Parks doesn't let anyone up the road until they are sure .'
As I forked over $20 for a bush campsite in Kakadu National Park in the Top End of Oz, the warden explained why Sandy Billabong [a permanent waterhole left behind by a drying river] road was still closed to the public this season.
Late, heavy rain this year in the north meant that our campsite had been under water only a few weeks before and the swamp edge was now just past the legal 50m limit on camp proximity to croc habitat.
Known up here as 'salties' - the estuarine crocodiles are at the top of the food chain. They can grow to 5 metres plus, weigh 700 kg, see in the dark feel, have no natural predators, and since hunting was banned in the early 1970s their numbers have exploded. Salties are assumed to be in all waters not above a waterfall [crocs can't climb] and designated waterholes are only opened to swimming once they are cut off from the main river flow in the dry season and a croc management plan and trapping has ensured the water is croc free.
As the sun set we heard them come. I started a fire, frantically spread flaming branches around our campsite and even deployed chemicals to keep them a bay but it was futile. We should have known camping beside a World Heritage Area wetland, and the recent high water ensured that there were too many to contend with. We finally beat a hasty retreat to our tent, unable to leave for ten hours even to use the toilet.
In the morning the damage had been done. Twenty-one bites on my right elbow and ten on my finger from where they rested against the tent mesh as I slept.
The salties can be deadly up here but they have nothing on the Kakadu mossies.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
A cramp in my right right index finger
necessitated a switch from raising one finger to two, sometimes even three off the steering wheel. It was like clicking a computer mouse all day.
This is the Stuart Highway slicing through the red heart or Oz, 2,834 km from the last fish and chips of Post Augusta on the south coast of Australia to steamy Darwin on the Timor Sea in the north. On 'The Track' as it's known, you are either going north 'up the hill' or south 'down the hill'. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of dirt roads lead off The Track east and west, 200 km to a cattle station here, 500 km to a mine there or simply 1000 km to nowhere enroute to somewhere else.
There are a few rules on this highway. Carry enough water for two or three days, if you break down stay with your car, give way to the 'Kings of the Road,' the massive, wobbling three or four trailer, 54-metre long, 150-tonne Roadtrains, don't drive after 4:30-5 pm unless you have a bush bumper, comprehensive insurance and a hankering for roo steaks and above all other rules, bar none, you absolutely must give the Outback finger-lift-off-the-steering-wheel wave to every single oncoming vehicle.
That's 2,834 km worth. But to not do it wouldn't be very 'stralian would it?
This is the Stuart Highway slicing through the red heart or Oz, 2,834 km from the last fish and chips of Post Augusta on the south coast of Australia to steamy Darwin on the Timor Sea in the north. On 'The Track' as it's known, you are either going north 'up the hill' or south 'down the hill'. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of dirt roads lead off The Track east and west, 200 km to a cattle station here, 500 km to a mine there or simply 1000 km to nowhere enroute to somewhere else.
There are a few rules on this highway. Carry enough water for two or three days, if you break down stay with your car, give way to the 'Kings of the Road,' the massive, wobbling three or four trailer, 54-metre long, 150-tonne Roadtrains, don't drive after 4:30-5 pm unless you have a bush bumper, comprehensive insurance and a hankering for roo steaks and above all other rules, bar none, you absolutely must give the Outback finger-lift-off-the-steering-wheel wave to every single oncoming vehicle.
That's 2,834 km worth. But to not do it wouldn't be very 'stralian would it?
Glancing over my shoulder, the large, sweaty man was closing the gap.
We were rounding the path on the lip of the Henbury Meteorite Craters in the crushing heat and we could feel his heavy breath on our necks. It seemed a rather isolated spot - 140 km south of Alice Springs and 15 km up a red earth road from the Stuart Highway - to be nabbed from behind by a bare-chested Russian wrestler.
Then he was on us as we reached the car park and honesty box for the gravel campsite where his vast Governator Hummer dwarfed our hobbit-like Corrola.
'Do you have change for a $10?' - Slavic but encased in a light veneer of broad Aussie. 'No worries mate.' I forked over two fives and retreated to our rocky campsite while 'The Bear' unfolded his Hummer-top tent, wheeled a quad bike from his trailer and zoomed off down the road, shirtless, long hair streaming behind.
It seems Russian oligarchs have spread beyond Chelsea.
Later, as the sun set into the desert and Venus shone in the west, The Bear stopped work on his quad bike and appeared at our campsite with a stool and two bottles of chilled New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc courtesy of the fridge in his Hummer. As The Bear hydrated with a bottle of white over ice we learned that he was Polish, not Russian, and a doctor not a wrestler, who hailed from Sydney where he'd emigrated to from Poland in the late 1980s. He'd recently sold a large medical practice and had driven up to Alice Springs [$2000 in petrol for his Hummer] on an Australian national Medicare contract to provide medical service to isolated Aboriginal communities. Clearly a man of the people.
We offered him dinner but he waved it off - 'I ate sushi for lunch' - and he quaffed a second bottle of white.
For fun he was racing in the Finke Desert Rally on his quad bike - 500 km of sand dunes in one day - and between diagnosing diabetes and sewing up wounds 1000 km from nowhere his other passion was poker and his greatest joy, empty the bulging pockets of payday miners on the lash in the Alice Spring Casino.
Perhaps a Bear after all.
Then he was on us as we reached the car park and honesty box for the gravel campsite where his vast Governator Hummer dwarfed our hobbit-like Corrola.
'Do you have change for a $10?' - Slavic but encased in a light veneer of broad Aussie. 'No worries mate.' I forked over two fives and retreated to our rocky campsite while 'The Bear' unfolded his Hummer-top tent, wheeled a quad bike from his trailer and zoomed off down the road, shirtless, long hair streaming behind.
It seems Russian oligarchs have spread beyond Chelsea.
Later, as the sun set into the desert and Venus shone in the west, The Bear stopped work on his quad bike and appeared at our campsite with a stool and two bottles of chilled New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc courtesy of the fridge in his Hummer. As The Bear hydrated with a bottle of white over ice we learned that he was Polish, not Russian, and a doctor not a wrestler, who hailed from Sydney where he'd emigrated to from Poland in the late 1980s. He'd recently sold a large medical practice and had driven up to Alice Springs [$2000 in petrol for his Hummer] on an Australian national Medicare contract to provide medical service to isolated Aboriginal communities. Clearly a man of the people.
We offered him dinner but he waved it off - 'I ate sushi for lunch' - and he quaffed a second bottle of white.
For fun he was racing in the Finke Desert Rally on his quad bike - 500 km of sand dunes in one day - and between diagnosing diabetes and sewing up wounds 1000 km from nowhere his other passion was poker and his greatest joy, empty the bulging pockets of payday miners on the lash in the Alice Spring Casino.
Perhaps a Bear after all.
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