Our Big Explore: Working at Emerald Springs in the Northern Territory!

Friday 15th August – Thursday 21st August

After asking for jobs on every single roadhouse on our way from Alice Springs to Darwin, we felt more and more keen for doing some more job hunting in Darwin. Although we would prefer a job on a roadhouse, we would like to know what our opportunities would be in the city. We spend most of a day in Peter Pans travel agency. It’s a travel agency especially for backpackers, and they’re located in every big city here in Australia. They provide free wifi, which a lot of backpackers, like us, are taking advantage off. The worst thing about getting into the bigger cities is that it’s a constantly problem to figure out where to sleep safe (in the car). We don’t wanna pay for the accommodation, so as a result of that, we always feel very rootless when we get into the cities. It leads to the same discussions and questions every time – like where should we park, where do we shower, where is the nearest toilet and so on. One of these days we had decided to sleep 10 km out of town, behind a caravan park (they charged $40 for a site, which we had no interest in paying), but we did want to use their showers though, and preferably for free, but it doesn’t always feel safe and possible, which is why we arranged that Erik should walk by the reception first, and then I would walk in there and pay for my shower (at least we would pay for one shower then), apparently they didn’t allow outside customers to take showers in there, so I was hating myself for be honest and polite. At this time I was desperate to get a shower (the midget bites we both got, started to itch like crazy and only cold water can reduce the itch). I was going out of my mind, couldn’t go another night without a shower. So I walked into the campground and filled up our 5 liter water bottle, and started showering behind our car on the silent street – only one car passed me and I don’t think they realised, that there was a crazy naked backpacker showering behind the car. At least the bites weren’t that itchy anymore. Erik got his free shower and got out of the campground without anyone seeing him. Lucky him!

During that night the midget bites got a lot worse. I think we got the bites in the outback somewhere, and apparently you can’t see the small flies, to begin with the bites isn’t visible either, but will show after a couple of days. Anyway we were getting crazy, none of us could sleep, and even though we knew that scratching the bites just made it worse – we just couldn’t help it.. Had to scratch the hell out of them – ALL NIGHT! It was a living nightmare – we had been eaten alive, by those small bastards. We have never experienced anything as awful as this – it was simply unbelievable that small flies can harm us so much. We counted our bites that night and it came up to a little over 600 together. The wounds looks horrible and it can take a long time to get rid of the red spots. After that night, we decided to check in at a hostel, and get all our bedding and everything in the car cleaned – to make sure we didn’t carry anymore flies around. We paid $34 each for a dorm bed, the social area was great with a swimming pool and a bar. And it was nice to belong somewhere!

I handed in my resume to different restaurants in the city and Erik went to a job interview with a VW and Skoda dealer, they offered him a job as workshop leader for VW, and a sponsorship for 4 years, incl. Australian citizenship (something that most backpackers can only dream about), but we’re not planning to stay that long, so he turned the offer down. Erik showed off at the hostel later on with his sponsorship offer – so embarrassing, ha ha, but also a little funny, course all the young backpackers there can’t get any jobs! And actually I never heard from any of the restaurants where I applied for jobs. We both got offered jobs at Apollo (car and camper rental company).

All these days we were actually just waiting for a roadhouse to call us back, and tell us we got the job we applied for there. We weren’t really interested in all the other jobs. We kept calling one specific roadhouse, but the owner was never available. Always too busy to talk!

Thursday we decided to do some tourist stuff. We went to the Northern Territory museum and art gallery - a very inspiring place, with a small exhibition about all the deadly animals around here, and whole room devoted to Cyclone Tracy. We also visited the Mindil beach market, it’s main attraction is food from all over the world. Here we found an interesting stall, advertising for a big rodeo show on saturday night. Very quickly we decided that it was on our to-do-list, and definitely something we had to experience.

It's so convenient to travel with a mechanic.. Here he's removing a part from the wheels that made a lot of noise.

Only some of all the sandflies bite that we got.. It looked sick.

Hostel pool and bar

The most wrecked car we have seen so far

Yellow masked lapwing

Cullen beach promenade

Do not want to meet one of these bastards, while having an innocent swim

From Mindil beach market

Dijurido's (a famous playing instrument in the aborignal culture)

Friday 22nd August - Saturday 23rd August

It was the day when we had to give our final answer to Apollo. We spend the morning on the beach and tried in vain to get a hold on Dallas, the owner of the roadhouse, where we preferred to work. He still didn’t call us back, so around noon we decided to drive out to Apollo, and tell them we were keen for the jobs there. Just before we started up the car, Erik tried to call the roadhouse for the last time… And finally we got an answer (still didn’t talk to Dallas), but the staff ensured us that we got the jobs and we told them we could be there sunday morning. We were so happy, first of all because we would earn and save more money out there, than in the city. We wouldn’t have to worry about accommodation, as it was already a part of the wage. We would stay in a very small community where everybody knows everybody, plus that we would get to experience the life in the outback. It was great and it was time for a little celebration. We splashed out and bought some nice wine, and went out for dinner.
On Saturday we went to the rodeo show – it was so much fun and very entertaining.

