Darwin . . . . oops I mean Darwin is biggest city i have seen for a long time. There was actually a traffic jam on my way in! Wow what a rare treat, just like old times. So my plan was to leave Alice by Saturday . . . today . . . and be in Darwin by Monday. I went about it in the usual backpacker way; by leaving a post-it note with my name and room number on the board in the hostel. But i wasn't entirely convinced that that was going to work so i went back to my room to put an ad on Gumtree (like craigslist) for travel partners to Darwin. Not five minutes later there is a girl knocking on my door saying that they are leaving for Darwin in 15 minutes. It was because of the post-it note not gumtree but i will employ both tactics in my attempt to get to Cairns. anyway so we left Alice at about 4:30 PM, a bit strange i know but they wanted to stay at a campsite for free rather than pay a hostel. So we drove an hour up the Stuart Highway (The ONLY road going north or south through the NT) and camped our first night on the road to Darwin. Here is a timeline i drew of my first night out:
WOW HOLY $&@* PICTURES UPLOAD SO FAST IN THE REAL WORLD!
Anyway yeah, it was alright for the first few hours but i woke up in the middle of the night FREEZING no thanks to the summer weight backpacking tent that i brought. Of course i love my tent but i may only be camping in it while i am up north here. But yeah, it was cold that first night. Especially because i couldn't have a fire. Leaving in 15 minutes i didn't have time to buy matches and the campsite had been scavenged clean by grey nomads. AHHH yes the grey nomads they are a new player in this story. Grey Nomads are people who are retired, whose kids have all grown up and left and they have sold their house and bought a Caravan and just live on the road. They will take months between cities just going from campsite to campsite trading stories about gas milage and cheap tourist parks with other grey nomads. And there are A LOT of them. i would say that at least 60 to 70 percent of the people at all the campsites were grey nomads. It sounds like a fun thing to live and a great way to finally see all of your big open country. But say what you will about their touristy frumpines and bathrobes, they are by far the nicest people you will meet in Australia, and that is saying a lot because Australians are generally very nice people. The next morning seeing that my breakfast was locked in the car with the german girls i was riding up with one guy offered me a spanish omelet with chorizo and a cup of tea, then later that night at the next campsite i was making my instant noodles with sausage over the campfire and this scottish expat comes over and dumps the remainder of his homecooked curry sauce in my noodles and offers me a beer! The generosity of Bill the Scottish expat goes even further but we will get into that just after i describe how freaking big Australia is. It was like my plane flight over here except in a car. It was cool to watch the scenery subtly change from the desert scrub of Alice to more green with bright white gum trees everywhere that usually only grow in creeks in Alice. Then there were these big rock formations around the Devil's Marbles then yesterday it started to get more and more green and palm trees showed up and NATURAL STANDING WATER WOW. It instantly and probably instinctually caught my eye the first time i saw it, a creek that actually had water in it. It was just a little bit mind you but it wasn't just being sucked right back into the ground or evaporating. Then later there were mountains and an actual river.
But we drove all of that first day from early morning to late and stopped at a campsite just north of Elliot. The campsite was bigger and more accommodating that the town itself. And Bill offered me his curry sauce and a beer and then i noticed this guy and girl asking around pretty desperately about going to Darwin. I wasn't sure if we had space but i offered them a ride anyway. It turns out that they had been traveling with 5 other people in a van when they stopped for petrol in Elliot and the gas station attendant called the police for them having too many people in one car. The police were less than helpful about giving them options for getting north and just dropped them at the campsite without a tent or a blanket or any idea of how to get anywhere. Which seems unfair given that later the rest of their group showed up and these two seemed like the nicest people out of the bunch. But we offered them a ride in our car and Bill in his infinite generosity let them sleep in his car for the night.
Night number two was much nicer, being 782 kilometers further north. The night was a little chilly but completely bearable and i slept through most of the night which was good. Then more driving and driving and driving until we ended up in the town of Katherine for lunch and to stock up on supplies at the grocery store. Of course i had been sleeping in the car on the way there and when i got out in the parking lot i wasn't quite looking and hit the car next to us with the door as i was opening it. A gentle series of taps but it left a little mark. All of a sudden the lady who owned the car came over and started giving a loud and public commentary on the height of my intelligence. I said sorry and that it was an accident and she kept going on so i said "Woah, chill out lady it was an accident and i apologized." Of course this didn't help anything and she got her boyfriend involved. After all was said and done i gave the guy 20 bucks to leave me alone and go buff his precious car. Which i would have done anyway so they didn't have to get all persnickety about it and cause a big fuss. And they didn't leave a very good first impression of the people of Katherine on a traveling stranger. But no harm no foul, i went inside and got some bread and peanut butter and jam and continued my good work. My good work being spreading the gospel of PBnJ. It seems that although peanut butter is sold all across the world, no one buys or eats it except for in the united states. So all through this trip of mine i have been getting people from across europe and australia to try peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and so far they have all enjoyed them. So if peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches suddenly become popular in Denmark, France, Germany and England, I can safely say it was my doing.
But here i sit in Darwin; I have my tent set up underneath the house of one of the aforementioned utopian permacultureists and am thoroughly enjoying some much needed time off. We had a barbeque last night and then this morning we all went to go see Batman. It's like i live in a city again doing all these city things! I took a walk to see the Darwin waterfront. . . . and i saw it. It was definitely a waterfront. I was there. But thats about it. I am more looking forward to Kakadu National Park that should be good fun. And city slicker stuff here in Darwin as well.
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