Irresponsible shoulder rehab 2018 road trip part 4

In the editing down of the pack, the binoculars were amongst the vices left behind. I came to regret that regularly. I did go with the jar of Nutella though. We got an early start from the campground and Alison had a ball getting the not-SUV to the car park. We even caught up with a real 4WD, who then pulled over to let us pass. Alison is a hoon.

Walking up to the top of Jim Jim Falls with a 14 day pack is a slog. Once we hit the creek, we turned up stream to find the nearest campsite, as per the new leisurely walk plan and jumped in. Alison again asked if I am sure the pool is croc free. I reminded her of the 180m of height we gained in the past hour. Alison is wearing nothing but a neckerchief. When I tease her about the scout look, she pulls a sultry pose on the water’s edge. She getting good at these. I fill my water bottle from the creek and go to drink only to find a tiny shrimp in it. 

I get to work on gourmet dampers. Today is cranberry and Nutella. Read, draw, write, drink tea, swim, do shoulder exercises, get sunburnt. I had even remembered how quickly I get sunburnt up here, and still I manage to get burnt on the first day. I have a unique tan line now. I discovered if you want to get a full body tan, you need to just lie there on your back. When you are a more casual nudist wandering around camp doing stuff, you get burnt on the top of your breasts only. We wander down to the top of the falls sporting the classic sarong and walking boots look.  We are forced into the tent early by mozzies, and lounge around discussing sex parties and sex work. The conversation never deviates far. There’s no weight in the vice of talking about sex.

Despite a leisurely start the next day, we are at our proposed camp by 910. It’s not entirely because we are lazy. We threw the extra days from the missed walk into this one, with the intention of lazing around and exploring. Given that we would have to commit ourselves to another 9 km if kept walking from here, we settling in for luxuriating. By 10, we have set up camp, been for a swim and settled in for some naked reading. Cheese and onion dampers are made. They are yummy. The blow flies agree. Most people don’t really think of bush walking as relaxing, but it is really enforced rest. We are miles from anywhere. No phone. No internet. No work. No responsibilities. Nothing to do but walk, swim, chill and eat.

Despite this, I sleep badly overnight, do way too much thinking about shit and have a melt down the next morning. I seem to operate on two extremes. Highly functional and non-functional. 3 days into a long walk really is not good timing for a batch of non-functional, let alone on a day a 9km bash away from the creek requiring an early start. Fortunately, after crying on Alison for half an hour, we resume packing. Then Alison can’t find her hat. Somehow, we still get away by 730.

Outside of the rocky country, Jim Jim Creek becomes long, still, dark pools, lined with overhanging trees, edged with water lilies. It looks like prime croc habitat. The first time I saw them, I had come over the escarpment and they are the first bit of Jim Jim you see. Not so inviting. At least when you have come up from the base, you have the reassurance that there is no way a croc would have gotten up that terrain. 10-12k of these pools is not so exciting though, so we were cutting a couple of corners and heading straight to the next interesting bit of topography. It’s pretty cruisy, mostly flat, not too rocky, light vegetation. Still, I feel a bit like a rolling drunk walking cross country like this. Whilst you are following a bearing and using the sun to keep you in line, you are constantly weaving around vegetation, then weaving back on course and in the end, you wonder how the hell you managed to actually keep a straight line, but somehow it has worked. Our drunken straight line successfully leads us back to the creek 4.5km later and we jump in. It still looks incredibly croccy.

We cut another corner through a fairy tale stone forest, where tall eucalypts and grevilleas full of tipsy honeyeaters create a surprisingly shady environment full of micro rock towers that look like ruins. Alison tells me I sound like an elephant charging through the bush. I scare 3 dragons and a goanna. Hopefully it scares the snakes away too. Being basically a baby elephant, I continue making enough racket to disturb our first ferals of the trip, sending a herd of cattle running. Pest animals, however, do us the favour of creating walking pads through the thick grasses, and they sometimes even turn out to be in a useful direction. It’s so much easier than bashing down the grasses ourselves that I frequently gamble on following any remotely close to the right direction.

