After a year of hunkering down and keeping my nose to the grindstone, it’s time for another break. I have to say I’ve been feeling a bit gypped over the past few weeks. The temperatures here in Perth still seem to be hovering around our winter norms, even though it is supposed to be summer. And now I’m heading for the frozen tundra of North America. Oh well… at least I’ll have three days to sizzle in the tropics enroute. Bangkok always seems to be in the nineties.
Category: Australia
27 Flights Later…
After 27 takeoffs and landings, I have finally found my way back to where I started my journey on August 1st: Perth, Australia. The air and streets seem super clean, the humidity is very low, the sun is very bright, and the people drive annoyingly slow and stay in nice neat traffic lanes. I’m having to get used to life with western toilets and toilet paper again. And I’m still not used to drinking tap water without having to purify it first. On the other hand, it sure seems quiet around here — without the hustle and bustle of Cairo, Delhi, Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Singapore. It will take some getting used to!
Snorkel City…
Like most Hawaiian Islands, the Big Island has a very wet windward coast on the east and a very dry leeward coast in the west. The rain forests on the windward coasts are usually really fascinating and full of hippies (or “ferals”, as they are known in Australia), but the constant rain and dampness can eventually start to wear you down. The dry, leeward coasts offer much warmer and sunnier weather with much calmer surf. Of course, the heat in these places can start to wear you down just as quickly.
It seems most visitors to places like the Hawaiian and Fiji Islands are primarily interested in hanging out on a beach, so these dry coasts seem to attract most tourists and tourist resorts. I can’t say I’m much for hanging out on beaches personally, but it’s nice to do a bit of everything while you’re travelling. And besides, there are some places in these areas that are good for snorkelling, and that is something I do like to do.
So there amongst the $500-a-night resorts, including a multi-million dollar Hilton (dubbed “Disneyland” by the locals), I checked into my $20-a-night cabin with ocean views overlooking Hapuna Beach State Park. Okay, it was pretty basic, and it looked like it hadn’t really had any maintenance since it was built in the 1970’s — but it did the trick and was a short walk from a fabulous beach. After being visited by a few spiders, geckos, mosquitoes, ant colonies and mice in my cabin, I just decided to pitch my freestanding tent on the floor so I could sleep in peace. I’ve been used to such nighttime visitors since I first arrived in Fiji.
Hapuna Beach State Park was a good base to use for swimming and some decent snorkelling along some reefs near the southern end of the cove. But the really nice snorkelling was a few clicks down the road behind a wealthy neighbourhood called Puako. I knew I had found a great spot when I spotted an expensive snorkelling tour operator anchored just offshore and other divers climbing out of the surf. Sure enough, it was one of the best snorkelling spots I’ve ever found, with loads of colourful tropical fish swimming into and out of deep canyons a few hundred feet offshore. The divers told me they liked it for the big underwater lava tube they could explore.
While I stayed at Hapuna Beach State Park, I also did the obligatory visit to the Hilton Waikoloa Village (aka Disneyland) — just to see how the other half lives. The answer? They live just like they do at home, with giant shopping malls right there on the beach with them. It reminded me more of King of Prussia Mall than anything else. And to think that King of Prussia is what I try to take vacations from…
Jiggedy Jig!
At long last, I’ve found myself back in Fremantle. Home again, home again, jiggedy jig! I spent my last day hiking through Porongurup National Park, near Albany, Western Australia.
And my last night away in Walpole on the southwest coast of Western Australia — in the heart of the giant Karri forests. Of all the places I’ve visited around Australia, it is still one of the most beautiful, although a bit cold this time of year. I actually found a quarter inch of ice on my windshield in the morning and couldn’t get it off (since we don’t have ice scrapers here). I had to resort to turning the car into the morning sun and running the defroster for a while.
The past few days in Fremantle have been quite hectic, with six weeks of mail to catch up on and serious cleaning and repacking to do. With about nine hours to go before my red-eye flight to Auckland, New Zealand (via Sydney), I’m happy to say I’ve finished all my errands and made everything I’m travelling with fit into my backpack.
I will be spending the next three weeks in New Zealand and will write from there soon!
Remember Skylab?
I’m spending my second night in a youth hostel in Esperance. Yesterday, I was the youngest resident (with several retirees). Today I’m the oldest. Ahhh… you’re never too old to backpack.
