It’s been 10 years since I was last in Oz, and that was just a month’s splash along the east coast with a brief (well as brief as 20-odd hours on a bus can be) trip inland to the catchily named Red Center. It rained, my girlfriend and I had the only major argument of a six-month trip (over a case of beer, which whilst appropriate to the country, was pretty pointless) and, well, let’s just say it was time to go back. So I was over the moon to be sent to WA and the Northern Territory (NT) for a couple of months updating the Rough Guide. It was the first time I’d been sent to do an update in a country where the principal language is English and I had a fully kitted out campervan, a stack of maps and only a smattering of settlements, geographical oddities and beaches to visit on my 7000 mile journey.
I soon discovered that the grand sounding Great Northern Highway was in reality just an endlessly straight swathe of tarmac cutting through the barren expanse of desert. My sis had been up this way a few years back and warned me of the sheer distances involved, but never one to listen to good, sound advice, I hadn’t really taken this on board. So proceeding a couple of inches up my grand map seemed like a reasonable proposal for my first short afternoon’s drive. Oh, how wrong I was!
It’s a lonely old business driving through the outback alone, but also a soothingly meditative one, with plenty of time to ponder, interrupted only by stops to photograph the odd wedge-tailed eagle scavenging on roo roadkill, or for a cup of tea at one of the randomly placed desert rest-stops. I’d never really researched anywhere like Oz before, in that the work was relatively straightforward and there were few major settlements to get my head round, but it was the distance that added the challenge. I’m used to traveling for long periods of time in rickety old buses, boats or trucks and interspersing these journeys with rapid research periods and on journeys I usually even manage to write up a few notes along the way, but my Oz routine soon proved to be very different.
Roughly, I’d get up, have brekky, finish up researching the tiny settlement I’d stayed in, stock up with food, water and gas and then drive, drive, drive, stop to check out the rooms at a roadhouse and refuel, drive, drive, drive, stop to check out an unusually large termite hill or a passing tornado, drive, drive, drive, stop for a snack, drive, drive, drive, make a seemingly short but actually 2 hour detour to a beach for sunset, drive, drive, drive (slower and watching out for roos), arrive, cook dinner, have a coffee, work, go to sleep in the van etc …
Living in Asia, and particularly Taiwan, it’s tough to get a sense of space and WA did exactly that for me. Probably too much space. I drove for over a thousand miles in 24-hours to outrun a cyclone to Broome and this also magically (for the first time ever) put me a day ahead of schedule. So with all this extra time to spare I thought I’d best create a problem for myself and took the campervan for a spin on the beach. And spin we did, and spin, and spin, until eventually a friendly local came and helped me out of my several feet deep hole with his 4×4. His only words were tryin to get home were ya mate? Anyhow after all this time alone and having watched Wolf Creek which I’d be passing on the road through the Kimberleys to Darwin, I happily agreed to take a couple of French lads (who had been sleeping in their car for the last month) along for the ride. They had next to no money and wanted to get to Asia as quick as possible, so urged me make haste for Darwin. It was great to break up the driving as well, although, sod’s law, the only time I got pulled over by the cops (in the middle of absolutely nowhere) I, the insured driver, wasn’t driving. Anyhow, the cops didn’t seem to care and after breathalyzing us (and letting us keep the tubes as souvenirs) we were on our way again. Tot was also due to meet me in Darwin and we were even thinking of getting married there, so we sped along.
After three weeks of relentless driving I don’t know what I was expecting from Darwin, but just as a plain old drink can take on monumental importance if you’re parched in the desert, I had made Darwin up to be a Las Vegas on the sea, a strip of bright shining lights drawing travelers through the desert. But it wasn’t. In spite of development and a stack of trendy bars, shops and restaurants, Darwin is still basically a one-street town. Late at night, when all the coffee shops, cafés and boutiques have closed down, but the pubs are still open, Darwin still manages to feel every inch the frontier town it once was.
Anyhow, the man bloggeth too much. Tot arrived, we burned down to Alice via Katherine, Mataranka (lovely springs) and Devil’s Marbles, spent a few days researching there and then headed to King’s Canyon, Uluru and Kata Tjuta. Compared to the huge distances I’d covered in WA, getting up and down the Stuart Highway seemed a breeze (it even had the odd traffic light), all the more so with the company of a good woman. The day we headed out to Uluru started with clear blue skies and so we raced across the desert to catch the rock in the sunlight. After mistakenly spotting Mount Connor as Uluru the weather turned downhill a little and by the time we reached the rock it was raining. Two visits, a decade apart, both met by rain in the desert. Did I do something really wrong in a past life? Anyhow, we watched the rock in the rain from the back of the camper with a cup of tea and soon noticed trickles of water running down the smooth sheen of the monolith. We drove closer to have a better look and were greeted by one of the most spectacular waterfalls I’ve ever seen, its white water racing its way down the red rock. The next day there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Nor the day after. So maybe I wasn’t so bad in my past life.
