginal bands who had taken up Western-style music, which gave us a small window into local history that a couple of days on the road would never have shown us otherwise.

Macassan Beach

From Nhulunbuy we drove to Macassan Beach, where we had booked two nights. On the way in, a sign told us to collect firewood at that specific point rather than closer to camp, because some of the surrounding land is secret or protected under Aboriginal law. It was a small thing, but it set the tone: even something as ordinary as gathering firewood came with rules out here.

The camp itself looked excellent when we pulled in: only five sites, all of them large, right on the water. For a few minutes we thought we had picked perfectly. Then we got out of the car and met the wind.

Being directly on the ocean meant no shelter from anything. The wind sat at 30 to 40 kilometres an hour, with gusts and sea spray reaching the prettier, lower part of the site regularly, which ruled it out. We set up higher and used Roger as a windbreak. Instead of our hexa tarp, we used the one we normally keep as dust protection in the back of the car; it never really cooperated, we got it to hold, more or less, but nobody would call the result tidy.

The toilets were about a seven-minute walk away, far enough to notice but close enough that we did not bother unpacking the portable one. We cooked dinner, I watched more of the World Cup, and we sat outside as long as the wind allowed.

The next day the location was still there for us to enjoy, but the weather made sure we did not do much with it. It reminded us of Cape York: hot, very humid and windy despite being the middle of winter. Being outside all day in that combination is tiring even when you are not doing anything in particular. We spent most of the day shifting chairs out of the wind, drinking water and waiting for the heat to ease, which it mostly did not.

In the afternoon I tried fishing off the rocks, my first time in water that might have crocodiles in it, which adds a certain awareness to every step near the edge. We did not see any, but I was not about to forget the possibility either. I got a few bites, lost two hooks somewhere among the rocks, most likely to fish that took the bait too deep, and called it there.

On a short walk we found rubbish dumped well away from any camp or road, not for the first time on this stretch of the trip. Carrying it in clearly was not the hard part.

Giddy River

On Wednesday we moved camp to Giddy River, which had the added benefit of shortening the drive back toward Mainoru when it was time to leave. On the way we stopped at a bay to try fishing again. I did not catch anything, wrong time of day and not many bites, but it was a quieter kind of unsuccessful than the one at Macassan Beach.

Giddy River turned out to be an excellent bush camp. We had site one, with plenty of room, and there were only three sites in total, our nearest neighbours a good ten minutes away on foot. That is a different kind of quiet from most campgrounds: not just fewer people, but properly separate, to the point where you could hear your own camp again.

We checked out the waterholes and a waterfall nearby. Other travellers we met there warned us to be careful, so we did not swim, even though it looked good. By that point in the trip that decision had become close to automatic. If someone with more local knowledge tells you to stay out, you stay out.

Back at camp, a police vehicle turned up, which was not something we expected at a site with three campsites in the middle of nowhere. The officer explained they were doing area familiarisation. It was not a problem, just a reminder that even out here, remote does not mean nobody is keeping an eye on things.

Steph had made English-muffin dough earlier in the day, so that evening we started a fire, baked the muffins over it and cooked bacon and eggs to go with them. It turned into one of the better meals of the trip: fresh bread, bacon, eggs, a fire and nobody else around for ten minutes in either direction.

Thursday was a full day at Giddy River, and we did not do much with it. We kept a fire going for most of it, cooked over it more than once, moved chairs in and out of the shade, and let the hours pass without much structure. Between the heat and the humidity, doing nothing still felt like a reasonable use of the day.

The Long Way Back

By Friday it was time to leave. We drove back the same way, toward Mainoru Station, and slipped straight into the hourly driver rotation again. It kept the day moving without becoming a grind. The colours out there were something else: red dirt, blue sky, green bush, strong enough to look artificial without being touched at all.

About 50 kilometres before Mainoru we ran into smoke from a bushfire nearby and the air turned bad for a stretch. We had planned to camp at Mainoru again, but it was only just after one in the afternoon, and once the smoke cleared we decided to keep going the four hours or so to Katherine instead.

That turned it into a much longer day than planned, and the one real risk was that we had not booked a caravan park and would be arriving after hours. It worked out. We found a site, got Roger unpacked, and were glad we had pushed through rather than stopping short.

Arriving back in Katherine felt different from the first time. A week earlier it had been the last easy stop before a road we knew nothing about. Now it was the other end of it: lights, phone reception, shops, a shower, the ordinary business of finding a campsite and settling in. East Arnhem Land had turned out to be less about beaches and culture than we had assumed going in, and more about permits, wind, mining, quiet camps and the road itself. We had not planned it that way. It was just how the week went.