Australia: Part I of V

The following is Part I of V of a series that will take you through my time exploring Australia with my good friend, Nate. We had 3 weeks off for Winter Break and we used every day of that break: leaving the day after school finished and arriving home the night before school started. It was an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime trip. Hopefully my posts will do the trip some justice. Enjoy.

When: 21 December – 25 December

Where: Darwin

The trip started with me in Terminal 3 of Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta and Nate in Terminal 2. The only flight that we had separate the entire trip was our round-trip flight from Jakarta to Singapore. We had a slight booking issue with being able to use Nate’s credit card and get a flight under my name for that leg of the trip*. It was not a big deal at all. I flew Air Asia to and from Singapore; they are the generic Asia budget airline, but I have had no problems with them. 

*I will bring this up several times throughout my posts, but I was very fortunate to have Nate on this trip with me for a lot of reasons. One of those reasons was that I only had cash while he had his credit card. Every time there was a large (or basically any) transaction, we used his card to get the current exchange rate. We did not find any places in Australia that gave better than a 93% exchange rate for USD. I only had cash because I cancelled my credit card before coming to Indonesia. That has turned out to be a stupid decision, but everything has been great thanks to good people like Nate letting me use their card when I need one.

We met up in Singapore at the self-proclaimed "World's Best Airport" during our lay-over and also had dinner with another secondary teacher from Singapore, Rashidah. She was waiting on a flight to South Korea for her holiday; it was great to spend some time with her—she is a really cool chick.

(Merry Christmas from Changi Airport)

(the journey begins)

Our flight to Darwin was smooth and we had enough empty seats at the back of the plane that we were each able to snag our own row. That flight was run by Jetstar. We flew Jetstar a lot in Australia. That is their main budget airline, but in my opinion it was a step up from the Asian budget airlines.

We arrived in Darwin early in the morning. Our plan was to spend that day and night in Darwin and then head east into Kakadu National Park. Due to our constant travel in Darwin and the surrounding area, we rented a car for this leg of the trip.

We started off the day by visiting the Botanical Gardens in Darwin.

(here is Nate explaining why the such-and-such leaf thrives in the warm and hu… okay, I wasn’t paying attention)

We checked in at our hostel where we had our own private room with a bunk bed. The hostel had everything we needed and was just fine. It was a little bit of a rowdy, party hostel, but it didn’t keep us up at night or anything like that.

Our next stop in Darwin was Crocosaurus Cove. This was a zoo-type facility that had a ton of crocodiles and some other reptiles. There were a couple of highlights from our time at Crocosaurus Cove. One was seeing the crocs be fed.

These guys were massive and it was kind of scary to see how quickly and efficiently they can move when they want to. Their tails were probably the most impressive part of their body. The tail is just as long as the rest of the body and is used to propel the crocs out of the water to snatch food.

We were able to feed baby crocs by using a fishing pole with some raw meat on the end. It was raining while we did this, so there is no photo/video evidence. It was really cool to see the little crocs jumping up to snatch the snack. The bigger crocs can’t get their whole bodies out of the water, but the little ones can get their full body and tail into the air. It is quite impressive.

They also had an area where you could hold a 13-month old saltwater croc. The way it worked was that it was free to do, but you had to take pictures at a distance. The pictures aren’t great, but it was cool to hold a live croc.

That evening we “hit the town” in Darwin. Darwin was really small and there was one main road with a few restaurants/bars. Nate and I were really excited to be in Aussie land because of the beer. Not to sound like an alcoholic, but having options other than small or large Bintang was awesome.

The beers Nate and I had that night:

XXXX Gold (me)

Pure Blonde Premium (Nate)

Coopers Brewery Original Pale Ale (me)

Carlton Dry (Nate)

Nine Tales Amber Ale from James Squire Brewery (me)

Sun Down Australian Lager (Nate)

We continued trying a ton of different Aussie beers throughout the trip. To me, they were pretty comparable to the American beer scene. The breweries produced some good, tasty beers (similar to microbreweries back in America) while there were also generic beers for drinking (like your Bud Lights).

We each had a lamb Turkish kabab for dinner. It was delicious.

We started Monsters University in our hostel. Less than ten minutes in the fire alarm went off and we were outside for roughly 30 minutes. We then continued the movie.

Pixar is great. Just great.

****

We woke up in the morning and headed to Kakadu National Park. Nate planned this part of the trip and had done a great deal of prior research as to what we should check out in the park. It is huge and since it is rainy season, some of the areas of the park were off-limits.

Once we got into the main city that was more-or-less the hub of Kakadu, we stopped at the local bakery and each got a ham and cheese roll for lunch. Outstanding.

(Nate enjoying his roll)

As we made our way south into the heart of Kakadu, we started to see a lot of termite mounds (pictured below). Apparently there are two types of termites: ones that eat wood and ones that eat dirt. These mounds are from the dirt-eating termites. They build these massive structures and create tunnels throughout them to get around. They are massive and really impressive in person.

We started our journey of Kakadu in the Mary River region. The first bushwalk* we went on was set up well because there were three scenic areas all on the same large path. The first site was Boulder Creek.

*Hiking is called bushwalking in Australia. Classic Aussies !!

The second site was Yurmikmik Lookout.

The last lookout on the bushwalk was Motor Car Falls.

This will be the only time I complain about the flies in this blog post. FLIES WERE EVERYWHERE. It was absolutely brutal. There were constantly 30-100 swarming you once you got outside anywhere in the park. It was truly like nothing I had ever experienced. Apparently the combination of rain and horse crap (????) adds up to flies being everywhere in Kakadu.

