Another interesting thing to note about the driving around these parts is all the different agricultural regions and their strict quarantine requirements. It can be very tricky to stock up on fruit and veggies because every few hundred kilometers you find you have to throw out what you’ve bought. Now that I’m thoroughly ensconced in New South Wales I should be safe for the next few days before I get to Queensland – where I’m sure I will have to go through the same process again.
Murray River Meandering through agricultural regions in South Australia.
Much of the agriculture relies on the Murray River for irrigation. This area is where Australia seems to get most of their produce, although Western Australia seems to try growing most of its own. Prices for produce do seem a lot lower around here, anyway.
Farmland in need of water next to the Murray River.
The small towns on this side of the country seem a bit more vibrant than they do in the west. As opposed to spending time in big cities, small towns are often great to check out. No parking hassles with no meters. Everything you need is within easy walking distance. Surprisingly the food can be really quite good if you seek out the right places. Broken Hill, New South Wales, appears to be a sister city to Kalgoorlie. Lots of nice old buildings, friendly libraries with free WiFi, and cool little cafes with trendy looking people – perhaps displaced from the larger cities. Had some wonderful french toast for breakfast this morning. Also had some nice pizza from a town in South Australia called Loxton. Some day soon I will break out the Trangia and cook my own dinner.
Broken Hill, New South WalesBroken Hill, New South WalesBroken Hill, New South Wales
Loxton was very small and had its share of people you’d expect to find in Dunt, South Australia. Loxton also had nice old buildings and everything you needed within a short walking distance of the town square.
Spent the night near Broken Hill in Kinchega National Park in New South Wales last night sleeping all by myself along the Darling River – with no other campers in the park. It was a beautiful park that was full of a wide variety and abundant supply of wildlife. I saw countless kangaroos including BIG grey ones I’d never seen before that would give extra big jumps when hopping away from you in your car – perhaps trying to intimidate you with their powerful rear legs. I also saw countless emus, smaller than usual looking monitor lizards, strange black chicken-like birds that preferred to run than fly, and heard lots of strange loud noises in the night – especially when sleeping along the river. All the animals seem to rely on the river to drink in the evenings, so it is amazing what you will see and hear there. Lots of big fish lurking underneath as well.
Lake Menindee in Kinchega National Park
I tried taking a shortcut up from Mildura, Victoria (nothing to write home about) on my way here and found some of the worst dirt roads to negotiate that I have ever found. The roads inside the national park were not much better. But then I remembered that it was just a little less than a year ago that this entire region was hit by massive floods:
Where I pitched my tent was about 2 miters below the flood lines on the trees in the area. The roads had obviously all been submerged and washed out at the time so it is probably a miracle that they are in as good a state as they are in at the moment.
Unfortunately for me it was one of the very hottest nights I’ve ever had camping. I set up just my tent with no fly and it still took forever to cool off! I tried to do like the animals and go for a swim but the bank was so steep and muddy that I could only wade in about a foot to splash myself. Venturing any further in would sink my legs into very deep endless clay, so i thought it best to stick to the shoreline.
I would have liked to have spent more time there but the heat was a bit much to deal with. Should cool off in the next few days…
Interesting to compare my drive this time with the drive I did last time in 2004. Now I’m driving an SUV which uses a bit more fuel than my little Corolla did. I seem to be carrying MUCH more stuff than I did last time, which is a bit of a pain. Among the items is my mountain bike which has stayed in the back the entire time up until now due to various reasons (including security, fuel economy, and nasty road surfaces).
I have the aid of numerous GPS devices, but as far as navigation is concerned, they are really only best for micro views of where you are going and are a but cumbersome to step back and get the big picture of where you are going for the day. Map books still lead the way on getting big picture views of what is around. On the other hand, the GPS has been very good for sussing out all the service station options in small towns (where I have saved quite a bit tracking down the stations the locals use on back streets). They are also good for finding accommodation, shops, libraries, and other things.
It’s also been nice to have 4wd capabilities for some of the roads I’ve been on and very nice to have cruise control. MP3 player as well? I actually had one of those installed in my little Corolla the last time I did a long road trip. Lots of hi-tech stuff including my laptop – which makes it much easier to get photos on these blog posts! Most libraries I’ve found have free WiFi available these days.
Lots of fun with time changes on this trip. Along the train ride over east there was a special time zone called “train time” which was 1 hour earlier than Perth. Then you arrived in Adelaide and the time was 1/2 hour earlier still. Then I drive a relatively short distance to Victoria and the time moves another 1/2 hour forward to equal Melbourne and Sydney time. It stays that way up until I camp in Kinchega National Park in New South Wales, but when I double back briefly to visit Broken Hill the timezone changes again back to Adelaide time (or so say the road signs). When I eventually get up into Queensland the time will go back an hour from Sydney and Melbourne time. That means Brisbane is 1 hour later in time than Sydney and Melbourne, even though it is well east of them:
So I headed off en-route from Adelaide to Cooktown, Queensland after I had that last rabies shot in my arm with the intention of camping for the night in the Mount Crawford Forest Reserve just about an hour outside of town. Well, so much for that plan! I arrived to find a big sign stating “No Camping Between 1 December…” and some other autumn date. Australia takes bush fires very seriously and every state seems to handle their response differently, but it appeared as though South Australia just shut down their camp sites. Western Australia would have simply banned campfires. Oh well, I decided to keep heading out towards the east as I was planning to do the next day and hone in on the region I was planning to travel through the next day.
