OZ9/8: The Road Made Us Crazy

The animals really start to stir at dusk each night, so we stopped that evening to make dinner at a rest area.  Once the sun had fully gone down, we got back on the road with eagle-eyes, trying to spot animals before they darted across the road.

We camped after a few hours of driving, but I can’t now remember where.

The next day we saw Devil’s Marbles, which is a collection of stones that are quite round like marbles.  They are formed by erosion and are quite enormous.

Splendid photo captured by Jojje

They do actually look like marbles!

Later in the day we decided to mark something off our trip’s bucket list.  We found a good pile of dirt and gravel, tucked the car in the bushes a half mile down the road, we sent Marco to the top of the hill, and then he stripped all of his clothes off, using a water bottle to hide his junk.  We waited for cars to pass and tried to film or snap their reactions.  Sadly, the cars were moving too fast, but we got to see a few faces as they went by—surprise, shock, and laughter being the main reactions.

Marco on the hill with his water bottle loin cloth

And it was totally Marco’s idea.  We didn’t even have to convince him.  The guy just wanted to get naked for cars.  Marco is a strange, but amazing dude.

We stopped for lunch at a little lake, where the other four of them went swimming.  I got crafty with making lunch, and was surrounded by peacocks in the process!

We stopped at a rest area for the night, but when we pulled in, we noticed just how full it was.  School holidays in the Northern Territory had just started, so everyone and their dog was out camping.  We decided we wanted a bit more privacy, so we drove on a road nearby until we found a turnout that would do just fine.  It was full of trash everywhere, but I got a lot of that picked up pretty quickly and it became a much more inhabitable spot.

We made and ate dinner, had a campfire, and had quite a few drinks.  In Alice Springs we had loaded up on boxed wine, so we had plenty to go around.  Jojje also broke out a couple of the rather unnecessary items—two N64 game controllers that plugged into the USB of a computer—and the boys played Mario Kart as long as the computer’s battery would let them.  I'd like to point out how exceedingly proud I was of Joe, who was the reigning champion.  I would also like to point out that I played only one match and it was against Joe--I won by a fluke, accepted the victory, and retired.

Mario Kart battle by the fire

The three musketeers slept by the fire again and Joe and I slept out in our tent.  Even if I hadn’t been worried about getting spark holes in my sleeping bag, it was really dusty and that would have stopped me.  I think it helps the decision too because our tent is so easy to set up.  Basically all the other tents required lots of time and effort staking, which could be difficult depending on the softness of the ground.  So I was content with our little tent home in the bushes.

The next morning as I was using the restroom in the bushes, I heard little chirps.  I looked around and there was the tiniest little nest with two tiny birds in it, eyes still sealed, but mouths open waiting for food.  It was beautiful.  But then I looked up and realized there were gigantic spiders above my head and I nearly had a heart attack.

Beautiful tiny birdies

I spent part of the morning too picking up more garbage, as there was a lot of it around.  As I was reaching in to shift some of it, a massive, hairy spider crawled up my arm and the heart attack feeling happened again.  Only this time my yell was heard by the other three in the party, who made fun of me a bit.  Bleh.

Oh my goodness, I hate looking at this photo

We found another lake to swim in early in the day.  This time Joe sat it out while I swam.  The water was opaque and freezing, but I think the fact that the visibility was only a few inches made him nervous.  We swam to the other side, which was a long process.  Then we swam back and got out to cook some lunch on the outdoor BBQ grills.

"Where next?" I ask after a frigid swim

We stopped at an eclectic little bar in one of the outback station towns.  It was full of collections of everything—old IDs, license plates, shirts, hats, ties, world currency, and post cards, and many more.  We got a quick drink and took off to see the town’s main tourist draw, which, honest-to-goodness turned out to be a tree that someone had carved their initials into when the town was founded.  Only the person wasn’t that well know, the tree had died, and they had filled its stump with cement to keep it upright.  Australia, you have some strange hyped-up attractions.

We took part in one of the traditions along the Stewart Highway and dressed up a termite mound.  I think people go crazy in the outback if they don’t have some sort of distraction like strangely humanized, clothed termite mounds.

