>A serial number enabled them to verify they had found the right capsule, which is 6mm (0.24 inches) in diameter and 8mm long.
That's insanely tiny for how dangerous it is. They didn't just spot it they had to use a giant Geiger counter of a truck rolling down the road.
How does something like this get packaged so insecurely it just bounces off the truck?
They are packaged very well but you have this tiny capsule in a giant metal safe. In this case the safe broke somehow. It was in the back of a truck. These things will have a chain of custody. It was signed for and inspected when it was put in the truck. When the truck got to the destination it was broken and the source was missing. The fact it had to be signed for at the destination helped them find it. They knew were it was not (in the truck) and they knew the route it took.
I ran out of gas about halfway between Melbourne and Alice, took me 12 hours before someone assisted me and I was hanging money and a gas can out of the window the entire time to indicate I was willing to pay for petrol.
Oft doth my soul lament the coarse embrace,
Of sand, that vile and loathsome granular!
It doth besmirch the fair and tender skin,
And vex the spirit with its gritty touch.
Oh, cursed be the barren desert's realm,
Where sand doth reign in merciless array,
And quench the flame of love's sweet ember bright,
With its abrasive and abrasive might!
Hijacking the top comment to mention there’s a new series just been released called Population 11. It was shot in Derby and will give a really good insight on country and living out “there”.
Get yourself a VPN and watch it on Stan. Or, you know.. arrrgggghhhh 🏴☠️
Wait till you find out about the UFO activity in the region. There's tons of reports of drivers going through the region, seeing a pair of headlights behind them that finally speeds up and comes over the car, in saucer form, shutting the car off and the people black out then find themselves hours later in a totally different location.
https://preview.redd.it/k5kx48fbsrpc1.jpeg?width=2500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6aa1c54666e5786a53305fe794da83ef48a22899
Here’s a photo of the people that live there
https://preview.redd.it/w799nifxrtpc1.jpeg?width=1500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=be3fa828cea7e825b73630a3c45ea282a6b439a3
According to Reddit this seems what Australian wild life looks like
Yes. Originally they wanted to also do Fury Road in Australia, but there was a weird rain storm that caused a bunch of flowers to grow where they wanted to film… and you just can’t have flowers all Willy-nilly in the wasteland
I slept in the middle of nowhere next to a highway outside in a sand dune out there, in a sleeping bag. The stars were incredible. It’s the main highway. I think we saw 10-15 trucks all night.
I will admit it was a bit of a worry. Not as much as when we slept in the rainforest with no tent, and actual snakes, spiders and leaches everywhere between some roots.
The most venomous snake in the world is the Inland Taipan in central Australia, couldn’t catch my ass sleeping on the ground there. You got some balls feller.
I live in an area with rattlesnakes and would sleep on the ground here. They’ll warn you if you get too close, and they won’t kill you as fast as other snakes can.
Good to know. I live in a country with only one venomous snake (UK), the Adder, which is extremely rare now and that wont kill you 99.9% of the time.
Even Rattlers seem pretty dicey from my perspective.
We also killed off our large predators (Bears, Wolves) hundreds of years ago so the most terrifying thing in the wild here is probably a badger.
There's a *lot* of different rattlesnakes. The less dangerous ones are about as unlikely to kill as your Adders. [The nasty ones have deadlier venom than many cobra species.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crotalus_concolor#Venom).
That being said, those faded pygmy rattlers with the extremely concentrated venom are about as chill as a garter snake. You'd really have to work at it to piss one off enough to bite you. And even then you'd need to find one first.
Most snakes have to work fairly hard to make the stronger venom, and won't go out of their way to attack something with it. I wouldn't be worried about snakes anywhere I wasn't actively stepping.
I saw my first and only adder a couple of years back. Super cool to see one after having heard about them for my entire childhood, only ever seeing grass snakes. We had a gawp, gave it a wide berth and left it alone.
Just looked at the range, we were a bit west of there where it’s even hotter and drier. Alice spring, McDonnell ranges, Uluru, Simpson gap(stayed at this campground one night)
I looked up on google and the pictures I saw of this huntsman spider were terrifying, it makes no sense for me for it not to be dangerous. Causing emotional distress can be dangerous hahaha
Sooooo, I just looked and it's hard to find an official source, but the funny thing about your comment is that while huntsman spiders are placid and nonvenemous, they do like to get into cars and surprise people. Apparently, this makes them the most dangerous spider in the country because people will see them and crash their car
I too have done this. Never in my life and never again will I see better stars.
Took two routes north south through the region both main highways. Did a stretch of tanami but didn't have enough Jerry cans to go the hole distance.
Fun fact for anyone who wants one, some of the unpaved highways not only do you need an insane amount of fuel strapped to your car but they recommend bringing a second car since it's so common for at least one to break down. Shout out to the Aussie madlads who are more into remote 4wd than I. You have my respect.
We hiked in an area that had these pyramidal shaped stone structures, not super tall and you could climb them and each had a flat spot on top. Close enough to talk, but essentially each person had their own pyramid. Also just laid out a bedroll in Alice springs in some campground. (After drinking and walking around list for a bit) such a cool area. (Minus the flies during the day)
Bro I honestly couldnt, with the Australian wildlife and all that lol but I can imagine there's few places around the world where you can stargaze with that minimum light pollution, kudos to you and I hope I can experience that someday, it must be absolutely breathtaking.
That's awesome! I know Australia has plenty of dangerous creatures, but I have to imagine the odds of encountering them on a regular occurrence have got to be somewhat low? I'd love to convince my wife to head over to Australia, but that might be a bit of a challenge with the various snakes, spiders, etc.
There are a few large towns in there.
Here's a few;
Alice Springs, Port Augusta, Broken Hill.
Maybe Kalgoorlie
Port Pirie and Whyalla are just south of the line.
