Top End & Red Center - Australia

The pain of saying goodbye hadn't quite been digested yet, so I moved on towards Darwin to join the next tour, which covers both the north and the outback including Uluru (Ayers Rock) in the Northern Territory. The famously huge Kakadu National Park with 19,000 square kilometers is beautiful and bears witness to ancient culture with its 6,000-year-old Aboriginal paintings. The primitive people have lived in Australia for over 50,000 years. For 50,000 years, life was adapted and perfected to natural circumstances through trial and error. Wisdom is passed on from generation to generation with stories that are still kept secret today or are only told to those who have proven themselves worthy of knowledge. The more generally accessible stories serve as legislation and show what is forbidden and what is allowed and what the penalties are for breaking the rules. Many of the Aborigines who loiter in the cities have been expelled from the community because of such rule-breaking. Of the over 700 countries/tribes that once existed in Australia, all of which had their own language, there are still around 70 active tribes today. As far as I understand it correctly, they no longer run naked through the bush, but rather have a community, for example within a national park, and live close to their culture and use the same rituals, even if modern hunting equipment is used. Now, if the white man had not managed to settle here 200 years ago, would the knowledge and culture of these ancient peoples still be the same as they were all those thousand years ago? Allegedly. By the way, Aboriginal people were only granted human status in the 1970s. Previously they were referred to as "bush-dwelling animal".

The Mary River Wetlands are countless billabongs (interconnected waterholes) that fill with water during the rainy season and are the focal point for all animals, from birds to crocodiles. After the hunt for crocodiles was stopped in the 1970s, the population has recovered very well. However, this also means that unwanted encounters between humans and crocs occur more frequently. Fortunately, the pools we swam in were “Croc managed”. Well... it means there are no "salties" i.e. saltwater crocs living in these pools. But the smaller (up to 23 m) "freshies" live there, but they do nothing to humans and only rarely show themselves to them, preferring to stay at the bottom of the pool. Good to know! Still strange to swim where you know there is definitely Cros. Luckily we didn't see any. After that I probably wouldn't be able to clean it anymore and would have died from heat shock. The temperatures climbed to over 40 degrees in the Red Center, although there was less humidity but no less hot.

But we saw many other animals on this tour. I've now gotten used to the sight of the wallabies in the "front yard", as well as the loud croaking of the black and white cockatoos. There are fewer snakes in the toilet and spiders in the pool. But I definitely want a baby camel!

In between we had a Friday evening in Darwin. The male to female ratio in Darwin is 4:1, due to the military and mining. This also gives the city the number one spot in crime statistics in the NT and its nickname "The Broken Jaw Capital". Personally, I didn't see anything criminal, but the people at Monsoons were enough for me. I've rarely seen weirder guys and a more unusual party. It was like being in a zoo, you couldn't stop being amazed! Splendid!

After driving another 1500 km we came to the center of the country. Australia is, apart from the discovery of the Europeans, a good 200 years ago. The rocks are several hundred million years old. At that time there was an inland sea inside the continent. Fossils of marine animals and living specimens of a frog and a crab, which have adapted to the changing circumstances and now live in the middle of the desert with little water, still bear witness to this.

The crossing of the continent from north to south of over 3,700 km is thanks to a gentleman named Stuart, after whom today's highway is named, who, at the request of the English, laid a telegraph line from Darwin to Adelaide to connect Australia with the rest of the world . The British then “quickly” pulled the line from Great Britain to Darwin, thus shortening the time needed for message transmission from several months to 8 hours. Camels (well actually dromedaries) were imported to Australia to cross the desert and after the project was completed the animals were released in 1870, resulting in Australia now having the largest wild camel population in the world. Some are caught and exported to the Arab world.

The song "Waltzing Mathilda" is the unofficial anthem of Australia and is about a man who is on the run in the outback and sleeps under the open sky. Due to a woman's lack of bed warmth, he calls his swag (a sturdier sleeping bag with an integrated mattress) Mathilda. Thank God there are no further indications of this man's deep connection to his sleeping bag. I have now often slept outdoors in the same swag (or alternatively on a lounger from a tent). And I have to say, I can really appreciate the campfire romance! The starry sky is really awesome! A fantastic feeling when you wake up at night and see this breathtaking firmament. And at this point I have to quote my favorite guide again: why sleep in 5 stars when you can have 5 billion stars?! How right he is!

Time flies, when you're having fun...yes! it goes by so damn quickly. It's already half over. Incomprehensible! Also that I have so much time again! What I have already experienced in the last 3 months, I can't imagine what else can come!

Funny, I suspected that I would have worse days on the trip, but to be honest, I haven't regretted a single day of the trip so far. I would certainly like to have a night here and there where I am the only person sleeping in the room, without snoring or other annoying noises from the other up to 7 male and female roommates or even my own clean bathroom (who actually has that? told me that I need to renovate mine? It's so luxurious compared to what you sometimes expect here) for extensive body care, but it doesn't really bother me. You become very frugal. As long as you have a place to sleep and the ability to shower, all is well with the world.

The more places I travel, the more I want to see. I now understand very well that you can just get stuck traveling and end up being a vagabond. Don't worry, I'll come home, but I think the passion after traveling is hard to satisfy. I certainly experience many exciting tours here and see beautiful landscapes, but often it's the little moments in which I stroll around somewhere in the town, drink a coffee, read in the newspaper what's going on here (if the number of inhabitants means the publication of a newspaper justifies it) or simply go dancing in a bar with the friends you've just made for the evening. Then my fingertips tingle with joy and I feel...yeah, how should I put it? That I belong right here. So, in short, I still enjoy every day! ;O)