Onward to Darwin! [Outback 2]

Day 4- We begin the road to Darwin. 

We're traveling the Stuart Highway, the path through the continent from Adelaide in he south to  Darwin in the North. We're jumping on at roughly half way at Alice Springs. Its different from US highways because theres no need for speed. its just two lanes, one each way, and you can go huge stretches without seeing anyone else. So off we go. We found out yesterday that we all were actually Kate's first solo trip, which is AWESOME she is so cool and tough. But she's being trained on this Darwin trip, so we have another guide to lead this one, Luke. He's really cool, a very cliche down under sort of guy. Our journey is themed by 6 hours of traveling in our 25 seat bus [holding the 16 of us, Luke and Kate, and 5 more we are yet to meet], which about each hour of travel separated by some sort of stop, whether a sight to see, a walk to take, or as Geyer exclusively calls it, a potty stop. Today's first was the Tropic of Capricorn!

This statue marks the line.

 It's the imaginary line that separates the arid zone where Alice Springs lives from the tropics where Darwin lives. This means it'll be getting hotter and wetter every day. The one guy passenger outside out group started running back and forth across the line saying in some European accent "ooh it's too hot here, oh no it's too cold over here!" Which was pretty random but funny and an impressive display of energy for before sunrise. Then we stopped at "the big man," a breakfast and potty stop in the shadow of a giant statue of an aboriginal man. There's also an enormous eagle there who is a pet because he is injured and can't fly. His name is Bozo and he's huge. He has a girlfriend/booty call that visits him too. These eagles are the biggest in Australia and their wingspan is bigger than the front of our bus. Then was a visit to an old telegraph house that was part of this telegraph line that crossed all of Australia and connected it to Asia and the world.

 It was pretty historic, and there was a tale of how Aboriginal people killed two men working there, probably because they cut off the aboriginal people from the only water source around. Let me pause this journal entry to say OH MY GOODNESS THE FLIES. There is just an incomprehensible number of flies here. And not normal flies, very brave flies that sit right on your nose or fly into your eyes like birds into clean windows. They're unreal. Then we stopped at the UFO capital of Australia! 

It was pretty weird, they were really milking the alien angle. There was even an advert for an alien conference in March. Don't wanna miss that. Then we stopped at Wauchope [walk-up] for more barbie! And a lie in the grass. It was weird, the front of the bar looked crazy dodgy, but inside led to this little fenced in oasis with a pool, grass, palm trees, and the bar was nice with a little restaurant. There was a large shouty Australian man in tiny shorts with one foot up on a chair like a captain, he was funny. So before and after lunch we just lied in the grass and let the flies take us. 

Next was... Bum bum bum...the Devil's Marbles! Which are...rocks. I could not exaggerate how many significant rocks we have seen here. Because, let's be honest, there's not much else on this continent. But the devils marbles are AWESOME. Enormous piles of rusting round rocks, they were once the site of a volcano, cracks formed in the raised earth formed because of the cold air and the hot earth. The rocks eroded at the cracks and formed boulders! And they're all still connected even though they look like someone plopped them here in the middle of nowhere. So that's he "marbles" part of the name. The "devils" part has a story: so farmers would need to cross Australia south to north with their cattle. They'd get to this chunk of the waste and see the close, low, surrounding mountains and said "hey, we should let our cattle loose here since they can't get over the mountains, and we'll watch from the rocks and sleep and whatnot." And they'd wake up in the morning and half of their herd would be dead. So they'd GTFO with all the cattle left. The place got a reputation but farmers kept trying to use it, and cows kept dying. WOAH. It turns out that there's a plant here called Wallflower Poison Bush, that has extremely sharp leaves. Cows would eat it and it would cut them inside and they'd bleed to death internally. Australia, you just keep outdoing yourself. There are also little things here that the plants drop called "teddy bear ass holes." Not my choice of language, I'm just being authentic. 

So we clambered all over the devil's marbles! Becca definitely got best blood, she slipped climbing up the rust covered boulders.

