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.

2018 irresponsible cat owners road trip part 2

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2018 irresponsible cat owners road trip instalment 1

Alison and I each own half a cat. The same cat. Such a good arrangement, until you decide to go on holiday together. My work was being a shit about accommodating my recovering shoulder, Alison was in the midst of a year off work, and over a bottle of wine, we hatched a plan to jump in the car and run away up the centre. We jettisoned Mishka and our meagre efforts at responsibility to the arms of Greg and drove north, muttering about how we perhaps needed to recruit a third comother.

It was in Adelaide that I first realised that this was to be an educational holiday. Alison had filled her weekend in Adelaide with galleries. I had filled mine with hot dates. But we did both go to the Art Gallery of South Australia on the Sunday before we left and I was treated to an explanation of modern curatorial practice and lessons in art interpretation. Over the years of travelling with Douglas, Lou and Clive, I have picked up quite a lot of knowledge about birds. I expect I will have picked up a few tips about art by the end of this one. I’m not sure what wisdom I share with my fellow travellers on these journeys in return.

Our drive to the centre was fuelled by coffee and conversation. Sex, art, the environment, more sex, relationships, travels, history, even more sex. Everything meaningful there is to talk about except climbing. Fortunately for Alison, I can diversify. The trip was all fun and laughter until the first morning camping. I got up and started my well practiced morning tea ritual. Then it hit me that I had been doing that with Douglas for over 6 years. He is not a morning person, so it was always me by myself, putting water on and looking around at the morning light, early birds and probably grumbling to myself about the cold. Certainly I was complaining about the cold this time. Then I’d crawl back into the tent with tea for both of us. It was just enough of a memory to bring back those of the many road trips we had done together, and then the thought that maybe he would never be doing this again. Fortunately, Alison was up to distract me with more talk about sex before I got too miserable.

Past Port Augusta, we enter the land that white people failed to tame, and cultivated land is behind us. The desert is constantly harsh, but also varied and beautiful. Its harshness has helped it to retain most of its original form in the face of wannabe farmers. Unfortunately, its harshness hasn’t fended off a smattering of cattle stations, pest animals and weeds and the medium sized mammals of this area are all but gone.

Our deep and meaningful conversation brought us safely into Coober Pedy where we’d decided to go the cultural experience and booked an underground room. It was a cell. Twin beds in a windowless hole in the ground with a fluorescent light. We decided heading out for the other cultural experience of an underground bar was critical at this point. We ordered drinks, chatted up the bar maid, put money in the juke box – the only thing missing was a game of pool. We talked about sex instead.

Leaving the literal and figurative hole of Coober Pedy behind, the landscape is a moonscape. The slag piles are almost continuous. It’s just holes and mounds. No remnant bush. Does any of it get repaired? How is it that mining that completely destroys the land around the town get celebrated like it is? 

110 kilometres per hour is starting to feel pretty slow. People overtake us like we are standing still. We overtake RV after RV. One is called the Crusader. Why would you brand your RV after a series of religious wars? Are they going after the infidel in the Territory? Are we the infidel? We pass the territory border and cheer as we speed up to 130. We move onto psychology, food, music, comedy and what’s that other subject again? Oh yeah, sex. We get inspired to make micro videos. I realise I’ve barely done my shoulder exercises at all and work out a car physio program. I could market it to Dave. Just before Yulara, we randomly pick a side road and find ourselves the perfect camp first go and pour wine to watch the sunset on Uluru.

