Australia & New Zealand Adventure Part IX: Perth to Darwin, Litchfield, Kakadu and the Stuart Highway

So, I will try and make this letter somewhat shorterthan the last monolith. I'll see how far I get...I believe that I last left you in

Perth

once again. Iflew back to visit a friend after finding out that theKimberley Region was flooded after the cyclone, and Ihad nine days free before our next tour left Darwin.I spent a few days on

Rottnest Island

which is abeautiful retreat for Perth's well-to-do. They havethe smallest kangaroos called

Quokkas

, this is theonly place in Oz that they have survived being eatenby other "feral" animals like cats and dogs. Theywere very cute. After two days of cycling around theisland not seeing another soul, I was ready to fly toDarwin and see people again.Giovanna had flown to Sydney for a week so it was backto travelling on my own for this period. After beingtogether every day since January, it felt a littlestrange at first, but then I was amazed at how manypeople I met when on my own. So off I set for theairport and flew 3 1/2 hours to the northern most cityin

Australia

.Darwin is a strange place. The heat was unlikeanything I've ever experienced. It was as humid as abee's nest and around 32 centigrade every day. Thereal bite was that the temp didn't fall in theevening, so it was still 32 when you were having abeer at 10pm. This whole atmosphere made me feelquite lethargic and the mere task of getting changedto go to the hostel pool felt like hard work.I lazed away a few days there, and was very happy tosee Giovanna's face again when she arrived.Darwinians are not the most well-mannered people. Oneday I was by the pool, when i noticed 4 guys juststaring at me incessantly. When I asked if they hadever seen a girl sunbathe before they answered, "oh,we were just checking out your scars, you f***

ing

yank!". This was not my only nerve-racking incidentwith the locals. Our next trip took us to

Litchfield

and

Kakadu

National Parks.

Kakadu

is UNESCO world heritagelisted and is generally recognised as the locationwhere Crocodile Dundee was filmed. We spent threedays swimming in cool rock pools with cascadingwaterfalls, hiking through mangrove swamps, checkingout indigenous rock art, learning aboriginal huntingtechniques, and generally trying to murder as manymosquitoes when the sun went down as possible. Oh,and trying to sleep in a pool of your own sweat wasalso a tool I picked up on this trip....so hot, andsleeping in canvas tents under the stars.The highlight of this trip was going on a cruise on asaltwater crocodile infested river. The guide

honked

huge chunks of meat over the side of the boat and wesat and watched the live version of Disney's "junglecruise" as the

crocs

came and jumped out of the waterup to six feet to chomp on chicken carcasses. Quiteincredible. One

croc

came very close to crawling upthe side of the boat, we all screamed and checked formissing limbs after. People still get eaten by

crocs

in the Northern Territory, our guide had many gruesomestories of cocky fishermen who thought they couldsafely wade across the river.....By this point in my trip, I am really starting to loveAussie humor. And the stories the people who reallylive out in the bush love to tell. Stories like:"crikey, mate, you should have been out on the pisswith us last night - there was a lugger came in with a1 1/2 meter

saltie

and just had him there thrashingaround on the floor while

we's

were tossing 4x ! "Fair

Dinkum

?" "yeah, bloody oath, mate!"Roughly translated: a guy brought a

croc

into a localbar after catching it out fishing....(he had photos toprove it!)It amazes me the things that are everyday normalityout here.....After

Kakadu

we returned to Darwin for one night, andthen it was the gruesome prospect of three days on theStuart Highway.....1500 kilometers of red dust, reddust, and er...red dust, all the way to

Alice Springs

.Luckily for us, our driver, Tex, was hilarious andoften had me checking that my spleen was still intactby the end of the day. Tex had been tour guiding fora few years after an accident on a cattle station inthe Northern Territory left him unable to ride horsesanymore. He certainly gave us a lot of insight as towhat life is like for thousands of (mostly men)Aussies who choose this way of life; living andworking in remote and harsh "cattle stations"(ranches, as we know them) that are often double thesize of

Switzerland

. They work 14-16 hours a day, inblazing heat, go days or weeks without showering, andonly make about $250 a month. It is a life full oftestosterone, bravado, and beer, and these mengenerally exude all three in excess. We stopped in a tiny town called

Daly

Waters forlunch, population 15. However, there was a beerfestival for all the cattle stations within 500 milesor so, and the place was swarming with cowboys, or"ringers"/"

Stockmen

" as they are known here. Going tothe bar to get myself a beer was quite an experience.The place reeked of cattle, leather, and sweat, andI'm not sure I've ever felt more like a "prize cow tobe roped in" as I did then. I was leered at fromevery corner; there were no women around! When I wentto pay, some of the cowboys were getting their ticketsfor the festival; a guy in front of me opened his tofind 3 free condoms inside, which he openly expressedapproval at finding. It left me wondering if they werealso rounding up women from a 500 mile radius andbringing them in by the truckload for the event.....?After three long days of driving, we arrived in AliceSprings. We had slept under the stars in swags, seengolden orb spiders the size of your palm, gone on atour of an old gold mine, had our photos taken in themiddle of the highway, peed in the red dust when therewere no toilets and marvelled at the bright green treefrogs that lived inside when there were, met weird andwonderful characters in a "town" that claimed mostextra-terrestrial sightings in the southernhemisphere, had photos posing by the weird "devilsmarbles" rocks formations, swam in water tanks atcattle stations that put us up for the night, anddriven many many kilometers. We all partied prettyhard that night in Alice, we deserved much beer. Wedanced the night away, and dreaded our 5am departurefor

Ayers Rock

the following day!I'll leave it here for now.....the trip to

Uluru

deserves its own letter. Thank you to those of youwho have read up till now.....I do love sharing myexperiences with you all!Please write, I do try and respond to each and everyindividual email I get! And I'll be back in thestates in under two weeks!Catching a bus to Hervey bay in 30

mins

, take care fornow...