From Darwin to Alice Springs

OK, I put a bit more time on my internet card, so we'll see how this goes. We've been in "The Alice" for a day now and are getting ready to hit the road again first thing tomorrow morning to drive to Uluru. I'm so excited! But the journey here from Darwin was an adventure in itself, so let me tell you about it.

Mom, Dad and I left Darwin two days ago at about 7am. We wanted to get an early start because we knew it was going to be a 12 hour drive to get to our overnighting spot at Tenant Creek. We drove just under 1000 km's on Saturday, in pretty much a completely straight line, from Darwin to Tenant Creek. The landscape along the way really surprised us. I knew it was going to be mostly flat, and I knew that we would get out of the tropical wet forest pretty quickly, but it took a long, long, long time for us to end up in "Outback" desert vegetation. I would say we spent the first eight hours driving through open eucalypt forest, of the type that I've seen all over the country. The main difference was the termite mounds! The termite mounds in the far north are HUGE - up to 7 feet tall - and they're absolutely everywhere in the forests, almost as numerous as the trees. As we headed south, the termite mounds became smaller, but still often climbed to 3 feet high. Craziness.

We made a few stops along the way. We stopped for coffee about 9am at the Adelaide River Roadhouse. Dad was not impressed that he paid $2 to drink a cup of instant coffee. Ha ha! This roadhouse, like all the ones along the highway, had its quirks. In the Adelaide River Hotel, we found a stuffed water buffalo that apparently had a starring role in the movie "Crocodile Dundee". Now I know I've seen that movie, but I have no memory of their being a water buffalo in it - guess I'll have to see it again. Further down the road, we stopped for lunch at another random roadhouse, which was a little on the sketchy/scary side. We ate on a rickety picnic table in the field beside the pub, standing up, 'cause we were afraid that if we sat on the picnic table it would completely collapse. There was a random stray chicken from the yard that kept watching us, hoping to get fed. Oh, and the wreckage of a bomber airplane from WWII. Strangeness.

In fact, all down the Stuart Highway there are tons of significant WWII sites, including many different airstrips. We finally pulled off to take a look at one when we reached Daly Waters. I had promised Jen's mom that I would take a picture of the Daly Waters sign, since her maiden name is Daly and she's pretty sure she has relatives who settled there. The airstrip at Daly Waters turned out to be the most important one along that stretch of highway during the second world war. It was an important staging point for Australian and American air forces as they prepared to go to war in the Pacific. It was also a stopover point for international flights heading from Sydney to Singapore, until the airplanes developed to a point where they didn't need to stop there to refuel anymore. The town of Daly Waters was a whole experience in itself. The pub there is quite famous, and we went inside to take a look and buy a drink. WELL! The walls of the pub are decorated with such a huge variety of objects you couldn't see the walls anymore. Items on the walls included international currency, stubby coolers, bras, licence plates, and much more. There was a rodeo going on in town and the place was packed, so we kinda slipped in and outta there as quickly as we could.

It was a long, long, long drive to Tenant Creek, and the last few hours were pretty harsh. The speed limit on the Stuart Highway is 130 kms/hr for most of its length, and even so, it seemed to take us forever to get to Tenant Creek. I'd booked us a room at an actual motel for the night, and we enjoyed an evening of luxurious comfort - including having a TV in our room, our own private bathroom, and air conditioning that actually worked! We enjoyed dinner in the motel's restaurant and made it an early night.

In the morning, we went back to the motel's restaurant for breakfast and enjoyed eggs, toast, fruit salad, bacon, and lots of tea and coffee before hitting the road again. The highlight of this part of the trip was visiting the Devils Marbles, which are about 100kms south of Tenant Creek. These are huge sandstone boulders scattered in crazy piles just beside the highway. Some of these boulders are 20 feet tall or more, and most of them are spherical or ovoid in shape. They were really cool. Apparently they're formed by the land eroding around harder rock (sound familiar? We've seen other versions of this phenomenon as we travel around the country). The boulders really did look like giant marbles or eggs. Dad and I snapped a number of pretty cool pics, which I promise to post on Facebook when I finally get back to Melbourne in April. It was insanely hot and the flies were really really annoying as we toured around the Marbles, so we didn't stay for as long as I would have liked.

Although we only had another 500 or so km's to go to get to Alice, it took us most of the day to get there. There were just too many interesting things to see along the way! The road itself continued to be pretty darn boring and straight (as in, we kept exclaiming things like "OOO! Traffic!" when lone cars passed us going in the opposite direction, and "ooo, topography!" when we saw a slight rise in the land). We pulled over at most of the roadhouses along the way. At Wycliff Hill, the UFO capital of Australia, we chatted with the bartender, sipped ginger beer, and snapped photos of the strange decor of the pub and the UFO parking lot outside. At Aileron, we admired the giant statue of an Aboriginal hunter. At Ti Tree, we stuck our heads into the local Aboriginal art gallery, where Mom bought some beautiful glass artwork. We took photos at the Tropic of Capricorn marker and ate freshly made mango ice cream at the Red Centre mango farm.

