Riding red dirt & epic landscapes

A six-day solo motorcycle trip connecting three of Australia’s most beautiful national parks — Kakadu, Katherine and Litchfield — turns into a trial of heat, thirst and sand.

About 100km out of Darwin, I pull into a roadhouse on the Arnhem Highway, where a billboard reads “Last Take Away Alcohol Before Kakadu”.

I’ve only been on the road for an hour, but I feel like I’ve been riding all day — a by-product of 30C heat, air that is so dry it’s already cracked my lips in two places, and a 130km/h speed limit I feel obliged to stick to despite the buffeting winds.

Where else can I ride this fast in Australia without getting booked?

I grab a meat pie and cold water, and top up my fuel even though I’ve only used a third of a tank.

“Fill up every time you pass a petrol station,” warned the chap in Darwin who lent me the motorcycle. “Believe me, the last thing you want is to get stuck out there at night.”

“Why? Dingoes?” I asked.

“No. It gets really cold at night this time of the year. You’d freeze to death.”

The Arnhem Highway is a long and lonely stretch of tarmac, blisteringly hot, and cutting through an ever-changing landscape of savannah woodland, stone country, and wetlands. I share the road with holidaymakers in their four-wheel-drives, bloodthirsty chickenhawks pecking at kangaroo roadkill, and dreaded road trains that are so long they create pockets of turbulence in their wake strong enough to blow a fully loaded touring bike into a crocodile-infested swamp.

It’s 5pm when I’m pulled over for a breath test by a copper outside of Jabiru, the only township in Kakadu. My plan is to fuel up here and ride another 40km further west to Cahills Crossing on the East Alligator River. But the copper warns me to call it a day.

“It’ll be dusk soon, and that’s the most dangerous time to be on the road because that’s when the kangaroos are most active. Most of us won’t drive at this time unless the vehicle has a roo bar,” he says, pointing to the oversize bull bar on his vehicle.

I take the copper’s advice and ride into the carpark at a nearby lodge. Among a sea of 4WDs and camper trailers, I see a solitary motorbike: a 20-something-year-old BMW with a 35-litre safari petrol tank and a mini-roo bar and roo grill protecting the headlight — for all the good it would do.

The following morning, my GPS tells me it’s only 56km on the Kakadu Highway to my next overnight stop at Cooinda. But I have two detours to make. The first is Nourlangie Rock, a sandstone escarpment famous for its rock art: depictions of kangaroos, barramundi, goannas, turtles, and legends like Namarrgon (Lightning Man), a spirit man with a band of lightning in his arms and stone axes on his knees and elbows to make thunder. Some paintings are more than 40,000 years old, making Nourlangie the oldest museum in Australia.

I get back on the road and follow the Kakadu Highway another 20km to the turn-off for Jim Jim Falls, which cascades 259m over the Arnhem Escarpment into a plunge pool.

It’s a 60km run on gravel to Jim Jim — a stretch I could normally do in less than an hour. But my GPS reckons it will take me more than twice that much time. A minute into it, I understand why: the road is riddled with corrugations — ripples carved into the sandy surface by road trains and 4WDs.

The best way to handle them, my friend in Darwin advised, is to lean back and ride as fast as possible so your wheels go over the tops of the bumps. But try doing that on a road that swivels through the countryside like a giant Australian centipede.

So I sit at 40km/h, feeling the sting of every little bump on the road.

It takes 90 minutes to reach the carpark, and another 45 minutes on foot to reach the falls, by which time I’ve run out of water again. Not to worry, I tell myself. I’ll refill my flasks at the spring of the waterfall.

The following day, I need to cover 250km to reach Katherine, gateway to the 13 stunning flooded gorges of Katherine National Park. But I also have a detour to make: Gunlom Waterfall, which residents reckon is the most beautiful swimming hole in the territory.

Gunlom lies at the end of a heavily corrugated gravel road. I reach the carpark within an hour and then follow the steep walking track to the top of the falls. What I see there blows my mind — 15 or 20 rock pools interlinked with mini waterfalls and filled with the freshest, bluest water I’ve ever seen.

After a swim, I skedaddle down to my bike, gear up and shoot off. This time, I take a devil-may-care attitude on the gravel, flying over corrugations like nobody’s business until a tiny misjudgment followed by a major overcorrection on a patch of soft sand sees my handlebars lock and me hitting the dirt.

I’m not hurt by the impact, but getting my 200kg motorbike back upright proves extremely difficult in the powder-like sand.

By the time I get back to the highway, it’s 3pm and I’m still 170km from Katherine.

I ride fast along long, desolate straights and arching into bends. Then, without warning, three kangaroos cross the highway about 100m in front of me. I come to a screeching halt. My heart is racing. I can feel my pulse in my hand.

Riding a motorbike in roo country is like Russian roulette, and the only way to mitigate the risk is to ride well below the 110km/h speed limit. I call it a day when I reach Pine Creek, 90km north of Katherine.

The next day, I altogether remove Katherine from my itinerary and head north to Litchfield National Park instead, cutting my riding distance over the next two days in half.

Still, near-death experiences continue to dog me all the way back to Darwin. On one occasion, a wind gust catches the lid of my helmet, nearly garrotes me with the chin strap, and temporarily blinds me.

Another time, two emus come out of nowhere and run alongside me before darting in front of me to cross the road.

And I nearly die of boredom when my ride comes to an end, and I have to wait seven hours at Darwin airport for my flight back home.

As I sit there waiting, a poster for Territory tourism catches my eye. “The Top End is different from the Bottom End,” it reads.

“Try it on a motorcycle,” I say to nobody in particular.