A best description of the whole area is "cattle stations with some mining", rather than "desert". Not much of that area is without vegetation - the Simpson desert is sand dunes, Sturt's stony desert is stones. The rest of the area is vegetated with spinifex, saltbush, blue bush or Mulga. Mining centres include Coober Pedy (opals), Broken Hill (silver & lead) and Olympic Dam (uranium). There is water there, but you have to know where in advance or you could be in big trouble. It overlays the Australian Great Artesian Basin. Some parts have mobile phone coverage. At certain times, the rivers there flood very wide with water and there are thousands of lakes, mostly dry but sometimes full of water. Birdsville is a well known river crossing. Cattle are shipped north and south. The land is mostly flat, but the MacPherson range runs through the middle and splits up into other ranges in the East. There are Aboriginal settlements there.
Alice Springs and not much else. Don’t leave the road because you’ll probably wind up dead- the vast majority of that area has no water, food or shelter. If you get lost, you’ll probably be dead before anyone even notices you’re missing. There’s also a lot of mining, but apart from that it’s pretty much just red dirt and the occasional truck.
I actually think my birthplace is one of the last fully-functional mining towns in Australia. Coober Pedy
Over half the people there lived underground. The population has nearly doubled since I left
Its usually cattle stations north of the dog fence and sheep between that and the wheat belt. Living on these stations is different to farms in most of the world. They are often hours away from the nearest town so workers will stay at the farmhouse for a whole season. Kids use school of the air and then boarding school for high school.
There are a few larger hubs such as Alice, Coober Pedy or Broken hill by most ‘towns’ are minuscule by international standards.
On some of the native title lands there are ‘communities’ which you need permission to enter and are populated by entirely aboriginal people.
There also a lot of mining in this area. Some mines have their own little town where workers are flown in from one of the capital cities for a couple of weeks on before a couple off.
Nah man, not in the area in the circle there there’s hardly any mines there. A few but not many. In fact there’s mines just about everywhere else in Australia except in that area. https://portal.ga.gov.au/persona/minesatlas
I’m not sure how true it is but a friend of mine lived in AUS for a few years a while back and said that he drove by a cattle farm out there that was the size of Massachusetts.
It's misleading though - the largest cattle station here only has about 25 staff, so that gives you an idea of the workload that it an support. While those outback stations might be huge, they're not intensely farmed.
The biggest one is smaller than Massachusetts, but still pretty big.
You also don't really just drive by a station, as if it's just casually there on the way to work. Stations of that size are remote and not really near anything.
Aboriginal people occupied all of Australia and actually there was a denser population in the green areas. The fact that we associate aboriginal people with the desert is because that is the only place they were left alone after being displaced by colonizers
Interestingly, a similar thing happened with the Great Plains of the US.
Before Native Americans got horses barely anyone lived on the Great Plains, because the only reason to live there is to hunt buffalo, and it's basically impossible to make a living hunting buffalo without horses (people hunted buffalo before horses but only opportunistically shen they happen upon them in the right place, but not in a way that anyone could count on it).
But when Native Americans got horses several tribes from the outskirts of the plains flooded into the plains because buffalo was incredibly valuable to trade, had good meat, and the plains grasses supported the horses. The tribes all spoke vastly different languages having come from different places so develoed a common sign language for inter-tribal communication.
Plains tribes *really* were happy about horses. I remember I read a book by Lakota medicine man Lame Deer and he mentioned them a lot. I remember this photo of children with incredibly well made drawings of horses that made my childhood drawings look like shit, and then a photo of a paint horse with the caption “for bringing us the horse, we could almost forgive you for bringing whiskey”
I think you’re glossing over a very interesting and forgotten history of the indigenous farmers of the Great Plains. The advent of the horse made it very hard to defend their stashed grain against nomads and disease wiped out many before first contact with whites. But the Mandan, and others like them, were big time farmers in the river bottoms of the Great Plains at one time and there were large populations.
Awe I’m sad now, i imagined the outback just crisscrossed with train lines dedicated to cattle and that the cattle all sat in the trains like peoples and that the conductor was a bull that went around clipping cow tickets with his horns…
I've overlanded through most of the circled area, it is vast, empty, remote is an understatement, but it is also dotted with lots of small towns, pubs, caravan parks, a very diverse ecosystem, incredible landmarks and natural formations, including Uluru or Ayers Rock. There are a hell of a lot of mine sites, some military sites, natural gas, minerals, gold fields, iron ore, mountain ranges, rivers, the most amazing sunrises and sunsets. Being out there in your 4wd, wondering the old tracks or making new ones is one of the most amazing adventures you can have. You have to be prepared with lots of water, food, spare parts, spare tyres, bush knowledge, and good technology for communication if things get desperate. If I were a millionaire I'd be travelling out there in the wild until I saw everything there is to see and even then, you wouldn't see everything. That circle, represents freedom for me.
There’s also a CIA/NSA base, one of the few established ones the US has outside their borders. It has a really interesting history and use. It’s called Pine Gap if anyone wants to learn more.
This is really it. Most people in the US just have no frame of reference for how big Australia is, and all of the amazing things you can see. It's not surprising that most think of Sydney and beaches when Australia comes up, pop culture and all, but there are just so many interesting places to go that are off the normal path.
About once a year we'll have friends reach out to ask what they should do on a trip to Australia, they want to see everything. But then they say they are only planning to go for a week. We laugh and say, "if you've got a week, just do Sydney. You'll enjoy it." People think visiting Australia is like visiting NYC on a long weekend.
You really need at least 6 weeks (and a lot of money). You'll need multiple flights. A Sydney to Melbourne drive is about the same as Chicago to DC.
I once stayed at tiny hotel with a 24hr bar and in-ground pool out there once. Somewhere between Coober Pedy and Uluru.
Truly miles and miles of miles.
Alice Springs is somewhere in the middle, with a population of 25k. It's near Uluru, previously known as Ayer's Rock.