That is a picture of Nate towards the end of our first bushwalk showing the flies attached to his backpack. They would either latch onto your backpack or try to attach themselves to your face. They were hole-seeking flies. The preferred hole was the nose. If that was closed, they would settle for mouth or eyes. If those were off-limits they would investigate the ears. It was crazy. We both looked back on it and said that we are super thankful that we did this leg of the trip first*. We would have been miserable after 2 ½ weeks of traveling and then being swarmed by those things. The park was incredible, but the flies definitely took away from it a little bit. Nothing near the extent of saying that it wasn’t worth going there, but it did take away from the incredible diversity of the park. Rant over.

*Originally we had planned to do the trip in reverse order, but it was cheaper flight-wise to do the trip the way we did. It worked out.

We got back in the car after about the 2-hour bushwalk.

We relaxed in the car and enjoyed the world-famous Matt Phillips PBJ before leaving the area. I make a mean PBJ. You know who I learned the secret from? Keegan Bradley. He has his mom make two for him for each round of golf he plays. The key is to put peanut butter on both pieces of bread so the jelly doesn’t seep through. Have you ever tried this? It will change your life.

We were fortunate enough to find a place to shower in the park after the long, hot day. We then parked our car near the pick-up point for our Yellow Water tour the next day and slept there. Not gonna lie, it was terrible. Not much sleep that night.

Darwin is an extremely hot and humid place. I don’t know if I have ever been in heat quite like that before. The temperature isn’t what gets you: it’s the combination of heat and humidity. The car got pretty steamy that night, but we were still able to catch a few Zzzzs.

****

The next morning we woke up for our Yellow Water tour. This is where they take you out on the swamp and they advertise you seeing a lot of crocs in the wild. You don’t. This was probably the biggest waste of money on the trip, but at the same time it is tough to say that it was a waste of money. The trip was right as the sun rose and we got to see some National Geographic-type stuff in person, there just weren’t crocs. We wanted crocs. Where are the crocs?

As you can see, it was beautiful; it was also informative. I learned that a billabong is more than just a brand of swimwear. We were on one. It is a piece of water that branches off from a river that creates a stagnant pool. It was basically a river.

We did get a free buffet breakfast with our trip, so that was clutch.

We then got in the car and headed up to Nourlangie Rock to see some ancient rock art. This was pretty cool. Some of these paintings are thought to be 20,000 years old. They are all on the insides of rocks and are completely covered from any type of rain/water.

(I can't tell you how many pictures I have on my phone with part of Nate's fingers in the shot - smh)

The bushwalk there was nice and we had a good lookout. The only frustrating thing was that the flies wer…nope. I said I wouldn’t complain about them anymore.

We then drove up to Ubirr Rock to see some more rock art. The rock art was incredible, but for me the highlight of Ubiir was climbing to the top and looking out over the park. You could see for kilometers and kilometers (it’s taken 7 months, but I’m a metric man now).

As you can see at the end of that video a fly lands righ…nope. Not gonna do it.

We then started to head back to Darwin. We had the choice of either finding a place to stay or parking our car and crashing there overnight. We ended up crashing at the motel that was on the way back to Darwin. It was one of the best decisions we made on the trip. We got a great night of sleep and were able to leisurely wake up the next morning and head back to Darwin.

****

The next morning was Christmas Day.

Jesus!! You the man!! Thanks for the whole saving me from hell thing. I owe you one.

The first thing we did on Christmas morning was go on a bushwalk of Gungarre Monsoon Forest Walk. We didn’t get very far. There were a lot of signs (pictured below) around water that said, “beware of crocodiles.”

This was the only place where we saw a special sign that said crocs have been spotted extremely close to the walking path. As badass as dying from a croc on Christmas sounded, we played it safe.

We spent the next part of Christmas morning watching a traditional Christmas movie… “Murderball.” It was a documentary about the sport of wheelchair rugby that is played by quadriplegic athletes. I highly recommend it. It was very well done.

We then slowly headed into Darwin. We were in no rush because our flight didn’t leave until early the next morning.

We got to the airport, returned the car, and then settled in for our big Christmas meal.

S/O Mom for the Twizzlers!! 

The most entertaining part of the Darwin airport was a guy who was super drunk and annoying everyone. He started by making an innapropriate sexual comment to an airport security lady that was at least twice his age. She handled it very well and said that because he was young enough to be her son, she wasn’t upset. He concluded that conversation by saying, “If you would have told me that on Christmas I would be saying, ‘Thank you, Tricia,’ I wouldn’t have believed you. But here I am saying, ‘Thank you, Tricia.’” I laughed at that one.

He didn’t know which flight was his. The first time security came over to him, they asked him which flight he was on.

“Do you know where you are going?”

“Perth.”

“What time is your flight?”

“In the morning.”

“Which airline are you flying?”

“I don’t know. But I spent $300 on a ticket.”

“Are you flying Qantas? Jetstar? Virgin?”

“[...] Could be any one of them.”

That last line became a running joke for us the rest of the trip.

His interaction with me was limited to him coming over to Nate and I’s general area and blaring hard metal/screamo music from his laptop. I asked him if would mind using headphones. He didn’t have any. Trying to be a good person, I offered him mine so he wouldn’t disturb us. He was so drunk that he put the headphones on and didn’t plug them into his computer. I then got security to retrieve my headphones for me. He then called me a “wanker” and proceeded to say, “f*** you” to me twice. Nice fellow.

That concludes the Darwin section of the vacation. Hope you have enjoyed reading about it. To ensure the run-of-the-mill quality that we hold ourselves to here at mattinindonesia.blogspot.com, I will not post the blogs until I feel they are ready. Hopefully Part II of V will be up before too long.