The Way Out

We’re looking for a place to spend the night. “If you want to sleep in town you have to go to a gated camping. The blackies drink too much and cause problems” says a well intended white. We press on a little further, at Three Ways, where one of the campers is not happy, we should have backed in our lot. It is something that we are going to see in all the camps, we’re supposed to follow the rules, but we’re not very good at it. Water here has a yellow tint, a metallic taste, but it is clear and safe to drink. It is brought with cisterns and kept in huge drums. It is free! Or you could buy a plastic bottle and have it on your conscience, because there is no recycling outside big cities. 

The straight road isn’t fun. We have 700 km to drive until we stop for the night. There is nothing that catches our eye: grass, shrubs, an occasional tree. But at the end of the day we realize we have some clouds, there are more trees (and they’re not eucalyptus), flocks of birds that fly in the sun, and many hawks eating roadkill. Driving after sunset is not recommended, not because there are no lights to see the road, but for the animals, who, after the heat of the day, become active and start foraging. You don’t want to have a collision with a euro (a big kangaroo), or to flatten a possum or a wallaby. And beside this, if you have an accident, there’s no one who can help you until morning.

As we’re driving, we pass through small communities, the petrol station (gas is for cooking), the grocery store, some disheveled looking houses. The few people sit where the action is—waiting on a bench, looking at you as you get down from the car, as you fuel, scrutinizing the way you walk, talk, your gestures, looking for something to remember, to have something to talk about long after you’re gone.

We stop at the Mataranka hot pools. They are surrounded by large tall trees, stations for the flying fox bats, on their way of following the flowering season. 

As soon as we enter the forest the air changes, more humid, more fragrant, full of sounds. My mind searches for an explanation: why are the hot pools hot? There is no geothermal activity here, no history of it... It is a misnomer, they are not hot, just warm. In the Wet, the rainy season, the water is soaked up in the hundreds of miles of sandstone, to be released here, after being warmed by the rock. A string of three blue pools, steps on one side, mossy rock and vegetation on the other. The first one, the deepest and warmest, is occupied with elder people, one of them having his oxygen bottle. Some Czechs and a family with a happy, questioning boy and a tiny daughter were admiring a huge spider in the second. 

These are BIG spiders

We can’t wait to take our clothes off and change that sticky feeling. One step, another one, careful not to slip ... the water is soft, an incredible sensation, like caressing liquid fingers. We move around the occasional rock, exploring the borders, looking at our toes, swimming under water. It feels so good to be here...

Refreshed, we continue toward Katherine Gorge. When something goes wrong, you look back and try to find the mistake, but I can’t find ours. Water and fuel are essential in the Outback. You can’t find them on the side of the road and the next living station is tens of kilometers away. The water reservoir was full, and we had a third of gas tank for 160 km (100 miles), so maybe you understand our surprise when the red light decorated the dashboard with 60 km to go. We didn’t know the RV’s specifications, how long can we drive after the light turns on, it’s supposed to be a new car and the gauge to function. Mihai immediately changed the driving style, lowering the speed, accelerating slowly, not passing. My mind raced: there were few cars, would they stop to help us, maybe they were carrying cans with diesel, or they could take Mihai in town to buy there, do they sell small cans for diesel and so forth. The sun was setting and I had visions of the campervan on the side of the road with just the desert around. The kilometers were rolling very slowly, and though we entered Katherine a few minutes ago, we still had a long way to the fuel station. I think the last hundred of yards we rode on fumes. “Which one do you want—the one on the left or on the right?” Mihai asks casually and I realize he is right, we could choose, seeing that there are two facing gas stations. Euphoria sets in, making the children wonder what happened with us.

Now it’s my turn to watch them, perched up in my vantage car seat. People walk barefoot, dressed scantily. They spring up after the heat of the day, going about their businesses. I’m more curious about the Aboriginal people. They are apart. I would like to have a magic window, to look through it and see their way of life, their rules of behavior, their dwellings, in the village or in town, to understand their society. Then I feel guilty: they are people, not exhibits! 