It's starting to get a bit too warm, we are getting a bit over it and my feet are rather sore. I swear my feet are too small for me. They don’t have the surface area to hold the weight of an adult, let alone an adult with a pack. So, it is a joyous moment when we thrash out of the shrubbery and look onto the creek again. It is not croccy. It looks like a tropical resort. The water is a clear turquoise, white sandy banks grace the edges, and grevillea and paperbarks provide shade. Pack and clothes are off before you can say “this will do” and we are in the water.

Walking early in the morning is really lush. It’s also necessary as by lunchtime, it’s way too hot to walk. So, we are up just before first light. It’s a beautiful time with the feel of the air and the changing light. First light brings glorious colours that reflect off the water as I tend the fire and make tea. The pandanus make striking silhouettes (they really are lovely when you don’t have to walk through them and just lean appealingly over the water’s edge).  We are awake before the first birds. It’s like the birds all wake up together. It’s completely silent, then there’s one bird call, then they are going berko. These early mornings are like a brief moment in paradise. Until first flies.

The heat seems to bring out the scent in the grevilleas. It’s the first thing I notice walking near them. It’s a warm, sweet, rich, almost tasty smell, and I look around for the tree. The orange flowers are dripping with nectar. On most flowers, nectar is something you don’t notice unless you’re a bird or a bee. Not these grevilleas. Visible drops of it inspire you to lick them (and yes, they taste great too, although if you don’t notice a green ant on there you can get an unpleasant surprise).  They are so effusive, they drip off the tree, leaving a sticky crust on the ground underneath them. No wonder the honeyeaters are drunk.

Walking through woodland again and a random branch falls from a tree just missing me. If a branch falls on a Wendy in the forest and nobody hears her scream, did it really happen? We find a mini Nourlangie in the rocky country just before we rejoin the creek. The art to finding rock art is to be near good water, but far enough away to be out of the flood zone and spy a good cave or sheltered face. Using these principles, I scrambled up to one cave, and there it was. The surrounding area turned out to be full of art until we had to stop looking or we would never have made it to camp.

As it was, camp turned out to be perfect but still not quite good enough. A deep blue pool, sandy banks, rock tables, but Alison had come to expect perfection and suggested it could have more shade and been more sheltered from the wind. The map suggested the next kilometre of creek should have plenty of potential campsites, so we meandered on. Turns out, it didn’t. We find a site we could make work, but then Alison thought it would have mozzies. On we continue – surely the next confluence will have a good site. Then there we were at the confluence. About 13 years ago I did a walk in Litchfield where we had to camp in a recently burnt patch. It was filthy. We were filthy. Our stuff was filthy. We called it Fest Fest and I even made a commemorative shirt by writing that on my (already filthy) walking shirt in charcoal. This campsite at the confluence is Fest Fest 2, also known as the Feral Farm, as Alison has scared off 2 cows and a pig already. It is quite pretty if we ignore all that though. We covered 10.5 k today to get here. Alison is getting pretty good at the bush bashing business.

We suffered through a morning of serious bush bashing the next day. 2km had taken us 2 hours. Alison commented how you’d never get this sort of work out in a gym and we started designing the bush bash gym workout. Lots of things to push through with various degrees of resistance and capacity to flick back at you. Things to step over or under or stomp down. Preferably at inconvenient heights for doing any of the above. About waist height is good for that. Things to sink into like a pile of flood debris, stuff to climb over and things that grab at you and refuse to let you go. Then we got mean and added things with spikes and itchy powder that could fall on you if you weren’t careful and things that nipped at you. Somewhere in this, we saw our second snake of the walk, thus making twice as many snakes as kangaroos or wallabies we had seen out here. After these tedious 2 hours, we emerged at a massive (think football field size) deep blue pool coming out of a gorge. Swim break was called.

