Snakes, Undies and Crocs, Oh My!

Katherine, NT, Australia

Snakes, used undies and croc-spotting. That was the agenda to wrap up the continual journey north along the Stuart, further away from Alice Springs and the blistering core of Oz, closer to Darwin and the tropic thunders of the north.

And half-way through, the mini-bus suffers from a crippling case of hunger, forcing us to remain in the town of Dunmarra slightly longer than anticipated. Scotty, of course, jokingly made the oil ordeal out to be worse than it was, but that’s to be expected, because he’s Scotty. Kirk wanted to be beamed up, but Scotty jacked up, beamed himself down instead and was stranded in the Outback.  Kirk, on the other hand, eventually wound up doing Priceline commercials. Who the better end of the deal? Scotty.

Named after a young Irish boy named Dan O’Mara, who tragically wandered off into the bush looking for his dad, got lost and died, the town mainly serves as a fuel and snack stop along Australia’s Overland Telegraph Line.  After O’Mara’s disappearance in the early 1900s, a massive search party went out in attempts to find him, but his body would not be discovered until nearly three decades later. Dunmarra is a mispronunciation of the boy’s name by the local Aboriginal people in the area.

 That’s okay, because his name has been immortalized, even if it’s the incorrect pronunciation.  Dan, O’Mara, or Dan O’Mara just doesn’t have that same ring to it.

Inside the local refreshment stop, several cages containing some of Oz’s most feared creatures slithered around in boredom. Scotty was the man to embark on the task of convincing them to come out and play. I softly freaked out, asking myself what the hell is he doing picking up a Western brown snake, one of the most venomous creatures on a continent known for deadly animals? Was he out of his damn mind? I mean, what’s next, taking us out on a crocodile-spotting adventure in the middle of the night?

The bad news is the snake appeared to prefer boredom over being handled. The good news is the snake was only a non-venomous python.

Several local Aboriginals came up to the group admiring the slithering beasts, but also expressing a healthy amount of fear. The snake was handed off, person to person, camera flashes streaking through its body as it coiled around the hands and arms of our traveling posse. Honestly, though, I was just glad it wasn’t a Western brown snake per the original rumor. As we held the snake and posed for photos, Scotty answered numerous questions on the snake, showing his enthusiasm and respect for the creature. One of the Aboriginal men mustered enough bravery to hold the snake while his friends took photos of him with their camera phones.

No one was bit or strangled in holding the creature, and he was promptly returned to his routine of boredom.

Lunch was the usual fare of sandwich prep, but not in a usual setting. We arrived at another small outpost, known as Daly Waters, a small town that traditionally was home to the Jingili Aboriginals, who believed the Dreaming tracks of the emu and sun passed through her on their way deeper into the Northern Territory. Now, all that passes through are hungry travelers and beer. Some of those same hungry travelers decide to leave a little of themselves at the famous pub in town, ranging from business cards and magnets to...

That’s right, ladies and gents, dirty undies. Dirty undies that very well could have seen more of the world (among other things) than myself at this current stage. We can all be thankful that the pub has great ventilation, because considering the oppressive heat of the Aussie Outback combining with dirty undies is a volatile combination to anyone’s sensitivity of smell.  And, let’s be thankful that lunch happened on the back deck of the pub rather than inside.

But it’s the quirky aspects of this town that I like. Whether it is dirty undies precariously hanging from the ceiling to signs pointing the way to the nearest McDonalds in a galaxy far far away, Daly Waters became an outpost for the Overland Telegraph Line followed by an airfield to refuel early flights to Singapore as well as a World War II base. With advent of more modern technology, the town has simply become the quirky stop we know and love, dirty undies and all.

After continuing north, we began to transition into the more tropical aspects of the Northern Territory. After stopping off at a spring for a swim, night fell and we finally made our way through the town of Katherine and out to a nearby camping ground where, the plan was, to bunk for the night. The only problem was the gate was locked,  and no one had evidently used the grounds for two months. After all, this was the month of November, and despite it being Spring in the southern hemisphere, the seasons at this latitude aren't dictated by changes in temps but more by wet and dry. We were already punching our way into the wet season of tropical Australia, a fact that would greatly excite us in the coming days ahead.

My sense of adventure must have been inflated, because I truly believed for a minute that the campground had no idea we were coming and that we were literally going to break in. But alas, Scotty harbored the key for the gate, and we were the only souls to immerse within a more natural tranquil setting of the Oz tropical experience. Dinner was, again, a team effort, one that paid off well. For sleeping options, we once again utilized the swags of Outback lore and had the choice to sleep outside in the cool comfortable air with the wildlife, or inside the stuffy kitchen with no wildlife.

That’s an easy one.

As most of the group laid out their swags inside the kitchen, preparing for a night’s rest, there was one last adventure on the agenda. Earlier in Dumarra, I was mistaken that Scotty was crazy enough to handle a poisonous snake, because it wound up not being as such….but was he really serious about this new adventure? Don your head lamps, bring flashlights, because we’re going croc-spottin’ in the middle of the night!

This was (sort of) my expression overlying the nervousness and excitement within. We all marched out of the kitchen, displaying acute carefulness as to not step on a bloody snake and went around a nearby pond. There, only alligators who could do us no harm lived comfortably. Spotting a few of their glowing eyes in the desolation, we continued along the backside of the pond, approaching a barbed-wire fence and subsequently passing through it.

We made our way down some stairs towards a river, with Scotty explaining to the group more about the dangers of traveling along the riverbanks in Northern Australia. We arrived on a boat ramp that was deemed safe enough to prevent any major croc attack, but upon examining the left side of the ramp that harbored a large opening between rails and hearing just how far a croc can attack from, I wasn’t fully convinced.

Scotty decided to then to head off the beaten path along an upper section of the sandy embankment in the hopes of spotting some crocs further down river. As we walked…

Scotty: “Females are known to head up this far on the bank and nest. It’s getting close to that time of year.”

Someone in the Group: “Is this fully safe?”

Scotty: “Probably not.”

And off we walked, close together in tight formation, meticulously taking each step to insure no one slipped down the sandy slope into the river of doom. Headlamps and flashlights lit up the area around us to watch for any flanking crocs. Within about ten or so minutes, we stopped at a relatively safe locale and shined the lights towards the river. In the distance on the other side, several pairs of eyes lit up, followed by another pair further down our side of the river.

We made our way back, no one got eaten for dinner, and we contemplated the adventure we just undertook. Yes, it had its rushes and its concerns, but it was amazing. I felt, at that moment, that we just had the privilege of living a moment in the real Australia. Content, the group drifted off to sleep.