I would get a glimpse as we stop to buy groceries. On the walls there are slogans like “Don’t drink your money, do this!” Some are dressed clean and nice, some look like they just got out of a fight. There is a smell around them, of sweat and fire-smoke. And as we get out of the parking lot, a drunken couple sits on the tarmac and laments. Between two civilizations there are those who don’t know which one to choose.

We spend the night at Katherine Park. Wallabies are grazing around us, like it’s the normal thing to do. Hey, they’re seeing tourists every night, it’s us who marvel at their eyes and feet and way of walking!

In the morning we take our time to get ready. The park is big, with plenty of things to do that require time and energy, but we don’t have time so we choose to see the visitor center and take a cruise on the first two gorges. People come here for vacation or for the weekend, trek all 13 gorges or canoe through them, enjoy the natural beauty of the place.

On the boat, elder people and one family with two small children, our RV neighbors. Turning around to look for his children, he found them playing with a string in the dust. “YOU were supposed to stay CLEAN for ten minutes!” The guide tells us about the Jawoyn, the people who lived here, he shows us some crocodiles (their homes marked with colored plastic balls), points to some trees (when their bark changes from white into red, the seasons change). 

The gorge came into being in the Dreamtime, one snake made it happen and he still lives in the deepest part of it, coming up for punishing the greedy fishermen or those who don’t respect the rules of skin groups and intermarriage (a child inherits a skin group from his mother, and another identification name from his father, both dictating whom he can marry). We float between sheer cliffs and sandy beaches, but we are not impressed. Not even when we had to walk to get to the second gorge. 

Since we finished so quickly, we decide to see Edith Falls. In the sky there are cumulus clouds regularly spaced like they came out from a factory. 

On the sides of the road grass 3 meters (10 feet) tall waves in the wind. It is beautiful. The waterfall is short and slanted, emptying itself in a lake where we wiggle our toes, admire the striped fish and watch for those evil crocodiles. Fresh water crocodiles are OK, they will not attack you, but the salt water ones...They grow big, strong, territorial.

Kakadu National Park. Finally. It is a large territory encompassing a diverse land and its waters. Life is made easier for us: because we have a 6 bed RV we can drive only on the sealed roads and that leaves us just enough to explore. Add to this the flooded ones and we’re almost without options.

Visitor Centers are the place to be. They are air conditioned! Outside there are 35 degrees Celsius combined with water vapor and kamikaze flies who enter your mouth as soon as you open it. For the last one we have solution: the nets, lovingly sewn by myself. 

These are hiding, waiting for a good opportunity. 

Here we learn that Aborigines have five or six seasons. 

From 6 o'clock, clockwise,  Gudjewg (monsoon), Banggereng (harvest time), Yegge (cooler but still humid), Gurrung (hot dry time), Wurrgeng (cool dry season), Gunumeleng (pre-monsoon season)

We see the bags, the baskets, the mats woven from palm fibers, colored with natural ingredients, the many kinds of fish traps, the everyday tools for hunting, digging, all gifts (and the knowledge to make them) from the Dreamtime ancestors.
 We read about working for the cattle farmers, catching the calves, branding them, in exchange for tobacco and alcohol and later, for the uranium mine, the protests against it ignored. Again I realize that the differences between those cultures, Aboriginal and European, are big. One stays with me: burned fields are a sore eye for the white man, destroyed vegetation,

 but for the native it is a beauty, it is the signal for new growth, new life.

Anbangbang is a teaching place. We walk between towering stones and look for painted figurines. 

Namarrgong is the Lightning Man (the one that has antennas down to his feet) and Barrginj is his wife (her body is white and she has two round eyes). Their son is Aljurr (the big guy in the middle), and for those who can’t see him as a spirit, he looks like a brightly red and blue colored grasshopper. The people here are a group family going to a party. And you can fish that kind of fish nearby.

