We thought we'd drive up the road a bit (about an hour) to a gorge that J had heard about from a friend. We left Katherine around 1 pm, expecting to be gone a few hours, and didn't return for 12 hours. See if you can imagine it with just a few images:
A car that won't start.
A (22 km long) dirt road with no traffic that ends at the gorge.
Add utter darkness (we couldn’t see our own feet or each other), broken by blinding lightning bolts of a very nearby lightning storm, multiple washes and streams to wade through, cheerful and good-humored companions, and a good friend who was willing to get out of bed and drive an hour each way to come get us.
We ended up walking non-stop from seven pm to 11:30 at night to get to the highway. I have some blisters today. Maybe I'll write more later if that doesn't seem to be enough info for youse.
Bittersweet
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Eyal and I always knew that it would be difficult building a family from
two different countries. It is just now, however, that we have to really
put that ...
12 years ago
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2 comments:
Well, we definitely all thought about crocodiles as we crossed the floodways, but they don't really like shallow water, at least the dangerous ones don't.
There must also be snakes, but it was raining and somehow I don't have an association with snakes hanging out on an open road in the rain, but of course I have no idea.
There was really no point in talking about the dangers once we were walking. Once we were soaking wet, we really had to go on so as not to risk hypothermia from being chilled. (We knew someone who got hypothermia on a boat in the Solomons, so we know it's not just a "mountain" risk.)
As they (we) say here, "No worries, mate!"
Justin's dad has asked what happened when we got to the highway, so here's a bit more info:
Around 11 pm we got to a turnoff to an Aboriginal community that we remembered as being fairly close to the highway. We debated whether we should walk down that road (we could see their lights, but couldn't tell how far away they were) and hope that there was a phone there, that we would be welcomed (you usually need a permit to enter an Aboriginal community), and that it wouldn't be even further away than the highway.
We decided to keep walking, but J tried her mobile phone (which couldn't get reception down the road) and--much to our delight--it worked. She called R (her roommate and another linguist)who was worried about us and had just called the police to find if there'd been an accident. He very gallantly drove up to get us in his car, bringing hot coffee, chocolate and other goodies. Although he has often gone on (in a negative way) about J's car and had in fact expressed dismay that we were going to drive it up to the gorge, he showed great restraint in making no gloating I-told-you-so comments when picking us up.
Any more questions?
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