Surreal

I'm looking at an embroidery machine and want to get one that can be serviced somewhere I go regularly, rather than being sent away. So I have two choices, the major town down the road or the city. I phoned someone in the city and was talking to them about it.

"I'm interested in getting a machine I can have serviced easily, but I'm actually from the country."
"Where are you?"
"Tennant Creek."
"But that's just down the track, I thought you meant overseas."

First off, the track is NT slang for the Stuart Hwy, the road that runs from Darwin to Adelaide. So I really am just down the track.

By 12ookm.

Yes, over a thousand kilometres away from our nearest city, but it's considered local. We have a house there, we go there regularly, a lot of people from here do it in 2 days but we usually leave early and just do one.

Now to put that in perspective, if we were in Victoria, 12ookm would pretty much cover the state from east to west. If we were in the UK, it just about covers the countries (England and Scotland) from north to south. If we were in the US, you could drive across 3 states, or at least across Texas east to west. But that's our nearest city.

There are 3 other towns in the NT, Alice Springs has around 28,000, so technically it's a city, Katherine has a bit under 10,000 and Nhulunbuy has around 4000. Then Tennant has around 3000 and Maningrida about 2500, Borroloola about 1500. There are several large communities and that's it. Population of around 200 000 and bigger than the UK.

No wonder Territorians are distinctive.