Then I pushed my luck a little too far. Sure, bush bashing was probably not what the surgeon ordered, but I’d been getting away with it. I’d slipped over twice already. Once on a boulder in a creek that moved, sending me into the water on my left side. The shoulder, the camera and the map came out of that unscathed.  Next was slipping on the sandy film covering a slab. 3^rd time unlucky, I got my feet tangled in a vine, tried to recover, failed and thudded forward onto both arms. It didn’t hurt at the time, but movement at extension felt a bit tender as the afternoon went on. I didn’t even have the pack on, just going for a reccy for a potential campsite, and in the end, we camp back where I’d left Alison anyway. Fortunately, it was gorgeous, so we took a rest day to see how the shoulder fared. I made sprouted mung bean, onion and tomato dampers to comfort myself. Emergency mat repairs were made and watching the incredibly clear skies at night, we invented new astrological signs.

We are walking before sun to get over to the Twin Falls catchment. I didn’t expect water in the final creek, but there it was. We cut a corner, find the creek again, and there’s still water. It soon turned into a treelined sandy corridor, impossible to get lost in and as easy as walking in sand ever gets.   Pools still appeared occasionally, eventually a long one forcing us onto the banks with the pandanus and green ants until we said fuck it, and chose the spinifex instead. We climbed out of the gorge over rocks surrounded by spinifex so thick we couldn’t see if there was anything beneath it to stand on and end up sinking waist deep in it. On reaching the top, we discovered the country had been burnt and rejoiced.

Burnt country is a walker’s blessing. I completely understand why the aboriginal people burnt the ground before them when travelling. We wove through a maze of rock towers on the cleared ground until we crossed the creek at the very top of its catchment – to discover a pool of water beneath a dry waterfall even there, followed by another 3 k across the top. It’s mostly burnt, flat country until we come to a line of rock towers, little fortresses guarding the descent. In time honoured short person behaviour, I climb up to the highest point, and spy where our creek descends the other side of the valley. We weave our way down the cliff and hit the creek. It’s dry. HTF can that be? Twin is a massive catchment. The last pissy little catchment was wet to the last few hundred metres. Have we hit the tributary just before where we thought we were? I go for a quick reccy. Nope, this is it. Wide swathes of rock drop into remnant pools. It would be stunning if it was running. I give up and return to Alison. Lunch, swim and a rethink are declared. Nutella tortillas were eaten. You can almost convince yourself they are as good as crepes at this stage of a walk.

We dub this “the creek of disappointment”.  After all the lush, flowing water on Jim Jim, we expected this to be similar, if not better, because Twin Falls flow much later in the season than Jim Jim Falls. I obviously don’t understand hydrogeology. The original plan to go upstream was abandoned and downstream we go. Shortly we find another pool with a nice camp site. As we are contemplating if we should stay there, Alison points out that if we came across this site in Victoria, we’d be rapt with it. We stay.

Twin Falls continues to be the creek of disappointment. The day did start with a lovely gorge, but the map looked like it could be hard going, narrow, steep sided and an ominous shade of dark green. It could actually have been worse. A little serious bush bashing, but mostly clear rock hopping and some long rock ledges that made us very happy. Early on, I walked into a web and missed a giant orb spider by an unexaggerated 3 mm. I armed myself with a spider stick after that. There were more close encounters with giant spiders in that gorge than kangaroos spotted all trip. Alison is quite distressed by the lack of kangaroos, but there is no shortage of dingos. Whilst we did not see any, almost every sandy bank had prints and we heard enough howling to suggest large packs at night.

At the end of the gorge, the creek formed a long still pond. On one side was vegetated flood plain nonsense, on the other, steep rocky spinifex. Hmmm …. Boggy pandanus and green ants or spinifex? It was a unanimous vote for spinifex, and as we scramble on more rock than spinifex, we were very happy with the choice. The ground opened up towards the next confluence and we find a random pair of socks. Some group has been desperate enough to make camp here. It doesn’t bode well for camp potential downstream. They are nice socks though, so I grab them. As we cringe at further flood plain in our path, I spy some burnt ground. Burnt ground doesn’t sound very exciting, I know, but when your other option is bashing through head high cane grass hiding vicious pandanus, it is great.