As we approached Alice Springs, the land finally began to fold into hills - and then we were finally here! (I could tell we'd arrived in Alice because my cell phone beeped - sometimes the only way you know you're approaching civilization in this country is when you get cell phone reception again.) Jen had flown into Alice Springs from Melbourne earlier in the day and when I finally got in touch with her on the phone, she was pedalling around the city on a bike, scoping the place out for us. She met us back at the hostel. It was awfully good to see her after these three weeks we've been apart!

Alice Springs is not a big town, and its topography is similar to Mount Isa (well, except for the part where there's a honking huge mine in Mount Isa and there isn't one in Alice). The four of us unpacked our stuff and moved into our room, and then took a walk through the downtown core to see what there was to see. Because it was Easter Sunday, most of the stores and restaurants were closed. We ended up at the local saloon, Bojangles, for dinner. That in itself was an experience! Bojangles, like many of the Outback pubs I've visited in the last few days, has very quirky decor. In the front of the bar there was a crocodile skin and skull nailed to the ceiling. There was a replica set of Ned Kelly's armor set up in a coffin, and you could grab a handful of peanuts from where the codpiece of the armor would have been. (sigh) In the back room, there was a fabulous model train set built all around the walls of the room, up by the ceiling. Dad and I shared a plate of all sorts of Aussie bush meats for dinner. We sampled croc, emu, roo, and camel - and they were all good, although I thought that the camel was rather chewy.

We had to return to the hostel after dinner, as nothing was open and unfortunately there were largeish groups of drunk and rowdy folks out and wandering the streets. In fact, the hostel felt a little like a security compound - there was a double-locked door for us to pass through and high fencing all around. Not the most comfortable feeling!

This morning, we enjoyed a yummy breakfast (thanks mostly to Jen, who had gone grocery shopping for us when she arrived in Alice Springs yesterday) and then headed to the Alice Springs Desert Park, just outside of town. This was a really cool place. They have four different central desert habitats represented in the park, and a good series of interpretive signs to teach us about them as we walked around. We first headed for the Nature Theatre, for the birds of prey show. This was the BEST wild bird show I've ever seen. The ranger who was running the show stood in centre stage and talked, and on cue, as if by magic, the birds she was talking about would suddenly appear in the sky, swoop down, and sit on one of the trees or rocks in the display area. (What was happening was the birds' enclosures were just out of sight behind the theatre's audience stands, and they were being released at certain cues. The birds knew to fly into the theatre to get food.) The ranger had the birds demonstrate some of their natural behaviours, which was really cool. The black kite leaped upon food on the ground; the whistling kite snatched bits out of the air and ate them on the wing. The bustard used a rock to crack open a simulated emu egg. It was great!

Jen and I took off on our own for about an hour so we could watch a presentation by an Aboriginal ranger about the traditional tools used by the local indigenous peoples as they gathered foods from the bush. We learned how to use certain trees to make coolamons (bowls) and digging sticks, we examined various types of edible seeds and berries, and examined spear throwers and boomerangs. The ranger showed us how to throw a spear using the spear thrower, how to use a deflecting shield, and how to winnow seeds in the coolamon. It was great.

We were running a little late now, so we collected Mom and Dad from the theatre (where they were watching a film in air-conditioned comfort), and headed back to the hostel for lunch. Our afternoon destination was the Starlight Theatre, a block from the hostel, where a local didgeridoo artist gives free didgeridoo lessons every afternoon. Yep, we all sat and learned how to play a didgeridoo - even Dad! (The photos are very funny. The video my mom accidentally shot is even funnier. Yes I will post them when I can.) Let me tell you, it is a LOT harder to play a didgeridoo than it looks! I could make the basic sound, but had no luck flattening out my cheeks and doing circular breathing. Apparently this will come with time. Mom, of course, bought a didgeridoo last week, and now she owns a CD and a DVD on how to play, so maybe I'll get some time to practice it when I get home!

We spent the rest of the afternoon shopping for art (no luck) and opals (Mom had some luck here, but not me). We took a quick jaunt out to the airport to the Europcar desk so Jen could get put on as another driver on our rental car, then drove back through town to check out the view from the top of ANZAC Hill. We enjoyed dinner at the local Chinese restaurant, and now we're back at the hostel again, getting ready to head out first thing tomorrow morning.

I am so excited to finally get to Uluru. In many ways, it is the spiritual centre of this country. In some way I feel like my whole year's journey has been leading up to this point, and I am close to the end of my pilgrimage. We will be leaving here early in the morning and should arrive at Uluru in mid-afternoon. Wish us a safe journey, and I will report back when I can!