Deane & Jack's Motorcycle Trip in
Australia and New Zealand
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Deane & Jack's Motorcycle Trip in Australia and New Zealand |
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April 7 - Tennant Creek, Northern Territory to Mount Isa, Queensland 672 km (417 Miles) |
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Today turned out to be an easier ride than we expected. The road was excellent, with very little traffic (although several "Road Trains" passed us in the opposing direction), and we had good scenery, so the ride went fast. This was a ride totally in the "Outback". Following yesterday's ride, the Outback continued to be quite different than either Jack or I had envisioned. From earlier reading or from TV programs, I thought the Outback was a desert, and fairly sparse, like we saw from Adelaide to Alice springs. However, after leaving Tennant Creek this morning and continuing north in the Northern Territory, and then continuing East, we found that this portion of the Outback was anything but a desert. Yes, it is relatively dry in many areas, but still relatively green and has trees, bushes, and high grass with big seed heads, like grain. I decided I needed a photo of myself our in the Outback or "the Bush", so take a look at the following.
The Outback has to get quite a bit more rain than most places in New Mexico, Arizona, and the other Southwest U.S. states. Then all of a sudden the character changed so suddenly it was like day and night. There was a very long and very wide area with almost no trees at all, but having thick grass that looked like it would be ideal for cattle ranching. Indeed it was, and the area has been used for ranching since the late 1800's.
This grassy area lasted maybe 30-40 miles, and it was green from horizon to horizon (at least several miles wide). One other thing we've been watching is the size and spread of "ant hills". We first saw these yesterday, soon after Alice Springs. They range from very small, say 6 inches high, to huge ant hills of three feet tall.
The photo above shows the very large ones, and smaller ones in the background, more like the size of most of these ant hills. We have passed literally thousands of these for about 600 miles, and as many as we could see from the road, the number in the whole of the Outback must be at least high tens of thousands, and maybe in the hundreds of thousands. We were not able to find out anything about how and why they are there - just interesting. We are now headed East, going back to the northeast coast of Australia, and we are back in the State of Queensland, the State in which we started. More Tomorrow. |
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