By Truck from Perth to Darwin

Australia Travelabout

Travelabout

is the name of the company that owns various 20-seat 4x4 trucks that take tourists around Australia. Booked from Italy, after spending 15 days with Nando and Emilio in the eastern part of Australia and Tasmania, I arrive by plane from Melbourne, and after sleeping a night in a hostel, I set off on the tour that takes us in 20 days as far as Darwin in the Northern Territory.

We spend the first night in a hostel along the road and have dinner there; meanwhile we get to know each other a little: an American, four Japanese, two Swiss, a German, two Japanese, me the Italian and others. The guide is Tierry, an Australian who also speaks a bit of Italian and a few words of Japanese.

From the second night on we sleep in a tent, and one of the Japanese sleeps with me; fortunately we can talk since he speaks English.

The hours by truck are many, but Tierry makes plenty of stops to let us stretch our legs and explain a few things about Australia. It reminds me a bit of the Truck Africa I did a few years earlier from Kenya to Botswana; this time, though, we're indoors with air conditioning.

We visit Kalbarri Park and its canyons; Western Australia is very arid but, strangely (and I don't know how we managed it), almost every day we swam in the canyons after long walks under the sun. Tierry was great fun; once he swerved into a field of shrubs to chase a kangaroo, and many other times he'd stop suddenly to chase iguanas and various lizards to pick them up and show them to us.

Once, near Shark Bay, we camped on the beach, and the next morning, rolling up my tent, I noticed that a venomous snake had found warmth for the night underneath me. I called Tierry. He picked it up by the tail without any problem. At Shark Bay, on a boat, some of us went diving, with tanks, me included, to see the whale shark, a fish typical of these parts, which unfortunately wasn't there that day.

Having arrived at Broome (we were halfway, and up to that point the trip had been very exciting even though the Japanese sleeping with me kept farting in the tent), one of the Swiss girls, Heidi, asked me if she could sleep in the tent with me for the next 10 days. Naturally, to free myself of the farting Jap, I said yes.

Some of us had finished the tour after only 10 days and a couple, on the other hand, were starting from Broome to Darwin. A German with whom I hit it off at once kept me company for the remaining days.

We were now entering the green part of our trip; in fact in northern Australia it rains more. The guide took us on foot to visit caves with bats, and swimming in the rivers was a bit rare given the presence of saltwater crocodiles. While in the rivers or ponds inhabited by freshwater crocodiles, no problem; they flee, though they can reach 3 metres in length.

But that evening, even though Tierry had dived into the pond, nobody followed him; in fact a few metres beyond where he was swimming, lighting with the torch, you could see several crocodile eyes lit up.

Karujini national park, with its canyons and streams, is too beautiful, but the temperature of 42 degrees at Tom Price and Marble Bar was my personal record.

After 5 days off-road, the little truck got bogged down in the mud, and, without making us get out, Tierry let the air out of the four tyres and drove us out; tricks of the trade.

At Wyndham we visit a crocodile farm, very interesting; then we reach Litchfield Park with its splendid waterfalls. That night a heavy downpour soaks us all and we also discover that the tent has little holes from old age where the water comes in.

The kangaroos run off the next morning as I leave the tent; thank goodness the heat is always present, even if it rains it doesn't matter.

We enter the last park, Kakadu, very green and full of crocodiles and water birds; there too we swam in certain safe waterways and also visited some rock paintings.

At Katherine, another swim in the river in the company of good crocs.

Having arrived at Darwin, the end of the trip, we all have dinner in a little restaurant, nicely clean and well dressed, to say goodbye to Tierry, who was going back to Perth after 3 days.

I too, 3 days after arriving in Darwin, flew away with Malaysian Airlines via Kuala Lumpur to Rome.