So after saying goodbye to a good friend of mine from Amsterdam with a few shots of the dreaded Absinthe, I decided it was high time to get the hell out of Cairns and start seeing the 'real' Australia. Cairns is a fun city if you're into freezing your ass off in the lagoon
or trying to purchase a pair of sandals in the shape of crocodiles.....it's basically tourist shit heaven. So I opted instead to sign up for a three day outback tour that would take me all the way out to Alice Springs in the middle of the Northern Territory. Besides, I was sick of the weather as it had been raining solidly for almost 12 straight days and I figured if it didn't get sunny in the outback then it never would. This was my tour guide Al.
What I didn't realize was that God was playing a cruel joke on me that weekend and decided to make it pour even harder after the first day on the road. Since most of the roads were washed out, we couldn't take any of the dirt paths and had to stick to the paved roads instead, which changed out trip from a meager 2100kms to an excruciating 2700kms.......sweet! The picture bellow was taken of a road as it was washing out underneath us!
For those of you who want to feel like you're the last person left on the face of the earth I highly recommend the drive. There is absolutely NOTHING out there minus a few scattered towns that look like the set of the movie "Wolf Creek." On our first day, we stopped off at a pub that made you feel right at home by displaying all of the pickled poisonous snakes that had been caught around the bar.
In the backyard there was an emu that would casually stroll into the pub when it was bored. There was also this guy who was a little pissed off so we kept our distance!
I still showed them how we did it in Canada though!
That night we stopped off at at a quaint little town for the night and partied in the only hostel/bar in the area with all the locals. These were interesting people if you enjoyed debating the finer points of cattle farming and shitalking the local cops when they came to clear everyone out at around three in the morning. The 'ol "Nelson Charm" wasn't working that night so I had to resort to other means...
The next day we departed for the town of Waltzing Matilda which is a really big deal in Aus because it's the name of their unofficial national anthem. It's a song about a thief who commits suicide by drowning himself in a waterhole rather than face some jail time for stealing a sheep. Thankfully, this way of thinking has percolated into all forms of Australian culture today and honestly I think it's amazing that some of these people can even get their legs through the correct pant hole in the morning.
After that it was off to the Walkabout Creek Hotel where the movie Crocodile Dundee was filmed. (The first one that is, not the one where Paul Hogan goes to New York or whatever..)
That night we celebrated out arrival at the hotel by getting wasted and making passes at one another.
With a hangover and an early start under our belts the next day we took off at five in the morning so we could make it to the natural rock formation known as "Devils Marbles." At one point in the road, there are no curves for 67 kms, you really do feel like you're in the middle of nowhere!
The devil's marbles truly are an incredible sight, they were formed by a combination of erosion and cracks in the earth's crust and the whole site, (we were told repeatedly ad nauseum,) is sacred to the aboriginals.
Very sacred to the aboriginals....
EXTREMELY sacred to the aboriginals!!!!!
Finally it was off to one of the only four remaining telegraph stations in Australia before we made it into Alice Springs. I only took one pic of the town but I think I managed to capture both the cultural divide and the unique history that makes this one of the most lawless and dangerous towns to live in in all of Australia.
