I’m smiling in this photo, but a few hours earlier I was most definitely was not. I was fuming, just like my campervan.
At 9am on Monday, I checked out of my Airbnb in Stuart Park, and caught the bus to pick up my rental campervan from the depot just outside the Darwin city centre. There, one staff member was running around connecting people with their vehicles. Finally I had the keys to my beat-up Suzuki APV van and was on my way. My first stop was Kmart in the northern suburb of Casuarina.
While reviewing my booking information a few days earlier, I had read that since the pandemic, the campervan company no longer supplied bedding with their vehicles. So I had done the practical thing and ordered a cheap sleeping bag, a set of bedsheets and a pillow online from Kmart through Click & Collect, to pick up on my way out of Darwin.
When I got to Kmart, the Click & Collect system was down, and I was advised to return in half an hour. I used the time to buy groceries for the trip.
On the way back from Kmart I ran into Jane, a lady I met at the NT Writer’s Festival. She had been volunteering and I hadn’t had the chance to get her contact details over the weekend, so I was so glad to cross paths with her again. We talked about the festival and how it had inspired us, and made a plan to catch up in a few days when I returned from Kakadu.
Back at Kmart, the staff couldn’t process the collection of my purchase and release the items to me. So I had to run around the store and find the items again. It was the school holidays, and the only the expensive items left. I had originally spent $40 and spent $100 replacing everything, and couldn’t get my money back from the original purchase until I called the online support team. I had $500 tied up in the bond for the van, and had just filled the petrol tank. I was mildly horrified by how expensive this camping trip had turned out to be, and I hadn’t even left Darwin yet.
I left Casuarina in the early afternoon and followed the Arnhem Highway out through Humpty Doo. It would take two and a half hours to reach Jabiru, the main township of Kakadu National Park. The last remnants of suburbia fell away, and bushland encroached on the road to Kakadu. On the stereo played ‘Byrralku Dhangudha’, a remix of the classic Australian song ‘Great Southern Land’ by Icehouse featuring Aboriginal vocalists partly singing the chorus in language. I cranked the volume up loud and sang at the top of my lungs.
Spotify started to cut out intermittently, and I knew I was leaving the safety of phone reception. There are certain places where even Telstra doesn’t reach. The only constant was the bitumen road. It was built above the swamp water level, and yellow road signs warned of crocodiles.
Darwin had been dry and dusty, but here I found myself entering a lush wetland.
I had planned to stop in at the Bowali Visitor’s Centre on the way, but I was booked in for the Ubirr Rock sunset rock art tour at 4.30pm, so I headed straight there. Our guide was a young indigenous ranger named Oscar, who walked us through the rock art galleries. The tour concluded atop the escarpment of Ubirr Rock, which is renowned for being a premium vantage point for the sunset spectacle. The sun was hiding behind cloud cover on this day, but the view was amazing nonetheless, like looking out over an African savannah. I half-expected to see a herd of wildebeest billowing across the plain. I kept an eye out for water buffalo.
With the sunset turning out to be a non-event, I decided to get back on the road early, drive to Jabiru and make up the bed in the back of the van before nightfall. I checked in at Aurora Kakadu Lodge & Caravan Park and found a space to park the van. My site was unpowered, so I was making the bed up in the dark. I had a shower, and then charged my phone at the camp kitchen while I heated a tin of soup on my portable gas stove.
I collapsed into bed late that night utterly exhausted. I love my alone time, but I was so far from my friends and family, and all I wanted to do was talk to someone from home. The day before, I had
been so inspired and energised by the NT Writer’s Festival. Today, I was frustrated and exhausted. I thought I was crazy for taking on this solo trip into the wilderness. I was drowning in overwhelm, flooded like Kakadu in the wet season.
Tomorrow, I was headed to Arnhem Land.
Kate Kelsen 