Darwin beach. It's all fenced in and the safest place to take a swim around here.

Celebrating that we finally got the job that we wanted

Rodeo, and time to play with my new camera...

The bull fighters were really making an effort to get the bulls out of the way.. No one got hurt, although it looks like it here.

Notice all the chickens in the chicken cage

Rodeo Video

Sunday 24th August- Wednesday 3rd September

We drove to Emerald Springs in the morning. We were extremely excited about our new jobs, and as a matter of fact, we have only been taken money out of our accounts the last year, and now all of a sudden, we were gonna do the opposite. It was an incredible feeling actually. At the same time we knew that we shouldn’t expect too much from a place so isolated from the civilisation. It would most likely be a very monotonous and easy job. And we were right! No big challenges for me. Erik has on the other hand shown a whole new side of himself as a waiter and barista. It took him a couple of days to get into it, but now he’s almost professional. For the first time, probably ever I earn more money than Erik – I get $24,60 an hour and he gets around $21. The staff here is backpackers like us, so it changes all the time. People only stay for a month or two. We’re living in a house together with the other 3-4 employees. We work 8-10 hours a day, 6 days a week. The roadhouse has accommodations and a small campsite, most of the visitors are truckers passing by on their way to or from Darwin. 5 days a week we have a tourist bus visiting, they get scones/muffins and coffe/tee in the morning and dinner on their way back in the evening, so those days can sometimes be busy. During the days we are in a constant fight against flies, they’re everywhere, and when the night kicks in we get all kinds of different bugs flying around, like big muffs and huge grasshoppers, and off course some mosquitoes and sand flies. One of our first days here there was a tiny python in the kitchen – WELCOME TO THE OUTBACK!!!

An old staff member also told a story about a 3-4 meter snake, living underneath the staff house, also a python, not venomous, but definitely not pleasant to step on either. One night it came into the house through a hole in the floor. That was awake up call to get that hole covered. Another thing is that we have to take care not to step on cane toes when we walk outside at night, not that they are dangerous, just very disgusting. Cane toes are huge frogs that were brought into the country, to get rid of all the beetles in the cane fields, but apparently they eat everything BUT the beetles, and they breed like crazy. They’re really disgusting.

Emerald Springs is located 130 km north of Katherine, which is the closest town, and 170 km from Darwin. Imagine driving that long to do your groceries –welcome to our world!!! The other day I drove 22 km north to the nearest roadhouse (Hayes Creek) to get alcoholic supplies, on my way I discovered a bushfire, which is really common at this time of the year, everything is so dry and the gum trees are just waiting to get burned down to the soil. I reckon most fires are caused by cigarette fags, thrown out of the windows of cars and road trains. Frankly it’s shocking how many fires we have seen already. 32 km south of us we have Pine Creek, a very small community with a post office, a kiosk and a gas station. The last saturday in every month there’s a party at an old historical hotel (Grove Hill), all the locals (that’s people living within a 100 km radius) come there to socialize and have a good time. We went to check it out, first 11 km on the highway and then 16 km on dirt road and then we finally arrived at the little gem. There was country style live music, and the atmosphere was awesome. People were enjoying themselves. Everyone, except us, was wearing check pattern shirts, cowboy boots and cowboy hats. Next time we will have to do the same! The hotel is ancient and can’t provide accommodation any longer, but before the highway was developed, it was the biggest stop-over you could make between Darwin and Alice Springs. All the workers used to stop here, change their horses and get smashed, before they continued their travels. Now it’s basically only used for this party every month.

Kitchen in the staff house

The lounge room

The outside restaurant

The inside restaurant really shows that it's mosty a place for truckers

Erik showing off as a waiter

A huge stick insect in the kitchen

Thursday 4^th September – Friday 5^th September

Our first day off in ten days. We had decided to visit Litchfield National Park. It’s one of the best places, in the top end of the territory, for bushwalking, camping and especially swimming. It’s got gorgeous waterfalls plunging into safe swimming holes, and with safe I mean no saltwater crocs (salties), has been spotted there since last wet season. The freshwater crocs (freshies) lives there, but they are not dangerous to humans. It’s actually scientific proved that the freshies isn’t a threat to us. A signpost told us the pool was safe, so together with all the other people we enjoyed a swim in Wangi Falls. We also visited Tolmer falls, which was another neat waterfall, only for looking though. To avoid driving the same way out of the national park we decided to do the loop, which included 50 km on dirt road. It was fine in the beginning, but all the potholes and corrugation makes it uncomfortable after a while. Just when we got out on the normal road again we ran out of LPG gas, so we tried to switch to petrol, but Migaloo (our car) wouldn’t run on that, so we had to pull over. It came as a shock to both of us, we didn’t have any problems with that before, and now when we finally had a day off, we ran into problems and off course right in the middle of nowhere.. Well everything here is in the middle of nowhere, so it didn’t really matter where it happend. It’s bad news no matter where you are. We tried in vain to get Migaloo going again, but without any luck. We were stuck, the nearest gas station was at Berry Springs, at least 15 km away. We were fucked!

