Swallowing flies, waiting for emus to move from behind reversing cars, and eating camel burgers at roadhouses in the middle of nowhere – that’s what made the Northern Territory somewhere I will never forget.
What a country we have. It almost beggars belief when it comes to its extreme beauty.
I love our sunburnt country so much. If Sydney is the jewel in our crown, then surely Uluru is the beating heart of our glorious nation.
Dirt runs everywhere you look, like a huge magic red carpet that wraps around the base of ghost gum trees and slides down orange canyons, before rolling up and over breathtaking amber rock formations.
Paddy melons lie dormant in giant empty, cracked creek beds and the bluest sky stretches for miles and miles.
It is countryside summed up in the chart-topper of James Reyne and James Blundell that proclaims: “Way out west where the rain don’t fall, got a job with the company drilling for oil, just to make some change, living and a working on the land.”
On our family road trip, we met Lola the bitsa dog that lived at Kings Creek Station, 260 kilometres southeast of Uluṟu.
Lola was just like a dog out of a movie with a red bandana around her neck and her laconic shuffle under the pub table.
She looked humans up and down with the gaze of a dog as wise and tough as the outback.
Lola had a huge chunk of flesh missing from her floppy honey-coloured ear.
We asked what happened to the country canine and the reply from a weathered old bushie was: “She got picked up and dropped by a wedge-tailed eagle.”
Our shocked faces were met with laughter from the bushie as he then told us with a straight face: “Just joking, youse all. Lola’s eat got torn up real good by a dingo when she was a pup.”
Our jaws fell even further towards the red earth.
We also met a First Nations person named Tania, who gave us this kind advice for free: “Whenever in life we swim in a watering hole or creek, just throw a stone in it first and say out loud, ‘I mean no harm to you and I just hope to cool off for a while’.”
I found it to be such soothing advice.
My kids looked at Tania like she was some exotic goddess talking about skipping stones and babbling streams.
Finally, we drove into Alice Springs where the Todd River wraps its way around the town.
It is totally dry and looks more like an unsealed highway than a river.
The locals took much glee in telling us that every August sees the Todd River Race where locals run boats through the hot sand in the only dry regatta in the world.
Only in our great country.
