2002/11 Australia trip - Stuart Highway |
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Finally, we headed off south down the Stuart Hwy. We found a radio station and heard about the German girl who was eaten by a croc at Sandy Billabong. This was close to where we’d been hiking in Kakadu. She was part of an adventure tour group that had been in Bali and narrowly missed the bombing, and then had moved on to Kakadu. Apparently their guide had told them that it was safe to swim there and they’d all gone in for a sunset swim, and she was the unlucky one. This all sounded very strange as the park warns you not to even stand on the edge of these billabongs.
We stopped off at Fran’s in Larrimah for another Devon tea. She told us off for swimming anywhere in Kakadu. She said she’d lived in the area all her life and had never gone swimming: that’s why she’d made it to 75! An elderly German couple came in after us, and we had one of those conversations where nobody quite understands what’s being said, but we are all polite enough to agree with each other.
We made one more quick stop at Daly Waters, the Northern Territory’s oldest, and some say the best, pub.
Every surface is covered with cards, papers, pictures, money, footie shirts, all sorts of things. If they were removed the place would fall down. The roof didn’t quite cover the whole room, and you could see blue sky through the cracks. Their beer was good.
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Daly Waters (2.12) |  |
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We were headed for Tennant Creek. With all these stops we didn’t make it, and had to pull in at Renner Springs at sunset. This was a typical roadhouse, with a tired-looking motel, bar, petrol pumps, and campground, all a little tacky but OK for a few hours. Their spring was being augmented with a wind-powered pump, but it looked like the pond was drying up.
Thursday October 24th
We were away early and in Tennant Creek by 9am for some shopping. We felt like we whites were in the minority. We eventually realized that the streets were full of aborigines, but the shops were full of white workers. Not an equation that leads to a stable society. I got lots of attention while I was getting money out of a cash machine, but Sandie was sitting in the truck nearby with the camcorder running, which seemed to discourage any interference.
We had an empty road as we blasted south towards Alice Springs. We took a side trip
to the Devil’s Marbles, which are, as you might imagine, some bloody great round rocks. They’re actually exfoliated granite, similar to the domes in Yosemite, except that this rock is also layered horizontally and erodes at both top and bottom. So the end result is piles of rounded rocks, some balanced on each other, others split in half. A great place to climb around in.
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Devil's Marbles (3.00) |  |
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We also stopped off at the Red Sand Gallery in Ti-tree, an aborigine community. It’s owned by Peter King, a white man who has over a hundred native artists working for him. The place was busy with a tour bus, but once that had gone, we bought some presents for home and then sat around talking with the owner. He was relaxed with us but was very agitated with young European tourists in his art shop and with the aborigine family that was shopping in his food store. I would think a lot of stuff just disappears.