Then eventually we could see a car coming towards us, going the same direction as we were suppose to. We stopped them and asked for help. They were from Sydney and on their vacation up here, luckily they had time to help us, and towed us out of our misery and into the gas station. Unfortunately they didn’t have LPG, the next gas station, Noonamah, was another 10 km away. Erik now tried to start the car and all of a sudden it started – the family now followed us to the next gas station, to make sure we got there safe. Erik reckon it’s got something to do with the heat. It’s pretty hot up here at the moment, so it´s possible that the heat is the issue. Well, when we got the LPG on, Migaloo was good to go again. We arranged to meet up with the family at the Mindil beach market in Darwin that same night. We wanted to thank them and buy them a beer or something.

After the car was fine again we decided to drive back to Berry Springs, and visit the swimming hole and hot springs there, before heading to Darwin. We so needed to cool down after that hectic afternoon. Unfortunately this was also the reason why we never found that family on the market – we got there too late! It was a shame! It wasn’t really our day! I got my cowboy hat though, which was our main purpose to visit the market (now I’m ready for the next cowboy party).

We drove down to Adelaide River and camped for the night. The next morning we rose early to drive the last bit to the jumping crocodile operators. As all our time in Asia, we didn’t book the tour in advance, but got on the boat in the morning anyway. We were in for a treat, watching wild salties jump out of the water to catch a silly piece of pork chop, isn’t something you see every day. It was like a circus act, the crocs know where to get free feed and they seem well-trained in jumping for their prey, which by the way is their natural behavior. They use their powerful tail as a propeller to get themselves out of the water. It was really fascinating to experience. And all of this happens in the wild, no enclosures or anything – just as we prefer it! Afterwards we cuddled with a Western Australian carpet python and I just couldn’t get enough so I swung the black headed python around my neck as well. The black headed python is one of the rarest pythons, and unfortunately a lot of them die, from eating those disgusting cane toes (the frogs). Erik had to start work at 1 pm, so we headed “home” straight after the croc show.

The beautiful outback colours

Tolmer falls

Wangi falls.. And more playing with the camera.

A free ride....

Berry Springs was gorgeous

Croc tour

They can be hard to spot on the riverbanks.. But the dragon look-a-like tail give them away most of the times.

Frontpages on newspapers

Snake dundee, with the western carpet python

Erik is really comfortable with his new friend

Jumping Croc video

Saturday 6^th September – Wednesday 10^th September

We have gotten use to a lot of different and weird looking animals, especially bugs and bettles – one thing we probably never will get use to is the snakes. It’s almost daily that one of us see a snake around the roadhouse, and they have all been different so far. So there’s a few around! Erik almost stepped on one the other day when he walked out from the staff house.

The owner of the roadhouse (Dallas) is from time to time driving all of us insane, he’s using his energy and time on all the wrong stuff. Like for example he thinks it’s more important that he uses time to tell us which corner of the plates the tomatoes goes on, than to drive the two weeks old rubbish to the dumb. The yard smells so gross from all the bad food in the rubbish bins, and it’s literally a pigsty. No wonder there’s so many flies and animals around! He thinks he can solve the problem, if he just move the rubbish further away from the restaurant. So his big truck is hidden by a tree in the backyard – loaded to the max with ancient rubbish. So disgusting! We can’t have a normal conversation with him, frankly he’s out of reach, and every now and then he blames us for all kinds of stupid things, and afterwards uses his sick wife as an excuse for his weird behavior. One day he came stomping into the staff house and started to look into kitchen drawers, our common cupboard, the fridge and the freezer. When I asked him what he was doing his answer was ‘I found some weird stuff in here from time to time’. He obviously doesn’t trust us at all. His childish head makes him think that people steal food from the kitchen and hide it here. At night time we have caught him several times, sneaking around the staff house and listening by the windows. He talks unreasonable loud to us, sometimes in front of costumers. Luckily most of the costumers knows that he’s a freak. He’s unreliable and unpredictable. Between costumers the place is called Dallas’ kingdom’. He’s a sad sad human being to be around. I could continue telling stories about that guy, but he’s not worth the time!

There’s some really nice things happening as well. There’s this local guy that visits us frequently and he’s got two wallabies (small kangaroos) as pets, and a dog. It’s such a different world to have them coming and jumping around in the restaurant. They do get a lot of positive attention from the other visitors. It’s so great! There’s a lot of truckers coming frequently as well, Erik has begun to recognize them and share travel experiences with them. A lot of them are transporting cows, and sleeping here for the night. It can be really noisy at night with all those trampling cows, but on the other hand I find it extremely cozy to get up in the morning, and start my morning jog with saying good morning to all these animals looking down at me, from the big road train trailers. I run on the highway, but it's never really busy in the mornings. Usually I only meet 8-10 cars during my run, so it's all right and not to dangerous.

We will stick around for another three weeks, and will have to put up with Dallas weird behaviour for still a little while. Then we will continue our journey through Australia.