Week 4: Mike vs. The Outback

    The beginning of this week was pretty straightforward. Classes and stuff. Maybe some notable things actually happened between Monday and Wednesday, but my memory at the moment is dominated by our second large excursion of this Australian semester. I am talking, of course, about our journey to the great Australian outback, or the bush as the locals call it.

            The Goon Squad was all together for this momentous odyssey. (Anna, Julia, Court, Monika, Matt, Tim, and I) We caught a red-eye flight out of Brisbane that took us to Darwin, the largest city in the Northern Territory. By the time we got to the hostel in Darwin, it was already 3am and we had to be at the bus for pickup at 6:30am. We all somehow managed to wake up and stumble our way to the beast of a bus that would be our home for the next 3 days and met our met lovely tour guide, Leigh. And by “lovely,” I mean a rugged, experienced, resourceful, and hilarious dude from Cairns. Leigh lives the type of life that any free spirited and outdoors loving person would kill for. He either acts as a tour guide in the outback, a dive instructor at Cairns, or a dive instructor in Indonesia. When he can, he travels around the world diving and backpacking. We were lucky enough to get him on one of his stints with Wayoutback Tours and this guy knows more about the outback than I know about my own hometown.

            Joining Leigh and the Goon Squad on our bus were 9 other people who came from all over the globe. We had university students from Germany, Netherlands, Italy, and Mexico as well as a pair of Swiss bankers who had graduated only a few years ago. It was the single most diverse bus I’ve ever been on. We departed from Darwin to begin our almost 1000km trek across some of the least inhabited terrain in Australia. Once we left the city in our rearview mirrors, the countryside quickly changed into a vast expanse of red, iron rich soil, dotted only with small shrubs and termite mounds. The termite mounds we saw throughout the trip were huge, with some reaching over 10 feet tall. The Northern Territory was just coming out of the dry season so the land we saw had not seen a drop of rain in almost 6 months. It was an arid, barren, dusty landscape that was strikingly beautiful… especially from inside of a nicely air conditioned bus. The temperature was a steady 90 degrees Fahrenheit for most of our trip and rose to the upper 90s for a few hours each day. It was HOT (and we brought long pants, thinking that it might get cold at night. Leigh laughed at this and told us he doesn’t even own a pair of pants. So that was a big waste of precious packing space. Live and learn I guess.)

The endless expanse

    Our first stop on our tour brought us to Kakadu National Park, the largest national park in Australia that covers almost 20,000 square kilometers. We drove to the Mary River Wetlands for a crocodile cruise. Now the wetlands/floodplains after 6 months of draught aren’t really that wet. They’re actually rather dry, believe it or not. However, when the wet season comes around, those wetlands get really wet. Like 5-feet-of-rain wet. It rains so much during the heart of the wet season that most roads in the area get completely flooded and some towns are cut off from the rest of the world for months at a time. The rivers that were merely babbling brooks when we saw them would grow to be almost a kilometer wide, some get even bigger. It was crazy to think that where we stood by the banks of Mary River would be covered in 5 feet of water that would stretch from horizon to horizon in just a few short months. Anyways, we hopped onto a boat in the river while it was only a measly 50 feet across. It seemed like a great place for a quick swim to cool off. As it turns out though, the Mary River Wetlands happens to have the largest concentration of salt water crocodiles on the planet. Leigh cheerily informed us that we would be lucky to make it 5 feet in the water before being gobbled up by a hungry croc. Isn’t Australia fun!! With swimming out of the question, we hunkered down beneath the blazing sun for a boat ride amongst the crocodiles.

    Mary River was beautiful. Lily pads with huge pink blossoms lined the banks and exotic birds of every shape and size flew in and out of view. Despite the large number of crocodiles in the area, we only saw two on the cruise. The boat guide attributed this to the hot midday sun and the cold-blooded animals’ need for the cool riverbed beneath the murky waters. The great diversity of wildlife and flora that we saw made up for the lack of man-eating reptiles though. We would also come to see dozens more crocodiles over the course of the next few days. 

Mary had a little River

Croc

    From Mary River, we ate lunch and headed to Ubirr, a set of natural sandstone caves sitting atop a hillside. Ubirr holds a very rich history for the aboriginal people in the area and features cave paintings that date as far back as 20,000 BC. Leigh was able to tell us heaps (the Australian lingo is catching on) of stories about the paintings, aboriginal history, and how their culture has evolved. From the top of the hill, we had an incredible, 360 degree view of the area. In fact, Ubirr is the place where the opening sequence of Crocodile Dundee was filmed. Watch the movie. We were there. Yeah. It was from there where we watched the sunset which was absolutely breathtaking. It was even more mind blowing to think of the aboriginals that sat in the exact same spot watching the same sunset 20,000 years prior.

 

Goon Squad at Pride Rock

Unreal

    We spent that night at Cooinda Camping Ground where we were able to get to know the other people in our group. I always find it fascinating to talk with people from other countries to hear about their experiences and how different some places are from the US. Before calling it a night, Liam, Tim, Matt, and I laid down to look at the stars. The stars. Holy crap the stars. As an eagle scout, I’ve been on my fair share of camping trips and looked at the stars uncountable times. But holy crap… the stars here. I was seeing a night sky I had never seen before because of the difference in hemispheres between Australia and every other place I’ve ever been. More than that though, the sky was essentially exploding with stars. The absence of light pollution, the lack of actual pollution, and the low amount of moisture in the air to form haze gave us a view of millions upon millions of bright, clear stars. It was and still is beyond words. We laid there for probably two hours and saw about a dozen shooting stars ignite the sky. The only thing that drove me into my tent that night was the assurance that we would be sleeping under the stars the next night. And the fact that we were waking up at 5:45am. That’ll do it too.

