Darwin to Wongalara, and our new home

   The eighth leg: Darwin to Wongalara Sanctuary.  Distance: 616km.  A ute full of groceries, a bumpy ride, and reaching our final destination.  We left early in the morning to be able to finish up our shopping in Katherine, the closest town while we're out here (300km away from our house... but takes 5 and a half hours to get there).  Having gotten the dry goods in Darwin, we wheeled through the Katherine grocery store with reckless abandon, grabbing the perishable items that would round out our enormous grocery bill.  With town runs a couple times a month, you need to be prepared.  Food: check.  Alcohol: check.  We spent a few frantic moments trying to track down some parts for the generator that the sanctuary needed.  Being a Sunday, nothing was really open, but thanks to Tegan's persistance someone was roused that could unlock the gate and give us the package.  We didn't even have to part with one of our cases of beer as payment.
   Driving in our 2 utes, Tegan in the work vehicle and me in Frank, we got to our turnoff: the Central Arnhem Road.  If Katherine was our hub, this would be our interstate highway.  A dirt track that connects Arnhem Land (a huge lot of aboriginal land to the north and west) to the rest of the world.  Saying goodbye to the smooth bitumen, we hit the dirt and quickly found that it had gotten quite rough after the recent rains.  With shadows crossing the road and making it hard to see some of the washouts, there were some moments when I had to apologize to Frank for beating him so relentlessly.  We followed the signs for Wongalara, and finally arrived around 7:30pm.  Home.  After a little over a week on the road, totaling nearly 5000km, burning through diesel (and cash) at an alarming rate, and seeing some great sights, we made it.
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Coming up: what the hell are we doing?, where exactly are we?, and how can rats and cats take up 8 months of our lives?               

Banka Banka to Darwin

   The seventh leg: Banka Banka Station to Darwin.  Distance: 887km.  The beauty of sleeping in a bed.  This was the mother of all driving days, the last leg in our big trip up from Esperance.  Well, the last leg as tourists.  We'd be driving to our ultimate destination, Wongalara Sanctuary, after spending 2 nights in Darwin enjoying the city life one last time before heading to the middle of nowhere.  
   The biggest highlight of the drive was our decision to stop at a little bakery/coffee shop on the side of the road near lunch time.  Run by a rather talkative older lady, we soon found ourselves walking out with a homemade beef pie, rather than 2 coffees.  Wow, easily the best pie either of us has ever had, topped with mash and mushy peas as well.  This thing was as big as your face and cost 10 dollars.  
   An additional stop was the Mataranka thermal pool, a nice break from the drive where we could have a swim in the warm water.  Not much farther to go and we'd be in the city.  
   A friend of Tegan's from primary school lives in Darwin with her fiance, and had offered to let us stay with them.  What a relief to have a place to dump some of our things, have a good shower and a bed to sleep in, not to mention have a couple friends to hang out with before we travelled on to Wongalara and a life of solitude.  Many thanks to Sally and Landon, hopefully you guys make it out for a visit in June.  
   We spent the next couple of days running around, picking up our work ute, and running errands for the new job.  Our last night of fine dining was spent at Char, a rather upscale restaurant in the middle of Darwin (Jimmy, you know this one well).  Wine in hand, we cheers'd having made it this far, lamenting the lack of options with regards to dining out once we made it to Wongalara.  With our checklist completed, we could head off into the bush for the next 8 months.
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Coming up: after a long journey, we arrive at our new home.      

Alice to Banka Banka

   The sixth leg: Alice Springs to Banka Banka Station.  Distance: 610km.  The smooth sound of bitumen.  We had some errands to do in Alice, so we got up early enough to be on the road with time to spare.  It was going to be a big day of driving, and we needed to get into Banka Banka at a reasonable time so we wouldn’t have to go knocking on any doors at the unthinkable hour of 8pm.  After doing some shopping, and seeing a mechanic about what turned out to be a minor issue with the leaf springs, we headed out of Alice with full fuel tanks and a sense that we were almost at the end of our long journey.

   The drive was relatively uneventful, pretty much a very long, very flat, very straight journey north.  There was a surprising amount of greenery around, however, due to some recent rain that had come through.  We passed the Tropic of Capricorn, signifying that it would only get hotter from here on out.  One of the highlights was a random stop at a mango farm, where we enjoyed mango ice cream for lunch.  Drop me in a tub of it and I'll eat my way out thanks.  

