Ok well Port Douglas, although being a very nice place, had served its purpose and I needed to get out of there and see some more of Australia. Work was getting a bit tedious too, the bar was a shambles and just wasn't a nice place to work in, and despite the people being cool, the bar wasn't! Tai pointed out a van relocation website and later that day myself and Kev were due to pick up a '4WD Adventure Camper Van' that weekend from Apollo...
We had 4 days to get a van from Cairns to Alice Springs and paid $1 a day for the rental, and they would pay for up to but no more than $350 worth of fuel. Although the excess was $1,500 we had to be careful with the thing as the distance was around 1,444miles. Take a look
here and you can see just how far we had to drive. I guess it'd be like driving across two-thirds of the States. We couldn't drive at night as there would be kangaroos jumping all over the road! Aussie animals are kinda nocturnal and they come out to play at night when its cooler, and they get attracted by the bright lights, but they are stupid and don't really observe the highway code...
So we left Port Douglas (early!) on Friday morning, said our tearful goodbyes and left. We were quite hungover from the night before so Kev took the passenger seat and I adopted a couple of cans of the trusty Red Bull. Our route was taking us down from Cairns, through Innisfail (the town and area where the cyclone hit a while ago, and wiped out most of the bananas, bumping the price up considerably!) and down to Townsville. That took around 5 hours and yet whenever we looked at the map it still looked like we'd hardly covered any distance at all. Below is a picture of just one of the many lookouts along the way. We only stopped at this lookout point for a quick pee, but hey what a nice view!!
Next, we left the coast and headed inland, towards Charter Towers which is situated pretty much amidst the Great Dividing Range. (This Range of mountains stretch around 1,200km from Queensland down through New South Wales and to Victoria. I'm not entirely sure what they do but everything east of them is green and everything west is dry desert or shubbery!) We stayed in a caravan park overnight after a long long day. The next day we left late and continued west as far as daylight would allow us. There are small towns or rather villages dotted along the highway, but servos (petrol stations to you and me) are few and far between, so you have to plan your journey right or face running out of fuel in the outback, with no mobile reception and a slim chance of anyone driving by carrying spare fuel, let alone anyone that will stop for you!
My preconception of the outback is that the further you got inland, the more sparse and red it would get. I was totally wrong. The scenery changes every now and then, no big sparsest of desert, the soil will change from brown to red and the landscape can be full of large hills or just empty with the occasional tree or bush. We didn't see any kangaroos as we stuck to daylight driving, well, we saw loads of dead ones alongside the road but that was about it! I noticed an emu in a dried up creek and Kev saw a cassowary but that was whilst we were still on the road along the coast.
The roads however, Jesus, you cannot begin to imagine how straight they really can be. From the van to the horizon, both ahead and behind us, were usually straight. The roads would be hot and reflect the sky as well, so they kind of tail off in the distance and just merge in with the sky on the horizon. There were several stretches of road which we would travel along at 100-120km/h, for around 45 to 90 minutes, without having to turn a single corner. Its pretty boring at times but along with the sun in the sky without a cloud to be seen, it kinda manages to submerge you in the experience. Vehicles on the other side of the road were sparse and most people would wave or nod at you on the way. Something to pass the time I guess.
We saw a nice sunset in Mt. Isa, which used to be a popular mining town but I think its kinda subdued nowadays, the rest of the places were just empty towns. Julia Creek had nothing open at all on a sunny afternoon, except for the Shell garage which was the single servo in the place. Once into the Northern Territory and there was no national speed limit on most stretches of the road. Day three and we were onto the highway heading south, which links Darwin in the northern part of the territory with Adelaide in South Australia. It also runs closeby to the Ghan, an old but still used famous railway line connecting S.A. with the N.T. Devil's Marbles was another thing to nosey at along the way, a site where hundreds of large and small boulders were just scattered around, said by the aborigine's to have been laid by a serpent...
We spent the final night just next to the roadside and it was a bit creepy, being in the outback with no-one else around! But we survived and cooked kangaroo steak (which we had bought from Port Douglas by the way, we didn't pick up any free roadkill!!!) whilst the sun rose amongst clouds to the east. Skippy sandwiches were had before our final stretch of the trip taking us into Alice Springs. The weather had gotten a bit crap and it was cloudy all the time and it was even starting to rain a little bit... Not good! Still, some fairly cool skies were seen....
All in all, a great experience driving through the outback, it has to be done to be seen, and it has to be seen to be believed (how cheesey) :OP
I'd write some stuff about the National Park, but to me, its just a rock, I know its got a lot of Aboriginal stuff and beliefs behind it but I can't be bothered to write much about it now because I'm mega lazy... So have a look at the gallery and see the thing for yourself! Oh, the Olgas are cool too, smaller rocks but some are taller than Uluru, these are situation in the same National Park... We spent most of the day at Uluru, before a quick look at Kata-Tjuta, followed by a bit of a buffet sunset dinner, facing away from the sunset, watching Uluru change colours as the sun set in the west. Wasn't quite as impressive as I thought it would be, I think sunrise would be much better... Still, a good day out, worth the trip. Perhaps wish I'd done a 2 day trip with Kings Canyon included too, oh well, until next time.
