When Does the Bootscooting Start?

---

Today we head 300 or so kilometres north- east to Kings Canyon in the Watarrka National Park. But first a quick stop at the Yulara petrol station, where we enjoy the privilege of paying somewhere around 40% more per litre than the current price back in Melbourne. It seems the premium petrol that we’re told our chariot needs is indeed a very valuable commodity out here. There’s a padlock on the bowser, and the sign says we need to go inside and beg for a key before we‘re allowed to pump even a single drop of this liquid gold. I’m not sure we’ve ever seen anything like that before. I can only assume the whole padlock thing is to stop you driving away without paying, but I’m not sure why you couldn’t do that anyway …. after you’d taken the padlock off and filled up, and probably also driven off without returning the key. It’s a bit worrying that I seem to be starting to think like a criminal.

We stop for a caffeine fix at the roadhouse at Curtin Springs, population 30, most of whom work at the million acre Curtin Springs Cattle Station. A million acres! Apparently American tourists are often told that that’s about the same size as their entire states of Rhode Island or Delaware, which does kind of put it into perspective.

I get chatting to the very jovial roadhouse proprietor. He’s a real character, which I think might be a prerequisite for living out here in the back of beyond … and if you weren’t a character when you got here I suspect you soon would be. He says they have two type of coffee - “instant coffee” or “coffee made instantly”. He tells me that COVID was a really tough time for the roadhouse. Uluṟu was in total lockdown, so they had to go three hundred kilometres to Alice Springs to get supplies, and needed three separate lots of paperwork to get through the checkpoints on the way there and back. He said there was a massive amount of misinformation being peddled about the virus, particularly to the indigenous folk, many of whom blamed the “white men” for bringing in the disease. One church minister even went around telling indigenous communities that it only affected white people, which then resulted in many refusing to get vaccinated. Hmmm.

We pull up at the Kings Canyon store next to a very distinctive looking vehicle; it’s got a large outboard motor boat attached to a steeply sloping ramp on the back of it. We were parked next to this very same conveyance the day we walked around Uluṟu. It looks a lot like a mobile rocket launcher, only with a boat instead of an Exocet missile. I wonder why anyone would be carting a boat hundreds of kilometres through the outback, where there don’t seem to be too many water bodies much bigger than a puddle. I hope the boat isn’t a front for something more sinister … and if it is, why exactly does it seem to be following us around?

The late evening views over the George Gill Ranges of the Watarrka National Park from the boardwalk across the road from our accommodation are excellent. Then it’s off to dinner … in a large barn like structure … the only eatery in town … well “town” might be overstating things just a tad. The locale’s called Petermann, and its population is a whole 185 … spread out over 70,000 square kilometres.

Several bus loads of tourists turned up in “town” this afternoon, and they’re all here in the barn; the place is packed. We estimate their median age to be somewhere around 85. We’re both feeling a bit underdressed and out of uniform; bus people are all wearing name tags. We eventually manage to find a vacant table in the back corner. There’s a guitarist blaring country and western music out at ear splitting volume, so I guess at least bus people won’t have to turn up their hearing aids. I feel like I’ve just walked into a bar in outback Texas and we’re waiting for the bootscooting to start. Issy says that in her mind we’re on a cruise ship waiting for bingo. We agree our heads are going to explode if we have to eat here for the next three nights. The music’s way too loud and cringeworthy for meaningful conversation, so we spend the meal looking for alternative eateries. Success. There are two nearby. No hang on, they’re both closed for the season, and the next closest one, well that’s a couple of hundred kilometres away. Hmmm. Just as well we bought a couple of packets of peanuts before we left Uluṟu.

---