Matt Down Under

On Thursday (or Wednesday, might still change) I will leave Alice Springs to go on a road trip to Darwin. I hired an awesome Britz campervan for eight days and found three people who want to join me, so it’s really affordable in the end.

Alice Springs: not a place to stay longterm

I have been staying in Alice Springs for two weeks now and like many others in the hostel here, I feel like it’s more than enough. I’ve seen everything I wanted to see and there’s just nothing that would keep me here longterm. Sure, I could do a bit more hiking, more trips into regions around Alice, maybe Simpsons Desert, East MacDonnells, but somehow I’d really love to be closer to the ocean again. And it’s cold at night.

I actually saw a job ad from a web agency here in Alice, but they were looking for long-term commitments. I asked them anyway if they were interested in short-term contracts — at that time I could have imagined staying in Alice maybe for a couple of weeks if that work would have been attractive. They responded within minutes, were very interested and asked me to complete a ‘personality profile’ as part of their classy application process. It actually took me quite some time to complete that garbage and some time later they sent me the ‘results’, telling me that apparently I’m quite an ‘objective thinker’, who would have thought. Thanks for the detailed analysis. However they seemed to be much more excited about this stupid test than any kind of work, and for some reason I haven’t heard anything back since then. Such silly behaviour is only another reason to move on and look for people with ‘city attitude’. Alice Springs is too much like Hobart.

Darwin: maybe a place to stay longterm

So Thursday or Wednesday I will travel on to Darwin. I didn’t want to end up in a smelly backpacker van again so I did some research and lots of calculations, got quotes and information and ended up hiring a shiny Britz camper with space for four persons — the same model the girls had on the trip to the West MacDonnells. I then placed ads in major hostels in Alice and online and two days later it now seems I have found a good combination of people who are going to join me on this trip. With four people the total cost of this trip should go down to somewhere around $500 per person (including petrol, food and camping fees), which is very good for an 8-day trip.

I bought the fantastic ‘Camping guide to the Northern Territory’ with detailed info on over 200 campsites. With that and the great touring map ‘Adelaide to Darwin’ I’m now busy planning a rough itinerary. So far I’d like to camp at the Devils Marbles for the first night, at Daly Waters for the second, and then spend the remaining nights at Nitmiluk (Katherine) Gorge, Litchfield and Kakadu. I’m estimating it will be roughly a 2.000km road trip and I’m really looking forward to it.

I’m thinking of staying in Darwin for a couple of months to work and improve my travel budget before any further travelling happens. The region around Darwin is so big and beautiful with Arnhem Land, Kakadu and the many islands off the coast that it would be worth spending at least several months there.

I’m in the lucky position that I don’t have any obligations or dependencies other than to make sure I have enough money to live. Ever since I came to Australia three and a half years ago my goal was to live in the tropical region where it is warm all year round, I have a feeling Darwin could be a great place to live. In the end it all depends a bit on jobs, but I’m pretty flexible and can imagine a lot of things. Working on a fishing boat during day, doing IT work at night, who knows? Life in the tropics should be lived outdoors so I’m not particularly keen to spend most of it indoors in air-conditioned offices.

I will find out more in the next weeks, but I’m pretty sure I want to spend at least a few months in Darwin to get a feeling for what it’s like to live in the top end. Quite likely I won’t find a second Melbourne there either, but the climate and the landscape have the potential to make me happy anyway. Living in Darwin, plus 4WD camper plus sailing boat, that almost sounds like a perfect life.