For a few days I felt exceedingly unsure about what to do. Try and get a job in Darwin? Fly to Perth and do the same? Hitch-hike my way down the West Coast? This last option was one that scared me, but despite that, or perhaps because of that, it was the one that appealed the most. Yet none of them were to be.
When still in Alice Springs I met a really nice couple from the UK, they had just spent a good few months travelling Asia and waxed lyrical on the wonder that is Indonesia. Initially I dismissed the idea, I wanted to see the west coast, but after a while the conversation began to remind me how much I enjoyed my previous travels in Asia and how much I have been wanting to experience more. Beyond that I really didn't feel like getting another job. I decided to look at flights, just to see.
A couple of hours later I had not only booked a flight to Bali but had also managed to arrange a volunteer position on an urban farm somewhere in Denpasar. The west coast, I decided, could wait for another trip.
And so I find myself, a little worse for the wear, on the bus north from Alice Springs. As has happened so often, I leave that which I do not want to leave. And yet, as has happened so often, I approach that which I desperately want to see. I gaze wistfully out the window pondering my lost sand and wait for sleep to reclaim me. At 5.38am we cross the tropic of Capricorn.
Our first stop is a strange little place called Wycliff Well. It looks to be little more than a service station and a caravan park and yet it has a great claim to fame, for every place in Australia, no matter how small, has to have something that makes its inhabitants think it famous, and if a town does not possess such a thing then the locals are just as happy to make something up.
This place is legitimate though. This tiny patch of desert is the UFO capital of Australia. Of all the three million square miles of ancient beauty that makes up this country the aliens decide that they just have to visit this sixty acre holiday park. It does have a lake for swimming and recreation so that could explain it. And just in case you don't believe him, the owner of the service station has decorated the whole place with green men and exceedingly dated spaceships, as if to prove a point. We are warned not to make fun of anything we see as the locals (local?) take it very seriously.
The next stop is at the Devil's Marbles, and they are much more interesting. They are made from a patch of granite that had long been buried under the sandstone that pervades this area. Ancient tectonic movements brought this rock to the surface and as the pressure on it diminished it expanded and cracked into large blocks. In the years since then the blocks have been worn down until today where they appear as vast round boulders. And although they are made of granite it is like no granite that I have ever seen. There isn't a speck of grey in sight. As at Uluru the surface of these rocks has rusted red. Imagine if Aberdeen was this colour:
To the Aboriginals this place is called Karlu Karlu, which roughly translates as 'round boulders', and it is an extremely important site to them. There are many old aboriginal stories associated with this area but unfortunately almost all are deemed unsuitable for sharing with outsiders. One story that I do know is how it came by its English name. The 'marble' bit is fairly self explanatory, but the reason these particular marbles were thought to belong to the devil is not, as you might guess, to do with the colour.
Some time in the 1800's, I think, a farmer on his way through the area with his livestock put his cattle out to graze overnight in the area around the Devil's Marbles. In the morning he awoke to find all his cattle dead without a mark upon them. For a long time the area was avoided until another farmer found himself in a similar position and decided to take the risk. The same thing happened, and thus was the reputation of the Devil's Marbles established. The culprit in question turned out to be not the devil but a flower, small and irresistible to cows, that grows with thorns so sharp that they can cause internal bleeding, and death, if ingested.
We walk between hulking saffron boulders and climb to the heights of great mounds of them to see the land dotted for miles around. Some are perfectly round, most are not. Some are balanced precariously upon each other, or form a bridge between two others much like a past Stonehenge that has long been forgotten and only now is slowly being revealed. Some are even split in two as if by some unknowable act of power, and their grey matter is bared for all the world to see. I treat myself to a solo climb up a particularly challenging area of rocks and am rewarded with yet another burnt vista.
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A stop off on the way.
The pub kindly provides directions to the nearest McDonalds.
That evening two of the locals take us on a tour of the long abandoned prison and post office, the latter of which is the home of a grisly death. A suicide that everyone suspects was a murder. The building feels like it's falling down around us and unfortunately we can't enter the room where the deed itself took place due to a ceiling collapse. If there hadn't been so much company it would have been a terrifying place. Pale walls stripped of adornment close in around while flaking doors hang from their hinges. The flash of your torch reveals unwanted shadows through beckoning dark doorways.
