EMMA YOUNG — Em and Stu do Australia Part 3: The Northern Territory

*If you have ever considered travelling in an Apollo Endeavour campervan with a baby through the NT, just don’t.*

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In 1919, four adventurous Australians decided to attempt flying from an English winter to Darwin: across 28 days, in an open cockpit with nothing between them and vicious weather, taking off and landing on muddy runways, skimming trees and getting bogged, sometimes having to jumpstart the plane like it was a car, flying either safe above the clouds but blinded to landmarks below, or flying dangerously low to see landmarks. Sir Ross Smith’s own account of this pioneering flight said:

“This sort of flying is a rotten game. The cold is hell, and I am a silly ass for having ever embarked on the flight.”

We came across this in August, in the Darwin aviation museum, where we were sheltering Augie from the afternoon’s blistering heat, one week into our own month-long self-imposed ordeal: travelling through the Northern Territory in a campervan with a one-year-old.

Reading the quote, I was overcome with a rush of fellow-feeling.

Our 3000-kilometre road trip travelling south throughout the Territory all but broke me, to be perfectly honest. And Stu too, which is really saying something, because Stu is basically the human equivalent of a cart horse.

And yet… even if this journey was 80 per cent pain and 20 per cent pleasure, it’s a reasonable bet that the pleasure and the pride in our survival is what will stand the test of time.

All the more reason, then, to immortalise the pain in this blog: Lest We Forget!

We thought since we’d managed in a Britz Voyager for a fortnight in WA’s Pilbara, that we would manage in the Apollo. This was wrong. The interior layout is completely different.

A portable cot does not fit in an Apollo Endeavour.

Anywhere.

Floor plans were not available in advance. Like Sir Ross we were flying blind, and more than a little unprepared (in my defence, try planning a six-month trip while you’re marketing a debut novel, working full-time and mothering an infant. The plan will not be thorough.)

In addition, the weather of the NT is brutal even at its mildest, in the state’s peak tourism season; even more challenging than the Pilbara’s had been.

As Augie’s first scheduled naptime in the van came and went, it became obvious that we were not going to be able to sleep him in the sweltering van. This was a serious problem. A baby needs two sleeps a day until they are around 15 months old. And there was no even remotely affordable van upgrade option.

Thus ensued a frantic few days careering van back and forth across Darwin’s hopping hot tarmac, walking Augie around vast carparks as we went from Anaconda to Coles to Bunnings to Spotlight, trying to cobble together somewhere our baby would have some basic approximation of the space, darkness and temperature that would enable him to sleep, even poorly.

This is how we learned Darwin sports the world’s biggest Bunnings.

We emerged later in the week sweaty and miserable and stressed but with a new setup to call home for the month: a large two-room blackout tent with a pedestal fan (in fact three different fans), next to a campervan in which no-one would be sleeping: essentially a large and fuel-hungry car sporting a severely poorly-laid out kitchen and many places to bang one’s head.

I am forever disabused of my romantic notion that camping is quiet. Camping used to be quiet, back when Stu and I were childless lovers camping in rustic unpowered sites.

It is no longer.

*Let’s try this again, or How to Throw Money at a Problem.*

It is fair to say that in a week spent mostly trying to persuade Augie to sleep in a tent insufficiently insulated from intense heat, light and constant beeping, engine noise, and the strange musical tastes of permanent caravan park residents, we did not really get the chance to appreciate Darwin’s lovely, walkable and relaxed city centre, complete with world-class waterfront.

We did love, and do recommend, the aforementioned Aviation Museum, oil tunnels of WWII, and fantastic modern, family-friendly waterfront development.

We did celebrate, after a fashion, Augie’s first birthday, thanks to Zoom, some hastily bought presents and a cheesecake that melted because Esky could not keep it cold enough. Have you ever seen a cheesecake just… liquefy? It’s heartbreaking.

Never mind. Onward, to the centrepiece of the Top End: Litchfield and Kakadu National Parks.

We found a quieter, shadier campsite in Litchfield for three nights, but by now the realisation had set in that all the blood, sweat, tears and hours that had gone into creating a beautifully sleep-trained baby had been rendered irrelevant with the advent of tent life. Hours of crying, comforting and rocking, with us snatching silent, miserable dinners then going straight to bed, were again a reality. We learnt to unzip zips and walk over tarps without making a single sound. But despite all our strategising, purchasing and effort, day naps were regularly failing, Augie was overtired and his parents were frazzled, to say the least.

Again at Litchfield, just like I had in Port Hedland, I panicked and tried to push the eject button. I pulled Stu aside one fretful, hot afternoon punctuated by angry cries from the tent, and we sat on a patch of dirt and I attempted to create options where there really were none. Pull out of all our bookings? Drive back to Darwin, stay there for the next two weeks, surrender the van, and fly to Alice?

