Australia, the Outback and Uluru

Driving a VW camper into the Australian Outback to Uluru and then up to Darwin.

Transcript

Episode 15 – Australia, The Outback

Well hello everybody! And welcome to the 15th episode of my podcast, Goin’ down the road with Randy. We are in Australia and have been for several months. After working and saving money in Sydney, we are now traveling in our VW camper. Currently it is just the two of us in the van. We have traveled up the east coast from Sydney, all the way to Cooktown and now it is time to turn our trusty Volkswagen camper van, Stella Blue, west and into the vast interior of Australia, known as the Outback. Our current destination is Uluru, or you might know it as Ayers Rock, which is pretty close to smack dab in the middle of fucking nowhere. From there we will head back north to Darwin where we intend to leave the country and fly onward to Indonesia.

It is Monday, August 26th, 1991 and morning finds us camped in a rest area on the Flinders Highway approximately 100 kilometers west of Charters Towers. If you look up desolate in the dictionary there is a picture of this little rest area. Nothing to be seen but red dirt. If you look up gullible there is a picture of you. Oh, wait, stop now, that is not nice at all.

We are up early; the heat drives us from bed and we drive through the nothingness toward Mount Isa, a mining town about 250 miles away. Did I mention that there is nothing out here. There are very few cars traveling the road. Not much to say, not much to see. We drive around Mount Isa hoping to pick up a hitchhiker to split gas costs with us but there is no one. We camp at the lookout.

Mount Isa is a “T” intersection and the next morning we turn north on the Barkly Highway and begin the longest single days’ drive yet – over 700 kilometers. From Mount Isa, through Camooweal across nothingness to enter the Northern Territory of Australia. At Waramungu, or “three ways”, we intersect the Stuart Highway, also known as “The Track”. It is a 2-lane road that runs for 2700 kilometers from Darwin in the north to Port Augusta in South Australia and it bisects the continent.

We head south on the track passing Tennant Creek and finally give Stella a rest and camp at Devil’s Marbles. During one stretch of the drive we travel 400 kilometers with no town or dwelling in sight. We see plenty of roadkill, kangaroos, cattle, pigs, and large lizards. Shortly after entering the Northern Territory we encounter a cow carcass burning on the side of the road – very surreal, like a scene out of Mad Max. Sometimes we see a person walking in the middle of nowhere, not along the road but like out in the desert.

We see our first road train. A road train is a very large tractor pulling 3, sometimes 4 trailers and it is best to give them a wide berth as they can’t stop and they are not very maneuverable. They tend to spray windshield shattering rocks in their wake. Many cars are equipped with screens to protect the windshield from rocks. We don’t have one of those.

We also see signs warning us of wild camels. I wonder what do I have to worry about from a wild camel. I know I don’t want to hit one in the road, but what about if I stop to take a pee behind a bush and one runs up on me, what do I do then? I just don’t know.

The landscape at Devil’s Marbles is surreal. Large granite boulders lie scattered about as if tossed by some unseen hand. Many are perched on top of one another. Apparently they are just the top of a large underground granite formation. Known as Karlu karlu by the aborigines, it is a sacred site related to many of their dreamtime origination stories.

The heat wakes us up and we continue driving south. The earth seems redder and the heat may be less intense the father south we go. Or is that my imagination?

We meet Dave and Heidi, who are coming back north after their Rock visit. They advise us against visiting Kings Canyon as they nearly destroyed their van on 200 kilometers of corrugated dirt road. Good to know because we were definitely considering going there.

We get into Alice Springs in the early afternoon and check into a caravan park for showers and laundry. They also have a refreshing swimming pool which we take full advantage of. There are some oh-so-cute little rock wallabies scampering about and I feed them – probably a no-no but I don’t care. I change the oil in Stella – she has been working so hard and is running like a champion and I’d like to keep it that way. These roads are no place to break down.

