Sunday, November 2, 2008

Alice Springs to Darwin

Hi there again. I'm really sorry that I am sooo behind writing but I guess I have the best excuse in the world for it. I'M ON HOLIDAYS.
Well anyhow having had so many adventures it will be hard to remember exactly everything but I will try to give my best:

Driving up to Darwin:
Once again I got on the bus to meet a new group. The bus was full up to the last seat and the group pretty heterogenious, from 19 year olds up to over 60 year olds. It was great to be able to talk to so many different people and listen to their stories. Anyhow our trip took us through the outback into the tropical part of Australia. Our first interesting stop were the "Devil's Marbles". Big round stones that came up through the earth million and million years ago and were called by the white men devil's marbles as the this place was used as an assembly and resting point by shepards and when they woke up the next morning, a lot of their sheep have died. Supersticiously they thought it was the devil playing with them and that this place was bewitched but later on scientists found out that after all it wasn't the devil that killed the poor sheep but a little plant with sharp hooks that when eaten by the stupid sheep opened them up from inside and they bled to death. Strange enough also the Aboriginal people called this place Kula Kula, where the devil lost his hair. Kind of spooky, isn't it.
The next stop along the way was in Tennant Creek which is the 4th largest city of the Northern Territory with, now it comes, 4.000 inhabitants. This is less than Baiersbronn and they call themselves a city, no more jokes about me being from a village then :)
Nothing interesting to say about this place, quite far away from everywhere, typical easy build up houses, a supermarket, petrol station and not much more.
Finally we arrived at the end of the day on our camp site which was located on the cattle station Banka Banka (more than 11.000 km2 and 58.000 running beef burgers). We had a really nice kind of outback evening, sitting around the fire and grilling marsh mellows on a stick over the fire. Have to admit that it was my first time ever eating grilled marsh mellows and I have to admit its really yummy, crunchy on the outside and melted inside.
After another early start the next morning we stopped for lunch at a place called Daily Waters which has the oldest running pub in Australia. This is quite a strange place as its inside was decorated by things travellers left behind, including a flip flop tree.
By the way, I nearly forgot to mention that I finally got over my fear of snakes, shock therapy...
After lunch and a short bath in the swimming pool we went on and got finally to some of the more interesting places, the hot springs in Mataranka. Nice bath tub warm water to swim in. As a real adventuress that was a bit to boring so I went on to look for a kick and found it a bit further on where the hot springs ended in a kind of river where crocodiles were living. Francis and me were brave and took a swim with the crocs. (well actually we just dared to enter about two meters into the river and the crocs are the more friendly freshies that don't eat you just nibble at your legs if they get hold of you, and I have to admit, there was non around when we got in, but still the adrenaline kick was there. Which made the whole experience even more spooky where the thousands of huge bats that were sitting in the trees and made a lot of noise. I can now imagine what Bartman felt when he was stuck in the cave with those animals, they are scary.
Over night we stayed at the camp ground of the Kathrine Gorge National Park. Early the next morning we carried on to the Gorge to do some Canoeing. My canoe partner was Bryan, the scotsmen, and althoug he promised me he was an experienced canoer we actually were the lousiest ever, the 3 km to get down the first Gorge were more like 6 km to us as we went zig zag, but still we had a lot of fun and this place was really beautiful.
Before we arrived ein Darwin we made a short stop at a pub where the iconic buffalo Charlie out of the Crocodile Dundee movie was set up (stuffed of course). I really have to watch this movie again, especially as most of it was filmed in the kakadu National Park. When arriving at Darwin I went down with some of the people from our group to the Mindil Market, which is a hippie style street market down at the beach. Beautiful setting, good food and great music.

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