We stop at the Mamukala (Mar-moo-car-lar) Wetlands. In front of us is a carpet of water with big blue lotus flowers and small white ones. Behind it, a forest of old lotus leaves, witness of Wet’s height. A hawk flies down to catch a fish, but only washes its talons. Though is late in the day, there are plenty of birds to watch stepping dainty on the round leaves. Dragonflies add their hum to the incessant sound. 

The scenery is so different; we entered a grassland and we exit through a marsh. 

Jabiru, a bird 6 feet tall!

We drive toward Litchfield Park, another wonderful space. It is like someone collected interesting waterfalls and their pools, and merged the rocks. 

Wangi Falls (One-guy)

But our first stop is at the termite mounds, brown “icebergs” sheltering endless tunnels, air shafts and the graves of past workers. The colony lives underground, subsisting on grass. There are many kinds of termites, you can see from the shapes of the mounds, though the guide books will tell you only about magnetic ones. No, they don’t attract metal, they are merely built on a North-South axis, exposing the least amount of wall to the sun.

A fifty years old colony.

You could consider this park the backyard for Darwin. People drive here in hordes in the weekend, sleep in tents and bathe in its waterfalls. It is quiet now because not all the pools are open, there might be some crocodiles left. We spend a glorious morning in the Cascades, terraced waterfalls where you can get a deep tissue massage, cool in deep blue water and play with pink sand. The boys will try their skill at Florence Falls too, still, the fishes swam better then them.

Darwin, a phoenix city, razed by Hurricane Tracy on Christmas Day, 1974 has new buildings with roofs anchored to the foundation.

Those upside down tripods are tethering the roof.

 It has a modern feeling. We visit the waterfront, with empty white sand beaches. You can’t take a bath, there are poisonous stingrays. The streets are almost deserted, just a few people braving the heat.

Next is the museum, and as you guessed, we start with the native part. We learn that the land’s tribes made themselves a flag in the 60‘s, to claim back their land (because that’s what captain Cook did, claiming Australia with a flag for the British Crown). Now they are recognized as the original landowners, but they live somewhere else. There is a sculpture of a mermaid, the feminine version of the Rainbow Snake in the Dreaming. We learn about burial poles, that are hollow logs painted and decorated, that will protect the bones, after the body was exposed in open air. The art is simple, fluid, with cross-hatching, rarrk, the more dense, the more ancestral power in the place that it depicts.  

There is a painting by Kathleen Petyarre, Storm in Atnangker II that mesmerizes me: white dots, ochre dots, rotating on a brick background.

Courtesy of Museums and Art Galleries of Northern Territory.

http://natsiaadigitisation.nt.gov.au/gallery/WAL-0300-01.jpg

We walk through the exhibit about that Christmas Day, with videos and sounds and pictures and how it changed surroundings and people. And another, made by students with wires, paper, photos, clothes and paintings, expressing the same things: feelings, moods, grace but in a fresh way. Why do we have to leave the museum?

Because we’re hungry! We eat at Mindil’s Market, a conglomeration of stalls with clothes, jewelry, knickknacks and food, next to the beach where we could watch the sunset. And because we need to pack our bags, as we are leaving for Bali the next day.

Australia, such a young country, still carrying the old ideas of the British Empire, changing from white supremacy to self determination, such differences between metropolis and village, such diversity, desert to wetland, mountain to beach, so many things to experience and learn about, so little time. Thank you for everything!

The aborigines don’t like to say good bye, but “See you!” 

Boo-boo Australia!

The Top End and The Land of Never Never

As we drive North from Alice Springs toward Darwin there is a sign, about 20 km into our trip. It is the Tropic of Capricorn. As important as that might be, the girls choose not to get out of the car. I learned in school a hundred years ago about the imaginary lines on the map, the Equator, the latitudes and longitudes. The tropics. Yeah.

