Signs and Poor Tents

If my poor tent were a person, it would be asking me what the hell I was thinking when I planned this trip. A couple weeks ago it could barely handle the snow, and now it has to handle the tropics. Spring in the Northern Territory isn’t the least bit like spring in Tassie. 98° every day, ants that look purpose-built to chew tent fabric, sawtooth pandanus leaves poking holes in anything they can reach, and you know that one persistent fly? The one that flies around your head and follows you no matter where you go? Wherever that fly went to school to learn how to perfect the art of annoyance, that’s where every fly here graduated from.

My tent prides itself on keeping flies out and dammit, it’s doing its best. It’s proud of its record against thorns, poky sticks, and sharp stones: 100% flawless defense until this week. Now? Two holes in the ground sheet. Two! The rainfly is still gray but the rest is red with shame.

Last night we had an almighty display of Nature in all her power: a dazzling nonstop lightning storm just east of my campsite. It was near enough for me to put the rainfly on just in case. Which means my tent was fucking hot.

After a sweaty and mostly sleepless night, I woke as a human salt lick. I thought the flies were bad yesterday, but the instant I left the tent this morning they swarmed me like flies on shit. I didn’t even get dressed; I drove to the nearest camp shower wearing only a towel.

Freshly desalinated, I packed up to drive where I am now: the city of Katherine, just outside Nitmiluk National Park. Don’t worry, I’m wearing more than just a towel now. I have flip-flops.

I have time to write because there’s exactly one grocery store in town and they’re not admitting customers because their power is out. Actually, Katherine’s power is out. Nitmiluk’s power is out too, 30 km from here. I need food and there’s nowhere else to get it, so I’m writing in a place I have never seen before in the NT: a parking space in the shade.

I just love the road signs you only see abroad, and since I have a minute, I thought I would share a few of them with you. First up is strangely common. I’ve never driven anywhere where people need to be reminded of this every twenty minutes.

Seriously. On the Great Ocean Road you see this every 15-20 km.

Next up, my favorite category: animal crossings.

Here’s one more, same general category though not technically a road sign:

I’m sharing this one specifically because of where I found it:

Yes, that is a children’s sandbox. Specifically, it’s the “dinosaur discovery play area” at the Cape Otway Lighthouse, a family-friendly tourist attraction situated in a national park. I’ll have to do some writing about this later, but one of the things I admire most about this country and its people is a general willingness to accept that the world has sharp edges. (I appreciated this about Texas too, actually. It’s the only thing I liked about living down there: you have to watch out for snakes when you walk the dog.) Back home I see all these efforts to bubble-wrap the world so no one gets a boo-boo. When we can’t bubble-wrap it, we surround it with caution tape and liability waivers and incantations of corporate legalese to cast wards of protection.

Here they seem to understand what we seem to be hell-bent on denying: you gotta prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child. But more than this, they prefer a world where there are still plenty of sawtooth pandanus to cut into your poor tent. That’s the world I want to live in too, and it’s the one I wish more of my students were trying to get into instead of trying to escape.

And not just my students, come to think of it. Lots of people. In fact, as of right now, even my tent is going to change its attitude. It’s about damn time I brought it somewhere it can really test its mettle. All these years and not a single serious battle scar? For shame. From now on its name is Old Nylonsides, and it laughs at thorns and sawteeth.