One of our guides, and one the nine town residents, is from, believe it or not, just north of Inverness! He has been here long enough that he looks like the most Australian person I have ever seen, but his accent still screams Scotland. The other guy is Australian in both appearance and voice. He is an interesting one for sure and he makes the guys at Wycliff Well look boring and mundane, and he disparages them as being no more than a gimmick. The real aliens, of course, come to Daly Waters, specifically his back yard where to this day there is a circle of land that plants refuse to grow on; a result of a visit he had the day he moved in. No doubt they just couldn't wait to find out who the eighth resident of Daly Waters was going to be.
He regales us with extraterrestrial stories. He even reveals that he used to work for the government and that he personally was the one ordered to burn all the official documents relating to aliens, all a part of the Great Cover Up. He assures us that he managed to save a few files and they are currently hidden away in his house. At one point he comes out with this gem of worldly wisdom, and I assure you he was being utterly serious when he said it:
“I know now what the important things in life are. One, family. Family always come first. And two? Looking for UFO's."
Now that I think about it Daly Waters could well be some sort of alien experiment.
After the tour me and Laura get talking to the Scot about the stars, which here are clearer than I have ever seen, even in Uluru. He tells us to walk about twenty meters down the road so we are out of the streetlight and look again. We do so.
The moon is new and without its obscuring the light the full majesty of the heavens is unveiled. The Milky Way is an eonian girdle, effervescent across an occult sky. Stars burn and flicker with ancient fire, planets blaze clear and strong, and light seems to permeate in the air before me like dust suspended in a sunbeam, almost opaque, almost within my grasp. It is pure beauty, eternal and separate, a world of glass and silver that is forever just beyond the reach of your fingertips. It barely seems real.
The following dawn again sees us well on the road, and by nine in the morning we have stopped for a swim. The creek we are taken to winds through the jungle and we drift upon its warm currents under trailing fronds and drooping palms. And spiders. Hundreds upon hundreds of spiders. Huge spiders. Huge spiders with webs that stretch from one side of the river to the other and swoop down until they are but a few centimetres from the surface of the water and you have to dive under them lest you shake loose a black and yellow nightmare the size of your outstretched hand. They aren't poisonous. But in 2012 one of these spiders was caught consuming a half meter long brown tree snake. Make of that what you will.
Spiders aside, it is beautiful. The water is perfectly clear and you can see the dappled sunlight twisting and twining across its sandy bed. Eventually we come to a bridge where we haul ourselves out and walk back up the stream to where we started. We make the journey again.
After lunch we find ourselves swimming once more, this time in a wide and open pool at the base of a small waterfall and there isn't a spider in sight. Crocodiles however, can cause a problem. A much more severe one I would imagine. Today the signs say the pool is safe, and the crocodile traps just down the river form a last line of defence should any stray this far upstream. Our guide tells us that only a few days ago a three-meter-er was caught making its way into this particular pool. I'm not sure if I believe him.
At long last our bus pulls into Darwin, two days of driving, swimming, and learning about aliens later.
Here be spiders.
Here be termites.
Here be crocodiles.
Darwin is much like Cairns that Amy and I visited very briefly on the east coast, although it's not quite so tragic. It is still relatively devoid of culture and creativity, but I can see it could be a lot of fun for a short time, and it is surrounded by gorgeous tropical scenery. On our first night we meet up with people from our tour and I dance so vigorously that I have to remove my flip-flops lest they fly into someone's face. Half a song later I notice they have gone missing so I proceed to continue through the night barefoot until the bouncer tells me to go home and get more shoes. I grudgingly oblige.
The second night we attend a firework display on the beach and a night market stretched along the shore. The fireworks are massively below par, I mean ever Jerilderie put on a better display and they only have seven hundred people, six hundred of whom are Irish, and Darwin is supposed to be the capital of the Northern Territory. But the Northern Territory, I am slowly discovering, leaves a lot to be desired. To start with you can't buy peaches or nectarines anywhere within its borders, which is nigh on unbearable. And secondly, there are only about two shops in the entire place that sell boxes of wine (those places being the drive through alcohol shops – have I ranted about this before? I mean come on people, you don't know how to fix your massive drink driving problem and yet you persist in opening drive through off-licences), and these boxes of wine can only be bought between six pm and nine pm, they can only sell one at a time, and they aren't allowed to stock any that are over two litres. I mean what is the point.