This is where the day starts to go on and on and on and on. 8 km of alternating flood plain and burnt land and not a decent camp site seen. The creek is flat as a tack here. It drops a single contour line in those 8km, so it’s like an elongated wetland, with vegetation so thick, we can’t get within 100m of it. We bash through to the water to fill bottles and wet shirts whilst precariously balanced on a pile of flood debris then retreat back to burnt country.

After 11km, we find a small clearing and hear running water. That’s the first movement in the creek for a long time. There’s a tiny pool formed where the water is funnelled through some pandanus. It’s actually incredibly cute. We have a long deliberation about whether to camp. It will be another Fest Fest. But as the creek drops only another 10m in the next 11km, this might be it.

The next day we were congratulating ourselves on our decision. It was another 4.5k to the next decent campsite and we were so glad we hadn’t slogged on. It would have been a lush campsite though, with little cascades running between sand banks with shady melaleucas.  From this point onwards, it stopped being the creek of disappointment. The creek was more open, with tannin coloured translucent pools in white sand and intermittent rocky cascades. It was nice to be able to see something other than the cane grass/pandanus nightmare. The walking was easy, following our noses between animal pads and previous walkers’ pads. It is a definite benefit from ferals, when they have bashed down the grasses for you. Despite this, my feet were caning. Alison’s neck was sore. 9 days in, but we are still smiling.

We decide the next pool is relatively close in the scheme of things. What’s a kilometre, when we are 30+k still from the car? Compared to the 3000+ ks from Natimuk, we are basically there. Or the 16000 k or so from London, we are actually swimming in it now. We find another cascade dividing 2 huge pools and settle onto the convenient sand bank for an afternoon of what we really came here for. Alison is concerned that the bank is covered in snake tracks. I am much more excited when I see them. There are either a lot of thirsty goannas making a beeline for the water, or our pool is home to a healthy population of freshwater crocodiles.

We finished walking at 9am the next day. I know, it seems like we could barely have started. But we’d done 3.5k and serendipitously hit the creek again at a perfect campsite, and who were we to say no? At this point, I develop the Rule of Gingernuts. That is, no walk can be longer than the supply of gingernuts allows. I have a little ritual of making tea and dunking gingernuts in it when we arrive at camp each day. On the current schedule, we are going to breach that rule by at least 1 day. 

Again, we are treated to easy walking. Vast flat slabs worn by the wet season torrent, broken by convenient steps.When not on the slabs, there’s a pedestrian pad. We are very close to civilisation again now, and the tourist helicopters reappear. It’s a good thing it’s easy, as we are tired. Then suddenly, it’s not at all easy. There’s a major waterfall to a massive pool.

12 years ago, I was camped opposite these falls when a gaggle of school girls appeared above it, and their leader made them throw their packs in, jump and swim across. We had decided that walking around was better. So today I confidently say, yep, we can climb around this, no worries. Well, baby elephants do seem to forget. There is a lot of spinifex. Head high spinifex between rock lumps and it’s all scrambling up then down then swimming through the spinifex to the next one. Swimming across the pool was starting to look like the wiser option. An hour later, we make it down the creek on the far side of the pool and contemplate what chaos this pool must be in the wet with a 20m wide torrent coming in from the south and a 10m one from the north whilst they both tried and exit to the west.

We find still more freshy tracks on the sandy banks, and this time they are ending in obvious diggings. Freshies nest in the late dry, burying their eggs in the sandy banks. We weave our way down the side of the gorge, once even hanging off trees to avoid getting in the water and settle on a raised sandbank with stunning views down the gorge. Alison comments how it doesn’t feel real. We’ve been transported to somewhere that doesn’t actually exist. Some tropical island maybe. I ask if there are hot waiters bringing us cocktails anytime soon on this tropical island?

