Quite possibly the weirdest stop of our travels--certainly in Australia if not the entire past year--Wycliffe Well is an odd motel/caravan complex in the Northern Territory's Outback that we stopped in while on the road between Kakadu National Park in the North and Alice Springs to the South. The place is one owner's obsessive monument to UFO sightings, but is covered with folk art murals made by several different artists over decades, larger-than-life kitsch pop-culture statues of all sorts, and even includes a manmade lake and a glassed-in room filled with "International Dolls," among other curiosities.
Elvis Presley between the bird cages of cockatoos and emus.
That afternoon, Sarah walked with the little Chinese girl who is the daughter of the Wycliffe Well's current custodians and who pointed out the spot beneath the bridge on the Stuart Highway outside where groups of Aboriginal people slept. That evening, Sarah talked with several of the Aboriginal men, mostly alchoholic, who stayed by the highway in a sort of no-man's land between their Aboriginal homelands and white Australians' private property. At one point, police arrived and Sarah witnessed a fracas between them and the Aboriginal men. Voices were still shouting in the distance from time to time after we went to bed. Although we saw no UFOs, it was a memorable night.
That afternoon, Sarah walked with the little Chinese girl who is the daughter of the Wycliffe Well's current custodians and who pointed out the spot beneath the bridge on the Stuart Highway outside where groups of Aboriginal people slept. That evening, Sarah talked with several of the Aboriginal men, mostly alchoholic, who stayed by the highway in a sort of no-man's land between their Aboriginal homelands and white Australians' private property. At one point, police arrived and Sarah witnessed a fracas between them and the Aboriginal men. Voices were still shouting in the distance from time to time after we went to bed. Although we saw no UFOs, it was a memorable night.
The next morning we pulled off at a small rock formation known as "The Devil's Pebbles," mainly because we couldn't resist the name. Sarah spotted several flaked artifacts along the trail. Mark mainly noticed that the place was peacefully free of many tourists, albeit full of flies. We'll have more about those infamous Outback flies in our next post.
Sarah is always most intensely herself when perusing the ground, searching for artifacts in situ, or, as she calls them, "little treasures."
No comments:
Post a Comment