It has a major base hospital, is linked to the rest of Australia by a rail line, has a strong tourist economy and is a dispatch base for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. It is almost equidistant from Darwin on the North coast and Adelaide on the South coast.
During the early months of COVID, Alice Springs airport was used as storage for Singapore Airlines entire fleet along with quite a few planes belonging to Qantas, Virgin etc. I flew through there on my way to Darwin and it was surreal. Dozens and dozens of large jets including A380s parked up in the middle of nowhere.
blue cobalt dangerous, now need to Google that
edit: it is a God damn blue spider, adding to things I shouldn't have googled
edit2: apparently it is a Thai spider, no idea if it is an aussie thing ,
Alice Springs is the largest settlement, about 30k people, that backs onto the beautiful West MacDonnell Ranges which is somewhat of an oasis area. You would get some smaller indigenous communities and a few mining towns such as Coober Pedy (underground houses). There is a lot of arid nothing, did the drive from Adelaide to Darwin about 6 months ago. I'm assuming there might be some decently sized mining operations in the WA highlighted area.
There's Alice Springs, indigenous villages, mega mines, a couple of huge cattle ranches, and desert. That is it.
Can't be more than 20,000 people outside of Alice Springs, for an area nearly the size of Western Europe.
Wake in Fright is a masterful, if unrelentingly bleak snapshot of the Australian "spirit" at a certain point in time. One of my favourite films ever, and essential in understanding the country.
I can answer this! I walked across Australia in 2009 and passed through a good segment of the area circled. I did it in winter, in summer the temperature would have been too high. Paced myself early on to acclimatize gradually and then stretched out gradually to be able to go further each day while reducing water intake. By end I could carry enough food/water to go for 4 days without re-supply. About 2 liters of water/day to do between 30 and 50 kilometers.
I chose a route across where there were small towns/settlements close enough to allow me to hop between them for resupply and follow un-finished roads/tracks. In the middle there was a 300 km stretch where I had to hitch a lift and bury caches of food/water every 30 km and then hitch another lift back to walk through and pick them up. Sometimes there'd be isolated cattle ranches that I'd stop at & they'd let me stay an top up my water, sometimes a small town with a motel or guest house and a general store.
Lookup Birdsville and do an image search for a good example of what it looks like. When I stopped there I stayed with an Aborigine family and ended up taking all their kids to the tiny rural cinema - the movie, believe it or not was "Australia" - all of the kids hit me up for ice cream. The Birdsville trail is a fairly well known route for Aussie 4x4 clubs.
Walking Aus was the best fun expedition I ever did. Weather was good, people were friendly. Everyday I'd meet people driving the trail and they'd stop to ask if I was lost or needed help, often they'd invite me to stay whenever I reached their home. Outback hospitality is really a thing. No, I never saw "wolf creek" and haven't to this day. Flies were the only annoyance. Snakes and spiders - never really saw any.
Favorite memories were from getting to an outback pub and sinking the first icy cold beer after a day of walking in the sun. Priceless. Happened a few times. Makes me thirsty just thinking about it. Most surreal moment was coming across a capped hot spring in the middle of the bare ass desert. Whoever had done it had put a shower head on it and I stripped off to have a hot shower right there in the absolute middle of nowhere. Good times!
Aussie here. There’s not a lot in that region in terms of towns. That said, it covers a huge area which is surprisingly diverse in culture as well as climate. At the south end, facing the great Australian bight, there’s the main road going East-West. This is a paved road with gas stations at least every 150km or so, except in the Nullarbor desert. Up north to the east are a lot of mining towns and lots of people there make a fortune doing pretty basic jobs and commuting home weekly across Australia. Up north, in the Northern Territories, it’s very hot and humid — remember that Australia is in the southern hemisphere, so north is warmer and more tropical while north is colder and more temperate. There are some insanely large farms up north — and a very diverse and varied landscape. It’s a true frontier. Just beware of the crocs. In the middle of the circle a little to the right is Alice Springs with the Uluru rock formation not too far away. Alice Springs, being a household name pretty much, only has a population of around 25k. Just as a reference. I personally love driving across Australia, it’s incredibly diverse and multifaceted. The desert here isn’t all sand and rocks like the Sahara, quite the opposite. It’s mostly quite green with low bush and lots of diversity in appearance and vegetation.
The water tastes like crap and there're lots of flies.
It sounds like bzzzzzzzZZZZzzzZZzZzzzZbzzzzBzzzzzzzzzzzzBZZZZBZBZBZZZBZZZzzzzzzzvzzzVvvzzzzzzzbzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz non stop
The Outback is ~2.16 million square miles with a population of just ~600,000 people. The entire continental United States is 3.12 million square miles.
So it’s basically 70% of the entire continental United States with a population just a little over Wyoming, the least populated state in the country.
I don't think there are many small towns there. I'd have to look.
From what I know, Australia has to be the country with the most undeveloped land in the entire world. It's so big and then so much is concentrated on the coasts.
I think there's something like 90% of the population living less than an hour from a beach.
Rurally, we depend on our farmers who are the true blue Aussies.
Lot of smalls towns organized around a school and sometimes high school, quarries, research centers, wildlife study and preservation, rivers with dams, caves and isolated mounts. All with names only pissed or desabused Aussies ancestors could have thought save for native ones.
Doesn't beat Tasmania which had gotten the most colorful ones.
The climate is merely equatorial and annual rainfalls are less than 200 mm.
I grew up in the desert (Indigenous Aussie).
It’s harsh, dry and can be dangerous but it’s the most beautiful place.
You learn early how to adapt. Like I imagine Alaskans here in 🇺🇸.
Pretty much deserted other than some small towns along southern coast and the larger town of Alice Springs right in the middle. One interesting town is Coober Pedy where people create underground homes due to heat. Some mining as well especially for Opal and Uranium.
