outback rulezzz

laurian and tom have decided that the road from cairns westward to normanton by the name of gulf development road, has been the greatest. it's the road to the gulf of carpentaria, on the map this is that big bite out of the top of australia. the road has mainly one lane, with red sand on each side. to avoid a collision with a car or road train (truck + 2 trailers) coming from the other side, you have to drive with at least your two left wheels on the red sand. in case of a road train approaching, you better choose 4 wheels.
this road is the one with all the kangaroos crossing from the previous message. the next day tom thought he saw from a distance another one of those loose grazing cow on the road but while getting closer it turned out it was an emu crossing the street. by the way, in the message from warrnamboole, 4500km more south, the emu's spotted were mistakenly called ostriches by tom. he's such an innocent tourist. ostriches only live in the wild in africa.
today's emu crossing had his female with him and about 100km further down the road the same setting of the male crossing and the female waiting around happened again. it was quite a high point of the trip.
the big birds of prey from the previous message turn out to be called wedge tailed eagles. they are known for sitting on their prey until the last moment and then taking off. this was a fabulous view once when this huge bird decided to take off in the same direction as the campervan was going. tom and laurian were in the front row for the show. the bird has enormous wings. with these wings, he accellerated big time and beat the vans 110km/hour.
the eagle's smaller brother, but much more common, is called the scavenger hawk. one of those tried to do that trick too, but he ended up as the van's first road kill. that is, if you don't count the black goo of mashed flies on the van's front.

normanton is the first big town in northern queensland when you head west. big here is 2500 inhabitants. also, just like north of cooktown, many aboriginals live here. normanton is only by the norman river and not yet by the sea. 75km further is karumba, which is really located by the gulf of carpentaria. don't you dare swimming there because the water is full of crocodiles. and these are salties.
one was lying on a ramp into the norman river right where tom and laurian had just turned their vamper van!

here's something on mobile phones, their costs and coverage. australia is such a big country that only if it would have 10 times more inhabitants it would be worth having coverage everywhere. there are four providers or so. telstra has the best coverage because it used to be the national fixed line phone company, optus (owned by singapore's singtel) is number 2, vodafone is at a distance number 3 and hong kong's hutchison owned three is a worthless number 4. if you don't need to call in tasmania, optus and telstra are similar everywhere but optus is more than half the price of telstra's. and if you do need to call in tasmania, you just take one of each, so laurian had telstra and tom would call, sms and internet his ass off with optus.
an interesting development is nextG, telstra's 3g initiative. you need a 3g phone (starting at 100 aud) and a 3g (pre-paid) simcard (included). no one could yet explain it, but with this phone it was possible to call in normanton and karumba while the normal telstra and optus gsm's didn't work. tom thought 3g was only the umts functionality on that phone and that that had to do with fast internet but somehow 3g in australia has also more coverage. cheaper roll out? greater reach? ernst and roosje? optus also had something 3g but that wasn't available in most of outbackland yet.

to call abroad, make sure you get ezichat. a few cents to fixed lines in europe and between .1 and .2 eur to mobiles in europe. this is in addition to the mobile phone cost. optus is .05 eur per minute if you buy a 60 (70?) dollar bundle that lasts for a month. in new zealand ezichat is called superbuzz. they have the same prices but with an new zealand vodafone (the only other after telecom nz) simcard there's no additional mobile phone charge! kind-a-cool to call to europe with your mobile for a few cents all in while gazing over the ocean instead of hanging out in a phone booth.
internet is provided by vodafone nz for .45 eur per 10 Mb per day and 600Mb or so for the month in the optus bundle.

the queensland capital of the outback world is mount isa. you pass it on your way from the north queensland coast to alice springs, the outback capital of northern territory. mount isa is a mining town with 24,000 people. the most interesting was a place called riversleigh fossil centre. this is where they bring all the findings from a remote area by the name of riversleigh. this area now a dry riverbed but up to 25 million years ago it was a swampy area where skeletons of animals from back then were nicely contained for us humble visitors to see. many animals were similar to todays but then bigger. that's called island gigantism. new zealand had that as well. if there were few, if any, natural enemies, the animals would grow bigger and bigger. is that what happens to human species currently? getting taller and overweight? the world is my island!

oops, forgot to say that nextG brought coverage to quite some outback towns but the roads between them have absolutely no coverage. apparently they are still too far fetched. litterally. speaking about those roads, sometimes the next settlement is more than 200 km away. for instance in northern territory between barkly homestead and three ways. because of the remoteness and tinyness of a settlement diesel costs aud 1.70 (eur .90) per liter instead of 1.15 (eur .60) in the crowded world but still less than holland (eur .92). gasoline has similar prices in australia but not in holland (eur 1.30!). three ways is named for its location between darwin, mount isa and alice springs. midlevels in hong kong and halfweg in holland are also examples of towns named after their location.
if three ways is still kilometers away, there's no campground there anyhow and it's turning dark, you can always camp on a rest area on the side of the road. this one 60 kilometers from three ways was real outback: red sand, dry spinifex grass, lots-of-flies and, according to the guide, dingo's howling at night. although, but maybe because, there was nothing to do, it was one of the most beautiful places to stay overnight.

allard's corner:
he's a dude! not only does he like swimming, he also tried out mettes floaters and after two tries he could hold his head up and float around.
he can now move anywhere, but only if he wants to grab something. he can pull himself up to peek over it and kind-of-stand. if you have food and he wants it, he starts panting.

and to quote mette (don't forget to check out #mettesquote as twitter pffffff):
* kom 's even hier met jouw hoofd / why don't you come here with your head (to allard in order to put on his hood)
* hee, ouwe snackie / hey, you old snacker (to allard who shakes a bag with bread)
* hij heeft een bloedneusje / he has a little nose bleed (about allard who had a little wound by his nose)
* zo wordt allard wakker. met die wijnen / allard will wake up like this. with those wines (after an empty winebottle falls over)
* i see a kangaroo. (tom: where do you see a kangaroo etc... this time it was a real one and she was the only one who had seen him)
* wie wil er alvast een pruim? / who wants a prune already now? (in fact it was a date but still...)
* berend botje ging uit varen. hij is niet hier, hij is niet daar. waar is onze krokodil (a dutch children song about a bear but she mixes in a crocodile)
* oeh, lekker zacht / ooh, nice and soft (daddy shaved for the first time in a month or so)
* deze mevrouw moet naar de wc / this lady has to go to the bathroom (about herself)
* hee, er staat "koffie" op / hey, it says "coffee" (pretends she's reading the label of the cold coffee drink)
* ja, dat zei ik / yes, i said so (after laurian asked if she really had to go to the bathroom)
* als jij groot is, dan hoef jij geen zonder luier lopen en geen zonder luier slapen / when you in grown up, you need no walk without diapers and no sleep without diapers (to her doll who wears a diaper nowadays. she uses am, are and is but randomly)
* ga maar rechts, daddy / daddy, here right (and she was right)
* dit is een krokodil en die leeft absoluut niet meer / this is a crocodile and he is definitely not alive anymore (about a crocodile she drew on the drawing board)