Thursday, August 29th we spend in Alice Springs. A very touristy town which is the gateway to Uluru or Ayers Rock though it is still a good 450 kilometers, over a 5 hour drive to reach our destination. Distances here take on a life of their own, a 10 hour round trip is seen as a day trip. The vast majority of visitors to the Rock fly into Alice Springs.

We take the day off from driving to run errands – you know, go to the post office, phone home. We learn there is a rodeo on Saturday and we discuss whether to stay and wait for it but finally decide not to.

In fact, we decide to go ahead and start driving to the Rock when we meet Paul and Janet coming the other way. It is a testament to the paucity of traffic that you can recognize folks driving opposite you in the vast wasteland. (If you remember I took my open water diving course with Paul and Janet in Airlie Beach in episode 5.)

We have a roadside conference and we decide to stay and party tonight with these two. They are staying at the “G’day Mate caravan park. They have 2 entry tickets to the national park that are still good saving us 8 dollars each. We make dinner in Stella and drink lots of wine and pass out.

The heat wakes us up again and we say our goodbyes and drive to the Rock hoping to avoid the worst of the afternoon heat while driving in the morning. Stella is one fantastic machine but she does not have air-conditioning and sometimes it is like driving in a blast furnace with the windows down.

We drive through the red desert of roadkill and broken retreads and reach Uluru in the early afternoon. We spend an hour in the visitor center and then mosey down to the Rock.

Uluru, or Ayers Rock, and Kata Tjuta, which is what the aborigines call the Olgas are the relic of an immense bed of sedimentary rock now covered by windblown sand. It is believed the 36 domes of the Olgas – and I refer to them as the Olgas merely because I can’t pronounce the other name – I guess I could call them K.T. OK, so the 36 domes of K.T were likely once a single massive dome of rock many times the size of Uluru.

There has been a ban on climbing the Rock since, I think, 2017 but when we were there there was a well-trodden route to the top that is probably 5.2 climbing grade and is protected by a chain link handrail - it is perfectly safe. We climb, hoping that the voracious flies at ground level will dissipate the higher we go.

We do not make it to the cairn on top which marks the summit before the setting sun drives us down. I play some hack while waiting for a spectacular sunset which never materializes. Then we have to kill some time before scamming our way into the caravan park to avoid paying the 16 dollar fee. See, the deal is that the gate is unmanned at night so if you go in late you just find an open spot and pay the next day and if you leave before the gate is manned in the morning, you’re golden! So we go to the Yulara Tavern and buy beers and kill time.

The bottle shop has signs that declare at the request of the local aboriginal community they refuse to sell alcohol to native inhabitants. Additionally, they ask that you refrain from purchasing it for them. So, naturally, as soon as I leave the tavern I am accosted by an older aborigine pleading with me to buy him some grog. I take pity on the poor guy and buy him a couple of boxes of Moselle. I don’t know if I did the right thing, probably not, but the experience of a grown man asking another to buy him some wine was enough. If they want to reduce alcoholism within the aboriginal community, I reason, there must be a better way than having visiting tourists deny them.

We pull into the caravan park and find an empty spot and make ourselves at home. We fire up the barbie and make some scrumptious lamb chops.

The next morning we are off at dawn with the dual purpose of catching the sunrise and avoiding the 16 dollars camping fee and we are successful on both counts. I don’t know if this scam still works but we use it to good effect. The sunrise however is not spectacular. We go to the ranger station and make tea and breakfast and nap a bit before walking around the rock.

We make a complete circumnavigation of the Rock and visit Maggie Springs and the Kangaroo’s tail. The rock art here seems more jumbled and less well-preserved than at Carnarvon Gorge but there are some interesting little side canyons into the Rock.

Then we do the climb for real this time. The view from the top is quite impressive and the vastness of the rock monolith inspires awe. We scramble about the vast summit plateau for quite a while. The view of the Olgas from here beckons from 30 kilometers away and they are going to be our next stop.

We drive to the Valley of the Four Winds and charge around the loop in quite a bit less time than the recommended 4 hours – more like an hour and a half mostly due to the voracious flies everywhere. We shove small twigs into our straw hats to deter them landing on our face but this is only marginally effective. We prefer the Olgas to the Rock and the valleys between the rock formations are truly amazing. The flies are amazing as well and do their best to make any hike miserable.