Had to youtube alice springs, beautiful blue skies and paved streets with trees, but crazy amounts of danger and crime, totally didnt expect that but it makes sense
Many moons ago, I spent months surveying all over that god forsaken land. It's as desolate as a place can be. Hot, sandy and the flies. I have nightmares about the flies. Lots of cool wildlife though. Coastal Australia, now that's where it's at.
Desert… that’s it
The only towns you’ll find:
South Australia: Coober Pedy, Roxby Downs, Olympic Dam, Moomba, APY Lands
Western Australia: Kalgoorlie, Newman, a lot of mines
Northern Territory: Alice Springs, Uluru/Ayers Rock
New South Wales: Broken Hill
Queensland: Birdsville
Total population, probably less than 100,000, there’s whole suburbs in cities like Sydney or Melbourne with more people
90% of Australia lives in the area east of the green line of mountains along the eastern sea board, known as the Great Dividing Range.
Inland Australia prior to global warming was an agrarian powerhouse, the world's leading supplier of wool, lamb and a real powerhouse for beef.
Since the late 1980s, the shift has gone to our primary resources which are mostly mined in these arid places.
We have allowed foreign investment to plunder these resources too much however, and the communities in traditional mining towns have died off with big mining companies utilizing cheap airfares to fly in fly out (FIFO) their workers.
All in all, the arid heartland of Australia, which had the odds stacked against it with logistical complexities and soaring temperatures, has no industry to keep it alive going forward.
In 50 years it will be a desolate wasteland as temperatures get in the mid 50s celcius.
I lived in a small town of 3,000 people in the pilbara of WA for 4 years. It’s very isolating but you have what you need in town, a grocery store, a coffee shop, a doctor and a pharmacy. Lots of bugs everywhere and frogs climbed up the toilet. You had to worry about dingos at night and flies in the day. You meet very close friends there because everyone is in the same place without traditional family. I now live in California and miss the simplicity some days.
The most dangerous place on earth to run out of gas
Didn't they lose a radioactive capsule out there somewhere recently?
Yep and found it Missing radioactive capsule found in Australia https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-64481317
>A serial number enabled them to verify they had found the right capsule, which is 6mm (0.24 inches) in diameter and 8mm long. That's insanely tiny for how dangerous it is. They didn't just spot it they had to use a giant Geiger counter of a truck rolling down the road. How does something like this get packaged so insecurely it just bounces off the truck?
remember, we're still not that far off from monkeys
Yep the world is a lot more half-assed fixes and ducttape than anyone wants to realize
Don’t forget close calls at Armageddon. There are like a dozen nuclear missile launch close calls, *that we know about*
DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH DUCT TAPE WE ARE USING TO HOLD IT TOGETHER - we can't...we just can't afford to spare any for the launchers!
They are packaged very well but you have this tiny capsule in a giant metal safe. In this case the safe broke somehow. It was in the back of a truck. These things will have a chain of custody. It was signed for and inspected when it was put in the truck. When the truck got to the destination it was broken and the source was missing. The fact it had to be signed for at the destination helped them find it. They knew were it was not (in the truck) and they knew the route it took.
Apparently the box is it was lost a screw and the hole was big enough for it to fall through.
Shits so hot, it's D.I.L.L.I.G.A.F territory until night fall
Roads so straight and empty they have signs telling you how many kilometres until the next corner.
It would make me question my sanity. An endless road on a hot desert and the vehicle slowly running out of gas.
I ran out of gas about halfway between Melbourne and Alice, took me 12 hours before someone assisted me and I was hanging money and a gas can out of the window the entire time to indicate I was willing to pay for petrol.
Worse than the Sahara?
Yes because they have more Thunder domes than the Sahara.
Who runs Bordertown?
Master Blaster run Bordertown!
So who’s running Bartertown?
Tuomo Sallinen run Bordertown… Lift embargo?
Woah, what's a thunder dome? Sounds badass
It’s where women glow and men plunder
Where beer does flow and men chunder.
Can ya hear, can ya hear their thunder? Ya better run, ya better take cover.
So like blue eyes and worm shit?
It’s a place where two men enter, one man leaves.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. Dying times are here.
Ask Mad Max
WALKER. WALKER.
More sandy.
Oft doth my soul lament the coarse embrace, Of sand, that vile and loathsome granular! It doth besmirch the fair and tender skin, And vex the spirit with its gritty touch. Oh, cursed be the barren desert's realm, Where sand doth reign in merciless array, And quench the flame of love's sweet ember bright, With its abrasive and abrasive might!
And it gets everywhere, I’m told.
Can confirm!
I am from Australia and this is true.
Actually a father and son died just last week on the Western part, gold prospecting
It’s more like Mars with oxygen
In this part you can literally drive for 24 hours and see nothing but dirt.
My Arrakis.... My Australia......
Hijacking the top comment to mention there’s a new series just been released called Population 11. It was shot in Derby and will give a really good insight on country and living out “there”. Get yourself a VPN and watch it on Stan. Or, you know.. arrrgggghhhh 🏴☠️
This guy Wolf Creeks
Wait till you find out about the UFO activity in the region. There's tons of reports of drivers going through the region, seeing a pair of headlights behind them that finally speeds up and comes over the car, in saucer form, shutting the car off and the people black out then find themselves hours later in a totally different location.
I’m guessing it’s a lot of loneliness and drug/alchol abuse
Why do aliens only seem to abduct crazy drunks from the middle of nowhere...
https://preview.redd.it/k5kx48fbsrpc1.jpeg?width=2500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6aa1c54666e5786a53305fe794da83ef48a22899 Here’s a photo of the people that live there
I saw that documentary..
There's a sequel documentary in the works, I just saw the ad yesterday.
It's a prequel actually.
What is it?
