I survived cyclone Helen

Once I was positive that staying in Darwin any longer would not add much substance to my trip, I rented a car with the idea of attacking Kakadu & Litchfield National Parks. I learned about incoming cyclone Helen just as I was leaving.

An overheard conversation:
A guy: "Helen? Why do they always give them girls' names?"
A girl: "Because we're bitches!"

I had good provisions of food and water for 4 days, so I said "no worries" to all those who were worried, and set off. Drove to Litchfield through the thick rain, saw as much of the park as I could, stopped at Florence Falls at nightfall. All the while I had the radio on, and in between songs, all they talked about was the cyclone. Warning, warning, a cyclone is approaching, blablabla, stay indoors, blablabla.

Then Helen came. Nothing much, I guess. The gale blowing, hectolitres in freefall, uprooted trees, branches flying about, gusts shaking the car. This is all a reconstruction of events, for at the time I couldn't see a thing. The sounds filtering through my earplugs hinted at what was going on around, though. I slept like a baby all through it.



At the break of dawn, I awoke, stretched and yawned, and found myself in the middle of the crime scene. I also found that the battery was drained, so the car wouldn't start. Good on me to have foreseen this event and parked just by the "Emergency Call Device". I struggled with the walkie and managed to call the rangers. They took their time to get where I was. This very nice guy gave me a hand with the car and informed me that, just as it appeared, I was the only guy in the park at that time. He also hinted that they were not exactly happy about me being there.

Follow me, he said. I followed him. He certainly floored the gas. It was a fun drive, zigzagging between the fallen trees blocking the road, crushing branches and raising clouds of green leaves. It was, however, somewhat short. We soon arrived at "Aida creek", a place where the road was flooded to a depth of 60cm. My ute wouldn't pass over water higher than 40 cm, Nathan explained. I didn't know that, of course. That's when two heavy coins fell into my pay phone. The first one said clink, if I hadn't run out of battery I would have probably also been stuck, but in the middle of the river in water up to my waist. The second one said clink, now I understand why the snorkel. Lucky of me, I could say.

But that still left me stranded in Litchfield for an indeterminate and unforeseeable amount of time, with some 30 km of road to move in, cut off at both sides. So I idled, and went to the one attraction that was open, the Magnetic Termite Mounds.

I was mostly "Alone in the Park" the whole day, except for a very few lucky owners of big 4WDs with snorkels. Two guys passing by in a monster-truck ute gave me a deja-vu. They seemed jolly good chaps, but I couldn't help thinking of the passenger as Cletus The Slack-Jawed Yonkel from The Simpsons, and the driver as Butthead, both on a night out. I instantly knew that if this was USA, a confederate flag would have decorated the back of the truck. They stopped and we sort of chatted a brief while. It looked so much like a scene from one of so many identical Hollywood movies that a big smile came to my lips while I was unsuccessfully trying to decipher their impossible Territorian dialect. Eventually Cletus and Butthead drove off, which left me in my own good company for the rest of the day.

Everybody opens big eyes when they learn I was alone in Litchfield when Helen said hello. I suppose that in times of danger, the usual, and thus supposedly sensible, thing to do is to seek the company of your fellow hominids. I say that's cattle instinct. In this situation I was much safer and happier away from hanging power lines, wobbly buildings and opportunistic thieves.

So, to sum up, I survived cyclone Helen. Admittedly, so did everyone else, but I had more fun.