Stu talked me off the ledge, and we went on. And of course, had unforgettable times.

From our spot in Litchfield we could reach multiple attractions with thankfully shorter drives, and fell in love with its waterfalls and rock pools, which provided relief and relaxation during long, blazing afternoons.

*Burrungkuy (Nourlangie) main gallery and shelter walk, Kakadu*

Kakadu, despite Augie’s interrupted sleep, further revived our enthusiasm and nourished our spirits: the Ubirr and Nourlangie rock art walks, particularly Nourlangie, where you tread boardwalks through enormous rock shelters and weave through trees in the shade of mountains covered in art. The Mamukala wetlands where we lingered for a long time to observe the teeming birdlife. The Yellow Waters cruise, where we saw more crocs, closer up, than I had ever expected to see in my life, and multitudes of waterbirds.

The caravan parks were reasonably upmarket in Kakadu and we got some slight routine through multiple-night stays, but if we were to reach the Red Centre we had to plunge south, and we rolled up our sleeves for the trek to our next major destination, Uluru: a 1700-kilometre journey spread across six single-night stops, meaning the whole set-up had to be put down and packed up each day, a feat even without a baby.

We went straight through Katherine, narrowly avoiding a snap lockdown, to reach Mataranka. Here at the setting of the classic novel We of the Never Never, we bathed in gorgeous thermal pools and wondered at the Northern Territory’s favourite pastime, whip-cracking. Yes, they practice whip-cracking in caravan parks, they sell whips at servos, they attend evening shows featuring professional whip-cracking performances.

At the quirky Daly Waters we greeted someone’s front-yard pet croc, Kevin, cruised a collection of junkyard magic, and spent as much time as possible in the centrepiece pub, a true outback destination coated in the layered leavings of many decades of travellers.

At Threeways Roadhouse we wandered through an echoing and deserted ‘tourist information centre’, once proudly funded and opened by the political identities of 15 years ago, now being used to store toilet paper. Here we did little more than watch Augie roll in the dirt, then bathe him in our otherwise useless Esky.

At Wauchope we camped near the granite boulders called Karlu Karlu/The Devil’s Marbles, viewing them both during the searing hot afternoon and, in a mammoth family effort, also at dawn the following day (hey, if your fellow campers have woken your baby at 5am anyway, you may as well all go).

At Alice Springs we had a night in an Actual Apartment with a Bed and a Sink and a Fridge and a Carpet, which Augie played on like he’d never seen a carpet in his life.

*Uluru at dawn, with Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) in the distance.*

When we had Augie, my former pastimes and self-care routines such as journaling, meditation and cooking for pleasure vanished. We had imagined that on this trip we would have time leisure, relaxation and play again, but apart from the sightseeing, not only were these pastimes more firmly out of reach than ever but even the chance to read or watch TV was gone, subsumed in a daily battle to keep everyone relatively clean and fed.

We were distinctly battered by the time we reached Uluru, but here our troubles were over, as Stu’s parents had travelled up in their caravan from Perth to meet us. They appeared Mary Poppins-like, whisked Augie away and cleaned him up, and generally babysat the hell out of him for the rest of the month.

We stayed three nights at Yulara, and did beautiful walks around Uluru and Kata Tjuta, otherwise known as The Olgas, which are surely among Australia’s most magical places. Our wonderful babysitters even watched Augie while we did a solo walk through Kata Tjuta, and we were most appreciative of being able to tramp around in the rocks without having to stuff a yowling, sweaty little comrade into his hated carrier.

We settled for the remainder of the month in Alice, from where we saw some (but nowhere near enough) of the West MacDonnell Ranges and Tjoritja National Park – with the beautiful Simpsons Gap a highlight – and had a generally lovely time lounging and recuperating. Our camping setup was radically enhanced with the addition of Stu’s parents’ campervan where Augie could conduct his day-nap refusal in airconditioned comfort.

Fun fact: Alice remains a stronghold for rally-car nights, plus the delightful Cracker Night, on which locals are allowed to let fireworks off themselves, until 11pm, anywhere, which turns out to be directly above our tent.

While appreciating the whip-and-fire-cracking Territorian spirit, Stu and I were more than ready for September, a return to walls, roofs, curtains, floors, temperature control, etc, with re-sleep-training our baby topping the to-do list.

Having reluctantly bumped Queensland and Victoria from the itinerary thanks to COVID, we looked forward to our cold but indisputably civilised next stop: Hobart, Tasmania!

JOBS TALLY
Bookshops visited: 2. Parmas eaten: 3