Editor’s note: This is the latest in a series of articles about Darwin, Alice Springs, and the quirkiness that is the Northern Territory of Australia by Jack Brown. You can read Jack’s previous post here, to catch up on where the road’s taken him.

HEARTBREAK HOTEL, NT, AUSTRALIA: When heartbreak strikes — could it be what the bushmen call the Disappointment of Disappointment? — the road beckons and it’s time to move on once more.

The unrealised “wild town and crazy Friday night” that we expected from Cape Crawford’s Heartbreak Hotel (if you’re looking for the segue, it’s here, about halfway down the page) left us with little more than a hot-morning-come-sunrise and the onset of serious humidity, thanks to our transition into the tropics and the early gatherings of the “build-up”.

Never Never Land: Looking back as we head along the Savannah Way

Should the unseasoned tropical traveller fancy a sojourn to the untamed Top End of Australia’s Northern Territory between, say, the months of September and November, let them ask themselves one question (well there are many, but best to start with): “How am I with heat?”. Heat up to 40 Celsius (104F). Heat mixed with humidity up to 99%.

If the answer is close to “I couldn’t get away from myself fast enough if it got THAT hot,” then perhaps the south of New Zealand or Tasmania could be a good place come the year’s latter months for that “Down Under” experience.

So, as the saying always goes, there we were. Just off the track, camped in a creek-bed that we discovered to be as about as shallow as a used-car dealer’s promise and about as far from the main road as you’d get a fart in a breeze. Well, given that there was only about one car every 15 minutes on that rapidly warming Saturday morning – and that all the ute drivers would know each other anyway, and word gets around fast that there’s some out-of-towners dodging a night in the campground – we dragged our road-weary bodies out of the dust and after some considerable time-wasting, procrastinating and dithering, we made it back into the hired ute and along the short stretch of road back to “town” to steal us a shower and a moment’s respectability on a day that promised heat, heat and more heat.

The showers were fine and, even on a warm day – perversely – a hot shower is still a glorious thing. The trucks that were parked up out front of Heartbreak still showed no sign of taking off in a hurry, but we did the rare treat of catching some action as one road-train backed a truck off the back of his truck which was then driven slowly away by another materialising truck driver. Like they say, those things move this wide brown land of ours and the past few million years still say that Its not in a hurry.

We opted against starting the day with any of the fine roadhouse cuisine on offer - steak sandwiches, chiko rolls, fried-something-that-used-to-be-alive-and-is-now-something-else-entirely, most of which was probably perfectly capable of waiting in the bainmarie for a couple more days until their perfect match arrived in town and swept them away.

We also opted not to drive deeper into this Gulf of Bereftness, passing up the opportunity to visit the town of Borroloola, home to grumpy old men and miners far from the watchful eye of civilisation. (Also the setting for one of David Attenborough’s first documentaries in the 1950s, The Hermits of Borroloola, when he was still a young lad toting a pipe.) Instead we shambled on with rumbling stomachs toward the Never Never country that called with promises of swimming and perhaps, even better, beer.

It’s been said that Australia’s Never Never land is so named because the white settlers that first went here Never wanted to go and then Never wanted to leave. The road along the Savannah Way is peppered with the ruins of towns that once were, and some that never did.

One “town” that has stood the test of time is Ngukurr (pronounced nook-urr, the ‘ng’ like ’song’ without the ’so’). Ngukurr is one of the oldest indigenous communities in Australia’s Northern Territory, located by the north side of the Roper River, the southern entrance to Arnhem Land – a tract of Aboriginal Land the size of Tasmania but a good deal hotter.

Never Never Land: the local river menu

Roper Bar is a small store on the south side of the river - you’ll need a permit to reach Ngukurr - and is a popular recreational fishing spot. And as you get farther north, you’ll come to see the signs that tell that a fishing spot isn’t necessarily a swimming spot. Question: What’s a few metres long, sits still for weeks but moves faster than a man and has sharp teeth? Answer: I can’t be bothered saying the word out loud as it’s only really a conversation had with a broad brimmed hat and a beer in hand – and the sun’s not out of the yard yet, so its still a bit early for that one yet. Plus, once you’re a bit further up the track or in one of those quaint tropical oases by the wayside you’ll have plenty of time to exercise your elbow and talk that one over with the seasoned professionals.

Once we’d snaked our way round west past the Roper store and its unique combination of retail wares (Beyonce CDs, polyester hip-hop clothes through to leather Akubra-style hats and all manner of foods with sugar, starch and oil) the Roper Highway settled into an easy and steady rhythm as its single lane afforded us many opportunities to exchange single-finger waves (not the middle finger, no, but a more pleasant and respectful tip of the first digit ‘twixt thumb and the middle-finger-of-fury), as time and again we pulled our dusty ute off the unsealed road to let others pass.

Window goes up, window goes down – the dust, visibility and subsequently breathable air shifted around the red stretch of road — until eventually, after a scant 200 kilometres of dirt, the road finally yields to tar once again. The road stays single lane, but at least you’re once again on a quick route to a swim and the first beer of the afternoon. And who’s to say it’ll stop there?

–Jack Brown

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

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 1st, 2007 at 12:58 am and is filed under Australia & Pacific, Destinations, The Art of Travel, Travel Inspiration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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