My swimming spot on the Murray River.
Lucky for me I stumbled across a really nice little place along the banks of the Murray River. For those of us living in Western Australia, we get a little tired about endless news stories about the Murray and Darling Rivers, but they are two of Australia’s largest rivers and valuable sources of water for the a large sector of the countries population in the east. The camp I found was actually a sister camp to Adelaide Shores (part of a franchise), but it had far more natural features and was right along the river. Just across the river was Murray River National Park, although the current was a bit too swift to even think about swimming across to it. Although the temperature was hovering around 40C (104F), I was able to immerse myself underwater along a sandbank until my core temperature dropped low enough to doze me off to sleep in my tent after sunset. Very nice!
So far my record of actually following my itinerary accommodation plans has been quite poor. This has largely been due to the heat – with temperatures havering around +100F/+38C for over 12 days straight! Some national parks have proved to be very dried out, extremely hot, and so desolate that I have been skipping them in favor of cooler surroundings. Forest Den National Park, for example, had no den nor forest. It was essentially a ranch full of cattle with a campground 10km down a 4wd track that was just a patch of dirt next to a watering hole in 100F degree heat. I sat their for 5 minutes in the heat before deciding to move on. The cows even seemed to get a bit hostile towards me in my car on the way out, running up to me to block my exit and chasing me out. Don’t know what they would have been like in the middle of the night!
Other parks I visited but skipped were Gundabooka National Park, NSW (also very hot and isolated with claims of video surveillance even though there was no electricity around for miles – but the security problem issue was duly noted), Currawinya National Park, QLD (way too isolated and hot), Moorrinya National Park, QLD (another cattle farm?), and White Mountains National Park, QLD (no mountains I could see, but perhaps a few hills and a very hot and remote campsite down a 4wd track).
On the other hand, there were a number of national parks I had not anticipated visiting that I was able to get into at the last minute without any problems – so I am very happy things worked out they way they have.
So I arrived in Adelaide bright and early Tuesday morning and only had to wait a few minutes for my car to be unloaded from the train. I had one last rabies shot to get from The Travel Doctor in town on the following morning (just the way the schedule worked out) so I decided to pop into town for breakfast and find a few new things to check out that I missed on my last visit in 2004. For breakfast I revisited a cafe I discovered years ago connected to Adelaide’s Central Market. The Central Market is a great old market much like Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia with lots of independent fruit and vegetable sellers and butchers — but curiously no Amish! I stocked up on super cheap peaches, just coming into season here, as well as other snacks for the road before having a nice breakfast in an adjoining cafe.
Afterwards I found my way up to Adelaide’s Botanical Gardens to have a free snoop around when I discovered a massive wombat dead in the middle of a side path. It was so big I wasn’t sure what it was at first, but when I reported it they acted like it happens all the time there. They were very nice gardens to walk around, but you would feel the heat beginning to build – so I thought it best to hop into a few free museums while I had the chance.
One annoying thing about popping into cities if you have a car on these trips is having to worry about car security and parking and whether your meter is about to run out. It always leaves you feeling a little on edge while you’re snooping around. I did find that most of Adelaide’s museums were all set up together in the same “cultural precinct” area so it was easy to make my way through the Immigration Museum, Art Gallery (aka museum), and South Australian Museum before my meter ran out. All were very nice but a bit on the small side.
Once the temperature started to cool a bit, I headed out to the campsite I reserved at Adelaide Shores. NOT my idea of perfect camping, but about as cheap accommodation as you can find in the city. The nicest thing about it is that it is located on next to the beach and an extensive network of cycling paths. Having thrown my mountain bike in the back of the car I took it out for a spin up and down the coastline for about an hour. I ended up in very trendy Glenelg which seemed to mimic L.A.’s beach communities where I had myself a nice dinner.
To get started on another around-the-world tour, I thought I would do what I did last time and explore parts of Australia that I haven’t had the chance to visit yet. Because I’ve seen so much in the west I thought I would take a different tack from driving or flying and catch the Indian Pacific train from Perth to Adelaide with my car on-board. A lot people I know have always been interested in seeing what it would be like to ride the train over 43 hours through some of the least populated deserts in Australia.
Cars loaded on Indian Pacific for journey from Perth to Adalaide.
