Viator Viator Travel Blog

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of articles about Darwin, Alice and the quirkiness that is the Northern Territory of Australia by Jack Brown. You can read Jack’s first and second posts to catch up on where the road trip’s taken Jack.

With all those little towns, along with the last signs of the tropics, falling behind us and subsiding into the dust, the journey south from Larrimah to Alice Springs is now about speed (130km/h is the limit), keeping the car straight and keeping the humour as dry as the landscape. However, should you meander off the straight and narrow just out from the HiWay Inn (that marks the turn off east to the Gulf of Carpentaria) to the quiet “town” of Daly Waters – you’ll find the wood-posted pub with a corrugated iron roof which has been decorated by travellers of the world with personal items aplenty, making it the other outback icon that’s made its way onto the World Map.

This place is something between an exploded wallet and a lingerie fight gone wrong: identification cards of every conceivable kind and country line the bar and surrounds (reckon you still need that Darwin City Council library card now? Hand it over if you please); knickers, panties, undies – call them what you will, the undergarments of the fairer sex hang proud at once from rafters, slung aloft for all to see and wonder. And last, but by no means least, a heists worth of bank notes unneeded by distant travellers have made their way into this impromptu desert wallpaper, good now for naught but a laugh as the ale tickles tired tonsils.

The Ute in all its glory

The Daly Waters’ Annual Campdraft and B&S Ball* is an unruly occasion to be sure. The tuxedos and “ballgowns” sported by the eager outback patrons are wearable for only minutes before the paint fight starts and the steady flow of Rum gets libidos and patrons a-flying. They come from as far as Queensland and north Western Australia to ensure their part of the action and come morning, the line-up of utes** and swags, sees much of this party confined to the horizontal from the wee hours for the lucky soldiers of fortune.

With your pants back on and heading down south to the Buchanan Highway turn-off (which leads to Top Springs, then crosses over to Western Australia and the Tanami Desert) you are, by now, starting to get the broader outback picture. Should you have not arrived in the tropics by land, the word is out now - distances are huge and even though it feels a long way already, it hasn’t even gotten going yet.

Elliott, at a mere 150 kilometres from Daly Waters, is a refueling opportunity at best, being a little less upbeat than Mataranka and without the thermal pools to boot. Newcastle Waters lingers off the highway for the enthusiastic and is also an ideal opportunity to encounter the Grey Nomad (also known as the Ewok, for their Caravan of Courage) in their natural environment. The slow moving Grey Nomad likes nothing more than places with little more to offer than happy snap opportunities and lots of other Grey Nomads. More on this remarkable species shortly. [If you must know, three stock routes that crossed Australia met here making the deserted township a bastion of reminders of Australia’s White colonial past, reiterating much of the Terra Nullius*** talk that was in vogue during the 18th Century. Let us speak of this no further for wont of social recrimination.]

Renner Springs is a quaint oasis upon the expanding southern trail. A strange coming together of disparate forms – for example, it was formerly home to two lost pelicans, then one when the partner made it some miles down the road to expire upon the highway and then there was none, as Agatha Christie once wrote. The piano in the dining room passes for “in-tune” and can be used to while away an hour should your musical side require relief. Slip in some conversation between sips of ales at the bar with some local wildlife and the backpackers - not to forget the road-train drivers (trucks of 3 carriages and up to 53.5 metres) that made this proud brown land what it is today. [God bless ‘em for they are the true gentlemen of the road].

Just outside of Renner Springs, near where the once again flat landscape plays one of its little tricks and arcs up suddenly into an unannounced escarpment, the road is marked by the number of the beast upon a road sign south - indicating the distance ahead to Alice Springs (666 km). Congratulations, souls bought and sold here. Best to opt for a takeaway.

Devil’s Marbles with Grey Nomads

Noteworthy, if only for its name - Bootu Creek (it’s a mine and there are many of them in the NT as there are miners) – appears and disappears to your left like a quiet practical joke in an otherwise unpopulated stretch.

Unpopulated that is, save for the sizable park-up happening all through the cooler months just south at Banka Banka Station. “Hot Showers”, “shady sites” and so on the signs said – and golden words such as these bring them in droves. Like a Grey Nomad Convention Centre the sites, indeed shady, swell with the ranks of Ewoks poised to recount stories of roadhouses, grandchildren and Places Of Interest to come.

A kip (sleep) in an unmarked stop on the roadside looks good should you not be wishing to take part in oral history survey of inveterate Australian travel culture. If you do in fact wish such a quiet moment, I recommend the Churchill’s Head back road. Virtually un-driven by other motorists, a serendipitous night of peaceful solitude awaits, with your only companion a rock which (that’s right) looks like (Winston) Churchill’s head.

Bonus points for working out which of the many bald, round number is indeed the rock of fame. And if big, round rocks are your thing, a veritable stony stupor of delights await you on the final stretch of our tar-bound travels as we cover Tennant Creek to Alice Springs in this drive of a lifetime.

–Jack Brown

* Bachelor and Spinster Ball – polite word for piss-up (heavy drinking) amid a singles grab that puts most nightclubs to shame on the meat market stakes.
** Utility truck, a good one is covered in stickers, mudflaps that would shame a semi-trailer and enough aerials to pick up the news in Singapore. Rum stickers are prized. A good tray on the back is about the same size as a double swag when the tailgate is down.
*** Terra Nullius: the presumption upon which Australia was colonised – no one lived here.

If you missed Jack’s first installment of Darwin to Alice by road, you can read it here. Planning a trip? Browse all of Viator’s Darwin tours and things to do in Alice Springs.