Arrived in Darwin we want to get Mickey out of the garage as quickly as possible. However, Dave tells us that the garage is not open on Saturday and Monday is a national holiday. That means we are stuck in Darwin for a few days. We use these days to search for a job on the internet and notice that there is more work on the east coast and in the south of Australia. We decide to start driving and keep looking on the way.
We pick up the bike on Tuesday and prepare everything to leave on Wednesday in the early morning. We are so happy when we are finally driving our bike out of Darwin, cruising in the outback...

Ready to Leave

We quickly notice how dry the landscape looks here. It is also very warm, almost as if you are driving in an oven. We meet a young man driving his bicycle around the world and started a few months ago in Sydney. The worst part of the outback are the flies, they love to fly in your eyes / ears / nose and don’t let go. Just before dark we look for a campsite because we don’t want to take risks with all the kangaroos hopping around in the evening.

The Outback

The camping is cheap, which we didn’t expect in Australia, and even has a swimming pool. The lawns are full of poisonous toads, a pest here in Australia. The next day we find out that we can camp 24h for free on the rest areas, which we see every few kilometres along the road so we decide to give that a try. The rest areas are nicely maintained, there are several sheltered benches and even a proper toilet. We set up our tent and we get a beer from the other couple that spends the night on the rest area. We talk a bit with Kevin and Valerie and they offer us dinner. In the morning we have breakfast in their caravan, as the flies are horrible outside. We would like to give something back to these friendly people and since they, like us, go to Alice Springs, we agree to meet again over there. In Alice Springs we find another cheap camping with swimming pool.

Alice Springs

We decide to stay there for two days to enjoy the pool and rest a bit. On the second night, we have a bbq with Kevin and Valerie.
We get a job offer from a farm in the state of New South Wales, so now we finally know which way to go. We make an appointment with the farmer down in Broken Hill, a larger mining town. We still have a few days to get there so we decided to make a detour to Uluru, to the famous Ayers Rock. Although Ayers Rock is the most famous attraction in Australia, we really can’t see why. It's literally just a rock and they ask 18 euro / person to see it from a little closer and to climb it. We had seen it well enough from the road so we do not bother to pay.
On the way back we stop at Mount Conner, this mountain looks similar to Ayers Rock and we think it looks nicer but still no 500 km detour worth...

Ayers Rock

Mount Conner

Sights of the Northern Territory

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