A farmer staying here told me yesterday that there are big bucks to be made selling “Blood and Bone” fertiliser, and that’s what the kangaroo collector was probably doing with them in South Australia. He also told me how road train drivers approach livestock when they’re on the road — usually aiming to knock them on the edge and not hitting them full on (which would cause too much damage to their trucks). Ah, the joys of road kill talk…
The weather has been very stormy for most of my stay here, but it has just begun to settle down. To take refuge from the rain, I spent some time perusing the local museum. The coolest exhibit they had was the remains of Skylab, which fell here in 1979. It was really interesting to see all the bits, some of them huge, and read all the newspaper articles. I can remember everyone worrying about whether it would fall on them back in the U.S. I also remember NASA claiming that it had safely landed in the Indian Ocean — just before the people of Esperance announced that, actually, it had fallen on them. There were big things in the exhibit like the freezer, hatch door, and a giant cylinder. It’s a miracle none of it landed on anyone’s head.
The weather did manage to clear up enough for me to see the outdoor sites as well. The “Big Sur” type drive is really spectacular with many an endless beach with lots of white sand and huge rocks. The local national park has pure white beaches that seem to run for dozens of miles. There were also whales in the neighbourhood, but I didn’t personally see any.
Tomorrow, I will head for Walpole (in the thick of the Karri forests south of Perth) to spend the night before making that final 5-hour leg back to Perth on Sunday.
Esperance… 10,000 miles later!
After my night sleeping on the state line, I got up bright and early and soldiered back to the car for another long day of driving. One of the reasons I decided to sleep at the border village was because it was actually on the South Australian side, and there was an Agricultural Inspection Station waiting for me to get into Western Australia. This was the fourth zone I’ve had to cross into, where I was expected to throw away all my produce, and I was getting a bit sick of it. The other zones were around Kununarra, the Northern Territory state line, and the lower parts of South Australia. I still had some oranges and apples I bought at Adelaide’s Central Market, so I had them all for breakfast before getting started on my journey.
This drive had a few more trees than the Nullarbor, but it also had the distinction of holding Australia’s longest straight stretch of road — the Ninety Mile Straight, which got a bit boring. I actually found it a bit dangerous because oncoming traffic seemed to appear out of nowhere. You would get tired of constantly looking in the same place for too long and find it hypnotising, so you would try to keep your eyes moving around, looking from side to side, just to stay awake. And then, pow, there would be a truck barrelling down on you.
I finally arrived in Norseman in Western Australia in the mid-afternoon, where the tourist centre greeted me with a free hot shower and a free private camping spot 22 kms south of town. It was quite nice, private, isolated, and beautiful with lots of thick bush.
From there, I made the final few hours of driving this morning to get to the southern coastal town of Esperance — which is actually only about 8 hours away from Perth.
Esperance is supposed to be beautiful, but it’s been pouring rain ever since I got here. I’ve checked into another single room at the YHA in anticipation of another nasty storm front passing through. I think it’s probably already here. Esperance is famous for having lots of big, beautiful beaches here with pure white sand. They have a bay full of islands and a local national park with some good hikes (I’ve been told). There is also a scenic drive nearby that it supposed to be like Big Sur. I’ll let you know when the weather clears.
The Nullarbor Run
So after a few days of freezing nights in the damp cold of Adelaide, I decided I should start making my way back to Perth—as time was running out. I thought it would be more interesting to try and camp in as many national parks as I could on the way across the Nullarbor. One park I camped in was Mount Remarkable National Park, a little but, ummm, remarkable park just outside of Port Augusta (which I had to pass back through to get around the Spencer Gulf, anyway). Mt. Remarkable had lots of nice trails I could hike, running through gorges and up to the tops of mountains. I saw an echidna there, a relative of the porcupine, doing a bit of echidna-type business along the river.
After a night in Mount Remarkable, I headed through Port Augusta and down to the southern end of the Eyre Peninsula to camp at Lincoln National Park (next to Port Lincoln, and not named after Abe). The Eyre Peninsula was quite nice with a lush green interior and nice, quiet little coastal towns that are probably a bigger attraction during the summer months. It was cold (again), but I was able to get my own campground and private beach there. I could tell a storm was brewing in the distance, but I didn’t know what was in store for me until the next day. Fortunately, I was able to find the perfect sheltered spot for my tent, so I didn’t suffer.
My original plan was to break the run across the Nullarbor Plain up into about 500-600 kilometer sections. Unfortunately, a huge nasty storm front moved through with driving rain and gale-force winds that didn’t make the idea of stopping to camp anywhere along the way a desirable one. Instead, I just headed as far west as I could, hoping to get through to the other side of the storm (which was coming from the west)
The storm made what would otherwise have been a notoriously boring drive (“Nullarbor” means “no trees” in Latin) into a beautiful drive with huge dark cloud formations, distant storms, and lots of full rainbows. The drive across the bottom of Australia runs very close to the edge of the continent, and there are numerous places you can pull off the road to watch the Southern Ocean crashing into sheer cliffs. There were also a couple of passes up onto and off of plateaus that were really spectacular to look down from.
