Trip 4: NORTHERN TERRITORY TRIP in June 2006 …. In Central Australia: Post 1

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A Personal Note: Harriet (my wife) and I jointly share a spirit of adventure. As we have no mortgage, we are free to travel the world financially. We built a handmade house in 1981 on five acres of land 35 kms. out of Brisbane, Australia for minimal money.

See the house / land posts:

OUR HOUSE …. An Overview

OUR HOUSE ….The Actual Garden  See  the photos of the house and garden and the history of how we obtained rejected materials like from the Supreme Courthouse stone (where the Law Courts are now in Brisbane) …. two loads for nothing in 1980. They dumped 100’s of cubic metres as fill and built a school over the top. The stone was cut out of the Kangaroo Points Cliffs in 1877.

OUR LAND OVERALL

See these travel posts:

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Note:  I would like to share with you through these few words, photographs and hyperlinked websites, a 3 Dimensional experience as though you were actually there with us. Click on any photograph and it should enlarge to a different size ….. at least half screen or size full screen. It will be clearer in detail than the photo on the post. It will be as if you were  really there looking at the actual  scene. You are an arm chair traveller with us.
If you would also like to see the post in a larger or smaller size, I suggest you follow this procedure: If you right-handed, with your left hand, press down continuously on the Control Function Key with your left hand and with your right hand, move the little cursor wheel either forwards or backwards to make the text in the post larger or smaller.
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Travel posts from 2003 to 2017: Harriet and I have been travelling overseas every two years to see the world. In between we have been seeing parts of Australia which is a very large country. We are also a member of Wyndham Vacation Resorts Asia Pacific (a holiday share organisation) where we have available free accommodation in 3-star apartments around Australia.  These are largely free of cost. People express their ideas on life in the way they build and arrange their living spaces. They maybe largely ignorant of you and the way you live and where you even live.  Here are some years and countries we have been to:
    • Trip 1: 2003: England, Trip 2: 2005: Italy, Trip 3: 2007: France, Trip 4: 2008: Canada,
    • Trip 5: 2009: England again, Trip 6: 2010: The South Island of New Zealand,
    • Trip 7: 2011: China trip, Trip 8: 2012:  a two week holiday up in the Kimberleys in Western Australia,
    • Trip 9: 2013: Scenic Tours: Amsterdam for two days then a river cruise for 14 days from Amsterdam 
    • to Budapest  on the Rhine river with Scenic Tours. See this website. We then personally caught
    •  a train to Prague (six hours), stayed for two days and then we flew home via Singapore after 3.5 weeks
    • of being away.  We came back on the 29th of  July
    • Trip 10: 2014: South Africa and Madagascar and now with  Voyages to Antiquity … Cruises to Ancient Civilisations in May 2015
    • Trip  11: 2016: THE USA HOLIDAY for six weeks from 23rd September – 8th November
    • Trip 12: 2017: Japan for 16 days from the 4 – 19th August 2017.
    • Trip 13: 2017: Voyages to Antiquity: … Cruises to Ancient Civilisations in September 2017. We sailed from Lisbon (in Portugal) to Rome over 17 days across the top of the Mediterranean Sea … we saw:
      • SPAIN: Cadiz, Malanga, Valencia, Barcelona
      • FRANCE: Carcassonne, Marseilles, French Rivera
      • ITALY: Florence (by bus), Rome …. Colosseum etc.

Then Harriet and I did our own trip to Northern Italy by train over the next week: Assissi (two days), Verona  (two days), Lake Como (two days), Milan (two days). Then we flew home to Brisbane, Australia via Dubai = 19 hours around to the other side of the world.

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In my  later years of life, specially after my  life-changing situation, and not having  to  ever work again, I have become a writer and  a photographer. I share these things online as now through my personal experiences website at http://www.kenaitken.net/  As you may know, this website is used to personally stay in touch with hundreds of friends and associates around the world. I frequently send out our personal experiences photos and then links to the website posts.

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2006: Australia: Northern Territory Trip: Harriet and I flew off to the Northern Territory from 1st-13th June for a short holiday.  This trip to the Northern Territory  in Australia  covered a number of areas:

  1. We flew up to Darwin in the Northern Territory from Brisbane on the 1st June then hired a camper van
  2. Then we went down 250 kms. to Kakadu National Park for four days … a Park of rivers, floodplains, cliffs and Aboriginal rock art etc. over hundreds of square kms.
  3. Back to Darwin again and then we caught the train = the Ghan down to Alice Springs (1000 kms. +) which is in Central Australia
  4. We stopped off before Alice Springs on the way down, for four hours to visit by boat the Katherine Gorge
  5.  In Alice Springs, we were staying in the Novotel Hotel for two days in Alice Springs. Seeing we had never been there, it gave us two days experiencing a city out in the desert with green lawns and gardens all  watered with underground artesian water
  6. Then we went on a small bus tour to Ayres Rock (Uluru) for several days …. a distance of 463 kms.
  7. Then we flew back to Brisbane by the 13th June ….. Alice Springs to Sydney then onto Brisbane

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See the following websites:

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The posts will cover our holiday in photographs and a few words in the following areas:

  • Kakadu National Park (A World Heritage-listed Park): Gunlom, Katherine Gorge, Yellow Water  …. The Alligator River  in  Kakadu and Obirr … The place of great cultural significance in Kakadu National Park
  • Bus Trip to Ayres Rock (Uluru) for several days. We stopped in to see the Camel farm, Mt. Ebenezer, Curtin Springs and finally Ayres Rock
  • Ayres Rock (Uluru): We saw and walked amongst the Olgas, walked on the short walk and the Mala walk (some went  to the top of Ayres Rock), then we went to Kings Canyon

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In writing these posts in June  2016 compared  to June 2006, it has been a very emotional experience. It as if I doing the holiday all over again.  Writing it up has been easy  for me …..  even though it is ten years  later. My memory is very clear as I have a photographic memory ….. a bit like playing a TV show all over again. I see the pictures playing again, especially if I have taken photographs.

For twenty years, I ran a small Landscape Design and Construction Company undertaking very creative, individual designer gardens for wealthy residential clients around Brisbane.   I was an  artistic person, a lateral thinker ….. more artist than businessman. I thought of a landscape as a three-dimensional piece of space that people walked through. This space changed with time as it grew and changed with the time of day. Shadows vs. sun patterns, boulders, colour, plants, trees, earth-forms, solid structures and water. These were the ingredients I used. Unknowingly, I was a landscape sculptor. Rather an intangible product to sell and run a business with!! However I built a structure for my life: my marriage, family and business from this base.

Harriet and I  go on our holidays every year around the world.  See Ken and Harriet’s Travel post from 2010 to 2015.  2003-2009 has yet to be  written. I see life and the  places we go through the eyes of a landscape sculptor. The cultural context is the movement through the static framework of the geographical framework.

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See the next post:  NORTHERN TERRITORY TRIP in 2006: In Central Australia ….. Gunlom: Post 2