Week 23: July 11th – 24th, 2023 // Life will pass you by if you aren’t careful.
Another week down!! I feel like I’ve been in Alice Springs forever, but also can’t believe it’s almost over… I’ve officially decided I’ll be leaving sometime the first week of September, and having a more tangible timeline in mind makes everything sit a little differently for me now. Really looking forward to how these last 1.5months are going to play out!
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Had SUCH a great start to the week + end to my long weekend. Enjoyed not having to set any alarms, waking with the sun, and spent a good few hours of my morning reading in the van before the park started to get busy. Drove about 40min further along the Namatjira Drive to get to Ormiston Gorge for the Pound Loop Trail. It’s a beautiful 9.5km trail taking you behind and through the gorge, ending with a walk through waist height water and a stunning view overlooking the gorge. I ended up making a new friend from Sydney (Dylan) who was also solo hiking the trail, and has been road-tripping the country the past 4 months. One of the huge attractions to Australia is their work-life balance. The amount of Aussies I’ve met who are travelling around because they have multiple months off at a time (in various fields) is so freaking cool! There just seems to be so much support and encouragement for taking care of yourself first and not making work your entire life (Canada, take notes).
Had a great drive back with the playlist on shuffle, windows down, golden hour slowly creeping in towards the end of my drive. Once I got home, I spent the evening watching some Max & Occy and Patagonia Youtube videos while making dinner and getting last week’s blog post up!
I ended up getting a call from Cata about changing shifts – was initially doing a short 4 hour transfer for some hikers, and now get to spend the day driving to and from Yulara (5 hours one way) on a bus rescue mission, starting at 630am.
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Was an EXHAUSTING day on the road for 10+ hours, but also super easy shift getting to spend it listening to music and podcasts. More days like this has me itching to get back on the road and it’s crazy how fast it’s coming!! Nothing really notable happened today, but I did get to see Jono for the first time in what feels like forever (we got back to the yard around the same time), and was so nice to get a little catch-up in. Spent the evening prepping for leading my first semi-solo West Mac’s tour tomorrow, which I was honestly so anxious for…
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Thankfully Wednesday went so well! For the tour I had Felipe supervising me to see if I was ready to be completely on my own, and it couldn’t have gone better. The group we had was a bunch of really lovely Australian seniors who had been travelling together the past week and all clearly got a long quite. They were so lively and funny and just so much fun to be with – they gave me an applause when I reversed a trailer without Felipe at one point, it was too cute! We had a couple mishaps with someone thinking they left their phone at a café and making a wrong turn, but it all turned out so good, and was a great case of what to do in certain scenarios. Cata also had a bus on the WM tour, so we got to hang out at all the stops!
Jono ended up finishing his tour around same time as us, so we all (Cata, Jono, Takk, Felipe and I) went out for food to catch up as a group. I think it’s been since Pablo left for Yulara, that we’ve hung out as a group, so was really nice to spend some time with them. I was so tired from the past couple days, so it was an early night for me.
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Woke up to a little friend in my kitchen… at first I was hearing rustling sounds which then turned into a consistent grinding. At first I thought I was overthinking the sounds, but sure enough, when I opened my back kitchen drawer, there was a little mouse sitting on the drawer tracks! I’m not how they got in, and I couldn’t find any bite marks on any of my food bags, so I think I’m good for now, and really can’t tell what they were chewing on… but fingers crossed this is just a one-time thing…
Managed to drag my butt to the gym for a workout before my afternoon shift, but was a hard one… was feeling pretty sleepy when I got back but thankfully today was an easy tour! Emma and I each had a bus to take a large group of people from the Ghan out to Simpson’s Gap and do a few different walks with them. Was another really lovely group and was nice to get out for some walks; also got along really well with the Tour Guide from the Ghan (Bruna) who accompanies on the tours, and ended up exchanging numbers so we could tag up either in Adelaide (where she lives) or somewhere in WA next year! She’s planning to buy a van with her partner and roadtrip the West Coast next year as well, so much try to link up if paths cross!
I spent the evening after work hanging out at Takk and Jono’s, making dinner and watching the movie ‘Black Phone’, then reading a bit before heading to bed.
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Friday was a much needed r ‘n’ r day from all the socializing the past few days. Had a good sleep in and spent the whole day rotating between reading, going on my phone, and watching some Criminal Minds. Stayed up WAY too late, but felt good to give myself the permission to have a day like this and not feel guilty about it.