Uluru is one of those Australian icons we all grew up with and somehow, Alison and I had gotten through 95 years between us without seeing it. Of course, it is 435km away from Alice Springs, which is already in the middle of nowhere. It’s really quite a long way from all the other things in the Centre. Despite that isolation, it is packed. Another party seeking bush camping tell us the campground in town in full. We drive up to the park, mostly staring at the rock and going gaga. I thought was making an entertaining video of how many variations of “fuck, look at that” Alison came up with, but turns out I lack basic videography skills. It was off when I thought it was on, and I got a lovely 5 minutes of the foot well when I thought I’d turned it off. Just as we were completely entranced by the rock, we see the giant traditional indigenous faux blimp. For a moment it doesn’t quite sink in, because it is so incongruous. Who thought they’d paint a bloody great big white balloon, put it on a tether and get people to pay to go up in it??? Then we come around a corner and to a standstill. Queueing to get in to the park took nearly an hour.

Ok, so seeing Australian icons isn’t really my usual sort of holiday. But if we were ever going to see them, we were going to have to join the show, and here we are. The rock is, however, mindblowing. The colours, the textures, the features and contours, it just screams at me to touch it. Yes, I am a rock obsessive. We start the walk around it at a cracking pace with the plan to leave the hoards behind. It doesn’t work because we just catch up with more. I suppose it’s good that so many people are doing a 10km walk, but, I like my peace and quiet. We dodge bikes and sedgeways. I drool over some epic offwith corners. Steep pocketed walls. Roof cracks. Flared chimneys. Even the slabs are calling out to me, and we all know what I think of slabs. Am I ill from rockclimbing withdrawal syndrome? But the rock is featured almost like turtle back, and even though the amazing curving ridges and domes are slabs, they are stunning lines. Alison learns that I can’t diversify from climbing that much.

The other problem of Australian icons is Australian tourists. We arrive back at camp to find another party have moved in. They are ok, actually, if you try not to be too biased against certain sorts of Australians. They are friendly, polite and quiet, and we tried to ignore the incessant firewood collection and stories of destruction wrecked in the process. Or the insistence on climbing Uluru. When the indigenous people politely ask you not to do it, don’t they feel incredibly rude traipsing up that travesty of a fence line? The next lot turn up and try and blast on up the hill. They don’t make it, chuck a tanty and head cross country to get back down. Group 3 also goes the random drive across the bush as if their 4wd gives them a right to go anywhere. Over the hill, we can hear yelling and swearing from another camp. In the morning, these guys crank a generator then hoon around in their dirt bikes. Another lot settle in further back down the road, yell at their kids and put on some doof doof. It’s the sort of population that remind you why we have to regulate camping.

Kata Tjuta is a breath of wilderness in comparison to Uluru.  The track becomes rugged quite rapidly, and most people only make it to the first lookout. By the time we were walking up Valley of the Winds, we saw only the odd other party. And it is stunning. Conglomerate domes rise around you and you actually walking in and amongst them, gain height and lookout over the landscape. It’s a much more engaging walk than the one around Uluru. Besides, I love conglomerate. It’s faceclimbing without reach problems. The mishmash of pebbles and holes mean that there is always something higher to stand on, something I can reach. Blank rock doesn’t really exist in conglomerate. As I fondle the rock and blether to Alison about the joys of conglomerate, she is again realising I am a little single minded.

Driving again, it’s plastic surgery, body hair, geology. We still come back to sex. We decide we should make a pod cast. Surely we should share our witty banter with everyone? Moving onto King’s Canyon, we analyse Greg’s dance mix on my ipod. It’s a review of extremes, either omg yes, or omg, what were you thinking, Greg? Religion, ice cream and spoons. In particular, what flavour ice cream would Alison be and what sort of spoon is she looking for? If you are starting to wonder if we are going insane with each other’s company, let me correct you that this is, infact, a meeting of genius minds.

Walking up King’s Canyon, some middle aged father tries to entice his son along by imagining there’s a pole dancer at the end. We may have made some loud inappropriate comments about hot young male strippers as we walked on. Sexist males aside, King’s Canyon is lovely, but the walk is all too short. It is rife with birds and holly grevilia flowering, and red rock completely different again to Kata Tjuta and Uluru. In Kathleen Springs, we are inspired to write a children’s book by the language on the interpretive signs. They seem to be aimed at 8 year olds. “A kangaroo or emu can feed many people”.  Our book is a sex education manual for kangaroos and emus when their parents have fed many people. It’s not delirium, OK, we are fine.