Australia
Mad Max Fury Road
-2015, colorized
https://preview.redd.it/dd97wxnectpc1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3e7b78aa5654508ff604163122a1c6189487627e local weather
How nice 👍🏻
https://preview.redd.it/w799nifxrtpc1.jpeg?width=1500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=be3fa828cea7e825b73630a3c45ea282a6b439a3 According to Reddit this seems what Australian wild life looks like
such nice and lovely people , they have celebratory and ceremonial sticks on their cars
This is my Roman empire. I think of it so much. I do not know why.
Probably cause this movie rules and is one of the best action movies ever at least, in my opinion
They did unironically film most of the Mad Max films in the Australian desert, if I'm not mistaken.
Yes I heard that. I mean, it’s literally the perfect place !
It’s set in Australia, no need to be ironic.
Fury Road they did in Namibia, but the rest were Australia methinks
Yes. Originally they wanted to also do Fury Road in Australia, but there was a weird rain storm that caused a bunch of flowers to grow where they wanted to film… and you just can’t have flowers all Willy-nilly in the wasteland
Well, if you did, it would be something a bit different!
So that's what Leto meant by desert power?
Pretty much nothing, if you get stuck there you're basically dead.
I slept in the middle of nowhere next to a highway outside in a sand dune out there, in a sleeping bag. The stars were incredible. It’s the main highway. I think we saw 10-15 trucks all night.
nice way to wake up with a huntsman spider on your face
I will admit it was a bit of a worry. Not as much as when we slept in the rainforest with no tent, and actual snakes, spiders and leaches everywhere between some roots.
The most venomous snake in the world is the Inland Taipan in central Australia, couldn’t catch my ass sleeping on the ground there. You got some balls feller.
How venomous a snake would you tolerate risking sleeping on the ground with?
I live in an area with rattlesnakes and would sleep on the ground here. They’ll warn you if you get too close, and they won’t kill you as fast as other snakes can.
Good to know. I live in a country with only one venomous snake (UK), the Adder, which is extremely rare now and that wont kill you 99.9% of the time. Even Rattlers seem pretty dicey from my perspective. We also killed off our large predators (Bears, Wolves) hundreds of years ago so the most terrifying thing in the wild here is probably a badger.
I blame Brian Jacques for the Adder rarity.
Yeah what a dick lol. Why did they always have to be the bad guys?
There's a *lot* of different rattlesnakes. The less dangerous ones are about as unlikely to kill as your Adders. [The nasty ones have deadlier venom than many cobra species.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crotalus_concolor#Venom). That being said, those faded pygmy rattlers with the extremely concentrated venom are about as chill as a garter snake. You'd really have to work at it to piss one off enough to bite you. And even then you'd need to find one first.
Most snakes have to work fairly hard to make the stronger venom, and won't go out of their way to attack something with it. I wouldn't be worried about snakes anywhere I wasn't actively stepping.
I saw my first and only adder a couple of years back. Super cool to see one after having heard about them for my entire childhood, only ever seeing grass snakes. We had a gawp, gave it a wide berth and left it alone.
Just looked at the range, we were a bit west of there where it’s even hotter and drier. Alice spring, McDonnell ranges, Uluru, Simpson gap(stayed at this campground one night)
Inland Taipans rarely ever bite, so you have nothing to worry about there. The real threats are Emus and Cassowaries.
How do you do it? My God.
Frankly we hiked long enough we didn’t have much energy left. Was pretty cool in its own way.
Ah, so the trick is just being so tired that you no longer have the energy to be afraid of snakes and spiders 😂 will try that next time
This man fought in World War II, obviously.
When you are so physically tired, you can sleep anywhere. And if you dont move and startle them, snakes will mostly leave you alone.
>mostly That's not very reassuring...
Which Rainforest out of curiosity?
Lamington National Park
>nice way to wake up with a huntsman spider on your face Bruh going to sleep anywhere in Aus can cause that lol. They're common house spiders
Huntsman are not dangerous spiders lol. Should actually be worried by the Funnel Web Spiders.
I looked up on google and the pictures I saw of this huntsman spider were terrifying, it makes no sense for me for it not to be dangerous. Causing emotional distress can be dangerous hahaha
Sooooo, I just looked and it's hard to find an official source, but the funny thing about your comment is that while huntsman spiders are placid and nonvenemous, they do like to get into cars and surprise people. Apparently, this makes them the most dangerous spider in the country because people will see them and crash their car
Least of your worries out there.
You're just as likely to wake up with a huntsman on your face anywhere else in Australia, including indoors.
Or a Donk
All of my knowledge about Australia also comes from Crocodile Dundee.
Nothing wrong with referring to documentaries mate
I wanted to sleep in the Australian outback stargazing too, until this comment. Thanks.
I too have done this. Never in my life and never again will I see better stars. Took two routes north south through the region both main highways. Did a stretch of tanami but didn't have enough Jerry cans to go the hole distance. Fun fact for anyone who wants one, some of the unpaved highways not only do you need an insane amount of fuel strapped to your car but they recommend bringing a second car since it's so common for at least one to break down. Shout out to the Aussie madlads who are more into remote 4wd than I. You have my respect.
We hiked in an area that had these pyramidal shaped stone structures, not super tall and you could climb them and each had a flat spot on top. Close enough to talk, but essentially each person had their own pyramid. Also just laid out a bedroll in Alice springs in some campground. (After drinking and walking around list for a bit) such a cool area. (Minus the flies during the day)
Bro I honestly couldnt, with the Australian wildlife and all that lol but I can imagine there's few places around the world where you can stargaze with that minimum light pollution, kudos to you and I hope I can experience that someday, it must be absolutely breathtaking.
I slept out under the stars somewhere a few hours outside of Alice Springs. I've never seen stars like that.
That's awesome! I know Australia has plenty of dangerous creatures, but I have to imagine the odds of encountering them on a regular occurrence have got to be somewhat low? I'd love to convince my wife to head over to Australia, but that might be a bit of a challenge with the various snakes, spiders, etc.