I chose to take a cheap sleeper seat to save a few bucks and see how tolerable it would be. The trip turned out to really be great and a lot more interesting than you would think for rolling through endless views with flat surfaces and no trees (via the Nullarbor Plain). The trip was really quite comfortable – even for us spendthrifts. There were 50 of us riding the cheap way (from very young to very old) and we had one train carriage for doing whatever we wanted (sleeping, eating, relaxing, socializing) and two other cars with some restrictions on what we could do there. One of the other cars was a lounge and the other a diner. Sleeping was not permitted outside of our main carriage and only their food could be consumed in the dining car. Otherwise, we could do pretty much whatever we wanted in our 3 cars and had quite a bit of room to spread out. The lounge car was only available for an additional fee of $15 for the trip. For some reason this put off most of the passengers I was riding with – which resulted in me and about 7 other people having the whole place to ourselves. It had big comfortable seating and plenty of windows to view out through.
View of the Indian Pacific Lounge Car (Red Class) while train shoots through wheat belt region outside of Perth.
The food was really quite good and only about $13 a meal. I had a very nice Thai Chicken Curry the first night and a nice homemade Chicken Pie meal the second night. They cooked up Big Aussie Breakfast for the morning and had a range of sandwiches and snacks that could be purchased all day. The pricing was comparable to what you would normally pay anywhere (or even possibly cheaper).
The train was huge and contained 37 carriages overall (including 2 carriages full of automobiles in the back – including mine). This may have had something to do with “The Christmas Train” event having happened on the last trip out to Perth a week earlier or it may just be the norm. Aside from our cheap “red” class there were gold and platinum classes with formal dining cars and proper sleeping quarters. Now that I have had the chance to ride overnight trains in proper beds vs seats, I have no regrets about the red service they were offering. I could never sleep that well on the trains in Thailand and Egypt due to constant irregular motion of the train rocking the beds, but these Indian Pacific sleeper seats could be reclined to almost completely flat and had tons of leg room. I actually slept quite well in them once I figured out how to get on my side. I think perhaps we have all slept in cars while growing up and might somehow find seats more natural to sleep in when motion is a constant factor.
The train runs over 2500 kilometers between Perth and Adelaide, but continues on to Sydney – connecting the Indian Ocean with the Pacific Ocean. Before we arrived in Kalgoorlie for our first stop the train needed to pull over and allow freight trains and smaller passenger trains pass through from time to time. Once we got past Kalgoorlie there were minimal interruptions and a steady progression at about 115kph (according to my trusty GPS watch). For one (almost) 500km stretch the train travels down a perfection straight stretch with no bends at all in the track.
Unlike the road that runs across the bottom of the continent, the Indian Pacific route rides about 150km north through the heart of the Nullarbor Plain. While traveling from Perth to Adelaide the train needs to stop 3-4 times to deliver mail to people who live in the Western Australia parts these very remote areas. When traveling through the South Australia section of the trip it stops to pick up mail from a few places. When traveling west the train drops mail in South Australia and picks up mail in Western Australia. Each mail drop represents about 35 people sprawled out across hundreds of square kilometers. In addition to mail, the Indian Pacific is also used to pick up people from these remote regions so they can visit doctors in major cities or tend to other business they need to tend to in person. And then every year they send through Christmas train that stop to entertain young children and people living in these remote areas with music and Christmas treats. The conductors on the train have come to know quite a few of these people living on large pastoral leases because they are often their only physical contact with the outside world.
One of 3-4 mail drop locations servicing around 35 people scattered across 100’s of square kilometers in the Nullarbor Plain
The locals share tales of camels on the loose and dingoes surrounding their homes and eating their water pipes to get water out of their plastic irrigation pipes in the dry seasons. There were many kangaroos to be seen hopping away from the train as well as livestock who just roam over the rails. I asked one of the conductors whether they ever get hit and he acted like it was a fairly regular event. Putting up fences in such remote areas just isn’t worth it. Of the stops the train made, we were only permitted to get off at two of them, both for fuel and water: Kalgoorlie in Western Australia and Cook in South Australia. Kalgoorlie is still a sizable town thriving off the gold industry, but Cook is more or less a ghost town now with only a 4 residents. Cook was originally set up to service all trains with fuel and water with a school, hospital, swimming pool, golf course, airport, etc with 35 inhabitants — all at government expense but it with dissolved when the train networks were privatized. Cook has reached 48C (118F) at times but it was merely 23C (the mid 70’s) where we were there.
The Indian Pacific only stops twice for passengers to get off, this one in Cook, South Australia.
Along the Nullarbor Plain you would see the odd radio tower or tiny community. Everything seemed to rely on solar panels and rainwater tanks for survival. At one point we even came past a fresh looking brand new sizable airport in the middle of nowhere. Staring off into the horizon in any direction often brought strange parallax illusions of small objects racing in different directions because it was hard to judge distances. Even with all the desolate views out the windows, I still found myself quite mesmerized by the eerily beautiful scenery.
Looking back towards Perth while crossing to Adelaide.
Yes, I’ve finally made my way back to Perth — after a choppy flight from Bangkok. Choppy enough for half the crowd on the plane to burst into applause when we finally touched down. Perth can get pretty windy at times and it was a real roller coaster coming in.
The weather here right now is perfect: just like those cool dry Canadian summer days of yore. Perth’s having an unusually cool summer this year. Hasn’t hit 40C (104F) yet (according to the taxi driver who took me home from the airport)!
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