The Tropic of Capricorn

After that for the next 1100 km there is nothing. The drive is on the "Stuart Highway", roughly the same path that Mr. Stuart used 140 years ago, exploring the outback and establishing the telegraph line. Every 1-2 hours there is one roadhouse, source of water, alcohol and fuel. Besides that, desert, but the outback we came to expect, a lot of vegetation on the red ground. I call it vegetation, some might call it bushes, it is mostly spinifex, a fire resistant sort of grass that is toxic to most animals but some sort of mice. It is warm during the day but not too bad. At one point we see a mango farm for sale. At another point there might have been a vineyard. Or maybe not.
After the first 400 km there is a sign for the "Devils Marbles", interesting rocks in the middle of nowhere. Like formations that we saw in the Red Center, they have a geological explanation, it makes sense, supplementing some scarce information about the religious and cultural significance to the "original aboriginal owners."

Devils Marbles

Devils Marbles

The first resemblance of a town comes after another 100 km, Tennant Creek. We refuel but are advised to spent the night within the walled confines of a holiday park, because "the blacks" are known to drink too much and can become agitated and noisy. We drive further to the "Three Way", the only major intersection in the Outback, where the road toward Queensland meets the Stuart Highway.

On the second day we have another 650 km to go. Flocks of tiny birds flicker in front of the car for several seconds. The vultures hang a little bit longer. Slowly some tiny whitey shades appear on the sky, slowly they would grow bigger and bigger. In the same time, almost imperceptibly, the bushes grow bigger and bigger until hours later they come to resemble trees. Then the trees grow stronger, taller and denser. This is the transition from the desert to the tropics, in the front seats we experience it gradually in the course of the morning. When we arrive at Mataranka, the children get their heads out the books and are surprised by the dramatic change in scenery. When did we get in the jungle?

Sometimes you don't realize when the desert changes to jungle

Rover river in Elsey National Park

There is a famous book in the Australian literature "We of the Never Never", written by Jeannie Gunn. They made a movie after it, and they have the house built for the movie set, next to the parking lot at Mataranka. I would read the book a little later and marvel at the description of life in the beginning of the 20th century. This lady was the first white woman to make it here. Elsey National Park was then the Elsey cattle ranch, the lady followed her husband and gave the first account of how it was back then. It was a tough life, but those people loved it and would not have changed it for anything. They had all their possessions on their back and loved the free life, they even became philosophical when talking about it "next worst thing to being chained up was for a dog to drag a chain round when being out for a run." She only spent one year here, it was special and "cattle have died this year that never died before."

The Mataranka Homestead recreated for the movie

This upper part of the Australian Continent is a beautiful but difficult place to be. Six month per year it rains, they call this time "the Wet". The next six month, no rain, they call it "the Dry". When it rains it rains, sometimes for many days in a row, tropical storms, apocalyptical floods, that would cover everything in water. During the dry the scorching heat makes life almost impossible, wild fires would burn everything to ashes. The aboriginals, who think they were here since the beginning of times, have always started fires at the beginning of the dry, it would prevent some of the bigger fires later. They describe five or six different seasons and they figured out ways to make a pretty good life. When "the whites" came, they thought they could use these lands for cattle grazing, the farms were the size of European countries. They competed for the limited resources, occasionally having conflicts. We would learn more about this as we went further north.

Small fires cleaning up the grass in the wetlands

Somebody else looking for crocodiles

We learnt about crocodiles. The freshwater ones are small, inoffensive unless disturbed. The saltwater ones, also called estuarine, are huge, violent and dangerous beasts. They were all hunted almost to extinction, but lately they are protected and made a resurgence. We arrived here in the first official week of the dry. Maybe a bit too early, during the wet, estuarine crocodiles move around freely and can end up in places where they shouldn't be. The rangers close the natural pools during the wet and only reopen them after they made sure there are no bad crocodiles. In Elsey's we saw the first "plunge pool". We couldn't swim there, they didn't clear it yet. We had a good lunch using the picnic gear that came with the van.

