Road Trip to Nyrripi and Yuendumu

    And what a road trip it was. As always life in central Australia is anything but boring. Last night I went out with some coworkers to a couple of the local pubs for some pints, and then some more pints, and yet more pints, into the wee hours of the morning. Home after the pub closed with a case of the spins, so had to delay bedtime until about 3am...and this morning I had to be up and ready to go for 6:15am so there was little sleep that was had. Hungover and tired, I poured myself into the 4WD that was thankfully being driven by my partner today. I managed to catch a few winks along the long drive to Nyrripi, which is northwest of Alice Springs in the bush. The road changed from bitumen (pavement) with two lanes to bitumen with one lane, to hard packed bush road, to sandy and bumpy bush road and back again. The bumpy bush road was rather interesting - one can take them with a fair amount of speed but now and again you find yourself in sandy or rutted portions of the road, or numerous "wells" in the road where you bounce up and down through them with the shocks barely having time to recover before the next well. Good times...kind of like a roller coaster ride.
     By leaving early in the morning, we saw lots of wildlife - a number of kangaroos, several wild camels, goanna, cows, wild horses, and a plethora of birds - falcons, parrots, zebra finches, and so on. There was also the usual bit of road kill, today was mostly cows. Hell of a hit to run into a cow I reckon. The wild camels were my favorite - so odd to just see them sauntering along in the middle of nowhere. Along with the wildlife was several bushfires, some of which had just been through the day before and others that were still burning next to the road. A rather strange phenomona we experienced today was soot funnels, or whirly whirlies I think my partner called them. There is so much soot from the many bushfires and we came across a tornado like formation of soot swirling along and at one point it crossed the road while we were in the car and surrounded by it. Cool.
     300kms in we stopped over in Yeundumu to stretch our legs and use the bathroom at the police station there, having a quick chat with the members there before taking on the last 150kms to Nyrripi. We were lucky enough to find ALL of the people we were looking for which is quite a coup. Many times when we go in search of family members either in the town camps or the Aboriginal communities, we spend literally hours going from one suggested house to the next hoping someone will have current information as to where folks are. Today we found them all! We had some issues with one of the local police as she was totally off the wall, interfered with our investigation making several serious mistakes that pissed us both off - such as bribing the child, taking the child out of the classroom without our direction or permission from the children, and inciting the family members to riot against us with sticks by telling them the welfare workers were there to take the child...total cow she was, just an ignorant idiot. By the time we were finished our investigations we were both OVER this very bizarre space cadet, and left town without saying goodbye, glad to be away from her. I was also chased by a pack of camp dogs. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before but the town camps and the Aboriginal communities are usually overrun with packs of dogs, mostly inbreds of no known breed who are very often starved and emaciated, festering with sores, tumors, missing an eye, leg, you name it. They love to chase the cars, and bite on the tires as the cars are moving. Dumb dogs. I managed to run from the rabid dogs and the coppers chased them off. I was only wearing hiking sandals while they were wearing big hiking boots. Stupid feral dogs...
     The drive back was long but interesting enough and about 100kms from Alice Springs we had slowed down to pass an oncoming car. When you drive on the single lane bitumen, each vehicle is to slow down to reduce flying rocks and limit damage to each other's car, as we each have to take half the road and the other tires are on the dirt shoulder. Well, this idiot did not slow down but did shower us with rocks including a HUGE rock that smashed the windshield and sent glass flying into our faces and all over our bodies and the inside of the car. We pulled over then and looked for something to at least tidy the glass up enough to finish the return to Alice Springs, and were shortly on our way. The windshield is toast, and the car needs a professional clean due to glass shards embedded all throughout the interior.
     We managed to get home again by 6pm, safe and sound, for the most part after a successful and interesting road trip...ahhh, Australia...
 
   

Cambodia Bound

     My friend F. and I have been tossing around the idea of a journey into Asia for several weeks now, considering Bali, Thailand, Vietnam, but settled on Cambodia recently and today we bought our tickets! We leave in early October for 2 weeks, heading from Alice to Darwin, change over in Bali, overnight in Kuala Lumpur, and then into Siem Reap. We'll then make our way towards Phnom Penh and just about anywhere inbetween. I've never been to Asia at all, so I'm rather excited about the trip. There are so many beautiful temples in Cambodia, the most notable being Angkor Wat. We'll also take a tour of the killing fields, which will be a sobering moment for sure. Sometimes we need these kind of reminders of how fragile life is and how easily society can break down. It will be worthwhile.

     So now that I'm going backpacking again, I have to get my backpacks in order. Having lost my good backpack in the fire last year, I have a simple one that I bought at Value Village for $7. It has no patches on it. but I'm going to remedy that tonight. I will also bring my smaller UW backpack that has several patches on it already and more to go on. That should give me more than enough room to pack what I need and have room to bring souvenirs back. 

     We'll be stopping overnight at Kuala Lumpur so the two things on our list to manage in one day are to check out the Petronas Twin Towers that are an architectural wonder, and to check out the Batu caves, including the 272 steps to get up into the caves...asthma puffers will be in full supply for the trek. We'll manage it just fine though, as my daughter and I also climbed the Eiffel Tower's over 300 steps to each level and we did both. My daughter also climbed up Temple IV at Tikal which was just over 200 stairs in 40C heat. I stayed on the ground for that one and took her photo...

