Day 5 - Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge) and driving the Track to Tennant Creek

We were in a helicopter today!! But first, it is the second day that the cellphone alarm wakes us up and not that bigger alarm :-). Read: confirmation of no more jetlag for Olivia! The plan was to take the earliest 2 hour boat tour (9am) through gorge 1 and 2 and then leave at 11:30 for the "roadtrip of a lifetime". We planned to book the trip as soon as the place opened (7:30). As with most of our plans so far, we had to change it when we were told the first boat was full and the second left at 11am. Two options: wait till then and do less kilometres today OR see the whole thing in 8 minutes... from a helicopter for virtually the same price as the boat! About 2 hours later, we were in the air (Olivia as well) overlooking the very nice Nitmiluk gorges for 8 minutes and then in the car again on our way South.

Some numbers about our road trip ahead: we are going to drive 1664km to Uluru. Not so special, if it weren't for the fact that there is nothing (except for 1 town in the middle) on the way to Alice Springs. Another one: we will drive 1183 km on the same road (virtually) entirely straight!

The trip itself is fascinating. The landscape is pretty with red sand, green plants and blue sky... a full 1183 km long ... Luckily we are accompanied by The King of Pop who became our personal hero since we discovered we could not plug in our own music nor is there radio coverage to ease our minds. In the local road shop we could chose either the essential of michael jackson or the best of The Voice Australia... And so we cross the Outback singing "What about us" and lots of "woohoo's"!
The settlements that you come across are freaky. For example, we micro-waved Olivia's vegetables in Larrimah which has 6 (!) inhabitants and is the only -uhm- "village" in a 150 km radius.

But, the scariest part are the road trains. There is no feeling like driving in the opposite direction of a truck with 3 or 4 trailers driving at 100km/h on a road with 2 lanes (1 in each direction) and nothing between both lanes except for the usual white stripe on the ground, marking the terror zone of the opponent. Each time one of those machines passes by, we get sucked in by their current and then spit out again when they have passed. Scary. It feels like the "chicken or die" games in Fast And Furious type of movies but then without the option to "chicken" out.

Meanwhile the sun has set, we are dusty (well, the motorhome is), tired (well, Hanne is cause she did the driving including parking backwards with our monstertruck - all she needs is a tattoo and she will fit right in with the local road train drivers) and a bit tipsy from our first bottle of Australian Chardonnay.