   We came to the Devil's Marbles.  Stacks of granite boulders that looked like someone had placed one on top of the other, comprising acres and acres of bush.  Quite the impressive site, and worth the stop just off the road.  Once again, you could spend ages exploring and poking around the giant rocks.

   Next was Tennant Creek. Before we started this trip, we'd almost decided to camp there as a stop between Alice and Darwin.  But Tegan thought we could keep going and shave an hour off the next days drive, and Banka Banka looked like a nice place to stop.  Boy did we dodge a bullet.  A run down, dirty, dodgy looking town unfolded in front of us, with faded signs and plenty of abandoned buildings with smashed windows.  Charming.  If anyone from Tennant Creek sees this, please show us something good about your town, because we couldn't find anything.  If we camped there we might've been lucky to get out with nothing being stolen.  Stopping for diesel was a long enough visit, and we hightailed it out of there, laughing that we definitely made the right choice.

  Banka Banka was an hour away, and we rolled in just as the sun was setting.  After buying a couple beers from the friendly managers, we set up camp, had dinner, and high five'd each other because we weren't in Tennant Creek.  

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Coming up: we hit the big city, find a bed to sleep in, and celebrate making it this far.        

Kings Canyon to Alice

   The fifth leg: Kings Canyon to Alice Springs.  Distance: 364km.  Get me off this damn road!!  We headed off from the canyon in the morning, intending to get to Alice before dark.  It wasn’t much of a drive, but there were sights to see and hikes to walk.  The dirt road to West Macdonnell National Park started off well enough, with the usual rough patches.  How we should have savored the smooth bitumen (or pavement, in American english) while it had lasted.  It deteriorated fast.  It was like driving on concrete that was littered with meteorite craters.  There was no escaping either, we tried driving on both sides of the road, the middle, and the very edge.  It felt like Frank was going to rattle to pieces.  There was silence in the cab because you had to shout to make it audible.  And this was only for 150km, we had just come from over 1000km of dirt with nothing close to these head-pounding corrugations.  The bitumen was highly praised as we entered the park, and even though several short patches of beat up dirt road remained, we had come through the worst of it rather unscathed (“what’s that rattle under the hood?”).

   We toured the sights of West Macdonnell National Park, filled with gorges, water holes, and red cliffs that are so iconic to these parts.  It was another full day, with hiking, swimming, and bird watching on tap.  We could’ve easily spent a week there, exploring and camping, however we had a job to get to and some nature to save.

   After stopping at Simpson’s gap so Tegan could giddily observe the endangered black-flanked rock wallabies, we rolled into Alice after dark in search of a caravan park.  "Please don't let everything be shut at 8pm!"  Oh the beauty of Google Maps and an iPhone.  We located our park (“camp anywhere, we’re not very full”) and were treated to the nicest grass we’d seen on the trip.  For dinner, we treated ourselves to Hanuman, an Indian/Thai place near the golf course (Mom and Grandma, you know the one).  Some good sights, nice grass, and a great meal.  No better way to end the day after our struggles on that damn dirt.
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Coming up: we hit the tropics, touch the Devil's Marbles, and thank our lucky stars we didn't camp in Tennant Creek.

Uluru to Kings Canyon

   The fourth leg: Uluru to Kings Canyon. Distance: 326km. You won’t find a fuller day than this.  We awoke with the crowds before dawn in order to catch the sunrise at Uluru.  It’s something that must be done on any trip here, despite the madness.  Tegan had the bright idea to have breakfast as the sun rose, so we packed up the gear and headed over to have cups of tea with a giant rock.

    We followed the signs to the viewing area, only to discover that this was where everyone goes.  Even worse, we couldn’t even park up and sit on the back of the ute without 12 million camper vans and people invading our view.  With 6 minutes to sunrise and our stress levels rising, we gunned it out of the car park, easily surpassing the 10km/hour speed limit (“don’t mind the dirty looks, just go!”).  Along the road we found a place to pull over that had a view and only one other vehicle.  We sat on Frank, eating cereal and sipping tea, while the latecomers sped by trying to catch a glimpse of the view.  After a brief close-up look at the rock, we continued on to Kings Canyon.

