Toppin' it off in the "Top End" -Manic Monday

Australia--the land down under--and the land of many wonders.  The land of kangaroos, wallabies, and the thorny devil.  The land of beaches, bars...and army crawling through city landscape?!  This is where one of my crazy and manic stories come from, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia--this region also commonly referred to as the "Top End."  It is referred to the "Top End," mostly because this area is not ideal for living in.  Dry and tropic, no great vegetation, and some beastly critters around.  Read some more about this crazy place in a chapter from Australia for Dummies, which I so intelligently researched via google!

photo: wikipedia.org

The highlighted area is the Northern Territory, what is highlighted in red is considered the Top End.  Darwin is all the way at the very top! 

As for my manic story, it comes along in the latter half of the trip, about 10 days left in this beautiful country.  Being the crazy college students we are, of course we made sure to hit up every party scene in every place we went.  Darwin, even though rather small, had a very typical tourist area full of shops, restaurants, and bars.  Our final night it Darwin, 6 of us girls decided to hit up the bar scene one last time.  Not only would we find fine looking Australia men, but this was a big area for the Australian military--a man with and accent AND in uniform?!  Oh yes, we loved the sound of that.  Not everyone in the group felt the urge to stay up until 3 a.m., like myself and my friend Blair (that's another manic story itself).  Our group withered away person by person--and yes it is okay for a girl to walk home or take a taxi by herself, Australia is really safe (I'm sure some areas would be questionable, but we were in safer areas).  The next morning our friend Lauren had quite the story for us while we were heading to the airport preparing to go back to Brisbane.

On her walk home, an area halfway between the bars and our hostile had been barricaded by police due to a water leak flooding the streets.  Some girls told Lauren to follow them--up a block, over a fence, and crawl through some bushes--the "only" detour around the water leak.  In her intoxicated state, she believed the girls, even though she was slightly skeptic.  The 3 of them made it all the way to the bush crawl, army style, when they heard the police--"Oh shit!  We're out," chimed the two navigators, Lauren was stuck by herself.  She popped up from the bush behind the Holiday Inn, tangled in branches and soiled in dirt, while the cop had a puzzled look on his face.  "Excuse me Miss, what are you doing? Can I help you?"  Lauren replies with sobs, "I...just...want...to go...back.... to my...hotel!"  The cop spoke in a comforting tone while giving her directions back to the hostile, Lauren face began to get red and well-up with tears.  The cop realized she was completely lost, and offered her a ride in the cop car back to the hostile.  Lauren was the only one on this trip to be escorted in a police car, thankfully for no law breaking reasons.

We were dying of laughter, attempting not to pee our pants.  Lauren is a very sweet girl with a sense of style, and enjoyed getting dolled up for a night out.  It was very comical that out of everyone in our group, Lauren would have been the one to crawl through a bush at a Holiday Inn, then getting taken home by a cop--an Australian cop none the less!  I guess Lauren met the dream man after all, and Australian man in uniform.

July 2009

Before we headed out for our final night in Darwin

Bethany, myself, Susanna, Kim, Lauren, & Blair