3000 Interesting Km Of Boredom

It all started with Dominique and me thinking that 3000 km is too long to drive. That’s when we looked into flying to Darwin, but we soon discovered that a one way flight is around 400 to 500 AUD. Far too expensive for our liking. That same day we started to make a little flyer, copied it and handed it out to backpackers and put it up in hostels and internet cafes around Cairns. We didn’t actually expect many people to call, but apparently there’s loads of people looking for a lift to the Top End, as we got flooded with requests.

The next morning we met Julien, a french guy, and Yuto, a japanese bloke, in a cafe in town. They seemed nice and relaxed enough that we agreed to tackle those 3000 km together, starting at 8 am the next day.

The drive from Cairns back down to Townsville was uneventful. In Townsville we bought water and food, filled the car and the spare tank up with gasoline and we were on our way into the outback. None of us really knew what to expect. The air was filled with excitement and a sense of adventure. An hour into the drive and we were all bored to death. I mean, we had been told that there is nothing out there, but there really wasn’t anything out there. Well, that’s not entirely true. There’s trees, sometimes loads of them, sometimes hardly any; there’s grass, lots of it, but all very dry; there’s cattle, loads of dead kangaroos on the side of the road, the odd road train, 50 m long trucks, and every 200 to 250 km a little settlement, where you can fill the car up with gas.

Petrol in these little villages can be ridiculously expensive, but they can charge whatever they want to. They know exactly that travelers have to fill up their cars every opportunity they can get. The most expensive gas we found was 1.70 AUD a liter, a full 60 cent more then what you normally pay. At this particular gas station we chose to ignore the warnings and kept going with half a tank. We knew that we only had to drive 200 km to the next one, but we still got a bit nervous when the needle started to slowly drop down! We obviously made it, but from that point on we did fill Pumpkin up every single time.

While it was really an interesting experience, we were bored most of the time. After driving straight for half an hour I found myself wishing for just a tiny little bend in the road. I actually made a little movie of one of those roads, so feel free to watch it:

On the first day we drove until we hit Mount Isa, about 1200 km.The most exciting thing that happened on that day was being pulled over at night by the police for a random breath test. We had stopped earlier on to get some booze, but, thankfully, Dominique, who was driving the last stretch of the day, was the only sober person in the car. That night we all slept in the car at some supermarket car park. On the second day we started driving at 7 am and made it all the way to Darwin, which means that we might have gone a little over the speed limit from time to time, but we were all glad when we finally arrived at 9.30 pm.

Tags: 3000 Km, Cairns, Darwin, Outback