shoo fly, don't bother me

well - we have "arrived alive" (signs posted along the highway reguarly remind us that this is our goal) in darwin. i can hardly believe that we have made it here. mostly because many people didn't think we would even get to alice springs in the time we had to do our journey - let alone our soon-to-be arrival destination of broome. but we are here. palm trees. white sand. jagged rocky shoreline. torquoise waters. crocodiles, sharks and jellyfish. a multitude of racial backgrounds. a city routed with natural disaster and WWII history that any person could be fascinated for ages by it. and we have made it.

if i were to take one thing away from our journey through australia's outback - it would be that australia is not a land of "inbetweens." it is an "all or nothing" type of country. it doesn't have medium temperatures. it is either super hot or super cold. it does not understand what moderate humidity levels are. it is either all wet or all dry. it either pours rain or has droughts. a person insures their house for bush fires or flooding. there are big waves, huge sharks and the sun is nothing to laugh at - give it enough time and it will burn you alive like some fancy magic trick shown on the stages of a cruel and unusual las vegas location. the land is either lush with vegetation or there is nothing but dirt as far as the eye can see. and even then - sometimes i wonder if it is dirt at all. there is not one kangaroo - there are so many that i have lost track mere kilometres north of adelaide as to how many we have spotted as road meat on the pavement. and then there are the flies.

no one told us about the flies. no one. not one person thought to mention that hey - there might be a couple buzzing black insects annoying you on your journey through the outback. not even a quip in our treasured (and now dog-eared) lonely planet australia books to indicate that we may want to be a little prepared for the black monsters.

and let me just clarify - there are not just a "few" flies in australia's outback. it is like something out of what i would imagine biblical times to be with the plagues and all that legendary stuff. and yet all the locals strut around, doing their daily buisness as though they haven't a care in the world. apparently one can get used to them. we didn't. instead we developed our anti-fly defense routine - refusing to cave and purchase one of those outback fly hats we had previously laughed at when spotting them early in our journey at a tourist shop. once we entered flinders range (slightly north of adelaide) we understood why. the flies are everywhere. and by everywhere - i do not mean that they fly in a respectable area outside of a person's zone of living/breathing/eating. i mean that they are EVERYWHERE. on our backs. our feet. in our clothes. ears. mouth. nose and yes, even our eyes. they want our food. they want to camp out in our nostrils. they want to let us hear them "sing" in our ears. they are everywhere.

now - this can make things a little more interesting, even for the most boring of journey's one might be on. and i'm not just talking about the concept of how each day anika and i fought with the flies while making our meals - think of how interesting things can be when there are no toilets in the outback and one has to go. squatting in the bush has never been more uncomfortable - and not just because there was rarely a bush to squat behind and when there was it was all prickly and hard and such - but because those flies haven't heard of a concept of "personal space." they pretty much just wanted to be part of my person. i don't think i have ever peed in the bush so fast in my life. even the whole concept of backsplash onto one's feet one would normally worry about became a thing of the past.

with the flies all around - snakes were not even our worry. running over kangaroos was also put to a minor distraction while on the road. mosquitoes could do no wrong. flat tires? - who cares? went the wrong way? - we'll get there eventually. low on gas? - we'll just push the van. but the flies.... that was our concern. so - like i said, we developed our defence plan.

firstly - windows and doors remained shut while we were in the vehicle when at a standstill. if we started the van to go somewhere, we would sit sweating in the vehicle (we opted out of using the AC as it drains our gas) untill we would reach a speed of which the flies could not get into the vehicle.

secondly - food eating would be done in the vehicle. this proved to be truely interesting during supper in which our food was generally hotter than a PB & J sandwhich. we would cook the food, clean up the dishes and, on one particular night it was me standing 20 ft away from the van with the food in my hand as i spun around in circles (eyes closed as much as possible to limit the flies landing on my eyeballs) to avoid the flies becoming part of our meals as anika opened the doors to the van. it was then - and only then - that we would bolt as fast as possible to the opened van doors, bowls of food in hand, and jump in the van and shut the doors in one fluid motion... our bodies in a full sweat. we got so good that we would only have about 3 flies in the van at one time or another. that and eating there wasn't too bad as we would then be sweating out all the fats of our food as quickly as we could shovel the grub into our mouths as it was so hot and humid in our metal box. once finished our meals we would open the doors and stumble out gasping for some fresh and, ironically enough, "cool" air to breathe. this was our nightly ritual.

thirdly - become as skilled as possible in the art of fly-killing. every night as we got ready for bed. after spraying the inside of the van with raid (killing all the bugs already on the inside) and dousing ourselves with bugspray (which is supposed to limit the black fly attraction to us) we would hop into our cosey home and settle down to read our books. inbetween chapters we would focus our attention on killing the remaining flies within our tiny environment. i feel we have become so good at killing them with our hands that i am debating if i should put this under my "other skills" section of my resume.

so there was the flies - they took up a lot of our time, energy and focus while out in the outback. but then there was the other stuff too. there was the vaste landscapes of what would appear to be a whole lot of nothing, but anika and i learned to see the beauty in it. even just the amazing array of colors in the dirt throughout the desert put us in a state of awe. then there was the many different plants - looking so soft and inviting, but were mostly quite hard and rough once up close. we climbed mountains, viewed dried out trees, watched kangaroos hop along the road, avoided cows roaming the highway and successfully drove 4WD down the most isolated dirt roads in the outback. we saw some of the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets, spotted the most unusual birdlife and even got to see some really cool rocks.

and by rocks - i refer to the most famous ayers rock of the outback. it is a sacred rock of which the aboriginal people of australia hold a lot of spiritual meaning to it. anika and i drove to the gate of the national park, the rock set in the background of the landscape, and - when we realized we would have to pay $25 each to get in to see it - we turned around and opted to stay 80km away at a free campsite of which we could view mt. conner in the distance. aside from the random emu who came to eat some of our onion and would not leave when i tried to shoo it away with a spatula (apparently a small plastic stick is no match for a bird who's head comes up to my shoulder) the campsite was pretty awesome. plus mt. conner we thought was nicer to look at anyway.

we also saw the devil's marbles (and i have yet to figure out how these rocks got to be like this), hiked a part of the larapinta trail (west macdonnell range near alice springs) and swam in a swimming hole under the shade of the mountain gorges. we went to see a lake that was more like a big mud puddle and faught for our lives on a trail inhabited by spiders that looked as though they could take our heads off. we even managed to shower off our grimy bodies once in a while.

and we have made it. all the way to darwin. it almost seems like a dream - as though i could pinch myself and wake up somewhere entirely different. but we are here - the last major stop before we get to broome... a mere 2200km away. we're so close i can almost taste it. and it tastes like salty water.