Just another day - Northern Territory

Driving in Australia often means covering a lot of kilometres a day, especially when driving trough the Outback. Petrol stations are usually 100km apart, if not more, and towns are even sparser. So does it get boring? Yes and no.

When planning our trip, we really wanted to drive through the desert, because part of that experience is to let the relative monotony ease your mind and your senses. I do say relative monotony, because there is a lot of variety out there, it's just more subtle, and sometimes holds unexpected surprises. 

So let's describe a random day out there, the 25th of August we drove from Barrow Creek to Daly Waters, some 650km. Now Barrow Creek really is a petrol station in the middle of nowhere. We parked there for the night because it was 5pm and we weren't sure we would make it to the next one before dark. There was really nothing there besides fuel, beer and cow patties. 

We made breakfast in the campervan (fried eggs) and drove off around 8:30. As usual Rodie drove the first bit. Our first stop was a our an hour and a half later at the Devils Marbles. This is a rock formation that has eroded in a manner that it now looks like there are giant marbles heaped together. According to the first explorers these must've been the devil's own. The indigenous people call them Karlu Karlu: eggs of the rainbow serpent.

Devils Marbles

All these sites have some information like the history, geological formation and cultural significance, on a shaded sign. Most of them have (long drop) toilets and some have a rainwater reservoir. A few have an emergency phone, since mobile phone coverage in the outback is nonexistent. And this one had satellite internet! Which we didn't use, you had to give your full personal details, and we couldn't be bothered.

Internet options

It took another hour to get to Tennant Creek, which was suprisingly big. It has about 4000 inhabitants, shops, hotels, and 4 petrol stations. In our minds this is now big... We bought lunch (freshly baked bread!) and chocolate at the supermarket and petrol at the BP. We are very alert that our rental company does not allow us to tank Opal fuel, but we must buy premium. So we got BP Vortex 98 at $1,69 per litre instead of Opal 91 at $1,29. Just as we filled up, we saw that this station also had Unleaded 95 at $1,50! That's a few dollars wasted...

We aren't used to this much choice, usually we're happy if they sell anything other than Opal. Anyway, we switched seats and headed north. 

As we drive, the landscape changes continually. Today is definitely a termite mound day. The number of trees varies, the landscape goes from yellow to brown and green, it's sometimes burnt black al around, but we continue to see thousands of termite mounds. We're also in cattle country,  we don't just see the signs warning for wandering cattle (roads are invented) but we sees little herds of cows beside the road too. And quite some dead ones as well. They've dried into bags of skin with some bones insite. Lots of birds of prey circle the sky. 

Dead tree with dark dangly things

Around 2pm we stop for a late lunch and some petrol in Elliot: a general store with extra petrol station type of town. We park the van in the shade, and eat our sandwiches. While we eat we suddenly see a huge flock of bats emerge. In broad daylight! 

We take a closer look, and they seem to come from a bunch of trees, and take flight every time there's a loud sound. We walked closer and saw dead trees full of dark dangly things. And the live trees had them too. Hundreds, if not thousands of bats. I reckon flying foxes. Some of them just hung there, others clawed for branch to branch and others flew around, you could see through their sheer wings in the bright light.

Flying foxes?

After this little intermezzo, we switched places again and continued north. We discussed how much further we would go today, and we decided on Daly Waters. We wanted a shower, so no free camping tonight. And Daly Water, at the crossing of roads north, west and south, has two campgrounds. After checking the Campermate app we decided on the Wayside Inn as opposed to the hyped Daly Waters Pub. A good choice, it felt like a little oasis with grassy sites with a nice view. Little wallabies grazing in between termite mounds, and galahs, lapwings, crows, willy wagtails, and neon coloured parrots at the horses drinking spot. Some kites and hawks slowly circled low in the sky.

Our view from the campsite

We went to the inn for our complimentary beer, but decided we shouldn't order dinner here. We're spending so much money on petrol these days, that we are structurally over budged. And we rather eat out in an actual restaurant than in a roadhouse, so we'd better make dinner from our 'outback stash'. We chose our microwave meals, and they weren't all bad. That night we spotted our first cane toad, and didn't kill it...

Rainbow lorikeets