That evening, I look up from writing this to find a dingo sniffing at Alison’s water bottle a metre in front of me. It’s a bit like camping in bear country in the US and Canada, where there are warning signs everywhere, but after a while of not seeing them, you become complacent. Then you turn around cooking dinner one day and a bear is helping itself to your loaf of bread beside you.  I nearly jumped out of the chair, but the dingo just pottered along. In search of a baby I guess. There have been a lot of bad taste dingo and baby jokes so far. I’ll try not to offend you with them.

The rim walk at Kings Canyon turned out to be one of the best touristy walks I have done. I am a complete offtrack walking snob. I love being away from other people, the process of navigating and exploring, discovering magical places. One of the reasons the rim walk is so good is because it provides magical places and exploring that you don’t expect when you leave the car park. The country above the rim is stunning, convoluted with micros gorges and mini peaks, it explores the upper canyon and provides stunning views of the surrounding country. Then when you get back to the car park, Parks NT provides free wifi for you to post your photos on facebook. I guess it’s effective promotion. There is no mobile reception for hundreds of kilometres in any direction.

The road to Hermansburg from here is soft 4wd, but it’s the first 4wding Alison has taken her new car on. I get told off for calling it an SUV. She even threatened to leave me on the side of the road if I called it an SUV again. It’s an AWD wagon. I suppose SUVs are only what rich Melbournites drop their kids at school in.

The road isn’t really 4wd. I could get the little red car across it, but it has some major corrugations. The road looked like grade 3 rapids at times there. Vibration therapy we called it. You know those infomercials trying to sell you those things you put your feet on whilst watching TV and it miraculously vibrates away tonnes of fat? We lost like 5 kg each on that road.

The road into Palm Valley is delightful in comparison. Alison got to cross her first river beds (we didn’t need a snorkel), in fact, you basically drive down the Finke River at times. And at the end, we have a beautiful campsite on the Finke and it has not-hot showers and free gas cookers. For $6.60 per person. The Victorian government should have a chat with the NT government. We walked the last 5 km into the Valley as there was really no convincing the not-SUV that it was a high clearance 4wd. It turns out that walking is barely slower than 4wding. We jumped in and out of the river bed as we went whenever it looked more appealing than the road. The rock around the valley is soft, dark red sandstone, forming landscape almost reminiscent of Utah towers. Maybe an older version of them. Cabbage palms and cycads line the creek bed. It’s gorgeous, but it’s becoming incredibly windy. Our tents were sails when we pitched them, I nearly took off with mine as a paraglider and only held it down with double pegs and rocks in the soft sand. Worse than rigging on a glacier. The red dust has infiltrated Alison’s tent when we get back to camp. It’s fine enough to get through the no see um mesh of her tent inner and a red powder was layered over everything.

Alison is nothing if not enthusiastic and the next day we pack up, go for a 2k walk to the lookout, drive to Hermansberg, get fuel and shopping, faff on the internet, go to the historical precinct where I feel terribly like a voyeuristic white person, I get more art lessons, then we find they have real coffee and strudel. Lunch consisted of coffee, cheezels and strudel. I’m discovering all these things Alison has a weakness for that I would never have expected. She’s also a terrible influence on my drinking. We’re on holiday, she tells me.  We do more internetting, drive to Albert Namatjira’s house then drive over to Redbank Gorge, set up camp, pack for the walk up Mt Sonder tomorrow and Alison still wants to walk up to the gorge. Are you exhausted yet? I was. We compromise with driving up to the gorge and just doing the 2.4k from there. Alison admits it was a little more work than she was expecting, but late afternoon turns out to be a great time to walk up the gorge as everybody was on the way out and we had the place to ourselves. Us and the duckies. Or maybe they were grebes. I needed a Douglas to help me out. Birds make me miss Douglas. Whenever a cool bird event happens, my first urge is to tell Douglas about it. And of course, he has the bird app. It was like a thrid person in our relationship. Without the bird app, I have no hope of identifying anything.

