To the Tropics - Night 134

My adventure tour from Alice Springs to

Darwin left at 5:30 this morning. Our new driver, Trav, was overly enthusiastic at the early hour and once again no one wanted to ride shotgun so I gladly accepted the honor. Shortly after leaving on Alice on the Stuart Highway we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn; we were now officially rocking in the tropics. Not that you could tell. The area was still a bleak and desolate desert. The true tropical climes don’t begin until another 800 to 900 kilometers north of here. The next stop was the historic Barrow Creek telegraph station where a battle between white pioneers and aborigines occurred back in the 1880s. Trav is a bit of an Aboriginal history buff so I am sure we’ll get plenty of history lessons this tour. One of the things I have

Typical Outback Scenery

been most impressed with on these tours is how much explaining the tour guides do regarding nearly everything. They drive, cook, organize and teach and do a damned good job at all. Later we pulled into Wycliffe Well, the UFO capital of Australia. A strange little roadhouse with an even stranger proprietor. Apparently UFOs have visited this place for weeks in a row. It even has the certification of the official UFO society. I wonder if they are hiring…

The Devil's Marbles

Some bit up the road we came to Devil’s

Me and a Marble

Marbles, a forty-acre site of strange round stones that appear to have been randomly tossed about. Amazing scenery, the short walk around the park was absolutely exhausting. The temperature was well above 100, not a cloud in sight nor a breath of wind. At 21 degrees latitude near the noon hour the sun is absolutely relentless. We lunched at the Walchope Hotel, just a fancy name for a roadhouse a few kms north of Devil’s Marbles. The owner’s daughter works for the Adventure Tours company so we got free access to the pool, which was a huge relief from the heat.

Just north of Tennant Creek we pulled into the Mary Ann Dam for a quick dip in the rust stained water. Already you can start to feel the humidity increase, the flora is more lush, the clouds build…we are entering the beginnings of the Top End, the Tropic portion of Australia. A few hours later the tired bus arrived at Banka Banka, our stop for the night. As we ate our dinner a huge, orange full moon rose above the horizon. It was well after sunset until the breeze picked up and cooled it down enough to sleep. Until then, we drank a few beers around the campfire and listened to stories about Stuart Highway’s notorious rash of disappearances and strange crimes.

What I Learned Today: Regret is a bitch…perhaps the worst feeling one can have. “Live as to eliminate all regret.”…or so says the great sage.

written by

exumenius on February 21, 2008 from Tennant Creek, Australia

from the travel blog: Kiwis and Kangaroos

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