 We have a fun condition on this leg of Wayoutback that whoever gets to the bus last has to eat a spoonful of Vegemite. None of us are okay with that, so we're quite a prompt bunch. Not many stops after Devils Marbles, just more driving to the best camp ever. Really in the middle of no where, it's called Banka Banka. There's a hill you can climb if you navigate a ton of rough grass and brush, where we watched the sunset and could see that there is just wasteland surrounding this tiny place. It's a space to park campers, community kitchen pavilion thing, a tiny bar, and then camp space. We had the best evening, running around, chopping veggies for an awesome dinner [yes, on the barbie], and gazing at the stars. Which are the best yet tonight. And man, was the Tropic of Capricorn right. It's hot now. It was roasting at the devils marbles, only 4 hours drive from chilly Alice Springs. So camping is awesome without battling for warm sleeping bags. We're all sprawled beneath the spangly sky. I met some of our new travelers! I ate dinner with them but I didn't catch all the names. Philipe is Belgian and awesome, he's 19 like me! He's been in Sydney for 5 months and will go home in July to start uni. He learned to surf and is now a total surfer dude and a goofball. He's also got a Kevin Cashman type afro going on which is comforting. Then there's Anna from some island near Madagascar. She speaks French with Phil and is so nice. She's just finished studying osteopathy in Melbourne and is moving to Brisbane. There's Charlotte who is British and looks just like Rebecca C with really long hair! She is taking one month to see Australia after just starting her PhD in atmospheric chemistry back in England. Then there's a German lady who might be named Judith? She's a young middle school teacher there on holiday but she's really intense and a little scary. But quite friendly. Then one more super nice English girl whose name is Carla I believe, who told interesting stories about people getting drugged in clubs. So they're really cool!  After dinner and running about was didgeridoo time! 

A sweet guide from another tour came over and played for a few of us, and let us try. Lucas was the bomb, he got it pretty quick. Then I tried for quite a while. You have to kind of blow a raspberry, like make your lips flap really fast in the front. And do that into the mouthpiece, but it takes a bit to get the hang of it. But I did! It was so neat to make that low tone, and he taught me how to do a  dingo call with it, since playing the didgeridoo is telling a story. He can do kangaroos hopping and boomerangs flying. Then he told me I was pregnant, which was a little concerning. Then he told an aboriginal story to clear things up nicely: [this story is not appropriate for all audiences] there was once a tribe with a boy named Bilk Bilk [the spelling is dodgy, I'm interpreting an Aussie accent here]. Bilk Bilk was huge, by the time he was 5 or 6, he was the size of a full grown man. When he was around 13, Bilk Bilk started taking an interest in the ladies around in the tribes. But Aboriginal law,  Tjkurupta states that males can only marry girls from certain other tribes. The elders of the tribe saw this would be troublesome with Bilk Bilk so they decided to boot him out of the tribe totally. So he left, but soon girls from a few near by tribes were disappearing. Some tribes men went looking for them one night and came across a giant mans footprint, so they knew what was up. To catch him, they made a big campfire, but set a bunch of pitfalls in the surrounding earth to catch him. They had the finest girls dance around the fire to lure Bilk Bilk in. He saw the fine girls and decided he wanted to snatch all of them, so he ran over but fell in a pitfall. But he didn't fall in totally. You see, Bilk Bilk was a little excited upon seeing these girls, and his...excitement caught on the pitfall and held him up a bit. The tribes men popped out of the bushes and speared him, but Bilk Bilk really didn't want to be caught. So he pulled out his weapon, chopped off his penis, and ran away screaming "you'll never catch me!" So the didgeridoo was made and dedicated to telling his story. It's also a big piece of wood, but I don't know if that's culturally purposeful and significant or if the guides were just saying dirty jokes. So only men are supposed to play the didgeridoo, and if a woman does she's supposed to be impregnated by the spirit of Bilk Bilk. That'd be the ultimate souvenir to bring home, child of an Australian spirit. Anyways, there's a generator here making a racket all night, so I'm listing to "Pirates and Mermaids" by Francois-Paul Aiche gazing up at an incredibly starry sky. If you haven't heard the songs, it's really good, you should look them up and try to imagine what I'm seeing right now. Nighty night!

Day 5- Outback trek to Darwin continues. It's quite quite hot now, no more kidding around with this Australian winter crap. But this is much better. We packed up camp and hit the road for quite a while. Something cool about the outback [aka the bush] is that a "town" can really be just a gas station, but that gas station is a bar type thing with the coolest stuff ever. Our stop this morning was a little shack, but that shack had a bunch of snakes in tanks of varying tempers and venoms. We got to hold the friendliest little guy. Then we had out big stop for the day, an awesome caravan stop town called Daly Waters, famous for having the oldest pub in the Northern Territory. Population, 23. There is one street, with the pub on one side and a tin hut across the road titled the "Daly Waters Soovynear and woodthingstation" owned by a sweet lady and her husband, the most outback, BA man the world has ever known, Chili. He sells kangaroo paw knick-knacks, wooden signs with terrible spelling by a lot of humor, and leather whips that he can crack in the dirt road like a boss. 

Nathan got pretty good at it too. His wife sells hand made "jewellrey" and is just too sweet. Chili is the man. We did some bowling in the street, but since the street is a collection of red dust and rocks, the bowling ball chips a little every time you toss it, and a perfectly aimed throw can veer off to the side randomly a d put you to shame. The pub itself is something to behold: the thing to do is leave a piece of yourself behind. Popular items are bras, panties, t shirts, ID cards, pants, flip flops, flags, kettles, guitars, military and police badges, drink cozies, hats, and money, but there's also a piano, a stuffed dog, a bathtub filled with rubber duckies, hand tools, and more. And they're all stuck to the walls and ceiling and rafters. It is insane. 