We catch a pretty nice sunset and get some good pictures of the Rock before hitting up the tavern again. No aboriginals are needing alcohol tonight and we successfully scam into an empty camping spot and have a very restful night. Our bodies are tired from all the hiking and climbing.

Sunday September 1st we have decided that we have ticked all the boxes here and we are going to head out. We are buying some milk for our tea when Greta spies Peter Garrett, lead singer for the Australian rock band, “Midnight Oil”. She asks for a photo but he claims to be “allergic” and begs off. Fair enough. Hell, I wouldn’t have even recognized the poor bastard so I reckon he should be glad we even asked.

We retrace our route down the retread and roadkill highway and reach Alice Springs by late afternoon. We don’t even stay, just get gas and supplies and drive, north this time with Darwin as the final destination, 1500 kilometers or so away. We stop at a roadside about 100 kilometers outside of Alice and make camp.

The next day is another marathon road day and we make it almost to Warumungu, or three ways, north of Tennant Creek. It is a long day of driving.

We are off again the next morning. The distances involved in driving the Australian outback are huge and empty. We meet up with Paul and Janet again at some little bumfuck town – which just goes to show how hard we have been pushing it. We decide to meet up again in the evening at the hot springs in Mataranka.

On the way we stop at a little pub in Daly Waters. Greta wants to stay for the 10 dollar beef and barramundi barbeque but the hot springs are calling. We drive on and arrive in early evening. Stop at a bottle shop for some refreshment and slip into the warm water. It is just what the doctor ordered after a long day in the saddle.

The only drawback is all the bats. We have a shower and a grilled barramundi dinner with wine. We end up getting pretty pissed at the outdoor bar even though the punk-ass young Aussie with an attitude provoked me by calling me a “sepo”.

Like I wouldn’t understand his reference, but we have been in Australia long enough to know. “Sepo” means septic tank, which comes from “Yank” and the implication is that Americans are shit and I know exactly what he is saying and I am not having it. It almost comes to blows. We leave before it comes to that and make camp just outside the springs at a little roadside pull out.

We’re on the road early again – there is no sleeping in in this heat. We have a short day driving only a little more than 100 kilometers to Katherine. We stop at the tourist info office and book a canoe trip on the Katherine River. We will go for a day and a half and leave tomorrow morning.

We get a few provisions from the store – we are mostly stocked up – and drive the 30 kilometers to Nitmiluk National Park.

Here the Katherine river has carved a series of 13 spectacular gorges in the sandstone. The gorges and surrounding landscape have great ceremonial significance for the local Jawoyn people, its custodians. In the Jawoyn language, Nitmiluk means "the place of the cicada dreaming".

We check out the visitor’s center and then go down for a swim. We are assured that there are no dangerous saltwater crocodiles here – only harmless freshwater crocs, called Johnstone crocodiles. During the wet season sometimes the saltwater crocs come down from Kakadu and swimming is prohibited but we are here in the dry season. The smaller “freshies” rarely get more than about 10 feet long and are not known to attack humans unless provoked, such as by stepping on them. I vow to not step on any crocodiles.

We have a swim and meet Fred the pelican with a broken leg, who now loves humans. We start cooking dinner in the parking lot until the ranger comes by and kicks us out in the middle of the preparations – apparently they close at 7. He’s pretty cool about it though, he says just go outside the park and do what you like. So, we do. 

There is a little pull out just outside the park and there are some Brits camping there. The four of us – Paul and Janet are with us by the way – join them and soon some Germans show up. We have a little international village going on here. I mosey over to say, “Hi!’ and learn there are six of them in a van and have taken 3 weeks to drive here from Perth. We have dinner and wine and converse.

Thursday, September 5th we are up early and pick up our permits and then go the small store to find fuel for our MSR stove but have no luck. So we just decide to take cold food, a can of beans, a can of tuna and a can of corn will be our dinner. God help us if we forget a can opener!

