Melanie and Steve, Around the World in _

Posted 10:51 PM by MelanieandSteve
We arrived in Alice Springs today, some 1400 kilometers south of Darwin, and basically the next real city. But who needs civilization? Driving has been good, a bit hot, but we've enjoyed a few interesting stops along the way:

FISH FEASTS: On our attempt to leave Darwin on the 29th, we ran into Ken, who helped us build the van cabinets, and his friend Dwayne. Dwayne just got off a fishing ship that day and had a big catch. When he found out we were Americans, a "rare breed" in Darwin, he says, he insisted that we stay so he could BarBQ us up his fish. But it was starting to get late in the night and we needed to hit the road. So he just gave us a whole fish. The Gold Ring Snapper was probably two feet long and bigger than big enough for the two of us. We feasted to our hearts content the next two nights. The second night, we even tried cooking the fish in silver leafed Eucalyptus leaves like local Aboriginies do for 'a light lemony taste'.

KAKADU NATIONAL PARK: In the Northern Territory, this is the big one, the Yellowstone of Australia.
-Guluyambi Boat Cruise on the East Aligator River: No there are no Aligators here, an explorer who didn't know better named it the Aligator river when he saw the crocodiles. We took this river cruise to learn about aboriginal culture and tool making. Justin, our guide, started out the tour by promising that we should not expect to see any crocodiles. But we got the best of both worlds. The tour was greatly informative. We learned about aboriginal culture and tools, "Bush Tucker" (food), native flora and how they it is used for food and medicine. Justin demonstrated use of spears, digeridoos, and other skills. He started a fire with two pieces of wood. To a round of applause, Steve then succeded in started his own fire with the wood. Probably most interesting were the spears. One, called a "Punishment spear", is used to stab people straight through an arm or leg as a form of legal punishment still used on Aboriginal Lands. The stick is barbed in one direction so the only way the punished person can get it out is to pull the entire 5 foot stick all the way through the wound. Sounds cruel and unusual to a westerner, but they found that to an Aboriginal who cherishes out doors and freedom, a sentence to a jail cell can mean almost certain depression or death.
-Crocodile Surprise on the Cruise: Justin was wrong. We had GREAT CROCODILE SIGHTINGS. All in all we saw 4 salt water crocs (the aggressive dangerous kind) and one freshwater croc (the more docile kind). Each of the "salties" were about 10 feet large and we saw two of them actually starting to fight with each other: puffing up their backs to look big and then lunging at each other with jaws wide open. Justin said that in his six years on the river he'd only seen that twice. We were thrilled.
-Aboriginal Art Sites: We hiked through two amazing Aboriginal Rock Art sights called Ubirr and Nourlangie Rock with lots of really cool art and petroglyphs. Some came with dreamtime story explanations such as the picture of the folkloric monstor who would steal women in the night after hitting them with a yam, or the story of lightning man who makes thunder with axes on his knees and elbows and flashes lightning all around him and symbolizes the coming of the wet season.

DEVIL'S MARBLES:
-Eroded Batholyths: Further south down the middle of Australia is a pile of marbles. They're a bit difficult to play with though, because they're actually huge boulders 20, 30, 40 feet tall, teatering precariously on top of each other while the sands of time continue to erode them away and make them rounder and rounder.
-Photo ops: We took lots of fun photos with some great optical illusions including Steve as "Atlas" holding up the world, Steve doing an Iron cross between two rocks, Melanie dancing over the marbles, and Melanie holding up an immense boulder high abover her head with just her finger. We were there until sunset and the views only got better.
-Cover Page Photo: We came across the exact rock and tree that were used for the cover picture of our guide book. We didn't know it came from the Devil's Marbles, but as soon as we got there, we had our suspicions and set out looking for it. It ended up being one of our favorite photo spots as well.

MAJOR THUNDERSTORM: Last night, as we drove south in the vicinity of the geographic center of Australia, we found ourselves surrounded with a light show of lightning in 360 degrees. The flashes were several per second and the drive was spectacular. We stopped to camp for the night and cook up a meal when the storm caught up with us. It was terrifyingly violent and HUMONGOUS. We threw our things into the van and curled up, wet from the torrential rain, on the bed and watched out the window. The flashes were perpetual, the bolts visibly struck in the lot where we were parked, and the thunder roared louder than we'd ever heard it. The van shook with the wind, rain, and hail and it sounded like a war zone outside. Unforgettable. Then, this morning, the roads were flooded and all the "dry" creek beds were not only wet, but overflowing.

ALICE SPRINGS: Here we are. They have fast internet and cheaper gas prices. By the way, we're spending over $4.00 per gallon of gas. We're happy, but we won't be here long. We're looking forward to heading further south today and seeing some meteor craters.

LEARNING THROUGH READING:
-Finished "Rabbit Proof Fences", a true story about three Aboriginal children who escaped when taken away to school by white settlers. Learned a lot
-Enjoying reading the Journal of John McDougal Stuart, the first explorer to cross the entire continent of Australia. We've come across several monuments to Stuart along the "Stuart Highway" which follows much of the path of his expeditions through the center.
-A couple other interesting books in progress as well give us background on Australia and spice up our experiences.

WILDLIFE SIGHTINGS;
-geckos climb the walls of the buildings and hostels in Darwin.
-4 Salties: Four large salt water crocodiles swam next to our boat cruise in Kakadu. (see above)
-1 Freshy: One smaller freshwater croc waited by the rocks on the same boat cruise in a pool at the side of the river guarding her eggs on the shore.
-There Aren't Any Chicadees or finches: We see intense looking large birds all the time. Colorful parrots, cocatoos. But even more we see eagles, owls, birds of prey. One stood out for it's large size, jet black body, and bold bright red stripes on it's tail. In any case. they're all large, proud, exotic birds. It seems that the little cuties we're used to in America wouldn't fare very well out in the harsh environs of the bush. (We do see smaller birds in the cities and populated areas.)
-Jellyfish: in the river of Kakadu.
-Wallaroo: We're still not sophisticated enough to know the real difference between Kangaroos and Wallabies, other than to say that wallabies are much smaller. But we've seen both, and after doing a little reading and guide book searching, Melanie realized she'd also seen a couple wallaroos (but is that just a combo of the two?).

ABORIGINAL EXPOSURE:
-We've tried to learn a lot during our travels by reading and visiting cultural centers and art sites. Sometimes, the real knowledge is concealed or difficult to uncover because many of their secrets are sacred and guarded.
-In the Northern Territory, the Aboriginal population excedes 50% of the people. We've seen the city parks regularly full of Aboriginal people during the heat of day chilling in the shade under trees, reminding us of the 60's or 70's in the U.S. One man came up to us yesterday and enjoyed telling us proudly of all the bush tucker he enjoys as a local Aborigine and then he happily welcomed us to Australia.