I can’t believe I didn’t remember this gorge from 2006. I honestly don’t know what I’ve done with my brain cells. For the last few km above the falls and now down here, the landscape is, well, massive. It’s large scale water, erosion, rock, falls, pools, gores, boulders – everything is so striking. It’s certainly making up for being the creek of disappointment. Or maybe it’s even better for it. I run screaming down the sandbank and dive into the pool. On my second run, I stub my toe on a rock in the sand and decide maybe I didn’t need to do that again before I had to walk out with a broken toe.

I am continually embarrassed by my memory on this section. At the end of the gorge, a massive boulder in the creek prevents us getting across without getting wet or climbing. Did I remember having to swim? No. I drop the pack and put my hands lovingly into the crack up the boulder. Yippee! I am doing a few moves of real climbing! It’s maybe 15. Alison chooses the water and passes the packs up to me and wades around. Then about 500m before the falls, the creek goes underground. You can hear it running beneath the boulders. Nevertheless, I don’t think twice about it, because I seem to have early onset Alzheimer’s.  You’d think something as crucial as “there is no water at the top of the falls” might stick in my memory. Apparantly not. We admire the view (and again, the rock architecture of the falls is stunning, although the water is running out of the cliff inaccessibly 15m beneath us) and resign ourselves to walking back to fill our water bottles for the walk down.

When we left Jim Jim Falls, the road to Twin Falls was still closed due to high water level at the crossing. The ranger thought it would open soon. So, we were hoping it would have opened in our absence and we could just hitch down the road. No joy. We have lunch at the car park and contemplate camping or walking out in the heat. I was out of gingernuts. Alison was out of nut bars. We couldn’t stop thinking about barramundi and gin and tonics. We wet our shirts and started slogging down the road. 8km later, we hit the crossing. Such a little way across. A little wade in 800mm deep crocodile infested water. We sigh and turn up stream, through head high cane grass. A side creek creates a thickly vegetated confluence and after hopefully heading upstream to find a clearing, we give up, dive into the nightmare, climb a tree fallen across the creek and eventually find a bit of Jim Jim we can boulder hop across. At the car, we eat half a fruitcake and half a box of cheezels each, then head for gin and tonics.

2018 irresponsible shoulder rehabilitation road trip part 3

Alison and I don’t do things by halves. We left Katherine, procured coffee at the last known source in Pine Creek and motored on into Yirmikmik. Enjoyed a last lunch of fresh salad, then started walking at 12. Not the ideal time of day, but it was only going to be an hour or so, and our packs are ridiculously light. About 10 kg. Walking up north is so good. 4 ks later, we arrive at Motor Car Falls. The falls still trickle this late in the season after the massive wet this year, and have a deep plunge pool beneath them. Did I mention, walking up north is so good? I’m about to jump in when Alison ask about crocs. I hadn’t given them a second thought, because it really isn’t croc territory, but the thought is in my head now, and I double check the map. There’s the South Alligator (definite croc territory), but there’s a set of falls marked between here and there. Crocs can’t climb, I reassure Alison (and myself). Besides, there are no big fish for them to eat, and no banks to bask on. Can I guarantee there are no crocs? Well, um, no, but …. we go swimming. Nothing eats us. We make a fire and lounge around with cups of tea and ginger nuts. Well, I eat ginger nuts. They are so good to dip into tea whilst lounging around rockholes. It’s a vice I haven’t converted Alison to. These vices only seem to travel one way. I appear to be a vice sponge.

It’s 3pm and we are deliberating whether to camp here or continue to Kurrundie Falls. The sound of music makes the decision easy. A large, noisy group turns up (the price you pay for having a walking track) and we leave. The track ended at Motor Car, so Alison gets her first bush bash. It’s pretty easy as someone else has been here and there’s an intermittent pad through the cane grass. We hit the creek and boulder hop up to the falls, where massive conglomerate boulders block the way. We climb under and over them to arrive at the base of the falls, a double tiered set plunging into a steep sided pool. I don’t think this was what my shoulder surgeon ordered, but I seem to be getting away with it.  I am still doing my exercises. I brought the theraband. All 30g of it.