I realise that was simultaneously a complaint about both not being able to buy alcohol and about Australians selling too much alcohol but what can you do. I stand by both.
The night market however was very good. Lots of classic Australian tourist ware abounded; boomerangs and didgeridoos and the like, and lots of wonderful food. I overheard one jewellery stall owner claim that Australia is the only country in the world where you can find opals, which I'm pretty sure isn't true, but it's the sort of thing an Australian would say. And it did help her make a sale.
On mine and Laura's final day together we take a trip into Lichfield National Park. It is much like the more famous Kakadu National Park only smaller, cheaper and easier to get to. We are in a small group, just us two, a German girl, and a group of three guys (two English, one Welsh) one of whom is passed out at the back of the minibus due to overindulgence the night before.
Our driver, it swiftly becomes apparent, is another nutball. He is an odd mix of characteristics and opinions that both appeal and detest me. On one hand he is carefree and doesn't seem to take life too seriously, and he has very good views on preserving the natural world. And on the other he tells us how he and his friends are planning on going out and catching a wild pig, tying it up, and throwing it to the crocodiles 'just to see what happens'. I'm pretty sure I know what would happen, and it would involve taking pleasure out of death. Killing animals for food or necessity, ok. Killing purely for enjoyment, disgusting. Then he justifies himself by saying “because you can do that sort of thing here. That's just the Northern Territory lifestyle', as if that would convince anyone that life in NT was more fulfilling that anywhere else in the world.
Our day in Lichfield is superb. We visit termite mounds that tower many times above me, some up to two hundred years old. They are amazing structures, vast networks of tunnels built to perfectly maintain the exact temperature and humidity that the queen requires to hatch her eggs. In some places they dot the ground far around, soaring above the grass like great cities of the future stretching above trees, built to withstand an inhospitable outside
We swim beneath waterfalls surrounded by sheer cliffs topped with rainforest green, trees cascade down the steep slopes and take root against all the odds. We bathe in crystal pools where streams have worn the rock perfectly smooth, and we clamber over rocky temples where water plunges into the depths of the earth.
After Lichfield we make our way to a boat that will take us on a trip down crocodile infested waters. While afloat a member of the crew holds a fishing line over the side and entices crocodiles with pieces of meat, tempting them to jump from the water to reach it whilst giving those on board a closer view than is usually possible without losing an arm or two.
The crew here know a lot about, and obviously care a lot for, the crocodiles. It is very important to them that the crocodiles do not become in any way dependent on humans. They ensure this first by never feeding each crocodile more than one time in any given day, and second by making the crocodiles jump at least three times before they are allowed to catch the meat. This way the crocodile will have expended more energy in getting the food than they will get from the food so they will still have to hunt for themselves. Although the jump that they perform is a completely natural manoeuvre, it is one that uses a lot of energy.
Here our tour guide reveals his own brand of bizarre Australian beliefs when he tells us that the universe is inside of everyone, and that a remnant of the big bang can be seen inside our eyes. I mean I suppose he's right, because that is when all matter was created, but I don't think that's what he means. I nod along anyway. He then deduces therefore that if we want to see billions of years into the past all we need to do is look deep into a crocodile's eyes. Or something.
I wouldn't put it quite like he did, but there is something primeval, and downright scary, about the deadly creatures that silently slip from the mudbanks as we pass, scaled in armour older than the river itself. Their eyes, I think, lack the depth that so many creatures possess there, they are reminiscent of painted stone more than glass. They seem almost another to be just another scale, so perfectly do they blend in with the tough glistening shell that encases them.
The crocodiles effortlessly drift across the water, ridged spines cutting the water with lethal grace. They hover beneath the dangling meat and lower their body down into the water, eyes fixed on their prize. The tip of the tail remains just at the surface. At the last minute they swoop their tail under then they lunge upwards, sometimes getting their entire body out of the water in a huge surge of power, and revealing the softer yellow skin of their underbelly as they do so.
They are amazing creatures, and beautiful in their strength and skill and tenacity in survival. Did you know that they can survive for months without nourishment, and if they are caught far from water when the dry weather hits they will coat themselves in mud and slow their heart down so it beats as little as twice a minute, and thus wait out the dry season. Beyond this, wounds bother them little, and they never bleed out for they can simply stop the blood from pumping to different parts of their body. Even if they lose a leg or four they seem completely unfazed.