I made it to the Western Australian / South Australian border and found a cheap cabin in the tiny “border village” for the night so I didn’t have to worry about camping in the elements. $25. Not a bad deal. It even came with a tea kettle so I can boil water and make dinner in my room. The first night I’ve slept indoors in about 5 weeks!
Adelaide, South Australia
After another long boring drive through the desert, I decided to make a pit stop in Adelaide — even though it is actually about 600 kilometers out of my way. The desert I had to drive through in northern South Australia (if that makes any sense) was largely in a government protected military area titled “Woomera” and famous locally for housing boat people in camps (indefinitely).
The South Australian desert has two distinctive characteristics in Australia. They seem to have a lot more flies than anywhere else I’ve been. Flies in Australia are not like the flies they have in the U.S. They seem preoccupied with trying to fly into every orifice on your body. Your nose, your ears, your mouth. Whatever they can find open. It’s very annoying. In the U.S. they just seem interested in your food. In Australia they seem to love the heat. In the U.S. they seem to like hanging out in cool places like your garage.
The other distinctive characteristic of the South Australian desert is the amount of road kill. When I pulled back on to the Stuart Highway from Uluru and started heading south, I was taken by the number of dead kangaroos lying by the side of the road that looked like they had only been hit in the past day or two. I even saw one with blood draining out of it into the middle of the road, but that may have had more to do with the vulture picking at its flesh than having just been hit. The odd thing was that I couldn’t seem to find any dead kangaroos that looked like they had been lying there for more than just a day or two. It was like some mass slaughter had just taken place.
Then after hundreds of kilometers of driving, I saw a truck pull over ahead of me and turn on some flashing orange lights. A man jumped out from his cab with a huge meat hook and swiped in down towards one of the fresh dead kangaroos. I just managed to pass him before the impact, but I did notice some sort of odd grinder on a trailor attached to the back of his truck. Ugh! Their kangaroo problem, I figured, must be so bad that they have to send this guy out to collect them every day. That’s why there wasn’t any older skeleton road meat like you find on most Australian highways.
Southern South Australia turned out to be completely different. Except for the flies. The boring desert turned into rolling green and yellow flowering hills and distant mountain ranges. It became absolutely beautiful as I headed into Port Augusta. I was a bit stunned when I arrived in Port Augusta, because I pulled over to take a break at a park and found the sea lapping up at my feet. It suddenly dawned on me that I had just driven entirely across a continent from sea to sea (Timor Sea to the Spencer Gulf).
I continued driving south to Adelaide, Australia’s next largest city after Perth, through beautiful countryside for another three hours. I managed to find a camping spot in a caravan park right next to the beach. Only problem was that it wasn’t warm like it was up north. It was that freezing damp cold I knew too well from living in Melbourne for six months back in 1992. I ended up spending a few nights and a full day in Adelaide before starting my trek back west to Perth.
Adelaide was nice, but the longer I spent there, the more it just seemed like just another big city with the same shops and attractions as any other big Australian city. The one thing Adelaide had that Perth doesn’t (besides being very green and shady and wet) was their Central Market. I started my day there and it was really great. Very much like Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia. Just about the same size, too. And very well supported by the locals. Lots of fresh produce, fresh meats, fabulous looking deserts and other gourmet foods, surrounded my nice cafes.
After a few days of freezing nights in damp cold, I decided I should start to make my way back to Perth in time to catch my flight to New Zealand.
I slept in a mine shaft…
I’ve now reached the point where I really have to start making some progress in getting back to Perth. One interesting thing about visiting Uluru and The Olga’s was a little shortcut from there to Perth. It’s known as “The Great Central Road”. The problem with it is that it’s all dirt. Not only does it require a 4-wheel drive, but it also requires that you have a special permit to use it. And on some stretches of the road, I’ve been told that you are not allowed to travel along it unless you are part of a 4-wheel drive convoy. Hmmm…. sounds exciting!
So instead, I’ve found myself having to travel hundreds (if not thousands) of kilometres out of the way to make it back to Perth on sealed (paved) roads in my little two-wheel drive car. This paved route takes me down to Adelaide first (to the southeast) and then back west across the Nullabor Plain to Perth.
