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The Victoria Highway stretches for 510km southwest of Katherine to Kununurra in Western Australia. After an initial, dull 125km a narrow sealed road leads south off the highway down to a bleak roadhouse at TOP SPRINGS where there's camping and fuel. From here, a dirt road heads west past the legendary Victoria River Downs (VRD) station through to Jasper Gorge, rejoining the Victoria Highway east of Timber Creek. Once the country's biggest cattle station, known colloquially as the "Big Run", Victoria River Downs was established in the great droving days of the 1880s, and, like many "unmanageable" properties, is now owned by a business consortium better able to weather the currently depressed market. It still operates over a massive, semi-arid area, with the "homestead" more like a small township, incorporating a post office and shop. The station is also the base of Australia's biggest heli-mustering outfit, which pursues the daredevil practice of mustering widely dispersed stock with single-seater helicopters. From Top Springs, the Buchanan Highway (in fact just a dirt road) continues south and west through Wave Hill to Halls Creek (WA), a stretch of nearly 700km that should not be undertaken lightly. Wave Hill is notable as the site of the Aboriginal stockmen's strike in 1966, which led to the first successful land claim and the birth of the Aboriginal Land Rights Movement . Back on the Victoria Highway, the road narrows as it enters a picturesque spur of the Gregory National Park. The Victoria River Wayside Inn ($50-70), at the Victoria River crossing, boasts "the cheapest caravan park in Australia" and twin-share motel rooms. It also books river cruises (daily April-Oct; $30) on the Victoria River.
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