We spent the first week of our time in Australia on a couple of backpacker tour buses in Australia’s Northern Territory. First, we explored “the centre” – King’s Canyon, Uluru (Ayers Rock), and Kata Tjuta (The Olgas). Then, we rode from Alice Springs to Darwin, with a couple scenic stops near the top for Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge) and Lichfield National Park.
I’d heard that the part of the country we were covering would be hot, dry, and dusty, and that there wouldn’t be much along the way to amuses us, apart from the official “sights.” I was pleasantly surprised.
First, nothing we saw was that far from humanity. Yes, most of what we passed along the side of the road was either Aboriginal land or cattle/camel (!) station. But stops were not that far apart and were obvious friendly “watering holes” not just for tourists but also locals. And some of them are well known … we met “Dinky the Singing Dingo” at one. He’s a dingo one of the pub owners keeps on a leash (he says you can never tame them, so it’s just “Dinky is kept on a leash”) and who decided to howl in tune with the owner’s daughters when they were learning to play piano. Now he (the dingo) is a question in Trivial Pursuit and gets visitors from around the globe who come to see him.
Second, it’s winter here. So while it was still dusty, the plants were green, you knew there had been rain relatively recently, and it was COLD at night. Don’t believe it if someone tells you it’s always super hot in the Outback … our first night it was down to almost freezing. We were sleeping – or rather, attempting to sleep – in swags (essentially a canvas sleeping bag you put your regular sleeping bag into for extra warmth and padding at the bottom). Even with all our clothes on – including hats and coats – we were still very, very cold. It did get warm during the day, but only up to about 75 Fahrenheit during the day. Don’t worry too much about us freezing to death, though. We switched to a tent after the first night and that helped a lot! Plus, it got warmer as we moved north … the night before we got to Darwin, we were sleeping on top of the sleeping bags. There are benefits to the cooler weather … not too many flies (which are supposed to be awful during the summer – open your mouth and you’ll swallow them), and no worries about snake, which were hibernating for us.
Since we were on a backpacker bus, we were traveling with people from all over the world, most of whom were on their “gap year” trips, which means they were taking the year between high school and college (or military service and college, or high school and military service, or something like that ) to travel for 4 – 12 months. Some stop and work along the way, some just travel. It’s a fascinating group of folks from all over the world. Between the two buses, we were with Australians, English, Irish, Japanese, Israelis, Scots, French, and people from Hong Kong (and, again, the only Americans on either of the two buses). Conversations with people from these countries were fascinating, even if they were somewhat superficial. I learned about women in the Israeli military, what people miss from their own countries, how travelers choose between seeing the sights and figuring out what they’re going to eat (chips and rice make popular meals … veg can wait until we get home).
Only one complaint – we saw absolutely NO KANGAROOS on this trip!!! We did see wild camel, wild emu, brumbies, wedge-tailed eagles, and crazy horned lizards, though, and they were great. Who knew there were camels over here? They were imported by Afghanis to travel the outback since horses just couldn’t do the job. Go figure!