The boulders weren’t providing any camping space so we retreated a few 100m to some sandy patches suited to a tent and a fire pit. We rehydrate the first meal of the trip. They are yummy, but they have the appearance and texture of baby food. They should actually be nutritious though, given the amount of vegies and tofu I put through the blender and dehydrator in the weeks leading up to this. We discover the pool contains feet eating fish and stand in it laughing at them swarming around us. Mozzies drive us into the tent early and the night is hot. Definitely no more suffering in the cold for us.

The next day provides a more in depth bush bashing experience for Alison. A steep, loose, vegetated climb, followed by traversing across a spinifex covered slab. Whilst pulling on trees, pushing back shrubs and climbing over rocks, it again occurs to me this was not really what I told the surgeon I’d be doing. At the end of it though is a long gorge leading back to the waterfalls. We jump in and swim back to the top of the falls. At least the swimming is going well with the shoulder. It’s already feeling stronger and swimming breaststroke down the long pools is fine. At least, I’m pretty sure they said breaststroke was fine from 3 months … Alison declines to peek over, but the water falls freely over the mouth of a deep chimney into a lower pool before the fall visible from the bottom. Alison slips over getting out of the water on the return journey. There’s a moment of panic from both of us as she hits her face on the slab and falls back in the water, but she’s on her feet again before I can get to her. No bleeding, minimal pain, eyes equal and reactive, GCS 15. Is her GCS normally 15? We’ve been pretty loopy this trip … She seems fine and after a rest we go on.

The gorge requires swimming constantly. A green tree snake falls from a tree into the water just before we commit to swimming. At least I didn’t nearly step on it, which was the story of my last Kimberly trip. It did mean that the snake was in the water that we were about to be in. Oh well, it’s only a green tree snake. Shoes and day pack are abandoned to explore a few pools up before we head back to camp. On the way down, Alison turns an ankle. We truss it up like a turkey in my ankle brace and she keeps going. Then for the trifecta, she walks into a green ant nest. Green ants are aggressive little bastards that swarm onto you and bite if you disturb them. They hurt. The standard reaction is scream, swear and do a mad dance of slapping everywhere, throwing off your pack and clothing and getting someone to check they are all gone. It’s the least erotic variation on the dance of the seven veils you’re ever likely to see. Green ants are also not really green. They are 2/3s yellow, with a green bum. Green tree snakes are also yellow. I think someone in the Territory has yellow-green colour blindness.

The next day we are up early to walk out before it gets hot. This is the latest in the season I have ever been up here. I was at least trying to give the shoulder enough time to be ready for this. The days are really hot. And there are more mozzies. But thanks to the enormous wet season, there’s no shortage of water yet. We stuff our faces with almost fresh salad at the car and go to suss out our next walk. I am already thinking about another walk exploring further sections of Motor Car and Kurundie. This was my first foray into this section of the park, and it has more potential than I expected.

Unfortuneately, we are foiled at the next walk. Koolpin Creek is too high for the not-SUV to cross, and there’s nowhere to stash the car and walk in from there. Leaving the car on the side of the road for 4 days in a state full of burnt out cars on the roadside doesn’t seem the wisest idea. We retreat to Gunlom to rethink plans. Maps get thrown out on the ground again and more schedules drawn up. We decide to add the extra days to our Jim Jim Falls walk and take 14-5 days to explore there. I’m ready to settle at Gunlom for the night, have a rest day there to make sure Alison’s ankle has recovered and head for Jim Jim the next day, but Alison is afraid she’ll be bored. Did I mention she’s a task master? So in the car we get again (this is still the same day we walked 7k out from Kurrundie) and drive towards Nourlangie Rock, so I can have more art lessons the next day. And go to Jabiru for coffee.

The last 6km into Sandy Billabong provide the most exciting driving the not-SUV has done yet. Alison hoons around sandy corners and tells me how much fun this is. I tease her that recreational 4wding will become her new pastime. She declined to experience the joy of doing that road again though and we camped at the murella billabong.

