Elad’s blog

“The Track”, as Australians refer to the Stuart Highway, is the road that connects Darwin with Alice-Springs, at the very center of Australia. The 1300 k”m of it which we did in the last two days are genrerally a long, endlss road, that leads you through long, endless planes, with very few attractions on the way. The most beautiful one is Devil’s Marbles; others include a historic pub, a warm pool, and some roadhouses. In one of them, at an extremely lucky timing, my car started to leak water.

It was in a place called Renner-Springs, a small roadhouse with an expensive petrol station, where we stopped to fill some fuel when I suddenly noticed that water were flowing out of the front. Like I said - extremely lucky, as it happened when the engine was off just for filling the petrol. It was also extremely lucky that I had Tony with me, as it turned out that he has a good technical sense and doesn’t fear cars. It was a small thing - one pipe came out of place; and it was really good that I carried T-Wrappes from Israel, as they got handy in holding the pipe back in place for another day and few hundreds k”ms, until we could buy a decent hose clamp and fix it properly.

Actually I had some thoughts about those T-Wraps; in Israel they were always part of my travel kit, but I thought they would turn out redundant in this long travel. However, I already used them three times (in Fraser Island, when we went out of rope; in the boat at PNG, to hold a plastic bag over my head as it was raining and the ceiling leaked; and now in the desert, to fix the car), and I’m almost running out of them - probably I will buy some more, as they proved useful.

Before the car broke we stoped at the “historical” pub at Dali-Waters. It is the oldest pub in the Northern Territory, and really has an atmosphere - beside the necesarry rugby screen and pool table (essential. They are present in every pub in Australia, no matter where), the walls are decorated, virtually covered, with souvenirs travelers left there: from flags to money to girl’s underwear - everything goes. I contributed a small bill I had left from Cambodia; so if you ever go there, look for that Cambodian money with my name on - it is just by the counter!

Devil’s Marbles, which we attended the second day (after an excellent camp in a rest area by the road) are a nice geological phenomen - a field of huge granite boulders, just in the middle of the desert, shaped like almost perfect spheres. Geological experts claim it is the work of rain water, but I really find it hard to believe - the aboriginal explanation (these are the eggs of the Rainbow Serpent, laid here at the dreamtime) seem more plausible. Beside the impressive rocks, I learned there about the unique australian desert frog - a frog that comes out after the rains, and when the pools are about to dry it has the nicest trick: it drinks and drinks and drinks some more, than it buries itself alive and hiberrnates for months until the next rain comes. Yes - summer hibernation and an internal water-reservoir can keep frogs alive in the desert.

Since australia is big, and have large distances, the changes in the sceneries are gradual, so you can appreciate it. Along the way I noticed the change of soil color - gray, brown, orange, brown again, and finally light red; the change of vegetation - from forest, savvanah, bush, and arid vegetation (the deserts here have vegetation in them, much more than in Israeli deserts); the change of landscapes (from vast planes to small hills, that run on an east-west exis to form the Macdonnel Ranges, which fill up Australia’s middle), and the change in climate, from wet tropical to aride.

I have officially left the tropics now; the linbe on the road marking it was just 30 k”ms north of Alice, with much less fuss than in the east-coast (maybe because it is not in the middle of a city, and maybe because the outback atmosphere takes things much more easy than in the coast). I will spend some days here in Alice and its surroundings (Ayers-Rock is less than 500 k”ms away, which is considered really close here) and probably stay here to the Rodeo they have on Saturday - I haven’t seen a live rodeo show yet, and it can be interesting.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 15th, 2005 at 2:37 and is filed under Travels, Australia Center and South. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.