As we headed into the West Macdonnells, Gosse Bluff arises as another massive red monolith. This region really knows how to produce big red rocks. The roads are windy for the first time in 1000s of kilometres. Apache comes on the stereo. We have been pulling out all the clichés. Treaty took us into uluru. Beds are Burning into Kata Tjuta. But the titty bar music is my favourite. Dusty Springfield got us started on the trip, and she makes a regular reappearence.

When I wake up in Redbank Gorge, it’s cold, but the nights have all been pretty cold and I begin my morning tea making ritual. The water freezes as it hits the bottom of the pan. I go to refill my water bottle from the large container and discover the tap is frozen over. Alison stays in bed in disbelief that I can survive out here. I entice her out of bed by making coffee, but we quickly retire to the car in the hope that body heat and steam might warm the space up. 

It’s still cold when we start up Mt Sonder. You can tell that when I do the whole climb in my thermal, jumper and leg warmers. We bump into people coming down who had started walking at 3 am in order to catch the sunrise from the summit. And here we were complaining about the cold this morning. The wind along the ridge was icy, and the ridge undulated along for 5 km. The walk back was already looking very long. Alison started having olfactory hallucinations. She swore she could smell lamb chops. She though it was altitude. I thought it was fatigue. The ridge ends in a sudden drop off with stunning views and following the natural instinct of short people everywhere to reach the highest position, I climb up onto the cairn on the summit to get the best viewpoint. When we got back to camp and Alison updated her journal of what we had done since leaving Natimuk, she thought perhaps we really had done a lot and maybe a rest was in order.

After Glen Helen, Ormiston Gorge, Ellery Big Hole (which is effectively an outdoor swimming pool for families), we have Tourist Fatigue. Tourist Infrastructure Fatigue. I feel like a bit of a grump, but there is really only so much of this tourist stuff I can do. This really is the family road trip itinery that we are on. Even more so than the grey nomads. We are rare amongst the families, and even rarer amongst the serious 4wds and camper trailers. We could count the amount of other people in cars and tents we’ve seen on one hand. Families yelling at their children are getting tedious. Alison suggested we could put on some music. I thought about that for a moment and ask if I could put Too Drunk Too Fuck on really loud? She wouldn’t let me.

Fortunately, when we go to do the Ormiston Pound loop, there is no one else there. It is also a varied and beautiful walk. We were expecting to just slog up and over the ridge, across the flat of the pound and back through a short gorge. It turns out to be a delightful climb up valleys and ridges to a stunning view over the pound, the flat walk in the pound only brief, with multiple crossings of the creek and into the gorge, with 2.5k of boulder hopping and 300m walls. It’s pretty good really. Only when we got to the carpark end did we encounter the tedious hoards. Of course, the up side of the tedious hoards and infrastructure is coffee. There is a café at the gorge car park. So we had coffee and cake and settled in for a leisurely afternoon.

Since leaving Natimuk 2 weeks ago, we have driven 4000km. Walked 100km. Moved camp 9 times. Taken 347, 680, 201 photos (give or take) and a few less silly videos. Had precisely 0 hot showers since Adelaide, no phone reception for 10 days and have no wine left. We are tired. Hell, we even have a bit of Gorge Fatigue. Because after 20 or so gorges, they start to be a little anticlimactic. Tomorrow morning, we are making a beeline directly for a café in Alice. Good coffee and hot breakfast and finding ourselves a hotel to spoil ourselves with for the weekend. And maybe some hot dates. Because one thing we haven’t fatigued from is talking about sex. Then we will try and find ourselves some real wilderness and head further north.