Darwinian Theory
Darwin is the capital of the Northern Territory. It is the smallest of the state capitals with only 90,000 or so people living here. It's history has been quite a turbulent one. It is an RAN base and during WWII it was bombed by the Japanese. This naturally flattened it and after the war it was rebuilt and started to grow. Before the war it's population was limited by its remoteness and the only real links to it being the railway (from about 1870) and the Stuart Highway. In 1975 it was flattened by a typhoon that roared through doing an estimated $50 worth of damage. Thankfully most of the population had been evacuated but it was flattened again. In the late 1970s it was rebuilt this time in fashionable concrete. As you can imagine postcards of the town are rather interesting: "Tyre Concession and Municipal Car Park at Dawn", "Naval Dockyard and Meat Processing Plant at sunset", etc.
Darwin has one newsagent. They hold a monopoly over the whole of the central district. Not even Coles and Woolworths can stock national newspapers. After walking around yesterday in the blazing heat for a few hours I finally located the newsagent and tried to buy a paper. The mouth-breather who served me was as charmless as the building they served in, and she charged an extra $1.60 over the cover price (illegal, surely?) for "freight charges". Bastards. There is something rotten in the kingdom of Darwin.
Aside from that the town is quiet and there are a lot of backpackers here. I am staying for only a few more days and then fly back into the cold and wet of Melbourne and then onwards in to the snowfields of New Zealand. So I'm going to enjoy the heat and the sunshine while I can.
The trip up here from the centre was a good one, although our poor VW Campervan ("Harri", if you recall) could not make the last 100km or so. She had picked up a slight cough back in a place called Mataranka, 500km South of Darwin, and was smoking a little. We were told by a mechanic there that there was not much he could do (parts, labour, small town) but it would be okay to drive to Darwin where there is apparently someone who can sort her out. So we traveled onwards and upwards and with 80km to go there was a thunk, tap tap tap tap... From the engine compartment and a big plume of smoke. Her journey sadly ended there and we had to stop for the night in a place called Batchelor, staying in a butterfly farm-cum-hippy commune for the night courtesy of the bus company who failed to pick us up that afternoon and the RAA who broke some heads to make it happen.
This farm/hostel is part of an organisation that operates through most of the world. It is a network of organic farms where backpackers or volunteers can live with free board and food but they have to work on the farm during the day. As it's voluntary you can come and go as you please and I don't believe that you have to be green-fingered to do it. That would explain the crop yields the rather biblical state of the bathroom facilities. But the people at this one were friendly enough and they did rustle up a breakfast for us too.
traveling North even with all the rain that I endured on the way I really noticed the difference in climate from the centre. The North of the Northern Territory is more humid than the South and there are plenty of rivers and waterways within it. This gives rise to wonderful gorges, like Katherine Gorge, and other smaller waterways where there are falls and rockpools that you can swim in. There are palm trees and cockatoos flying through the air, among many other brightly coloured birds. It was as marked a difference as I experienced traveling from the dust of Tibet to the more humid Nepal last year (just to name-drop there, sorry).
At one point we stopped at a place that had natural hot springs that you could swim in. This was good for me as my swimming skills are virtually non-existent and the pools that had been created by the springs were shallow and warm, just like being in the baby-pool at the swimming baths! I gained a little confidence here and later we went to another set of springs. These ones had created a tributary into the large river running by. I decided to swim here again but managed to get out of my depth (by about 4 inches) and after exhausting myself by swimming no more than 10 metres I remembered that I cannot tread water as I have all the buoyancy of pig-iron. Thankfully Sarah, one of my traveling companions, can swim and she rescued me from the cold black depths that were clawing at my ankles. I need to practice swimming, preferably in an empty pool so nobody can laugh at me in my water wings and large styrene float.
We stopped in a few places like that, where the campsite was small and there was a waterway or pool nearby. I experienced a lot of natural beauty in these places and I like to think that I have made the most of what the NT and the centre has to offer. The biggest thing for me was seeing all these tropical birds flying through the air. I've only ever seen birds like these in cages so seeing them in the wild gave the impression that I was indeed far from home.
I almost forgot the Devils Marbles! Our last stop in the "proper" desert was here and they really are interesting. They are granite blocks that have been weathered by the heat and cold of the desert days and nights to the extent that they have become almost completely round. They look like they were placed there so the name is apt. One or two of them are sitting on points that are no more than a few inches across. With these boulders being about 8m in diameter they look like they'd roll if you pushed them. I have some photos that intend to publish on my other website (http://www.flickr.com/photos/vollerama).