Picnic in Elsey National park

Mataranka Hot Pools

We moved the car a few kilometers to the hot pools. Despite being crowded it was nice to soak and swim in the natural warm springs of Mataranka. When we left, we passed by the gas station and the sign warning us that there is no other facility for 106 km. I checked, we had another third of the tank full. When we had 60 km left the warning lamp came on. It would make for an interesting hour. I slowed down significantly and didn't touch anything on the car, trying to conserve the fuel. Hard to describe those moments, but when I filled up at the gas station I was able to put 76.66 liters in a 75 liters tank. Like Ileana said, the last few minutes we rode on fumes of gas, the tank was surely empty.
Katherine is "a big city" in the Top End. It has almost 9000 people, that is huge. It has several gas stations a visitor center and a supermarket. We only stayed for a few minutes and decided to go on, we had another 30 km to the Nitmiluk National Park, otherwise known as the Katherine Gorge. It is one of the most famous attractions in the whole of Australia. There are 13 gorges, pretty nice. We took the touristic boat for the first two. There is a longer trip, going to three gorges, but there were no more seats available on that. People might also rent kayaks and explore all the gorges in several days but I think the short trip is enough to get an idea. As a traditional area of the Jawoyn tribe, it was returned to them and they administer it along with the National Park rangers. We learned a bit of their legends and habits. The most interesting is what I would call "fishing by mangrove." They call the mangroves "fish poison," they throw mashed leaves of mangroves in a pool. That would take enough of the oxygen out of the water that the fish would faint. When fish faint they turn belly up on the surface of the water. The aboriginals collect enough fish for their meal and then send the young children to play in the water. The kids splash and play and in the process re-oxygenate the water, the faint, left over fish would recover and go on by their business until the next fishing day would come. Amazing isn't it?

Plenty of wallabies in the Nitmiluk National park

Entering the second pool at Katherine Gorge

The iconic second pool image

During floods the water can go up another 15 meters

Tough environment - only a few flowers around

We spent some more time at the visitor center, here we were even allowed to take pictures, then went on to the other end of the park, the famous "Edith Falls". Another plunge pool where we could have swum under the falls, unfortunately it was not yet opened. We just soaked our toes in the water, watched for crocodiles and took on further up the road.

Watching for crocodiles...

What I liked most at Edith Falls

It's been a dream of ours for many years to get to Kakadu National Park. We knew something about it, the name was easy to remember. I didn't plan for us to get there, it was an open schedule, depending on how our ride north would go. It is huge, half of Switzerland, and difficult to access, especially at this time of the year. The season was about to start, but with the campervan, most of the roads would not be accessible to us, and we didn't have too much time. We made it!

As we left Edith Falls, we refueled in Pine Creek and took on the Kakadu highway. I mention this, because in the 1870, Pine Creek was a major gold mining place, the train got here from Darwin (!), while Katherine was just a settlement with a few families and one pub. Now, with the touristic park, Katherine is a "city", while Pine Creek is a little sleepy village of 500 with a few rusted engines in a mining museum and a run down gas station. They have a sign as "gateway to Kakadu," but I doubt many people notice that. The park is still 150 km away. As we drove on, we learned from leaflets and guidebooks what we might be able to see. Basically Kakadu is a unique ecosystem developed over 200 million years and inhabited by traditional aboriginal tribes over the past 50000. That includes the last glacial age, with a lot of water caught in glaciers at the poles the ocean level was lower and the land of Australia extended another 300 km north from here! There is an extraordinary diversity of wild life in the vast park, and in places, cultural icons from at least 20000 years ago. It is a Wold Heritage site for both its natural and cultural marvels. But that is not easily discovered and we only got a glimpse of it. Having quite low expectations helped, in the end we were pretty happy with what we saw.

A cultural center, interesting exhibition and a gift shop where Ileana would buy a T-shirt

"Two months after my birthday, I finally get a T-shirt!"

Nourlangie area

They have some pretty big spiders around here

Rock paintings, some as old as 20000 years, some fairly recent

Angbangbang gallery

Talk about a tough climb

This was a road open for traffic. We turned around

Flooded forest with extra light

Ileana liked another campervan better. It had a stair and she could sing as loud as she wanted

Wetland flora

I haven't seen many people from Romania around here!!!