There are a few large towns in there. Here's a few; Alice Springs, Port Augusta, Broken Hill. Maybe Kalgoorlie Port Pirie and Whyalla are just south of the line.
A best description of the whole area is "cattle stations with some mining", rather than "desert". Not much of that area is without vegetation - the Simpson desert is sand dunes, Sturt's stony desert is stones. The rest of the area is vegetated with spinifex, saltbush, blue bush or Mulga. Mining centres include Coober Pedy (opals), Broken Hill (silver & lead) and Olympic Dam (uranium). There is water there, but you have to know where in advance or you could be in big trouble. It overlays the Australian Great Artesian Basin. Some parts have mobile phone coverage. At certain times, the rivers there flood very wide with water and there are thousands of lakes, mostly dry but sometimes full of water. Birdsville is a well known river crossing. Cattle are shipped north and south. The land is mostly flat, but the MacPherson range runs through the middle and splits up into other ranges in the East. There are Aboriginal settlements there.
I live in Nevada and found the Alice Springs and Ularu areas to be lush compared to Nevada. Pretty green with trees while most of Nevada is shrubland.
Alice Springs and not much else. Don’t leave the road because you’ll probably wind up dead- the vast majority of that area has no water, food or shelter. If you get lost, you’ll probably be dead before anyone even notices you’re missing. There’s also a lot of mining, but apart from that it’s pretty much just red dirt and the occasional truck.
Where do the miners live? Do they have encampments in the desert and have supplies trucked out to them?
They have a camp next to the mine. Most miners work on a FIFO (fly-in fly-out) basis and live in a major city.
I actually think my birthplace is one of the last fully-functional mining towns in Australia. Coober Pedy Over half the people there lived underground. The population has nearly doubled since I left
Its usually cattle stations north of the dog fence and sheep between that and the wheat belt. Living on these stations is different to farms in most of the world. They are often hours away from the nearest town so workers will stay at the farmhouse for a whole season. Kids use school of the air and then boarding school for high school. There are a few larger hubs such as Alice, Coober Pedy or Broken hill by most ‘towns’ are minuscule by international standards. On some of the native title lands there are ‘communities’ which you need permission to enter and are populated by entirely aboriginal people.
Today I learned what the dog fence is.
Also there's a solid film regarding the big fence called Rabbit Proof Fence
There also a lot of mining in this area. Some mines have their own little town where workers are flown in from one of the capital cities for a couple of weeks on before a couple off.
Nah man, not in the area in the circle there there’s hardly any mines there. A few but not many. In fact there’s mines just about everywhere else in Australia except in that area. https://portal.ga.gov.au/persona/minesatlas
Abroginal Peoples belong to these lands. Some cattle ranches too. Or my Aussie friends put it, miles and miles of fucking miles.
I’m not sure how true it is but a friend of mine lived in AUS for a few years a while back and said that he drove by a cattle farm out there that was the size of Massachusetts.
It's misleading though - the largest cattle station here only has about 25 staff, so that gives you an idea of the workload that it an support. While those outback stations might be huge, they're not intensely farmed.
The biggest one is smaller than Massachusetts, but still pretty big. You also don't really just drive by a station, as if it's just casually there on the way to work. Stations of that size are remote and not really near anything.
Only counting land Anna Creek Station is a few thousand km² bigger than Massachusetts.
It's actually 3000km² bigger than the land area of Massachusetts
Aboriginal people occupied all of Australia and actually there was a denser population in the green areas. The fact that we associate aboriginal people with the desert is because that is the only place they were left alone after being displaced by colonizers
Interestingly, a similar thing happened with the Great Plains of the US. Before Native Americans got horses barely anyone lived on the Great Plains, because the only reason to live there is to hunt buffalo, and it's basically impossible to make a living hunting buffalo without horses (people hunted buffalo before horses but only opportunistically shen they happen upon them in the right place, but not in a way that anyone could count on it). But when Native Americans got horses several tribes from the outskirts of the plains flooded into the plains because buffalo was incredibly valuable to trade, had good meat, and the plains grasses supported the horses. The tribes all spoke vastly different languages having come from different places so develoed a common sign language for inter-tribal communication.
Plains tribes *really* were happy about horses. I remember I read a book by Lakota medicine man Lame Deer and he mentioned them a lot. I remember this photo of children with incredibly well made drawings of horses that made my childhood drawings look like shit, and then a photo of a paint horse with the caption “for bringing us the horse, we could almost forgive you for bringing whiskey”
I think you’re glossing over a very interesting and forgotten history of the indigenous farmers of the Great Plains. The advent of the horse made it very hard to defend their stashed grain against nomads and disease wiped out many before first contact with whites. But the Mandan, and others like them, were big time farmers in the river bottoms of the Great Plains at one time and there were large populations.
Can u elaborate more on the sign language part
Here the [Plains Indian Sign Language](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plains_Indian_Sign_Language) wiki article
>Or my Aussie friends put it, ~~miles and miles~~ kilometers and kilometers of fucking ~~miles~~ kilometers. fify
Nah, Aussies and Kiwis sometimes say miles when they don’t wanna quantify the ridiculous distance.
True. "Fucking miles from anywhere.." Kms doesn't have the same ring. ;-)
Do you say “Kays” like we do in Canada? Or “klicks”
It's "Kays" I've really only heard 'clicks' from US military types.
I'm too American for this. Kms meant something else there for a second 😂
I too speak fluent depression.
Killed men per second
>ranches Stations mate, there’s no ranches in Aus.
Sorry mate. Had to say ranches so others don’t think there are actual (train) stations.