    Day 2 began bright and early, just as promised. We spent much of our day at Gunlom Falls. Again, being at the tail end of the dry season meant that the waterfalls were not very watery. Leigh put it best by saying that Gunlom was more of a waterdrip, not a waterfall. Nevertheless, we hiked up the side of the mountain to the top of the falls for a spectacular view of the landscape. A few natural infinity pools laid at the top of the falls so we did some swimming and took lots of touristy pictures.

The infinity pools

The whole crew

    We hiked back down to the lower plunge pool and took a dip in the fresh water crocodile infested waters. Oh I should probably mention here that fresh water crocodiles aren’t aggressive toward humans, only their salt water counterparts are. Sorry for the scare Mom. Most bodies of water in the outback are actually unswimmable due to the salt water crocs (I’m pretty sure unswimmable is a word. Spellcheck doesn’t agree with my though. Screw it I’m keeping it.) Gunlom can be swam in because the park rangers will clear out the salt-odiles a few times a year. Waterfall pools are usually fine to swim in too, because crocodiles can’t leap a couple hundred feet in the air to the top. At least I hope not.

Gunlom Waterdrip

    Adequately confident we weren’t going to die swimming in the Gunlom plunge pool, we donned some snorkeling gear and explored the large body of water. Tim thought his phone needed a bath so he ever so kindly took it in the water with him. You can probably guess how well that worked. In the midst of Tim’s tragic loss, Leigh popped out of the water holding a 3 foot long water snake. My adequate confidence of not dying got a lot less adequate in that moment. It turned out the snake was harmless so we played with it for a while. I held a water snake, in a crocodile infested pool, beneath a 150 foot waterfall, in the outback. Never thought I’d get to say that.

Me and da snake

    For lunch we went to a secret swimming hole Leigh had discovered in a past tour, ate some food, swam, and jumped off some rocks. Tuckered out from gratuitous amounts of sun and swimming, we carried on to our campsite at the base of Mount Bundy. Mount Bundy was a weathered mountain along an ancient mountain chain that has felt the full force of the brutal Australian season cycles. A small farm lay right next to the camp so we befriended some horses and bull named Nigel. At the campsite, the wildlife of the outback was out in full force. Lots of ugly brown toads milled about and cool little green tree frogs stuck to the walls of buildings. Wallabies were EVERYWHERE, hopping around looking all cute and shit. I snagged some sweet potato and fed a few and almost got one to eat out of my hand. Almost. Flying foxes, or super-mega-scary-death bats as I like to call them, whooshed around the night sky. They can have a wingspan of almost 5 feet. They big.

    We ate some dinner, made a campfire, and sat around chatting until the wee hours of the morning. I talked to the Swiss bankers, Michael and Joel, for a solid few hours about everything from skiing the Alps, to the decline of Swiss banking freedoms, to the effect the Eurocrisis is having on American foreign investments. I go to a business school if you couldn’t guess. Eventually I wandered over to the open field where we would sleep, set up my swag (an outdoor sleeping bag), and laid down to gaze once again at the stars. It was magical. I stayed awake as long as I could, saw about a dozen more shooting stars, then finally drifted off to sleep.

    I awoke to one of the horses from the farm standing stoically over us in the growing morning light. After falling asleep under the most beautiful night sky I’ve ever seen, here’s this majestic creature, bathed in sunlight, looking over me in my snuggly swag. Again, beyond words.

My wake up call

    Once I had woken up enough to realize that this was indeed real life, I got ready for our last day in the outback. We visited three different waterfalls on that day. The first being an incredible series of deep pools that were perfect for diving into. The water that led into the pools was also naturally filtered by sandstone underground and was clean enough to drink right out of the stream. It was really good. The second waterfall was part of the same river system, just further down the range. It was a massive swimming hole with a thundering waterfall that stayed flowing year round due to the mountain retaining huge amounts of water. This particular place had an underwater cave that you could look into with the snorkeling gear. The third waterfall and final destination of our outback adventure was also huge and had an awesome natural arch to its side. We did some more swimming and sat underneath the waterfall. It was finally time to head back to civilization.

Waterfall 1: The diving pools

Waterfall 2

Waterfall 3: Notice the arch/cave to the left

Matt, Me, Liam, Random Guy

    We got back to Darwin right before dark, so we decided to watch the sunset from the beach there. Leigh had been incredible the entire trip and we kept him entertained. He had so much fun with us that weekend that he invited us to a bar in Darwin for some pizza and beer as a farewell, it’s something he said he very rarely does. With our flight not leaving until 1:15am we jumped at the opportunity. It turned into one of the best nights I’ve had in Australia. After eating our fill of pizza, a live band started playing and Leigh made sure we didn’t go thirsty. The band was sick and played all classic songs we all knew every word to. We had become close with our other international friends so it was a fitting end to a spectacular trip. We reluctantly left our group after exchanging contact information and boarded our plane completely exhausted. The red-eye brought us to Brisbane at 5:30am and after only getting an hour of sleep on the plane, I was a zombie. Needless to say I slept the moment I got back to campus.

    This entire week was [insert synonym of awesome here]. We saw beautiful sites, learned about a place unlike any other on Earth, and met some amazing people. I was excited for the outback, but this experience took up a metaphorical sledgehammer and completely shattered my expectations. We still have Cairns, Sydney, and New Zealand coming up, and they will be hard pressed to beat this trip. Regardless, the outback was easily one of the best things I’ve done in my short 20 (almost 21) years. 10/10 would recommend. 

Sunset in Darwin