We spent two nights, in Cooinda and Jabiru, we visited the Bowali Visitor Center and the Nourlangie region. We returned, smartly, from the flooded road toward Ubir and got out of the park through the northern Arnhem Highway. Besides the wetlands vegetation we only saw a bird or two, but it was good nonetheless. Before we knew it, we were out of the park, and getting back on the Stuart Highway we were now driving South toward Litchfield.

As people prepare for a trip in the Top End they hear a lot about Litchfield National Park. Being much smaller and much more accessible matters. The scenery is much more varied than Kakadu, it is simply said, something different. There are a few falls, termite mounds and tracks in the wilderness. The magnetic termite mounds are perfectly aligned north to south, designed to protect the insects from the huge seasonal changes. They rise to heights of 5 meters, huge, huge, huge. The most beautiful fall, Wangi, was closed for swimming, these crocodiles again. But we swum in the Cascades and Ioan and I even went in the plunge pool at Florence falls. It was a good trip. Before we knew it we saw everything we aimed for, with two nights left until our flight to Bali. Time to go to Darwin!

A fifty year old magnetic termite mound

Wangi Falls

Wangi Falls detail

A Litchfield park spider 

The lower Cascades

Florence Falls from above

Florence Falls at water level

Magnetic mounds field (just a little section)

A New Campervan

Near Darwin: We pick out a powered campsite, probably somewhere near Litchfield, and relax a bit before a dinner of pasta.

The mosquitos are lethal here. Ileana went out to wash the dishes and came back after only five minutes, looking desperately throughout the camper for the repellent. Her back was bright red. I've got more bites on my legs than I know what to do with. It's so hot that our clothes are sticking to us and I don't even mind the oppressive heat and humidity any more… I just try to avoid heat rash— the sweat heats up and then you get a burn in the worst of places— knees, thighs, armpits… mostly thighs, since we walk all the time. It's annoying. 

And it gets hot in the day. We are almost liquid if we ever don't have the AC on.

And now a short detour into ACs. It can be air conditioner (only ever used formally), AC (American), Air Con (more often used everywhere else), or A-Con (possibly more often in Australia, Melbourne, than anywhere else).

Isn't it fantastic how we invent words for words? And how much they differ everywhere. I'm not sure which I like the most.

Back to liquidness. Sweat generally runs everywhere. The seats beneath us get wet if the AC isn't on, the palms get sweaty and it's suddenly much harder to read… it's terrible. A refreshing breeze is absolute heaven. We stopped to eat some sandwiches, and closed the curtains between the driver's section and the house section of the RV, ate our sandwiches… and prepared to take off. It was very very hot, and very very uncomfortable. Then, Mom opened the curtain between the drivers' side and the house side, and suddenly there was a breeze of cold air. A breeze.

You start not minding the heat after a while… there's nothing much you can do if you want to stay sane, but when a breeze comes, and the sweat starts drying off… it's pure heaven.

— 

I'm an anomaly whenever I'm in a hot climate, because when I'm there I can do without ice cream, cold drinks, pools, etc. In average climates, I can live very happily with an open chocolate box and some fruit. On second thought, cross out the fruit. In cold climates… I can sometimes live without complaining about the cold for a few minutes.

But it's hot weather, so I'll focus on that. It's so strange to have been in Alice Springs last week, where our fingers were cold and I was wearing my long-sleeved icebreaker and everything was reeeaaally cold, and then start driving and going north, of all places, and be so hot you can't stand it.

Except, of course, you can.

I have no problem eating ice cream and drinking hot drinks. The problem is when I have to dig out my bathing suit, shave my legs (one lovely part of traveling is that you never see the same people next day… so why shave?), get wet, get dry, leave the bathing suit (wet, of course) lying around the place until it dries, take a shower because there's chlorine or mud in the pool or waterhole, sweat a lot because it's still hot out, and then take another shower at night when it's not so hot.

Generally the only way people can get me to go to the pool (or waterhole) is to guilt me into it. Many's the time Ioan has said, "Let's go to the pool! (Or the beach!)"

