Litchfield to Kununurra (goodbye NT, hello WA)

Western Australia, here we come!!!

We left Darwin on Friday the 7th. Laurie drove me to Litchfield and I was the most comatose passenger he could have ever wished to have…I had had very late nights in Darwin with 5-star and had gone out a little too hard on the last night (dancing with aborigines at the Casino and at then after at some semi-nightclub-gurl-dancing-club). I woke up with my head somewhere other than on my head…and so, we went to Wangi falls where I had only enough energy to take a dip into the water and swim to the falls and let it pound some life back into me (dear vodka, dear me):


but I did manage to take a great photo of a goanna in full action:




And then we made our way to Tjuwaliyn (Douglas Springs) where we spent the night, and I got to spend the most wonderful morning just soaking in the thermal hot springs that flowed into the Douglas river!!! Oh…I could not have asked for anything more to try and get my body and mind back from the debaucherous behavior in Darwin…



From here, we made it towards Western Australia, leaving the Stuart Highway and beginning our westward journey again:


Somewhere along the way, we crossed paths with the most hard-core traveler: a single Japanese motorcycle-chick with camping gear and spare gas-container strapped to her bike!!! I was completely mesmerized by even the thought of traveling alone on a motorcycle across the OZ outback, with the intention of camping along the way!! THAT’S HARDCORE!!!





And on this drive, we also met Peter, a deutsch relief-teacher/substitute teacher (working in an aboriginal community off the Victoria River in the Gregory National Park). He was super-friendly, approaching us in the dead middle of the scortching day at a rest-stop. I thought was it was so ironic that Laurie meet Peter as Laurie’s students in Yeppoon call him: Mr Happy and Peter calls himself DR SMILES: (Suicide, Mental ILlness and Education). They are both teachers that love their students and pour their heart and souls into inspiring the next generation! What an inspiration in it of itself!!!




We traveled quite a long distance that day (700Km—a long day for us) and we made our way to Timber Creek (where we met some german travelers that we have continuously run into for the last 2 weeks). Here's just the road to:




And along the way, we saw incredible numbers of these really amazing BOAB trees (I will say more about these after we enter into WA):


And finally, we arrived to: WESTERN AUSTRALIA



where you must discard your fruit, honey and vegetables prior to entering:



oh, and I must not forget to tell the story about “how Laurie tried to kill me” that day before we entered WA!!! . As per usual, I left ahead of the van but being that I was still a bit on the tail-end of my recovery-from-a-bad-hangover-after-Darwin, I was going for my real bike-ride…and told Laurie that I was going for about 20Km and that I would meet him around 10am (about 1 hour) and that I wasn’t brining my camel-back—that I was just with 1L of water for this trip. Well, Laurie was just “doing his own thing” and lost track of time. By 10:30am, I was panicking as the sun was seriously beating down on me, I was down to the last dregs of water in my bottle, there was NO SHADE to be found, I was nearing 40Km and terribly worried that if I stopped, I would just get shrivel up and eaten by some unknown beast in the outback!! So when the van showed up at 10:40am, I had a few words to say like: where the f—- have you been and what the f—-are you trying to do to me?

We laugh about it now…but I sure as hell wasn’t too pleased at the time…

So yeah, if you stop hearing from me all together, just check in with laurie, he might just shrug his shoulders and say: I dunno, mate. She just took off one day and never came back?! She left me a camera, a few good CDs, her computer and a whole lot of her junk…have you heard from her on your end?

Yeah, the outback may just be recycling me back to my original form! (Speaking of which, I just picked up Bill Bryson’s: A brief history of everything for A$4—it’s a rather thick paperback that covers everything about everything about science…and, well, quite frankly I was stunned to find it in a tourist office in the middle of NOWHERE! But having heard from Brian&Jenn that it is a most wonderful Bryson read, I’m stoked!!!).