 We load up the canoes and begin paddling up the beautiful Katherine Gorge. Paul and Janet have opted for the day trip and will not be spending the night and are ahead of us. In the wet season there are rapids between the gorges but now they are a maze of rocks and require us to drag the canoes. It is hard work in the hot sun.

The second, fifth and ninth gorges are meant to be the best but between the third and the fourth gorge is a long, thousand-meter stretch of rock. This is where we have lunch and Paul and Janet turn back after lunch. Greta and I are lucky as there are 2 girls here who want to swap canoes. We will take their upstream canoe and they will take our downstream one. We will still have to pull it across the rocks going back but it is better than having to do it both ways.

After lunch we say goodbye to Paul and Janet and hike our gear to our new boat. We paddle the fourth gorge and find a nice campsite and dump our stuff. We continue paddling up the fifth, and to our minds the most spectacular gorge. The end brings us to a mass of rock which we decide to not negotiate with the canoe.

Instead we continue on foot. By this I mean we swim and walk from here on out. The sixth gorge has a series of rock bars with only short pools of water between them. We swim and walk our way to the end of the seventh gorge. We stop at the beginning of the eighth gorge.

It is a fantastic experience swimming through these beautiful gorges in sweet water. We see a few crocodiles and they make us a bit uneasy but don’t seem to pay us any mind. It is weird though to see a snout in the water only yards away. We swim and scramble back to our camp.

We find there are a pair of Brits there when we arrive and we make small talk – they are traveling in a VW van as well. It is an early night. It has been an exhausting day.

The night is hot and buggy. We wake at dawn and have no tea to wake us for the paddle back downstream. It is a different atmosphere up here in the early morning with no one around and the early morning light reflecting off the walls, it is truly a magical place and I kind of wish we had a few more days here.

We return our canoes at noon and notify the rangers of our safe return. In town there is a large parage of colorfully dressed Aborigines but we aren’t able to figure out the occasion. We stock up at the store for Kakadu and head up the road again, ever northward.

We find a shortcut which saves us 500 kilometers of driving but it involves 100 kilometers on a dirt road but it is well worth it. We are in Kakadu National Park by dark and find a campsite by the South Alligator River where a big sign warns of the presence of large crocodiles. We have a dinner of burgers and veggies and have an early night as it has been another long, exhausting day.

We learn later that the area now known as Kakadu National park has been inhabited for at least 25,000 years – possibly for twice that long. The Aboriginals are intertwined with  the park itself and have been for, basically, forever – like 40,000 years. Kakadu is 200 kilometers long and 100 kilometers wide and is one of the largest national parks in Australia. It is lucky to be a protected area as the whole park is surrounded by uranium mines.

My sleep is not restful. Between the heat and bugs and the possible presence of large carnivorous animals I am up half the night. We get up and have tea and drive into Cooinda a book a tour on the Yellow River billabong for tomorrow morning. A billabong, by the way, in case you don’t know, is an oxbow lake which is created when a river changes course leaving behind the water and not connected to the river.

Then we go to the visitor center and watch a slide show and pay our 8 dollar entrance fee. Then we go to Jabiru and go to the public pool. For a buck 20 we can swim all day in this huge, Olympic sized pool and it is a great way to escape the heat of the day.

In late afternoon we go down to Nourlangie Rock, or Burrunggui, to see the rock art and listen to the rangers’ very informative talk. Both are very interesting and worthwhile. We end the day with a hike around the Anbangbang billabong and then find a campsite in the Burdulba area. We will have cold chicken – chook, in Aussie slang - and veg for dinner washed down with wine, of course.

I have been reading Bruce Chatwin’s “The Songlines” for a glimpse into Aboriginal culture. It is very interesting. Each person has a “dreaming” which is given to them at their birth by the elders of the tribe. (ie. kangaroo dreaming, jabiru dreaming, etc.) This dreaming is part of the creation from the dreamtime when then earth was formed by the spirit ancestors in human and animal form.