Alison feeds the vice sponge cheezels and wine once we finally set up camp. The next morning, it’s Douglas’s vice I’ve taken on, as I make Alison get up before dawn to go birdwatching. Actually, only the birdwatching part is channelling Douglas. I’m not sure if even birds will get him up and functional at dawn. We wander down to the wetlands walk and discover a large “area closed due to dangerous conditions” sign. Right next to the crocodile and buffalo warning signs. Are the dangerous conditions some particularly hostile megafauna? It’s still quite dark and we decide that perhaps a stroll down to the boat ramp will suffice until a little lighter. I wander back in a bit (do I have more of the stupid and naughty genes than Alison?) and head down. The path descends from dry woodland into a patch of rainforest and as both the light and temperature drops, it feeds a little fear of volatile megafauna. I look around, laugh at myself and continue on. At the wetland is a very weathered stone bench, more than half covered in plants. I’m not sure what made them put a bench in the flood zone, but it looks like where birdwatchers come to die. The wetland is full of birds and I excitedly watch magpie geese, jacanas, a gazillion sorts of duck and even see a jabiru. Big birds. I am excited by big birds. My first ever birdwatching goal was a cassowary. Emus make me happy. The bustard in breeding plumage was a highlight of my Alice Springs desert park visit.

Nourlangie is a beautiful field of rocks. The path winds between and around them, and still more loom over from above. If a tribe of climbers had found it instead of Aboriginal people, it could be our Fontainbleau. Or maybe I’m just getting seriously delusional from lack of climbing. But it is gorgeous. The rock, the caves, the way they are scattered and form caves and tunnels. It feels cool and inviting and if I was living on the land up here, I’d want to hang out there. We come cross a ranger talk at one cave and listen to a story about a man who kidnapped and raped a woman then blamed them both for breaking kinship laws. They didn’t use such specific language. But the story had both of us angry about how a woman is blamed for being kidnapped and raped, and when the man was punished, it was for breaking kinship laws, not for abusing the woman. There was some discussion about cultural differences. I am not a cultural relativist. Abuse is abuse and stories that perpetuate victim blaming and fail to recognise abuse are not OK, whether in my cultural group or another. Alison performs a little hat slapping and hopping dance to fend off mosquitos. There’s some discussion about whether Aboriginal art can be appreciated without know the stories behind it. I ask if all art doesn’t have stories and intention behind it, yet we still apply our own interpretation and appreciation (or lack there of) to it. Sometimes serious conversations interrupt the otherwise constant flow of talk about sex.

We head into Jabiru to source real coffee and replacement thongs. I am a shoe destructionist. My thongs did not survive walk no. 1. My last walk in the Kimberly, I had to hold the sole of my boots on with strapping tape for a week. My latest boots are displaying a distressing peeling of the rand already. Thongs are a high demand item in Jabiru. Nothing remained between a kid’s size 1 and men’s size 7. I decided slightly short thongs were better than flippers. I could choose between Spiderman or Disney princess thongs. Alison thought I needed to reclaim the word princess. So I am a radical punk slut princess who refuses to marry the boring older man (real life princesses never got handsome princes) and produce an heir. I’d like a whole swathe of handsome princes and princesses, thanks. I’m not sure about whether I want to become ruler of the world or hand it over to anarchy though.

Alison and I have been on the road a month today and we haven’t yet fought nor slept together. Some people might find that disappointing.  Although Alison did say if I was a 6 foot tall man, she’d definitely sleep with me. What is a 5 foot tall girl to do with that? I have no chance. Devastating.

We’re up to about 6100km driven and 190km walked, 27 square metres of food and stuff had to be sorted a second time, about 30 litres of coffee has been drunk and despite how much I carry on about them, we might have only gotten through 6 boxes of cheezels. The number of mozzie bites are rapidly catching up to the number of photos taken. 5 hours of my life have been lost to shoulder stretching and 24 300 theraband exercises performed. No, I am not exaggerating this time. Don’t hurt your shoulder. The tedium of theraband will kill you.