Where are all the kangaroos and where the hell is Alice?

October 19, 2015 Longboard Lady 12 Comments

Where are all the kangaroos?

Six weeks ago we had our first experience of the outback, if you can call it "outback" only 43 kilometres away from Darwin. We did. Noonamah had a roadhouse, a gas station, a pub/restaurant, a camping and not much more to brag about. We were exhausted but thrilled, everything was new and we had a serious laugh at the stickers you could buy at the gas station. They said "Where the Hell is Noonamah" and we couldn't do more than agree. Where the hell had we ended up?

Several weeks later, and with a lot more confidence and experience of the outback and the roadhouses, we've learned that those stickers are everywhere. "Where the hell is Hayes Creek/Emerald Springs/Dunmarra/Wycliffe Well/...". Not so funny anymore even if we still wonder where the hell we are sometimes.

As we continue travelling we meet a lot of friendly people. Some of them stop to take photos, some of them are just curious or want to give us something cold. A few stop because they assume we are hitchhiking, I presume we sometimes look like that when we're waiting for cars to pass by. Anyway, we tell our story and lately people have started to say, "Aah, you're only going to Alice." Well, in my opinion it's not like skating to the neighbour. For your information it's still almost 300 kilometres away and the asphalt doesn't seem to get better. You're welcome to join if you like and if you're unsure of the map I can point Alice Springs out for you and explain how far "almost/only/just" is . ;-)

So, we're "almost" there according to a bunch of people but still we haven't seen an alive kangaroo. A dead one, yes. But that doesn't count.

We fall asleep to the strange sounds of howling dingoes and wake up to a lovely bird song in the dawn. We've seen more wallabies, dead and alive, than we thought were possible and the parrots are making us crazy with their noise. Their colours are beautiful though. Ants, frogs, toads, spiders, lizards, emus, peacocks, unfenced cows and fenced camels. Even a group of wild donkeys.

But where are the roos? Can't leave Australia without having seen one, can we!?