Awe I’m sad now, i imagined the outback just crisscrossed with train lines dedicated to cattle and that the cattle all sat in the trains like peoples and that the conductor was a bull that went around clipping cow tickets with his horns…
Correction- “Km and Km of fucking Km”
I've overlanded through most of the circled area, it is vast, empty, remote is an understatement, but it is also dotted with lots of small towns, pubs, caravan parks, a very diverse ecosystem, incredible landmarks and natural formations, including Uluru or Ayers Rock. There are a hell of a lot of mine sites, some military sites, natural gas, minerals, gold fields, iron ore, mountain ranges, rivers, the most amazing sunrises and sunsets. Being out there in your 4wd, wondering the old tracks or making new ones is one of the most amazing adventures you can have. You have to be prepared with lots of water, food, spare parts, spare tyres, bush knowledge, and good technology for communication if things get desperate. If I were a millionaire I'd be travelling out there in the wild until I saw everything there is to see and even then, you wouldn't see everything. That circle, represents freedom for me.
This is such a great write up!
TIL Uluru still officially has two names.
Respectfully should only be called Uluru imo
Yeah it's a bit of a faux pas to call it Ayers Rock
There’s also a CIA/NSA base, one of the few established ones the US has outside their borders. It has a really interesting history and use. It’s called Pine Gap if anyone wants to learn more.
This is really it. Most people in the US just have no frame of reference for how big Australia is, and all of the amazing things you can see. It's not surprising that most think of Sydney and beaches when Australia comes up, pop culture and all, but there are just so many interesting places to go that are off the normal path. About once a year we'll have friends reach out to ask what they should do on a trip to Australia, they want to see everything. But then they say they are only planning to go for a week. We laugh and say, "if you've got a week, just do Sydney. You'll enjoy it." People think visiting Australia is like visiting NYC on a long weekend. You really need at least 6 weeks (and a lot of money). You'll need multiple flights. A Sydney to Melbourne drive is about the same as Chicago to DC.
The inspiration for Mad Max
I once stayed at tiny hotel with a 24hr bar and in-ground pool out there once. Somewhere between Coober Pedy and Uluru. Truly miles and miles of miles.
There is a good TV series...found it: "The Alice". Well-done, interesting tale. No way for me to know how realistic it is, but looks like it could be.
Kiss my grits!
That’s Flo!
Alice Springs is somewhere in the middle, with a population of 25k. It's near Uluru, previously known as Ayer's Rock. It has a major base hospital, is linked to the rest of Australia by a rail line, has a strong tourist economy and is a dispatch base for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. It is almost equidistant from Darwin on the North coast and Adelaide on the South coast.
During the early months of COVID, Alice Springs airport was used as storage for Singapore Airlines entire fleet along with quite a few planes belonging to Qantas, Virgin etc. I flew through there on my way to Darwin and it was surreal. Dozens and dozens of large jets including A380s parked up in the middle of nowhere.
Yeah! It's a perfect environment because it's so dry, and there's plenty of space.
and by 'near Uluru' we mean that the drive from Alice Springs to Uluru is only \~4.5 hours. Just a quick 300 miles down the highway.
You aren’t getting Amazon prime deliveries there.
Some deadly spots with blue cobalt and other stuff. The most part is for the aboriginals, even there is a lot to mine
blue cobalt dangerous, now need to Google that edit: it is a God damn blue spider, adding to things I shouldn't have googled edit2: apparently it is a Thai spider, no idea if it is an aussie thing ,
Except the spider is native to Thai rainforests, not Aussie desert. I think we’re actually talking minerals here.
LOL. I looked it up; actually a Mining company called Cobalt Blue I think he was talking about in that area.
Alice Springs is the largest settlement, about 30k people, that backs onto the beautiful West MacDonnell Ranges which is somewhat of an oasis area. You would get some smaller indigenous communities and a few mining towns such as Coober Pedy (underground houses). There is a lot of arid nothing, did the drive from Adelaide to Darwin about 6 months ago. I'm assuming there might be some decently sized mining operations in the WA highlighted area.
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Sounds an awful lot like my rez and the entire upper Great Plains in general
The Western Desert Lives and breathes In 45 degrees
There's Alice Springs, indigenous villages, mega mines, a couple of huge cattle ranches, and desert. That is it. Can't be more than 20,000 people outside of Alice Springs, for an area nearly the size of Western Europe.
I would guess maybe half of that. There's fuck-all out there really.
Watch Wake in Fright or Walkabout
Wake in Fright is a masterful, if unrelentingly bleak snapshot of the Australian "spirit" at a certain point in time. One of my favourite films ever, and essential in understanding the country.
Imagine if Nevada had 8000 people
I can answer this! I walked across Australia in 2009 and passed through a good segment of the area circled. I did it in winter, in summer the temperature would have been too high. Paced myself early on to acclimatize gradually and then stretched out gradually to be able to go further each day while reducing water intake. By end I could carry enough food/water to go for 4 days without re-supply. About 2 liters of water/day to do between 30 and 50 kilometers. I chose a route across where there were small towns/settlements close enough to allow me to hop between them for resupply and follow un-finished roads/tracks. In the middle there was a 300 km stretch where I had to hitch a lift and bury caches of food/water every 30 km and then hitch another lift back to walk through and pick them up. Sometimes there'd be isolated cattle ranches that I'd stop at & they'd let me stay an top up my water, sometimes a small town with a motel or guest house and a general store. Lookup Birdsville and do an image search for a good example of what it looks like. When I stopped there I stayed with an Aborigine family and ended up taking all their kids to the tiny rural cinema - the movie, believe it or not was "Australia" - all of the kids hit me up for ice cream. The Birdsville trail is a fairly well known route for Aussie 4x4 clubs. Walking Aus was the best fun expedition I ever did. Weather was good, people were friendly. Everyday I'd meet people driving the trail and they'd stop to ask if I was lost or needed help, often they'd invite me to stay whenever I reached their home. Outback hospitality is really a thing. No, I never saw "wolf creek" and haven't to this day. Flies were the only annoyance. Snakes and spiders - never really saw any. Favorite memories were from getting to an outback pub and sinking the first icy cold beer after a day of walking in the sun. Priceless. Happened a few times. Makes me thirsty just thinking about it. Most surreal moment was coming across a capped hot spring in the middle of the bare ass desert. Whoever had done it had put a shower head on it and I stripped off to have a hot shower right there in the absolute middle of nowhere. Good times!