In the process of taking a photo of one of our mounds, Marco stepped on something and freaked out.  Joe took control of surgery on his foot (which was hilarious at one point when Marco went on his hands and knees like a dog with his ass toward Joseph and said something like, “go at it hard,” which made us die laughing) and between a needle, tweezers, and a whole lot of digging, he got a major chunk of wood out of his foot.  This wasn’t splinter-sized, it was huge.  Marco was thankful.

Maybe it's hard to tell in the photo, but that was HUGE

We made it to the Mataranka hot springs, a don’t-miss suggestion from Cam and Min.  It wasn’t terribly warm, but it was clear and still and gorgeous.  I am afraid of the bottom when I don’t know what’s down there, and in the dark I could see nothing!  We soaked for a long time, but decided to go back again in the morning, since it was so good.

We went to find a campsite and found one that looked promising, but then realized that there were empty bottles of alcohol everywhere and we had heard that drunk Aboriginals would often camp on the edge of town in the bushes after hitting the liquor store.  We were nervous by the sheer number of bottles.  And I refer you back to an earlier post where I discuss the confusing impressions I have of Aboriginals and their relationship to alcohol.  Honestly, it could have been any race of person drunk in those woods and I would have been scared.  It saddens me that the race of the drunken woods-people even needed to be identified, but I guess that’s how it goes.  I think Australia has a long way to go to eradicate all of their inherent racism.

Bah.  That is such a difficult subject.

So we kept going and found another place a few miles out of town, that looked very hidden.  It turned out to be one of the prettiest spots we camped the whole time.  The trees were still a little young and the ground was gently covered in their leaves.  The morning light the next morning was dappled, like the light I love at home that comes through the aspen trees.  It was pleasant.

We went to the hot springs again in the morning.  Joe and I had headed off to explore the pool expecting the others to come along.  We went back to see what they were doing and found them taking a selfie of the three of them as if we didn’t exist.  Even when Joe asked what they were up to, they said, “We’re taking selfies,” and continued without even noticing that we were there.

The gorgeous peaceful Mataranka hot springs

Joe seemed a little crestfallen and, I hate to admit, I was a little happy about that.  I had been noticing that the three of them had become this little clan that we were not really included in.  I thought I was going crazy, so I was glad when Joe felt a little shunned too.  They acted as if we didn’t exist.

Later in the day, however, on the way to Katherine Gorge, Joe and I had a small fight.  Sadly, this happens a lot.  I feel like I am going crazy for being annoyed at someone, Joe eventually agrees with me a little, and then I am so relieved to have him on my side that I unload a lot of the feelings I have on the subject, he regrets opening pandora’s box, and then suddenly we are at odds with each other.  So we fought.

As the day went on though, we sort of realized that we were on the same team, albeit with weak footing.  I was driving and Joe was my copilot, and the three musketeers in the back got drunk as we drove, having whole worlds of conversation amongst themselves.  Our destination that night was to a free campground at the base of a short hike that had rock climbing at it, so Jojje and Gwen were supposed to be the navigators.  But in fact, we drove way past where we should have turned before they even looked up from their drunk stimulating conversations.

I’m sorry.  This is all so cynical.  I struggle with letting things go and I know that.  Now that it is over and I look back on it, I am still snide about it, but I can logically say that the missed turn was obviously not ONLY their fault.  I was driving and should have asked exactly where we were going, or at least reminded them to look at their maps every so often.  I was just in such bad spirits that I didn’t feel like talking to them at all.

Telling the story and posting it on a blog is an interesting thing, because I have to find the line between telling it as I experienced it, and making it into a softer story by ignoring the ugly bits.  I still struggle with knowing how to do this.  For right now, I describe everything.  If I ever write a book and these stories make it in there, I like to think that even the negatives will stay, because human development is through the good and the bad.

All that to say, I am sorry that I have to tell you about some of my uglier bits in order to tell the full story.  Forgive me for my negativity, selfishness and arrogance.

Back to it, we drove back to the turnoff and wound our way through the back road (with a stop along the way for Marco to stumble out of the car in awe of the biggest termite mound we had seen to date) until we finally found the Robyn Falls campground.  Thanks to the school holidays again, the campground was super full and we were barely able to find a place big enough to accommodate us and our three tents.  It was very near the little dirt road, which was a shame for dust reasons, but it also had a lovely tiny little creek running through the back of it.  We slept soundly.