     On another note, I have FINALLY sorted out my television. I had bought an LG 32" flat screen television last fall when I set myself up in an apartment in Victoria, and found out I could easily adapt it for power in Australia so had it shipped here, however what has escaped me is how to get the signal converted adequately from NTSC to PAL. Australia has PAL signal which is very different from NTSC and without some form of conversion, you cannot view the image. I bought a cheapo converter on eBay, hoping that would do the trick. But no. So then I bought another one that wasn't so cheap at a local electronic store. Nope. In the meantime, I had an old tube tv that is a huge beast and hooked my Austar satellite dish up to that. The picture was clear but chopped off as Austar sends out a widescreen image, and that got rather frustrating. Add to that kitten damage when a wild Dundee was tearing around the apartment and got after some of the cords on the back that were dangling on that tv and broke their pins off in the television. I repaired it a few times but eventually it just broke. I then bought an S-video cord which did solve that problem, but I was still left with an inadequate image and I really just wanted to use my flat screen and get rid of the beast. I had been able to play anything on my computer on my flat screen but that was a bit of a hassle to hook up and disconnect all the time, and I really just wanted to watch everything on one screen. And tonight I finally figured it out. I tried this converter last night but was too confused with the cords late at night after too many beers with the girls in the courtyard, so tried it again today after work. I gave up once and packed it all in a bag to return to the store, but then something dawned on me to try and lo and behold, it worked...yahfrigginhoo. So I am ditching the television with a friend who is moving into her own place soon and has nothing of her own up here, having moved out of government accommodation. I appreciated the tv for the past couple of months here, but am so very glad to move it on. 

     Having said that, I think it is a fine and dandy time to retire on the sofa in front of my LG flatscreen...come on Dundee, time to relax.

Henley-on-Todd Regatta 2011

Well, I went to my first ever dry riverbed Regatta here in Alice Springs today. It's been running for 50 years this year, which is pretty amazing as far as community events go. The boats are not your normal boats, but depending on the class, the kind of boat you run with your legs down, Flintstone style. It was hilarious, particularly the first round which was the home-made boats, as teams could never be sure just how they would hold up during the actual race. I filmed more video than photos, so will post some when I get a chance (super slow internet tonight, so might only get one or two up) and the finale was amazing.
     They sure now how to throw a good event though, and I very much enjoyed the lack of segregation for drinkers. You could get yourself a can of beer and wander around the crowd, taking in the booths, sights and races without being banished to a beer tent like most events in Canada I've been to. They even sold stubbie coolers, so I bought one with the race on it, along with a t-shirt. They also had a free breathalyser tent where you could try out some visual effect items to imagine how you might see when you're relaly drunk, as well as submit for a breathalyser test. I drank all afternoon and still only blew .031, which was quite impressive...I was just curious and didn't need to drive home - I live just down the street about half a block from the riverbed where it all went down.

skiing on the Todd

paddling along the track

bathtub races

a couple of the Vikings

     The crowds were out in full force, and tame enough, lots of locals but also lots of out of towners and visitors. There were many from the space base aka Pine Gap as well, and the US Army team did well in the races. The weather was picture perfect - blue skies, a draught of wind, warm enough and no flies! After the races we came back to my place for a few more beers and watched movies. Good times!

Yuendumu and Papunya

Bush trips again today...we flew over some bush fires on our way to the community of Yuendumu and after some investigations there we flew to Papunya to pick up some prisoners to bring back to Alice Springs. The scenery was again amazing and I was able to sit up front with the pilot from Yuendumu to Alice, after pleading my case that I am not a police officer and no one gave me a gun to sit back with the prisoners so let me up front! Thank-you T. the pilot for hearing my pleas and allowing me to share space with you for an amazing ride. The photos may look grainy but they are actually smokey as much of the flight was through bushfires in central Australia. Smooth ride just the same and a great day all around.

G-Force and Docker River

I headed off to Docker River today for work and our very talented pilot decided to avoid some turbulence by flying high until we got to the dirt landing strip at which point he pulled back quickly and zoomed down (I have no idea of the technical terms) and we had some serious g-force...I nearly puked. It was like the land tilted, my stomach came up to meet my forehead, and we were strapped into the Gravitron at the fair but thousands of feet from the ground...ugh...cool but also pukey...the pilot laughed at our reactions, heh heh...thanks, R. He is from South Africa and full of stories, great guy. On the return flight we hit some rough turbulence and he looked back from the cockpit and giggled at me, "you're going to die!"...thanks again R...you're real funny...
     It was a great day to fly, blue skies, just a bit of cloud here and there. Docker River was just as I remembered it. We saw a roaming camel and two roaming donkeys. I wanted to get a close-up of the camel but E. the female copper I was in the truck with at the time was not as keen, so drove off before the camel could get up close...we drove to the Western Australia border, which is just 9 kms away, and took my photo under the various and assorted signs. I'm such a tourist sometimes, but I haven't left the Northern Territory yet so this was to be the very first time!

     Flying back into Alice Springs was a bit gross - smoke filled the sky and the stench of bushfire filled the air. The Stuart Highway is closed about 30kms up the road due to serious bushfires and the smoke is blowing into town. The temperatures were high today too, at 30C. After dropping my stuff off at the office, I drove home, picking up my co-worker F. at her office and had a couple of cold beers to debrief our days. Now I've shut the smoke out of my house, and Dundee is racing around with his usual allotment of energy...look out here he comes!