Mom's ready to take him to the pool, but Ileana and I will want to stay at home.

"Let's go, Ioan!"

"But I don't want to go alone!"

"But I'm coming with you." Mom will say,

"But…" and he turns to me. "Come on…" he wheedles, "We'll have fun, and I want to play with you, and we can dive, and have swimming races, and—"

"I'm not going."

"But pleaaaase!"

This is about the point when I kinda sorta think it might be sounding fun, but really don't want to take the trouble of that entire list up above.

I shake my head.

"Please please please pleaaaase!"

"Oh, alright."

The parents haven't fully figured this out, of course, and I'm losing quite a lot by posting it on the blog, which only they read (Ioan will probably never know that he just has to ask about three more times [I'm usually silently telling him to] and I'll do just about anything he wants)… but it leads into what I'm going to say next.

I enjoy myself at the pool— I've never not, but this time, the 'pool' was a… pond… waterhole… thing, with a hike of 1.7 km over rocks and stones and streams and such. Yes… I can hike 2km for a book, but hiking 1.7 km to get into freezing water merely to oblige the entire family… no thank you. But of course after twelve hours of discussing and discussing and discussing, I don't put up much fight. Mom managed to guilt me into it while we were in different shower cubicles, discussing. She probably wasn't doing it on purpose, of course.

So there is the water hole, after climbing and jumping and calculating jumps. Those of us who haven't taken off our shoes already take them off, pull off our shirts, pull down our pants, and jump in. Bathing suits, of course, have been on the whole time.

Just as I get my feet in the water, getting them acclimatized to the coldness of the water (not as cold as I was expecting, but still cold), Ioan splashes me.

"MOM!" I shout, "MOM! Please take my glasses." Mom takes the glasses. "I am going to get you!" I say to Ioan. I slip around a big rock in the middle and go in the other direction, where there's a very very small waterfall that, nevertheless has quite a current.

And then it's a free-for-all. We attack each other, splashing, dunking each other under water, (there's always a tap to make us stop), splashing a bit more, threatening terrible threats…

And just when I'm getting used to the water, the parents to move up a bit higher to the next pool.

This one's incredibly deep— a dark blue teal color, with a tree branch hanging over it and a spider web considerably bigger than a beach ball, with a spider as big as my fist. That measurement is only the length of the eight legs— the actual body is about the size of a man's thumbnail.

We swim around this long, thin pool a bit, then go up to the main pool— the one with a waterfall strong enough to pummel your back in a sort of shiatsu massage. Dad likes it. I'm getting water up my nose, despite the fact that my head is down. 

Ileana, Ioan, and I start making 'big plans' as we swim. These are the really pointless, really 'cool' ideas we come up when we're all best friends (pretty rare) and we want to keep being best friends for a while longer.

The 'big idea' this time is for each of us to memorize a movie. Ileana's going to memorize Ten Things I Hate About You, I'm going to memorize Beauty and the Beast (I've only watched it 14 times), and Ioan's going to memorize Treasure Planet. 

I don't think anyone actually did it. It might have come up a week later, but it's not as if we actually set our minds to it— I'm terrible when it comes to memorizing as it is.

The camper was also interesting as I managed to read about a book a day there— despite the fact that the world was bouncing up and down and it was stifling hot and we were getting out every once in a while to look at a new pool or walk up to see more cave paintings (very interesting, not my favorite thing to do).

I finished Poor Folk, North and South, Secretariat… a lot of books, most of them for the You'll Love This One! Reading group's year-long challenge. 

This camper van is more elegant-looking than the other… but there's almost no storage space. We've got bags stuffed under the beds, things in the upper loft-bed, food in the cupboards… where do people keep their stuff? I bet most people who take a camper van have bags larger than ours, so where do they keep them? 

We didn't figure it out— maybe they kept whole bags underneath the beds and took out the absolute necessities to put them in a cupboard, or maybe they knew something we didn't. At any rate, the minuscule storage space was a bit of a disappointment. 