That’s probably one of the things I’m learning to work on the most, is to not feel like I have to always be doing something “productive.” I know I’ve said it in a previous post, but rest really is productive too, and it’s so important to give yourself the time and space to just do nothing of importance. To just do what you want, even if it feels like it doesn’t contribute to anything important. It’s a reminder that you don’t have to always be working towards a goal, hanging out with people, investing time into things that other people would deem to be valuable. You’re allowed to “waste” time on your phone, or get lost in a big for a day, or binge watch a tv show you enjoy. It’s only really a problem if it becomes an addiction, or controls your life and pulls you away from the other things that are important to you. It’s about creating a balance for yourself, and allowing yourself to take breaks.
Oh I also made a DELICIOUS sandwich for dinner tonight hehe. Might have discovered a new regular…
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Saturday, despite being up so late, my body woke with the sun and immediately felt drawn to go to the park for some yoga. I had another day off today, so I spent more of the morning reading in the van, made some lunch, and then spent the rest of the afternoon getting some remote volunteer work done for Sea Shepherd. Because I’m obviously nowhere near the ocean, it’s a bit difficult to get on the front lines with volunteer work – so my media coordinator is giving me some tasks that I can do from the outback, and helps with the social media side of things, which I’m really quite excited about! I also watched the short film put together as a recap of the first Djulpan Campaign back in 2018 – this is the same campaign I’ll be taking part in this September, and I highly recommend everyone watch it. It’s so powerful and shocking to see the amount of ocean pollution that ends up on this remote beach; it just makes you wonder how many more spaces are like this — and worse. I actually had a much more emotional response to this video than I was expecting, and just makes me so much more eager to get out there. Please go and watch this 25min film.
I spent a lot of time looking at a screen, so to help with the headache, I went back to the park to soak up the last bit of sun to journal + read. Made myself a big batch of curry while watching more Max & Occy, and spent the evening getting some edits done on my sites home page! Go check it out and sign up for email updates, coming soon.
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Took Sunday morning a bit slower, read, journaled, and answered messages. Today I have quite possibly the easiest shift you could ever get, and it doesn’t start until 4:15, so I went in for a later afternoon gym sesh, and picked up a dehydrator I’m borrowing from a fellow guide from a different company – I’m wanting to make my own dehydrated meals for the Larapinta trek in an attempt to reduce the amount of waste I’ll be producing. There’s an Alice Springs tour guide group chat and I was lucky enough that someone was willing to lend me theirs! Really hoping the meals turn out and also feeling excited/nervous for the trek. As of today, it’s only two weeks away!! It’s really unfortunate that an activity/sport surrounded around enjoying nature is one that can produce a lot of packaging waste when it comes to food. Most backpacking snacks and meals come in packaging that isn’t recyclable or compostable, making planning for bigger trips quite hard to minimize your waste. Smaller overnighters are easier, because you can get away with making your own food and using containers to pack – but planning for 14 days makes this a bit of a challenge… very curious to see how this all turns out, and will definitely be sharing more about this in a future Impact post.
Today’s shift involved a 5min drive to pick up a full bus load of people from the Ghan, driving 10min to drop them off for a dinner at the Telegraph Station, and hanging out until they’re done, to then drive them back to the train station. A 5 hour shift for maybe an hours’ worth of actual work. Not a bad set up if you ask me! Apparently on shifts like this, you’re allowed to leave and go do whatever you need to do, so long as you’re back for 8pm pick up! Cata ended up being at the Telegraph Station, so her and I just hung out for a couple hours, read, and ate dinner. Not a bad shift at all haha.
Gian and I have been watching this anime series called Monster, so the rest of the evening we watched a handful of episodes before bed.
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With Larapinta date coming up super quickly, it’s starting to sink in how soon I’m going to be leaving Alice Springs!! I’m so excited for what’s coming next and honestly can’t wait to get out again… but I’m also starting to feel the pressure of making sure I experience everything I wanted to out here. Which I’m realizing as I’m writing this, is pretty much what I did with Hobart in Tasmania… I stayed in a more stagnant place (regarding exploration), and then in my last two weeks, crammed in a bunch of touristy things + the van renos. I really want to try and avoid this before leaving Alice Springs, and hope I can enjoy my last 1.5 months, rather than it feeling overwhelming. There’s also a small part of me that’s going to miss this community I’ve gained out here; the people have really made staying here worthwhile, and I’m going to miss them a lot.
Stay passionate and curious – and be kind to yourself.
Hunter💛