The particular individual dreaming is but part of the whole. Each dreaming has a songline – a song following a particular part of the landscape. The songline recreates the country as the singer walks it. There are a myriad of songs for the whole of the country. The rock art reflects beings in the songs and the dreamtime. It is truly fascinating and we are ignorant of most of it.

Sunday, September 8th we find that Paul and Janet are also booked on the same Yellow Waters cruise this morning. They pulled into our campsite last night right after I found a scorpion – and I was walking around in bare feet!

Anyway, the cruise is amazing! The guides tie a whole chicken carcass onto a long pole and use it to entice the crocodiles to leap several feet out of the water chasing it. It kind of makes you think when we are seated in a boat within a foot or so of the water’s surface. But the really spectacular sight is the birds – both in number and variety, white ibis, red-crowned Jacanas – or Jesus birds, sea eagles, kingfishers, darters, a beautiful and magnificent Jabiru stork, night herons, plumed ducks, magpie geese and that’s all I know. There were more. It was well worth the 20 dollar fee.

Afterwards we walk up to the Mirrai Lookout and I find a piece of stringybark branch that is almost, but not quite hollowed out by termites for a nice digeridoo. Then we drive out to Nourlangie Rock again and walk to the Namguluwar Gallery which is nice in it’s isolation but the art is not so spectacular.

The heat drives us again to the pool for the late afternoon. Afterwards we pick up some beers and camp at Malabanjbanjgdu – I can’t even say that!

The next morning we drive up the badly corrugated road – slowly to Ulbirr. It is rough but worth it. I think this is the most impressive art that I have seen. Perhaps the ranger talk educated us to a deeper appreciation. There are great examples of “contact art”, or art made after contact with white people. Lots of good fish and other food art. There are mimi spirits on the impressively high ceilings. How did they get there? Who knows? The Aboriginals say that the mimi painted them there. I almost have to believe them because I can’t imagine how ancient hunter-gatherers got up there to paint them.

Mimis, in case you don’t know, are fairy-like beings with thin, elongated bodies, so thin a strong wind will break them, so they live in rock crevices. According to Aboriginal folklore, Mimi had human form and made the first rock paintings before the Aboriginal people arrived in northern Australia. The Mimi taught the Aboriginal people how to paint, and how to hunt and cook kangaroo meat. The Mimi are considered to be mischievous but generally harmless.

We go down to Manugarre monsoon rainforest walk and see a huge colony of flying foxes – fruit bats. They make quite the racket and have a distinctive and not entirely pleasant smell. In early afternoon we drive back to the main highway and turn Stella towards Darwin. On the way we stop at the Mamukala wetlands.

The number of birds here is mind-boggling. We are fortunate to borrow binoculars from another guy who was there to be able to really see the magnitude of the spectacle. But, we don’t stay long and make camp at the appropriately named Leaving Tree Nature Reserve. We have a bit of a scare when the sky becomes red with the glare of an approaching brushfire but it must be controlled because it soon goes out.

Kakadu National Park is a gem. To me it and the Great Barrier Reef epitomize everything that Australia is all about. The wonder and beauty of the unique natural forces at play here are mesmerizing.

The morning of Tuesday, September 10th, 1991 a short drive brings us to Territory Wildlife Park, a small zoo of local animals. Our student cards get us in for 4 dollars and that’s good because – meh – it’s only ok. The aquarium is pretty good and the nocturnal house is interesting.

We leave in early afternoon for Darwin and the end of our road here in Australia. The only thing for us to do here is sell the van and move on to Indonesia. We cruise into town and almost immediately find Dave and Heidi outside the AMEX. They sold their van the first day!