Female crocodiles stop growing at around about three meters, but the males continue to grow for their entire lives, and it is thought that they can live for as long as two hundred and fifty years though few now surpass one hundred. It is currently unknown exactly how big or how old they can get (some that we saw were easily six meters) because all the oldest were killed for their leather when hunting was still legal. Crocodile leather is the most expensive animal skin in the world, and nowadays it is still farmed, but hunting has been outlawed since 1971. When it became apparent that the crocodiles were in danger they started to record the size of all those that they caught, the largest recorded being 8.7m. There are no official records before this but it is said that when crocodile hunting started it wasn't uncommon to catch one that was ten meters long. As sad as it is that these terrifying behemoths are no longer in the world with us, if they had been jumping from the river I think they would have eaten the meat, fishing rod and the poor woman holding it. Give it another hundred years and they may well be.
After the crocodiles we return to Darwin and it is time to say goodbye to Laura. She is flying to New Zealand and I am flying to Indonesia. This is the saddest parting I have had in a long time, we have been travelling and living together for longer even than I was with Amy. But now I have another friend who I cannot wait to meet up with when we are both back in Scotland. Since leaving home I have never spent more than a day or two by myself and I suspect that that trend will continue. People who travel alone say that it is the best way to travel, for you gain complete freedom to do as you will and you hardly ever need to sacrifice company to do it. I home that continues to be true.
My plane speeds along the runway and lightning flashes all around, lighting up the dark sky with thundering bursts of promise and excitement. Australia drops away beneath me, and I can't say I am sad to leave it behind. I do not know where this anti-Australian sentiment I am feeling has come from, and looking back through what I have written I see I have spent a lot of time complaining about Australia or Australians. Perhaps it's just that I'm in Asia now, and everything is better here.
The second night we attend a firework display on the beach and a night market stretched along the shore. The fireworks are massively below par, I mean ever Jerilderie put on a better display and they only have seven hundred people, six hundred of whom are Irish, and Darwin is supposed to be the capital of the Northern Territory. But the Northern Territory, I am slowly discovering, leaves a lot to be desired. To start with you can't buy peaches or nectarines anywhere within its borders, which is nigh on unbearable. And secondly, there are only about two shops in the entire place that sell boxes of wine (those places being the drive through alcohol shops – have I ranted about this before? I mean come on people, you don't know how to fix your massive drink driving problem and yet you persist in opening drive through off-licences), and these boxes of wine can only be bought between six pm and nine pm, they can only sell one at a time, and they aren't allowed to stock any that are over two litres. I mean what is the point.
I realise that was simultaneously a complaint about both not being able to buy alcohol and about Australians selling too much alcohol but what can you do. I stand by both.
The night market however was very good. Lots of classic Australian tourist ware abounded; boomerangs and didgeridoos and the like, and lots of wonderful food. I overheard one jewellery stall owner claim that Australia is the only country in the world where you can find opals, which I'm pretty sure isn't true, but it's the sort of thing an Australian would say. And it did help her make a sale.
Darwin in Darwin. How did I only just realise that?
The old town hall, destroyed in a cyclone.
Some hotel. Oh no wait that's the government.
On mine and Laura's final day together we take a trip into Lichfield National Park. It is much like the more famous Kakadu National Park only smaller, cheaper and easier to get to. We are in a small group, just us two, a German girl, and a group of three guys (two English, one Welsh) one of whom is passed out at the back of the minibus due to overindulgence the night before.
Our driver, it swiftly becomes apparent, is another nutball. He is an odd mix of characteristics and opinions that both appeal and detest me. On one hand he is carefree and doesn't seem to take life too seriously, and he has very good views on preserving the natural world. And on the other he tells us how he and his friends are planning on going out and catching a wild pig, tying it up, and throwing it to the crocodiles 'just to see what happens'. I'm pretty sure I know what would happen, and it would involve taking pleasure out of death. Killing animals for food or necessity, ok. Killing purely for enjoyment, disgusting. Then he justifies himself by saying “because you can do that sort of thing here. That's just the Northern Territory lifestyle', as if that would convince anyone that life in NT was more fulfilling that anywhere else in the world.