After my time in NZ I hope to come back to Australia for another 3 months. I intend to travel up to Queensland where apparently they speak very slowly, and then downwards through the states towards Tasmania. I'm not sure how to go about this, but a glance at the notice board in my hostel shows a lot of possibilities. For example, there were two Dutch girls who needed someone to travel in their camper with them from here to Cairns. Two Dutch birds! I would share their personal space and the cost of petrol. Result. Hopefully there will be a similar offer along a future leg of my journey. Knowing my luck I'll probably end up sharing a bunk with a nice big lorry-driver. Bleh.
Darwin has one newsagent. They hold a monopoly over the whole of the central district. Not even Coles and Woolworths can stock national newspapers. After walking around yesterday in the blazing heat for a few hours I finally located the newsagent and tried to buy a paper. The mouth-breather who served me was as charmless as the building they served in, and she charged an extra $1.60 over the cover price (illegal, surely?) for "freight charges". Bastards. There is something rotten in the kingdom of Darwin.
Aside from that the town is quiet and there are a lot of backpackers here. I am staying for only a few more days and then fly back into the cold and wet of Melbourne and then onwards in to the snowfields of New Zealand. So I'm going to enjoy the heat and the sunshine while I can.
The trip up here from the centre was a good one, although our poor VW Campervan ("Harri", if you recall) could not make the last 100km or so. She had picked up a slight cough back in a place called Mataranka, 500km South of Darwin, and was smoking a little. We were told by a mechanic there that there was not much he could do (parts, labour, small town) but it would be okay to drive to Darwin where there is apparently someone who can sort her out. So we traveled onwards and upwards and with 80km to go there was a thunk, tap tap tap tap... From the engine compartment and a big plume of smoke. Her journey sadly ended there and we had to stop for the night in a place called Batchelor, staying in a butterfly farm-cum-hippy commune for the night courtesy of the bus company who failed to pick us up that afternoon and the RAA who broke some heads to make it happen.
This farm/hostel is part of an organisation that operates through most of the world. It is a network of organic farms where backpackers or volunteers can live with free board and food but they have to work on the farm during the day. As it's voluntary you can come and go as you please and I don't believe that you have to be green-fingered to do it. That would explain the crop yields the rather biblical state of the bathroom facilities. But the people at this one were friendly enough and they did rustle up a breakfast for us too.
traveling North even with all the rain that I endured on the way I really noticed the difference in climate from the centre. The North of the Northern Territory is more humid than the South and there are plenty of rivers and waterways within it. This gives rise to wonderful gorges, like Katherine Gorge, and other smaller waterways where there are falls and rockpools that you can swim in. There are palm trees and cockatoos flying through the air, among many other brightly coloured birds. It was as marked a difference as I experienced traveling from the dust of Tibet to the more humid Nepal last year (just to name-drop there, sorry).
At one point we stopped at a place that had natural hot springs that you could swim in. This was good for me as my swimming skills are virtually non-existent and the pools that had been created by the springs were shallow and warm, just like being in the baby-pool at the swimming baths! I gained a little confidence here and later we went to another set of springs. These ones had created a tributary into the large river running by. I decided to swim here again but managed to get out of my depth (by about 4 inches) and after exhausting myself by swimming no more than 10 metres I remembered that I cannot tread water as I have all the buoyancy of pig-iron. Thankfully Sarah, one of my traveling companions, can swim and she rescued me from the cold black depths that were clawing at my ankles. I need to practice swimming, preferably in an empty pool so nobody can laugh at me in my water wings and large styrene float.
We stopped in a few places like that, where the campsite was small and there was a waterway or pool nearby. I experienced a lot of natural beauty in these places and I like to think that I have made the most of what the NT and the centre has to offer. The biggest thing for me was seeing all these tropical birds flying through the air. I've only ever seen birds like these in cages so seeing them in the wild gave the impression that I was indeed far from home.
I almost forgot the Devils Marbles! Our last stop in the "proper" desert was here and they really are interesting. They are granite blocks that have been weathered by the heat and cold of the desert days and nights to the extent that they have become almost completely round. They look like they were placed there so the name is apt. One or two of them are sitting on points that are no more than a few inches across. With these boulders being about 8m in diameter they look like they'd roll if you pushed them. I have some photos that intend to publish on my other website (http://www.flickr.com/photos/vollerama).
After my time in NZ I hope to come back to Australia for another 3 months. I intend to travel up to Queensland where apparently they speak very slowly, and then downwards through the states towards Tasmania. I'm not sure how to go about this, but a glance at the notice board in my hostel shows a lot of possibilities. For example, there were two Dutch girls who needed someone to travel in their camper with them from here to Cairns. Two Dutch birds! I would share their personal space and the cost of petrol. Result. Hopefully there will be a similar offer along a future leg of my journey. Knowing my luck I'll probably end up sharing a bunk with a nice big lorry-driver. Bleh.