2006/06 Australia trip - Northern Territory border |
|||
There are no towns between Coober Pedy and Alice Springs, just a few road stations in about 400 miles. There are some patches of shrubs and desert oaks, but the land is mostly red earth and clumps of grass. It’s far from empty though, and the daily pile of dead kangaroos, killed by overnight truck traffic, indicates that there’s a lot of 
nighttime activity. In the daytime, there are flocks of galahs, a few tiny birds like the robin here, and hordes of crows and wedge-tailed eagles feasting on the road-kill. The crows usually fly away when a car comes but the eagles stay on the carcass if it’s off 
the road. They are serious about their food.
Sometimes the birds die too when their talons get stuck in the carcass. I missed one raven by an inch or two. Our bow wave of wind pushed it over but it bounced back up again behind us and carried on eating.
Traffic on the road is light enough that it’s possible to stop and back up to take a better look at animals and birds, but it’s usually a good idea to check the mirror, just in case there is a 150 foot long road train hurtling towards you.
The last road station before the border is Marla. This is where we watched a fight between the aborigines back on our 1995 trip. We were on a Greyhound bus traveling south to Adelaide and had stopped for dinner in Marla. The men and the women were screaming at each other and throwing rocks. Our bus driver thought they were fighting about who was going to ride the bus. The women won and traveled with us on the bus to Adelaide.
We made it to the border with the Northern Territory just before dark and camped there in the rest area, not a very exciting spot, but the price was right. We were camped in South Australia but the toilets were in the Northern Territory. We had enough energy for another hundred miles of driving but didn’t want to drive in the dark, partly because of the danger of hitting kangaroos and partly because we were there to see the scenery.
Looking forward to afternoon tea and crumpets, we found to our dismay that our crumpets had been nibbled. We didn’t know if the offender was still on board, but we thought not, as nothing else in that cupboard had been sampled.
Next