Darwin to Alice Springs

Do me a favor and get out an Australian map. Now find the Northern Territory. Do you see Darwin and Alice Springs on the map? Good. In case you’re still uncertain of the distance, there are about 1500 kilometers between Darwin and Alice Springs (over 900 miles). Imagine a tour bus with 21 people traveling that distance, plus more with detours, in three days. Ok, got that in your head? Not too bad yet, right? Now...imagine me on that bus with only one book.

Aaaa!!!

Without a doubt, the point of these three days has been to get us from Point A to Point B and keep us from going stir crazy with a few stops along the way. Still…those stops were pretty entertaining.

First day, some of us went canoeing at Katherine Gorge. (In the canoe with me is Christina, my new friend from Austria.) The gorge was beautiful, though we didn’t have time to canoe the entire length of it. Apparently, it’s quite long, with thirteen gorges including rapids and falls.

That night we wanted to take full advantage of our campsite by building a campfire. Unfortunately, it was so hot, every few minutes everyone would stand up and move the benches further away from the fire. But we played some campfire games and enjoyed it all the same.

The second day we stopped at the Mataranka thermal pools for swimming, followed by lunch at Daly Waters, the oldest pub in the Northern Territory. (It also happens to be in the middle of nowhere and the home of Australia’s most remote traffic light…which doesn’t actually work.) If you ever make it there, check out the walls – they’re covered with money, underwear, shirts, license plates, and pretty much anything you can think of, all left behind by visitors from over the years.

Daly Waters even has a “thong tree” in the backyard where visitors are encouraged to give their flip flops a good home. Unfortunately, I love my flip flops too much and couldn’t bring myself to part with them, even for so great a cause as Daly Waters’ Thong Tree.

Apparently while in the middle of nowhere, aka the Australian Outback, movie theatres and bookstores are scarce. I um…think people are expected to…er, entertain themselves! *gasp* Fortunately, I’m pretty easily amused. Julie and I found some boxes with bowling pins and balls and lugged them out to a little-used road to play a few games while waiting for lunch. And I got a strike!

First stop on day three: Devils Marbles! Apparently some Aussie bloke lost a fair amount of cattle there, which for some random reason he blamed on the huge granite boulders balancing precariously on top of each other…hence their name. Turns out the cattle just ate some poisonous weeds. But at the risk of sounding callous to history, we all cared more about the great photo possibilities.

Meet some of my tour buddies!

Oh! And most importantly, I found a bookstore in Alice Springs! I’ve got plenty more driving through the Outback up ahead as I journey from Alice Springs to Adelaide in six days. Joy of joys, I now have TWO books to read!

Life is good.