   The day before, we had the bright idea to drive on to the canyon and loop around to Alice Springs, rather than hightail it straight to Alice and miss some good sights.  It might burn a bit more diesel, but it’d be worth it.  Plus, in our opinion, Kings Canyon could easily surpass Uluru in terms of beauty and spectacle.  We made the drive in a few hours, then setup camp in the recently-burnt dustbowl that was the caravan park.  Later in the afternoon we hiked up to the canyon, walking the rim in about 4 hours and arriving back at the ute just after dark.  When we got back, we enjoyed a well-deserved beer...at $32 a six pack.  

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Coming up: get me off this damn road!!, mountains and gorges, and a welcome spot of grass.   

Kal to Tjukayirla Roadhouse

   The second leg: Kalgoorlie to Tjukayirla Roadhouse.  Distance: 664km.  Abandoned car wrecks on the side of the road: lost count at over 40.  Flat, flat, flat land as far as the eye could see.  Dusty and hot, although the road wasn’t too bad as we passed 4 groups of graders.  A long day in the dirt.

  The first few hundred kilometres were marked by the discovery of this little fellow, a thorny devil for those unfamiliar.   

  We decided on Frank.  After spending hours in the ute brainstorming a decent name for our fearless Cruiser, Tegan came up with something that stuck.  Why?  Frankenstein is a natural choice because his new windscreen panels had come from 2 different vehicles.  But since he really isn’t that much of a monster, Frank seemed a better fit, and much less ugly sounding.  Frank has some air of esteem about it, a working class hero who puts his head down and works until the whistle sounds; someone to lead us into the desert and beyond.    

   We arrived at the roadhouse with some time to spare until the “no service after 8pm” rule came into effect.  Locks on the diesel pumps, bars on the doors and windows, it was clear we were in the desert.  In fact, we were the only ones in the whole joint, besides the managers.  Tegan cooked a nice risotto and we fell fast asleep next to Frank after a brief, yet unsuccessful search for reptiles.  

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   Coming up: secure your unleaded fuel, hide your alcohol, and observe the camels and raptors.

Esperance to Kalgoorlie

   The first leg: Esperance to Kalgoorlie.  Length: 494km.  Chinese food at the BP roadhouse in Norseman: hard to fault, given the location.  We pulled into Kalgoorlie at about 8pm, expecting to easily get a patch of grass in some campground.  Dead wrong.  It seems that “at that hour”, as we were told by one manager, nobody wanted our money.    That was, until we found one little gem that kindly opened their doors to our desperation.  That’s where the kindness ended.  You’d think we called to see if we could sleep in their bed.  We were relegated to a patch of dirt covered in shade cloth, realized that we forgot to pack pillows, were awakened by 3 drunk men coming back from the pub at 2am, and lay awake for some time after that making sure they weren’t going to try and steal anything off the back of the ute.  Needless to say we were happy to awaken the next morning and get the hell out of there.

    Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your opinion of Kal, these photos of the “Super Pit” gold mine were all we got as we ran around obtaining our last supplies (namely pillows) before the long trip on dirt.

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Coming up: a long day in the dirt, reptile spotting, and Frank is born.

Beginnings...

 

   It was beginning to get a bit ridiculous.  Here we were, packed and waiting to load our ute, and it was nowhere to be found.  In the days leading up to our departure, it was decided that we’d replace both the front and rear windscreen panels in order to avoid exacerbating the rust that was already present.  We’d managed to get our new windscreen installed the night before, with the help of Tegan’s cousin.  However, in the build up to the trip we’d decided to get the rear professionally installed since we’d be too busy running around packing up our lives for the next adventure.  Now it was 1pm, we were supposed to leave around 11am, and we still had no ute.  By 2 o’clock we managed to track it down after calling the body shop and finding out that “they were just going to call us”.  Well, with that drama over we spent the next hour frantically preparing our vessel for the coming trip (see map, with stops in green).
   Loaded, tied down, and ready for action, we rolled out of the driveway, radio blaring.  While we could spend hours listing the details of our trip, the way the dirt road laid out in front of us, the color of the rocks at Uluru, and the finer points of avoiding getting dust in your ute, we will instead speed things up and highlight some key points of our 5,000 kilometre journey. 
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   Coming up: our ute gets a name, camping in the desert, coping with the dust, camels everywhere, the price of diesel, ranges and more ranges, tourists, and the beauty of sleeping in a bed.  

Our Life for the Next 8 Months

Welcome everyone!  After many trials and tribulations figuring out how to design and write our entries, we're finally live.  Share with your friends and family, and stay tuned for further developments from the research assistants in the bush.