We get mail, go shopping and find Paul and Janet down at the transit center on Mitchell Street – the Mitchell Street car market. Janet is sick and vomiting, I’m guessing it’s a self-inflicted wound that occurred before we got here. The rest of us go out for beers and fish and chips followed by a movie. With a student card movies are 5 bucks on Tuesdays and 7 dollars every other day. We see Cityslickers with Billy Crystal and come back and piss it up until the wee hours until we are warned about our noise. Paul and Janet go back to their caravan park while we try sleeping in the parking lot until we get kicked out by the same asshole who warned us about the noise. So we go to the street but I don’t like it there so I try to find the caravan park but get lost. Finally I find a nice little park with another camper van already there. I pull in and crawl back to find that Greta has been quietly snoozing through the whole thing!

We are awakened at an ungodly hour by a representative of the Darwin City Council. He writes us a warning citation and we roll over and go back to sleep in a vain attempt to ward off an impending hangover. The citation says, basically, if they catch us again it’ll cost us a 200 dollar fine. All these months in Australia and now we find the assholes at the end.

We wake up at 9 and go into town to the bank and the travel agent and then out to Lee Point Caravan Park where Paul and Janet are staying. We spend the entire day cleaning and shining everything in Stella. We unload everything, and sweep, clean and polish the entire car. By 7 p.m. she is spotless we put up the sign for sale at $4,950.00 and go into town to see Terminator 2.

Thursday, September 12th is our first day parked at the Mitchell Street car market. Not much action. Too many cars and not enough buyers and everyone that is buying is looking for cheaper cars. All day and no serious offers.

Friday, September 13th is a lucky day. We sit by the van on Mitchell Street and sweat. Dave and I go digeridoo shopping but a good one is really expensive and it is looking like I will leave Australia without one because a good one is what I want. I drive him out to TNT Air Couriers to mail his stuff home. No serious offers on the van. We have beers in the evening. The girls have a night out while the guys sit in the Victoria Hotel and have beer after beer.

A big rainstorm came through last night but today is a scorcher! We get a few lookers but no offers. Paul and Janet sell their trusty Holden station wagon to a Norwegian couple. Paul is happy to have sold the car but sad to be leaving. We have a little party to celebrate. Dave and Heidi are flying to Denpasar, Bali tomorrow – we will cross paths with Dave again without Heidi. We piss it up in the courtyard behind the transit center with the big banyan tree. I try to take it easy as I can see that I will be driving everyone home. There are lots of laughs and we all go home happy.

The next morning we take Paul and Janet and their stuff into town, then we take Dave and Heidi out to the airport for their flight. There are new faces in town as a flight came in from Indonesia today. All in all a quiet day on the van sale front. We leave early to sort out our stuff to mail out tomorrow. All of our camping and climbing gear is going back home. We will be traveling on backpacks in Indonesia and need to slim down considerably.

We finally sell the van for $3700 on Monday September 23rd – we get 300 dollars less than we bought it for in Sydney, so really Stella has been an incredible bargain! We party like drunken rednecks on payday and then fly to Kupang, Timor in Indonesia on Wednesday, the 25th on the Merpati Air flight.

I don’t really realize it at the time but from here on out we will be spending an inordinate amount of time bargaining and haggling over transport. We have lost our means of self-transport and thus our control over when and how we get to where we are going. As a traveler, this is huge. You always pay for transport but when it is as simple as a stop at a gas station it is far easier than haggling with bemo, bus and taxi drivers.

We have been in Australia for 9 months and have done pretty a pretty good job covering the country, but there is much that we have missed. I really wished we could have gone to Melbourne for one thing, but this country is so immense. It has been a rollercoaster of once in a lifetime experiences – like diving on the Great Barrier Reef - and deep personal disappointments – like having people you thought were your friends steal from you – but all in all the positives far outweigh the negatives as they usually do.

We are excited to begin the adventure anew in Asia. Up until now we have been in English-speaking countries and have had our own transport. The travel has been relatively easy. That is all about to change in ways that we don’t even know yet.

And this, my friends, is where episode 2 picks up and where I will leave you tonight. I will post on the podcast page the proper sequence for listening in chronological order. I will also do that at the end of the next episode, which will be the last in this series. I will find you again, somewhere down the road. Until then, thank you so much for listening and be kind to each other.