At one point we reached the farmer's market type of attraction. It offers food, soap, bath kits, etc, all for a 'cheap' price. Of course everything was quite expensive for us, but for local Australians everything is a bargain! I can't remember the exact costs for everything, but everything was at least $10. 

It was around this point that we also picked up our second set of hitchhikers. Two fourteen year old boys, they were walking back from wherever it was they'd had a meeting with their friends to home. It was about two miles, and we sat in the back making awkward conversation. They asked us if we had Facebook, we exchanged names… but the best part was when they left. Before I'd even closed the door, the two were ecstatically talking about the fact that two girls had just given them their FB names. (Update: As of July, I've unfriended them. Like most teenagers, their posts aren't more than, "Like to get an honest reply" or something like that. I have better things to sort through). We laughed about it all the rest of the day, enjoying the fact that we'd actually talked to someone at some point that day.

An Australian Mozzie's Guide to Gorging

AN AUSTRALIAN MOZZIE'S GUIDE TO GORGING

Section B, Camper Vans

Locate any and all entrances into vehicle. Check the edges of flyscreens, as these often come undone during the many bumps these crazy humans encounter along the road. Hide within the curtains which they draw at night for 'privacy' to escape their extraordinary hand-eye coordination.

When they are asleep (also known as temporary death— recognized by slowed breathing, absolute quiet, and odd mumbling sounds that sound like 'talking'), slip out of the curtains. Bite most fleshy parts— calves of legs, thighs (unfortunately often covered), underarms, neck, and cheeks. Hide in curtains again until day, when they open the Door. Slip out as unnoticed as possible. Make sure you are not discovered when they pull the curtains!

REMEMBER: All humans are highly territorial creatures. They WILL KILL if they discover a mozzie, often relentlessly. HUMANS DO NOT FORGET YOU ARE THERE!

We entered a Britz Camper today. There are five humans, ranging from mid-forties to late adolescence to 'tween.' They seem to be a family that, like many humans, travels for fun. We hid in the curtains and waited for them to fall asleep.

One of the females, the middle-aged one, is a finicky sleeper. This sort of human is a pain. I'm starving, and all she can think about is 'drafts,' comfort of sleeping area… you'll be TEMPORARILY DEAD in 15 minutes! It doesn't matter!

Humans, of course, don't understand this. They have to be 'comfortable.' She moved herself and the middle-aged male around until the middle-aged man 'lost his temper,' as humans say, and whispered a lot of words to her.

Midway to sleep for most of the inhabitants of the camper van, the middle-aged female said to the tween: "Do you want a towel to stop the wind from getting to you?"

(Air conditioner, used for regulating humans' temperature. Highly annoying device. Remember to avoid at all costs.)

"What wind?" said the tween.

"From the airconditioner." (HATED WORD!)

"I don't feel any wind."

Note: Towel is a human word denoting a large, fuzzy cloth humans use to dry themselves after wetting themselves. The wetting seems to be pointless, but may be a recreational activity, as many humans sing and dance while in the small cubicle they call a shower.

Somehow, all the humans fell asleep in record time. We moved in. Marjorie the record keeper told me we bit about thirty times. A RECORD! Captain Katherine moved us all back to the curtains at dawn.

The humans woke up. Some of us darted higher up as they moved about.

Most of us were killed as they awoke. They don't seem to open the Door until all of our number are killed!

The late adolescent cornered two of our comrades in the bathroom. The middle-aged female took out at least fifteen of us in record time. The middle-aged male, the tween, and the adolescent female express no desire for murder. They are an anomaly.

I'm hiding at the top of the van… waiting for them to open the Door. There was a gap when the middle-aged female swept, but they'd doused it with repellent, and I can't breathe through it.

I can feel myself asphyxiating… the smell of the repellent is making me dizzy…

I leave these notes on the GUIDE in hopes that other troops will know of our bravery on the night of May 3^rd… and not assume safety merely from the fact that one of the flyscreens is faulty.

GOOD LUCK, those of you who venture here!

Note: Mozzie, mosquito.