After short walks, we were packed up and on the road at 8:15 am for the very pleasant 88 km drive to Batchelor. This town started its life in the early 1900s as a Federal Government experimental farm, to assess the viability of farming crops in the far North. The conditions were extreme and it basically proved what you can't farm up this way. The whole Darwin region is now a huge tropical fruit growing area and there's other crops being introduced all the time.
We arrived about mornos time, however, by the time we had set up it was a bit late. Some of the reviews for this van park are not very complimentry, but we think it's quite fine. It's leafy, the showers etc are ok, there's nice green grass everywhere, there's a great variety of birds and there's no dust. It's also situated right on the edge of town; it'll do us for a couple of days. Sometimes we suspect that the reviews are written by the opposition, or by those that forget exactly where they are in Australia.
After lunch we hopped on the bikes and explored the town of Batchelor, which didn't take very long at all. The longest part was getting through the Batchelor Museum which was very interesting and quite well done, however, follows much the same story as most other towns in this area: early settlement, crop growing by testing and adjusting, WWII, and then in Batchelor's case, a uranium mine. We were going to visit the Butterfly Farm but when we got there and had a look around, we decided that it was probably not going to be any different to the one at Kuranda, so gave it a miss for the time being. If we have time tomorrow after doing Litchfield NP, we will go back.
Back to the van for a bit of R&R before dinner.
Solar farm coming into Batchelor
Us at Batchelor Holiday Park, site #16, nice drive-thru site with slab
Replica Model of Karlstejn Castle
Batchelor Park
The man who started this whole Batchelor thing
WWII stuff
Brian 'Blackjack' Walker, a popular commander and highly professional pilot from WWII
Uranium occurs naturally throughout the earth's crust, in water, rocks and soil. The largest world reserves, approx 28% of the world's supplies, occur in Australia
