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...