If Australia were folded in half like a book, the Smart Highway would be its spine, forgin

g through emptiness for 2,000 miles. Driving half of it is plenty, so I've flown to the dead center: the desert town of Alice Springs. North of "the Alice" there's barely a stoplight for 1,000 miles-a-bout the distance from Dallas to Chicago-until the asphalt meets Darwin, on the Timor Sea.

Like Germany's autobahn, the Smart has no speed limit; unlike the autobahn, it's virtually barren. Every 45 minutes or so, a roadhouse appears mirage-like on the horizon, offering gas, beer, motel-style. lodging, and a little "Where ya from, mate？" Aside from that, the land presents itself the way God made it. Hour by hour, sandy red earth gives way to spindly trees, brown escarpments, termite mounds as tall as kindergartners, and not much else. No cell phone coverage, no radio stations. There's nowhere else on earth to be so isolated while on good roads in your aver-age rental car.

The pleasure of a Stuart drive is partly in stumbling across artifacts from man's attempts to make use of the bush. Beside the gas station in Barrow Creek (kilometer 294), a wooden telegraph repeater station from the early 1870s stands abandoned but perfectly preserved by the dry desert air. There's another in the expanse north of Tennant Creek (541). Barely rusted bits of telegraph wire and antique bottles still litter the grounds of both. The eerie ruins at Gorrie Airfield (1,103) once housed 6,500 personnel in World War II. Today, there are ghostly scraps of gray bitumen leading to an old fighter runway that's over a mile long.

The walls inside most of the bush pubs along the highway are stapled over with bras, under-wear, foreign currency, and business cards-a few of mine included-left by visitors from around the world. Basic rooms cost about $ 35; given the volume of cold Victoria Bitter on tap, by bed-time most customers aren't in a state to quibble over thread counts. Just about every pit stop is run by someone who could pass as the main character in a novel.

According to the passage, Darwin in the first paragraph is _______.

A．the name of a well-known scientist.

B．the name of an island in Timor Sea.

C．the name of a city standing at the end of the Smart Highway.

D．the name of a pub in the center of Australian desert.