Our day in Lichfield is superb. We visit termite mounds that tower many times above me, some up to two hundred years old. They are amazing structures, vast networks of tunnels built to perfectly maintain the exact temperature and humidity that the queen requires to hatch her eggs. In some places they dot the ground far around, soaring above the grass like great cities of the future stretching above trees, built to withstand an inhospitable outside
We swim beneath waterfalls surrounded by sheer cliffs topped with rainforest green, trees cascade down the steep slopes and take root against all the odds. We bathe in crystal pools where streams have worn the rock perfectly smooth, and we clamber over rocky temples where water plunges into the depths of the earth.
See the spider?
After Lichfield we make our way to a boat that will take us on a trip down crocodile infested waters. While afloat a member of the crew holds a fishing line over the side and entices crocodiles with pieces of meat, tempting them to jump from the water to reach it whilst giving those on board a closer view than is usually possible without losing an arm or two.
The crew here know a lot about, and obviously care a lot for, the crocodiles. It is very important to them that the crocodiles do not become in any way dependent on humans. They ensure this first by never feeding each crocodile more than one time in any given day, and second by making the crocodiles jump at least three times before they are allowed to catch the meat. This way the crocodile will have expended more energy in getting the food than they will get from the food so they will still have to hunt for themselves. Although the jump that they perform is a completely natural manoeuvre, it is one that uses a lot of energy.
Here our tour guide reveals his own brand of bizarre Australian beliefs when he tells us that the universe is inside of everyone, and that a remnant of the big bang can be seen inside our eyes. I mean I suppose he's right, because that is when all matter was created, but I don't think that's what he means. I nod along anyway. He then deduces therefore that if we want to see billions of years into the past all we need to do is look deep into a crocodile's eyes. Or something.
I wouldn't put it quite like he did, but there is something primeval, and downright scary, about the deadly creatures that silently slip from the mudbanks as we pass, scaled in armour older than the river itself. Their eyes, I think, lack the depth that so many creatures possess there, they are reminiscent of painted stone more than glass. They seem almost another to be just another scale, so perfectly do they blend in with the tough glistening shell that encases them.
The crocodiles effortlessly drift across the water, ridged spines cutting the water with lethal grace. They hover beneath the dangling meat and lower their body down into the water, eyes fixed on their prize. The tip of the tail remains just at the surface. At the last minute they swoop their tail under then they lunge upwards, sometimes getting their entire body out of the water in a huge surge of power, and revealing the softer yellow skin of their underbelly as they do so.
They are amazing creatures, and beautiful in their strength and skill and tenacity in survival. Did you know that they can survive for months without nourishment, and if they are caught far from water when the dry weather hits they will coat themselves in mud and slow their heart down so it beats as little as twice a minute, and thus wait out the dry season. Beyond this, wounds bother them little, and they never bleed out for they can simply stop the blood from pumping to different parts of their body. Even if they lose a leg or four they seem completely unfazed.
Female crocodiles stop growing at around about three meters, but the males continue to grow for their entire lives, and it is thought that they can live for as long as two hundred and fifty years though few now surpass one hundred. It is currently unknown exactly how big or how old they can get (some that we saw were easily six meters) because all the oldest were killed for their leather when hunting was still legal. Crocodile leather is the most expensive animal skin in the world, and nowadays it is still farmed, but hunting has been outlawed since 1971. When it became apparent that the crocodiles were in danger they started to record the size of all those that they caught, the largest recorded being 8.7m. There are no official records before this but it is said that when crocodile hunting started it wasn't uncommon to catch one that was ten meters long. As sad as it is that these terrifying behemoths are no longer in the world with us, if they had been jumping from the river I think they would have eaten the meat, fishing rod and the poor woman holding it. Give it another hundred years and they may well be.
No legs? Easy.
After the crocs we fed the kites.
Life sized replica of the 8.7m crocodile.
The guy in question.
My plane speeds along the runway and lightning flashes all around, lighting up the dark sky with thundering bursts of promise and excitement. Australia drops away beneath me, and I can't say I am sad to leave it behind. I do not know where this anti-Australian sentiment I am feeling has come from, and looking back through what I have written I see I have spent a lot of time complaining about Australia or Australians. Perhaps it's just that I'm in Asia now, and everything is better here.
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