The Long Overdue Walkabout: Day 5 – Final Thoughts From Darwin, Onto Alice Springs

I’m sure you can’t believe that I have even more thoughts on Kakadu, but I do. I had a lot of free time at breakfast the next morning to reflect.

Rather than eat the complimentary basic breakfast, part of me craved something more than fruit and cereal, but most of me just wanted a more luxurious meal after 3 days in the bush. I ate at a restaurant down the street (although I’m pretty sure I stole a banana from the kitchen anyways). It had a really nice outdoor dining area for quiet contemplation, was just the right amount of sparsely populated, and was named Duck Nuts. How could it not be a winner? And I savored every slow bite of that eggs florentine…

Anywho, here’s a bunch of other pointless notes I needed to share on Kakadu:

Termite mounds litter the landscape, the bug-equivalent skyscapers of New York City. On a long haul drive across the dirt roads, they appear as tombstones amongst the bush. Fun fact, it turns out the termite mounds in the Northern Territory are actually magnetic.

Not to say that Kakadu transformed me into Bear Grylls or anything, but I can now respect and understand the pleasures of gathering firewood and gathering around a fire. It was one of our first activities we did upon entering Kakadu, and I found the task gave us all an unspoken sense of bonding. Much like how we naturally settled into lunch preparation roles, we each executed our self-assigned duties with exact efficiency in order to escape the heat and humidity: gatherers to canvas the landscape and deliver the deadwood to the launchers, who would hurtle the wood up to Dillon and one or two people who would tie and secure the wood to the top of the tank.

Lunch always consisted of sandwiches, but dinner around the campfire was a little more exciting. Dillion surprised us with some mystery meat one night to try. One was crocodile (been there, done that) and the other was kangaroo, which tasted uniquely gamey.

Alright, enough with Darwin and Kakadu. After a filling breakfast, it was time to head to Alice Springs. Australian airport security is about as strict as a college frat party. I found myself instinctively taking off my shoes and belt and eliciting odd stares until I realized they don’t do that down under. It made me realize that it must be nice to live without the constant threat of terrorist attacks.

The flight to Alice Springs took about 2 hours, which at this point, felt like a jaunt down the street, but was probably the most expensive flight of the trip. Cheaper backpackers like Matt were planning on driving for a few days to reach Alice Springs. The bulletin board at Dingo Moon Lodge were littered with requests for passengers to join a caravan heading to the center of Australia. Gas would be split evenly, and the driver was going down to look for temp work with his questionably maintained ’96 Toyota. And while I’m sure traveling with some random strangers through the desert has it charms, it also sounds incredibly dangerous. I got to wonder how many of these bulletin board posters ever made it to the destination alive. I mean, this ain’t Route 66…there is NOTHING for hundreds of miles if you break down.

Back in the air, my flight consisted of about 50% aboriginals and 50% whiteys (those were the tourists). Alice Springs, as I later learned, is a hub for the aboriginal community. The red center of Australia holds a lot of spiritual and cultural significance to the aborigines as I would later learn. I was seated in the back with a fussy Swiss German couple who seemed a little repulsed by the aboriginal passengers surrounding us. Not that I really understood what they were saying, but they both seemed to be complaining about their stench (I never smelled anything weird). I was kind of off-put by their general discomfort of the aborigines and vowed to ignore them the rest of the flight. The flight to Alice Springs was otherwise uneventful. It was cloudless day in the Northern Territory, so outside the window was a sea of inhospitable but beautiful red rock.

So we land, and my lackadaisical jaunt off the plane, the need to pee, and my sudden realization that I had not planned at all how to get from the airport to the hostel meant I missed the last shuttle out of the airport and into Alice Springs by mere minutes. No one should be surprised. I wandered out of the airport and spotted a taxi stand, called a taxi, and proceeded to wait close to 40 minutes for my taxi to arrive. The Alice Springs airport was long since closed, our flight being the last one to arrive. I’m certain I was the last person to leave the premises.

$34 later, I finally made it to downtown Alice Springs. It was early evening and by then, pretty much everything had closed down and the sun was setting. I did a little bit of wandering around the tiny city center. It felt and looked like a ghost town out of the Wild West. Downtown Alice Springs is like if you took Boston’s Downtown Crossing and put it in a desert, drifters included. The place seemed more or less deserted, except for gangs of aboriginal families loitering in the streets. The kids were running all around the streets. These were not well-off people, and I really couldn’t gather if they were homeless or just had nowhere else to go. They were scream-howling to each other, ripping any sense of serene silence from the area, which was at once fascinating and horrifying. Clearly, aborigines were Australia’s lower class.

At least the hostel was amazing. Alice Springs YHA felt like a resort compared to Dingo Moon, although most of it might have been due to the fact that it wasn’t 100 degrees with 90% humidity. It was certainly bigger though, with an incredible courtyard for enjoying the cool, dry evening. And since there was no water and barely any plant life for hundreds of miles, no bugs! I think I could get used to desert life…

My roommates this time were an Israeli father and son who were here on vacation and an Australian who worked with urban at-risk youths. He was in the area scouting possible Outward Bound locations to take his kids. At this point, I was resigned to the fact that I would never be as interesting as the people i met on this trip.

So, 1000+ words for essentially a transit day. Next up, three more days in the Outback.