I’ve already had to backtrack 100s of kilometres to get out to the main “Stuart Highway” from Uluru and Kings Canyon today. I’m hoping to make it to Adelaide for a few days of battery recharging by tomorrow, but I’ve had to make an evening stop in Coober Pedy for the night.
Coober Pedy turned out to be really cool. It is famous for opal mining and has a lot of dwellings in former mines to give locals refuge from the summer heat and cold winter nights.
Even the churches, shops, hotels, and hostels (where I’m typing this entry) have made use of the leftover mine shafts.
I was even able to find an underground campsite, so I pitched my tent in a mine shaft for the evening. The campsite included a free tour of a former mine.
The tour was conducted by an eccentric mine owner. Eccentricity seems to be standard in these family tour operations I come across. I guess that’s part of what you’re paying for. It was mostly interesting information about how they go about finding where the opals are and what procedure they use to get to them (part voodoo).
A movie titled Pobby and Dingan was due to begin filming in the same deserted mine the week after I was there. It won’t be the first. The town was littered with artifacts from other famous movies that were filmed in the area, including Mad Max.
The best part about sleeping underground was that I didn’t have to worry about insects or the cold night because the temperature underground always stays the same. The worst part about it was a family of four who set up next to me and snored all night. Oh well. They were very nice, actually. Did the tour with me.
The stars in Coober Pedy were probably the best I’ve seen around Australia, probably due to its very dry desert environment. The Milky Way has been a regular feature in the skies for me over the past three weeks.
Earth’s Other Moon
So yes, I’ve now made the pilgrimage to Uluṟu (aka Ayers Rock), and I can tell you that it is absolutely amazing. I wasn’t really expecting it to be, of course. You tend to develop a bit of cynicism about these tourist attractions after driving hundreds of kilometres. But Uluṟu has certainly been worth the trip. Just think of a rock almost the height of the old World Trade Center towers encompassing an area around the size of lower Manhattan. I’m pretty sure, anyway. It’s a six-mile / 10-kilometre hike around the thing. It dwarfs everything around it, and you can’t see the top of it from the hiking trail.
There are black stains running off it where rivers of water flow when it rains (since rocks can’t absorb water). It actually struck me as being like the moon, because you can’t get away from it. It is so big, iconic, and prominent that it seems to follow you wherever you go — just like a really large full moon skirting along the horizon as you’re driving down the highway, keeping its same position as everything else scoots by you: No matter how fast you go or how many trees or buildings you pass, it’s always in the same position just looking back at you.
Driving right up to Uluṟu is one of the most awe-inspiring experiences. Of course, the big show comes when the sun goes down, and it lights up bright orange. That’s when everybody whips out their cameras. As tacky as this might sound, it’s lots of fun to hang around in the designated positions waiting for the right moment. It seems everyone there has a story to tell about how they got there. Being in the middle of Australia, in the middle of nowhere, it’s a big trip for everyone. There is a real pilgrimage feel to the experience. Many are people who’ve spent their entire lives in Australia and were just making their first visit.
To be honest, there is another rock formation in the same national park that is even more impressive: Kata Tjuṯa (aka The Olgas). Kata Tjuṯa may not be as iconic or symmetrical as Uluṟu, but they are actually much larger and more interesting to wander around. There is a nice 3-4 hour hike around them that is really beautiful with the red sand and wildflowers in bloom at the moment.
In addition to these attractions, there is also a beautiful range of mountains running east and west of Alice Springs (a bit of a drive to the north) called the MacDonnell Ranges that are full of gorges and canyons. I spent one night camping at a beautiful gorge in the West MacDonnells before going to Uluṟu for a few nights, and another night camping at King’s Canyon (which I believe is Australia’s biggest canyon) afterwards.
The entire area has been freezing for camping, but I’ve been surviving just fine. I know the temperature dropped to at least 0 Celsius (32F) the first night I camped at Uluṟu, but it is an area that is known to drop down to -5C in winter. It’s funny because I had one last balmy night camping at Wycliffe Wells, and then the next night I was freezing in the MacDonnell Ranges.
Kings Canyon was quite spectacular, but no Grand Canyon (of course). There was a 3-4 hour rim hike that was quite interesting and gruelling. Unlike the Grand Canyon, where you hike down into it and then back out, the King’s Canyon had to be climbed first and then climbed down. I think the movie Priscilla, Queen of the Desert ended up there, but I’m not absolutely sure.
The coolest part of King’s Canyon was the little oases tucked into some of the rock crevices. They said there were plants there that used to grow more widely in the area 100s of millions of years ago when the climate was vastly different in the region — but those plants have managed to survive in these pockets of water the canyon catches.
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