Im sippin some pear tea under a palm tree. There's also a sweet tree-climbing cat. This place is the bomb. Marry me Chili. There's also this sign

Once a little boy who was born and lived here was told he had leukemia, and only 3 months to live. So Make-a-Wish Australia asked him what he'd like, and his number one wish was to eat a McDonalds cheeseburger. So McDonalds sent a bunch of ingredients and some staff and Chili's store became a McDonald's to make him as many cheeseburgers as he wanted. So beautiful. Next stop was Bitter Springs! Natural thermal springs in a forest of palm trees, just a short drive from Stuart highway. 

It was awesome! It has a current that pushes people lightly from one algae lined pool, around many bends, to another, where it disappears into thick  grass. We passed under huge canopies of spiderwebs less than a meter over our heads, laden with golden orb spiders the size of my hand [plus all the dragonflies they snared].  We swam with the current to the end, then a few of us braved it back up, which was physically challenging and pushed a lot of algae and bits into or faces. Sometimes tree trunks lurked under the water, and once I ran aground on the end of one and it stabbed me in the chest. Good reminder I'm in Australia. Then we all got weird when we tried and failed not to change  in front of each other. Along the journey we played some trivia, but shouting out was punishable by a spoon of Vegemite, and poor Nathan fell victim first! He was just too excited about trivia. But he did it, bookended by desperate gulps of orange juice. We thought he'd barf. He's my hero. Camping was awesome, Luke and Kate made pasta carbonara, so good. We set up some hammocks and I got to sit in the top one and watch everybody in the hut enjoy each others company. What a good team. Now we have been sitting together for such a long time laughing really hard. Emily drew a picture of Scrott Dregory Goroski, and I like it more than any other work of art ever. 

Day 6- I licked an ant's bum! This one!

It was awesome. Aboriginal people squeezed their butts over food to make it taste like lemon. Today we finish our trek to Darwin! This outback stuff is basically in three segments: around Alice Springs for 3 days [Uluru Kata Tjuta national park], up to Darwin for 3 days which is ending today, and 3 days in/around Kakadoo national park. So today we did Katherine Gorge, a series of 13 or some gorges running through Nitmiluk national park. We were originally going to canoe in the river, but the water level is too high so there are probably salt water crocs in it, a no go for swimming and canoeing.  They're the largest crocodiles in the world, some get to 8 meters, about 24 feet long. Insanity. They have freshwater crocs here too but they don't have as much bite pressure so they're not as dangerous. They're smaller and are the fastest crocs in the world. They gallop like horses and can climb out on tree branches. So most of the group did a river cruise on a ferry in 2 of the gorges, but Lucas and myself, plus the 5 new people and our guides Kate and Luke went for a hike up above one of the gorges and out in the bush on top. 

We saw so many things! Licked ant butts, ate a yellow flower that tastes like butter, ate billy goat plums and got as much vitamin C as 50 oranges, saw a ton of huge bats, sniffed a bunch of plants, and fed an ant to this creature that builds Star Wars episode 6 type sand pit traps, where the ant can't get out and falls to the bottom, and the pincers just get him. We've grown brutal in the outback, we lick ants and feed them to sand monsters. Now it's just expressway to Darwin. But we had lunch and I licked more ant butts and got some other people to do it. Poor ants. We hammockd a bit and I ate a ton of cucumber. This past week our diet has been principally cucumber, tomato, lettuce, and apples, with meat and bread thrown in sometimes. I've had 3 apples [and their stems] just today and its one pm. After lunch we just scooted on to Darwin, with a stop at the Didggie Hut, this awesome shack by Stuart highway where this aboriginal guy makes amazing didgeridoos and sells boomerangs and paintings by aboriginal artists in his community and all that stuff. Plus he had a ton of dogs and parrots for us to frolic around with! The best is that all the money he makes goes to his people. It's an awesome place. Then we got to Darwin, which as far as I can tell is just a bananas city. Our hostel is also a night club/cabana/pool type thing, so it was bumpin all night. The entire street we were on was basically a night club. We had dinner at this restaurant/club called Monsoons, which was fun, especially when the live guitar guy came over and sang "Get Back" and Dr. Geyer started getting down with his bad self. I shared a room at the hostel with Ashley, Sarah, and Scott, which was funny because as soon as he came in he said "oh this is gonna get weird." But it didn't, we all just passed out. I tried to use the feeble Internet to post this blog so it isn't a week long, but I failed. Back to the bush tomorrow!

Woah bats!