The six of us stood silently watching the poor bird try to shuffle away, wondering if we could administer first aid to an eagle.

We decided to find help for the eagle in the next town. An hour later we pulled into a gas station at Marla. Taylor, Carrie-Ann and Jonny stayed to call the rental agency about our shattered windshield, and Jakob, Kate and I walked to the police station. Jakob told two bored-looking cops our tragic story. They weren’t impressed.

“A wedge-tailed? Yeah, happens all the time,” the cop laughed. The two of them griped about road kill, and then remembered why we were there in the first place. “Alright,” the cop said, “I’m heading down that way in a bit. I’ll see what I can do.”

Dejected, but having done the best we could, we drove (very slowly) to Coober Pedy. Things started to look up once we fired up the campsite grill for a makeshift Thanksgiving dinner of turkey and cheese melts, fried potatoes, sausages, bread, and apples. We lit a sparkler on the mound of sandwiches and Jonny made a speech.

There was a lot to be thankful for that night, not to mention narrowly avoiding being chased out of the campsite by the management (we had accidentally paid for only 5 campers, not 6). We were also thankful for Uluru sunsets, refreshing canyon watering holes, singing bartenders, animal-friendly cops, sympathetic campsite managers, and double-laminated windshields.

The ten-hour drive back to Adelaide was a long one, especially with a half-functioning windshield, but once we had parked the van outside our university housing, we didn’t want to leave it. We’d become so attached that we spent one last night in the van, looking at photos and laughing about the past five days. Our trip had been far from flawless, and maybe my family had reason to caution us, but our outback adventure was one I will never forget.

©Kristen Hamill