Headed to Darwin

Well we've done it. We picked up our four wheel drive diesel guzzling home on wheels and we set the compass bearing for West. On a beautiful Thursday afternoon in Cairns the two of us packed up our twelve bags of assorted sizes, wedged our partially disassembled bikes into the back of the Land Cruiser, and said our goodbyes to the East coast of Oz.

Good lord how is all that going to fit in there?!


E. bravely took the first driving shift navigating us through the busy city center to collect our things from the hotel. we couldn't have picked a more winding route to reach the Tablelands and E. showed great poise and composure while navigating the constant twists and turns and even weathered the moderate rains without the slightest trouble. Pretty good for a rookie left-side drivers first day out! We treated ourselves to a nights stay at the Innot Hot Springs (or thermal pools as they're called here). It took us just a few moments to get set up for the night and we rediscovered that cooking is a breeze when you don't have to saute veggies at ground level! A nice dip in the pools and a hot shower loosened the old bodies and we settled in for a tough night of reading in bed. Z. took the next days first driving shift from Innot to Prairie - 627 kilometers away, or about 9 days of bicycling! The road was a schizophrenic patchwork of potholed single land sometimes paved sometimes dirt, with huge compact gravel "passing" shoulders strung together with sections of hasty washout repairs that, when driven over at 80km per hour, would threaten to rattle the teeth right out of your head. Each time we were faced with an oncoming vehicle, the inevitable game of chicken ensued. The last minute swerve halfway off the pavement and onto the dusty shoulder would have Z. slowing down considerably and white knuckling the wheel while the other driver would casually lift a hand and give a little wave and zip on by without lifting their foot from the accelerator.

When we hit Prairie that evening we pulled up to the hotel/ van park/ bar and accepted the very reasonable price for a powered camp site out behind the bar. We were met by the curious stares on one very cranky alpaca and an incredibly sweet and very rotund water buffalo. We cleaned ourselves up and headed to the bar at the invite of the owner who enticed us with the promise of a good Aussie football game. We met the characters who were there to lay their bets on the entire seasons match-ups and to alternately harass each other when trys were scored or refs called questionable penalties during the game. The bar itself was quite a scene with it's collection of akubras, or cowboy hats, nailed to the ceiling, it's taxidermied collection of native wildlife, and it's worn and weathered wood floors used mostly as a tricycle raceway for the clutch of toddlers that entertained us while the footy was in half-time.

The nights have gotten cooler out here which is a pleasant change and has made sleeping that much easier. We were up early the following morning feeling refreshed and as a result we got back to the asphalt by 8:30am. E. was behind the wheel for a very jarring morning of driving along routes rutted by the many and giant road trains and softened by the intense afternoon heats. We watched as the landscape changed again and again from Eucalyptus stands that became sparse groups of scrubby trees, then morphing into intermittent groups of low brush which finally fizzled out leaving us to look on long expanses of incredibly flat grassland.

Where have all the trees gone?

Road Train!

We glimpsed a group of Emus along the roadside but missed the photo opportunity because of the ever increasing speed limit (now up to 110km p/h!). We made a few pit stops in the little towns along the way mostly just to break the monotony of sitting for hours on end. We got a chance to call our friend Eli from Mt. Isa to wish him an early happy birthday (22nd is the actual day for any of you that know and want to harass him, we're pretty sure he's turning a miserly 28!). We decided to push a long day so we could buy ourselves some extra time at the Mataranka Hot Springs the following day and that's how we ended up literally driving into the sunset. It was beautiful, but not a pleasant experience from the drivers point of view!

Against the warning sticker displayed in our vehicle which reads "Night driving in Outback areas is not advised" we did just that. We didn't see (or hit) any kangaroos but we did have a bit of trouble with the flocks of birds that were camped out on the road, busily snacking on the grasshoppers that were plentiful and either dead or stunned from the days traffic. Z. resorted to sounding the horn in short bursts every few seconds to try and warn them away, which may have helped some but didn't prevent him from a few collisions with the startled diners. As a result, we decided to pull off at a remote rest stop and wait for morning to get going again. From our vantage point in the camper we could watch the road trains pass by on the highway, lit up like some sort of twisted Aussie version of St. Nicks sleigh and sounding like a herd of elephants stampeding through the night.

Welcome to the Northern Territory!