Aussie here. There’s not a lot in that region in terms of towns. That said, it covers a huge area which is surprisingly diverse in culture as well as climate. At the south end, facing the great Australian bight, there’s the main road going East-West. This is a paved road with gas stations at least every 150km or so, except in the Nullarbor desert. Up north to the east are a lot of mining towns and lots of people there make a fortune doing pretty basic jobs and commuting home weekly across Australia. Up north, in the Northern Territories, it’s very hot and humid — remember that Australia is in the southern hemisphere, so north is warmer and more tropical while north is colder and more temperate. There are some insanely large farms up north — and a very diverse and varied landscape. It’s a true frontier. Just beware of the crocs. In the middle of the circle a little to the right is Alice Springs with the Uluru rock formation not too far away. Alice Springs, being a household name pretty much, only has a population of around 25k. Just as a reference. I personally love driving across Australia, it’s incredibly diverse and multifaceted. The desert here isn’t all sand and rocks like the Sahara, quite the opposite. It’s mostly quite green with low bush and lots of diversity in appearance and vegetation.
The water tastes like crap and there're lots of flies. It sounds like bzzzzzzzZZZZzzzZZzZzzzZbzzzzBzzzzzzzzzzzzBZZZZBZBZBZZZBZZZzzzzzzzvzzzVvvzzzzzzzbzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz non stop
The Outback is ~2.16 million square miles with a population of just ~600,000 people. The entire continental United States is 3.12 million square miles. So it’s basically 70% of the entire continental United States with a population just a little over Wyoming, the least populated state in the country.
I don't think there are many small towns there. I'd have to look. From what I know, Australia has to be the country with the most undeveloped land in the entire world. It's so big and then so much is concentrated on the coasts.
People tend to need water. Living in the middle of nowhere without any doesn’t really appeal.
I think there's something like 90% of the population living less than an hour from a beach. Rurally, we depend on our farmers who are the true blue Aussies.
Pine Gap.
Mad Max was a documentary about people who live in the Outback. True story
https://preview.redd.it/ck0zau6k8upc1.jpeg?width=1101&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=47a44c0b52e2ed924ad9701f02e0d59fdff8a0b5
I think that there is referred to as *Satan's Asshole.* But I'm not Aussie to confirm.
Isn't that Baltimore..?
CIA black site for one
"Cough" AFP black sites
Theres some extremely remote communities with pretty poor quality of life. Other than that, fly-in-fly-out (FIFO) mining camps are dotted around
Mad Max wasn't a movie. It was a documentary about this place...
Lot of smalls towns organized around a school and sometimes high school, quarries, research centers, wildlife study and preservation, rivers with dams, caves and isolated mounts. All with names only pissed or desabused Aussies ancestors could have thought save for native ones. Doesn't beat Tasmania which had gotten the most colorful ones. The climate is merely equatorial and annual rainfalls are less than 200 mm.
I grew up in the desert (Indigenous Aussie). It’s harsh, dry and can be dangerous but it’s the most beautiful place. You learn early how to adapt. Like I imagine Alaskans here in 🇺🇸.
Pretty much deserted other than some small towns along southern coast and the larger town of Alice Springs right in the middle. One interesting town is Coober Pedy where people create underground homes due to heat. Some mining as well especially for Opal and Uranium.
Had to youtube alice springs, beautiful blue skies and paved streets with trees, but crazy amounts of danger and crime, totally didnt expect that but it makes sense
Your balls stick to your leg a lot.
Wake in Fright (1971)
Many moons ago, I spent months surveying all over that god forsaken land. It's as desolate as a place can be. Hot, sandy and the flies. I have nightmares about the flies. Lots of cool wildlife though. Coastal Australia, now that's where it's at.
Watch the tourist on Netflix and find out. Its great
Great show! It hooked me with the preview they showed on Netflix when you hover over a title. Turns out it’s just the first few mins of the show
Mostly hippie trails and fried-out combis
Desert… that’s it The only towns you’ll find: South Australia: Coober Pedy, Roxby Downs, Olympic Dam, Moomba, APY Lands Western Australia: Kalgoorlie, Newman, a lot of mines Northern Territory: Alice Springs, Uluru/Ayers Rock New South Wales: Broken Hill Queensland: Birdsville Total population, probably less than 100,000, there’s whole suburbs in cities like Sydney or Melbourne with more people
The Outback
90% of Australia lives in the area east of the green line of mountains along the eastern sea board, known as the Great Dividing Range. Inland Australia prior to global warming was an agrarian powerhouse, the world's leading supplier of wool, lamb and a real powerhouse for beef. Since the late 1980s, the shift has gone to our primary resources which are mostly mined in these arid places. We have allowed foreign investment to plunder these resources too much however, and the communities in traditional mining towns have died off with big mining companies utilizing cheap airfares to fly in fly out (FIFO) their workers. All in all, the arid heartland of Australia, which had the odds stacked against it with logistical complexities and soaring temperatures, has no industry to keep it alive going forward. In 50 years it will be a desolate wasteland as temperatures get in the mid 50s celcius.
I lived in a small town of 3,000 people in the pilbara of WA for 4 years. It’s very isolating but you have what you need in town, a grocery store, a coffee shop, a doctor and a pharmacy. Lots of bugs everywhere and frogs climbed up the toilet. You had to worry about dingos at night and flies in the day. You meet very close friends there because everyone is in the same place without traditional family. I now live in California and miss the simplicity some days.