Slowing Down: from Kakadu to the Ghan to Uluru

The day I got on the Ghan in Darwin, I’d been having a rotten morning. I’d woken up at 4am to a shaking and rumbling. My first trained thought was, “Oh, god, an earthquake.” Then, it dawned on me I was in Australia, and the shaking was just the girl on the bunk above mine, moving around. These bunks are flimsy in some hostels, and when you couple that with the plastic, bed-bug proof mattresses at the hostel I stayed in last night, you’ve pretty much made for the least hospitable dorm sleeping experience possible.

What was the cause of this exhaustion? Well, I hade been moving non-stop for three weeks, and had topped all that with a whirlwind driving trip in Darwin. You see, I stayed very little of my five days in Darwin actually in Darwin itself. Instead, I rented a van and went to Kakadu National Park for three days and two nights. I went with a French woman who dresses like Emmet, has the weathered feet of a dancer, and a raw foodie’s glowing spacey approach to decision-making.

Every time I asked where she would like to go or what she would like to do, she said, “Oh, I leave it to you.” I do believe she was on a month-long walking meditation of Australia.

In some ways, this made for quite an easy trip; we went where I thought was best and on the roads I thought the car could handle. (Wicked Campervans are cheap but only sometimes functional – this one wasn’t going to do any off-roading.)

But it made for difficulty too: I was always the one saying we should go now if we want to set up the tent before it gets dark or get petrol before the long stretch of road or that I didn’t want to drive after dark so we couldn’t stay for sunset. I was the one always setting the rules and parameters. I was effectively the wet blanket.

She doesn’t drive either, so I did all of it. One would think driving in the outback-ish parts of Australia would be easy – there is no traffic, no lane changing required, few intersections – none of those things that make for the trappings of driving stress and anxiety. It turns out these are also the things that keep the brain alert on long drives.

San Francisco to LA in one shot? Not a problem. I can totally do that.

200 kilometers from Darwin to the Kakadu Visitor Center? We stopped three times to rest.

Driving in “rural” Australia (that is, most of WA and the NT) is actually quite strenuous. The brain and the eyeballs begin to turn to mealy mush on the long, empty road. The sun lulls you to sleep and the scenery is unchanging – either lots of grassland or lots of trees, all in big, unchanging swathes.

In three days, I drove 800 kilometers, and always made sure we had butane, petrol, water, ice, and whatever else we would need to camp far from supplies. My travel partner commented that she was always “slow, slow, slow” and I was always “busy, busy, rush, rush, rush.” Well, you wonder why, I wryly thought.

But she threw me a bone: “We work well, I think.”

True. She got a good tour of Kakadu, and I got a good and much needed reminder to chill the eff out.  She got to me in a good way. She wore only all-natural bug spray, citronella oil, and citronella candles. She accepted the mosquitoes as fact, reasoned they were less aggressive than many places in the world, and less deadly. She walked slowly and barefoot. She collected firewood at each campsite while I drank a glass of wine. She wanted to live simply, with minimum impact.

“I prefer not to cook my food if I don’t need to. I just prefer use less energie if poss-i-bul.”

I, on the other hand, traumatized still by the sandfly attack, have been soaking my feet in chemically bug sprays for three weeks and have been slathering on sunscreen at every chance I get. I’ve been taking the packaged way out wherever possible, reasoning that travel warrants this. But now that I’m on the train – now that I’m effectively “on my way back” – I think the universe sent this to me as a sign.

You have been too hard on your body, it is saying.

I took a shower at the hostel after we got back from Kakadu and scrubbed off the layers of bug spray and suncreen. I did not re-apply either of them. I did all my laundry for the first time in three weeks. So even though I had bad sleep that night, I began the process of refreshing (laisser revivre, the French would perhaps say, as they do of lettuce when it is wilted and so you set it to soak). Or, as my travel partner and I began to say, se ralentir – to slow oneself down. Not a proper French word, but a term we liked and decided to coin.

I’m clearly in a better mood now, as I write this. It is evening, and I’m reclining on The Ghan. I just had a nice conversation with the guy who runs the café on board, I got some warm tea, and I’m in a way better mood.

It’s a relief to simply sit for a while. I’ve been reading On the Road for the first time since I was sixteen and it is much more brilliant than I ever understood the first time.

It’s also a relief to turn my transport over to the train; I can sit here and write instead of focus on the road lines.

I’ve elected to take a tour in Alice Springs. I was reluctant about this at first, but now after moving non-stop for the last three weeks, I look forward to it eagerly. It is quite difficult to go to Uluru and other sites on your own, and ends up being quite expensive besides. Now I can just hand myself over to someone else, say, Here, you take me where I should go. I’ll just sit back and watch.

We saw absolutely lovely sights in Kakadu, went on marvelous walks, and met some cool park rangers. I’ll try to write/post more about that soon. Here are some photos: