AUSTRALIA

Alice Springs, Northern Territory

After Indonesia, we wanted to have fun again and comming to Australia has done that! We flew into Darwin in the 'Top End' of Oz, which is a pretty laidback town with a sort of small california/florida town feel to it but with that particular aussie accent to everything. In some ways it felt very familar but it was relaxing after all the franticness of SE asia!! We defiantly got the customs treatment comming into the airport, everything was checked and the customes man took my beanbag juggling balls that I bought in Bangkok, away, saying they were 'quarantined'!

In Darwin we bought an old Ford falcon stationwagon complete with camping gear from this German couple who just drove it up from Sydney. Our plan was to drive it back down to Sydney via the central Stuart highway, which goes down to the southern end of Australia to Adelaide. We bought a bunch of food and some other camping nessities like 'mozzie' coils'cause they can be quite fierce along with the flys out here.

Our first stop on our trip south was at the Mary River 'orginal jumping crocodile farm' which is basically a short river cruise in which this guy holds a chunck of meat over the side using a bamboo pole, the crocs just come up and jump out of the water to get it. kind of funny to watch but also quite scary to see them up close. They seem to know the schedule and it is a show but otherwise these guys just sit around doing nothing all day.

From here we drove past thousands of these huge termite mounds that you see everywhere here, past burntout grass fields and dried up red dusty dirt roads, to Kakadu national park , where we camped out for a week. This was a fantastic place that sits on Aborginal owned land and features waterfall plunge pools and various rock-art sites that have paintings done from thousands of years ago. We had several campsites to ourselves since it was very hot here (100's F) and there were sooo many flys buzzing us that I am sure that I swallowed a few!

On our way down we decided to stop at several small towns like Katherine Gorge, surrounded by wallabys(kangaroo cousins!) that sneak into your camp looking for food and later exploring the river by canoe. Pine Creek, where we went panning for gold at this old steam-powered mine operation. Daly Waters, which had this funky 1930's styled outback pub that you sit in old wooden rocking chair barrels, drinking a cold pint of 'VB'. Mantaranka, where we camped next to a cyrstal clear spring that you could just float downstream under all these giant spider webs.

Alice Springs which is geographically dead center of the country, we've had some interseting experiences talking to the locals about current events and how it may affect Australia. We spent our 3rd year wedding aniversary eating at this local grill where I tried the Northern territory delicacies of grilled kangaroo, emu, crocodile and camel. very tasty considering we don't usaully eat meat but where else can you try that we thought. After exploring several of the local museums and art shops we headed over to meet 'lindsey', who we rang up to make our own digeredoo. We went over to his backyard workshop and made one up in a couple of hours, keeping the outside texture rough, since we didn't see any of those in all the dige shops in town. It was great fun making one and it WILL play pretty good as soon as I get better at playing it of course!

Yulara and Uluru (Ayers rock) and the Olgas are one of the spritual centers of aborginal culture here and offer quite a spectacular insight and exploration of these famous landmarks. we walked around but not to the top, since this is sacred place for the locals and they don't really want anybody tumbling down its side either. Instead we did a couple of long walks into the various gorges and canyons that were especially amazing during sunset and sunrise. there were alot of kids and familys running around since this was also the week of their school holidays, but we still managed to find a small plot of grass to pitch our tent. It was near here in the Ellery Canyon campground that we met two people from the Chech republic who we had sat next to on a bus up in Laos! strange how those things happen.

Travelling down the main north/south route on the Stuart highway, we stopped into Coober Pedy (white man's burrow) which is one of the most unique towns we've been to. Most of the town is built underground in these old opal mines that are absolutly everywhere. They filmed scenes of Mad Max 3 there as well since it seems to have that perfect combination of post-aypothilic "junked cars and hazy dust everywhere look". We stayed in a underground campsite and took a tour of a opal mine to see how they go, later we went over to vist "crocodile harry" who is this old eccentric latvian "baron" who fought on the russian front in WW2 and hunted crocodiles up in Queensland,Australia. This man's house was something out of a teenage Hugh Hefner meets Gaudi, he was a REAL "young one" woman chaser with everytour group that stopped by, he was teasing all the girls to sit on his lap...they would, not bad for a 75 year old. We ended up spending the day sipping port, talking about Islamic culture versus America in Afghanistan and then going out to dinner and drinks at the local Greek restuarant. The next day we bid our goodbyes and headed back down the road, this time off the sealed one and on to the dirt Ondanatta track for the next 300 miles.