Our little green car was surrounded by heat and emptiness. The cool, shady interior of our 4 wheel drive provided the best view of the countryside. 12 seconds after you stood outside you could feel your skin getting seared by UV rays accompanied by the tickling of swarms of flies. We could drive hours without passing another car or seeing any signs of human life except for the endless, straight white line undulating in the heat. Sometimes we would see smoke near the road- bushfires. No one was fighting them, there was nothing to burn.
We tried to make a habit to stop to sightsee and stretch once a day. By the time we crossed out of Western Australia the scenery was beginning to change. Instead of watching red dust and scraggly bushes blur past our windows green and brown painted pictures of tall green grass, boab trees, steep hills and murky rivers.
One morning we went to visit a historic boab tree. In 1855 a European Expedition traveled down one of the many rivers of the Northern Territory. To mark their arrival an artist in the group inscribed the date on one of the bloated boabs. The characters have been stretched as the tree’s girth expanded but are still legible.
The 1855 Tree also was an aboriginal meeting place so we took some time to learn about this ancient culture.
Our days started early and ended late, at least 10 hours on the road a day. We took in more scenery during the day and sipped cool drinks and played bocce ball once the sun retired. Unfortunately none of us had slept in a soft, bug free environment below 95 degrees in 2 weeks. Darwin was drawing us in like the 100s of bugs that swarmed our lantern every night.
No comments:
Post a Comment