G'day --
Notes on Aussie customs:
We left you at the end of the Franklin River trip in Hobart, the capital of the state of Tasmania. After long hot soapy showers we were again fit for civilized company. We did souvenir shopping and ate local scallops and ice cream. The next day we flew to back to Melbourne, picked up some food, and left on the evening train for morning arrival in Adelaide. We had learned from a previous trip that getting a private sleeper (instead of reclining seats in coach class) is worth every penny. You have a small compartment with two facing seats and a collapsible table between, large window with a shade, and a small storage area for clothes. Then there is the room slightly larger than a phonebooth that contains a sink and toilet (both of which collapse into the wall), a shower with curtain, and storage for towels...this room is truly an engineering and interior design masterpiece. The beds fold down as bunks with a ladder for the top one. Each bed has a cubbyhole for storing books or glasses and a nightlight.
Adelaide is lovely town that has spent much time and money restoring and maintaining its old buildings. We stayed at one of the friendliest hostels we've seen. Maybe our opinion was influenced by the all-you-can eat breakfast buffet (10 kinds of fruit, toast, pancakes, coffee/tea for $3 Aussie) and the free home-baked hot apple pie with ice cream every night...nah, probably not.
We did our usual Zoo and botanical gardens tour and also toured the Migration Museum, dedicated to tracing the very hard times immigrants from all over had. These people had thought they were coming to a land of opportunity and instead stayed (as late as the 1960s) in migrant camps that grouped people by country of origin. For example, many of the people from Holland stayed in one camp and tried to become accustomed to the new language and culture...this was really an eye-opener....after an influx of people from many nations, the Aussie government put out a description of the ideal immigrant (blond hair, blue eyes, young, strong, healthy....doesn't that sound familiar)? I (Di) thought of my grandparents who came to America with little English, living within their own cultural neighborhoods.
We also used Adelaide as the start for a full day bus trip of the vineyards of the Barossa Valley. Initially, we were going to rent bicycles to tour the area but somehow I don't think drinking and cycling mix. So we visited three wineries (tastings at each), Tim climbed to the top of the world's largest rockinghorse (which really doesn't rock) and we whispered to each other across the 150 meter Whispering Wall (a parabola-shaped dam that will transfer even a whisper from one end to the other). The day ended with a trip to a dried fruit/nuts outlet...the chocolate covered cashews didn't last long in Tim's hands and Di discovered dried pineapple. A jam-packed day....much better than we expected from a bus tour.
After a trip to the huge Central Market (dozens of small food stalls) for provisions, we boarded the Indian Pacific Railway for our two-night trip to Perth and Western Australia. Australians do a lot of traveling via mass transit. It isn't that they don't own cars, it's that going between major cities can involve very long distances across barren landscapes. So it isn't uncommon to take the train (even to the point of taking your car with you). One of the three major historic train routes is the Sydney to Perth Indian Pacific Railway. This is a four day - three night trip (we did the last two-thirds) across one of the most desolate of Australian areas, called the Nullarbor. Those of you with a little Latin know that null mean no and arbor is tree -- needless to say we traveled about 1000 kilometers without seeing much more than some scrubby shrubs, one kangaroo, and lots of red dirt. We also passed through many abandoned railway/mining towns and stopped at Cook, a town with 6 people. It used to house more (when the rail was being built) and had a school, hospital, the lot. Now the hospital has a sign that says "Help save our hospital -- get sick!"
Actually, the train trip was a delight. We read, napped, wrote on the computer, napped, looked out the window, napped, listened to music, and occasionally napped...a relaxing two and one-half days. This train had a collapsible sink in the compartment and toilet/showers down the hall. Bottom bunk got the window -- so I could watch the stars until I fell asleep to the music of the rails. Everything you need for an overnighter..except extra space. If the bottom bunker needed to get up in the middle of the night, you had to store away the ladder (stranding the person in the top bunk), crawl out of bed folded in half (hitting your head on the top bunk on the way out), turn sideways to open the door, then turn the other way to get out of the door.....reverse the process to get back into bed. We ate the bread/cheese/olives/dried fruit/Barossa Valley port wine we had brought and supplemented it with coffee and pop (food on the train is very expensive). There was a short-term panic when we heard that the customs officers (they have them between the Aussie states) would confiscate any fruit and nuts... but they were looking for fresh foods that could contain unwanted pests...no worries.
When the train pulled into Perth, Western Australia (WA) at 7 a.m. on Sunday morning we were greeted by.......no one. No information, no bus schedules, no hotel shuttle. We hired a taxi to get to the YMCA (our room) then walked around the abandoned train and bus stations until we found a friendly supervisor who dug out some maps and suggested we spend the day at the nearby town of Fremantle (where the Australians defended the America's Cup sailing race in the 1980s). Since it seemed to be the only place inhabited, we took a half-hour train ride there. Ahhh, that's where the people are. Fremantle is a port town with a lively food and crafts market (even on Sundays), a convict-built jail and museum you can tour, an international food court, and a street claiming to be the Cappuccino strip of the area. It was a pleasant but hot day, and restored our faith in coming to WA. The next day we wandered around Perth itself on Monday, climbing a hill to get to the Botanical gardens that overlook the city -- Perth is a fun city if it's not Sunday. And on Tuesday we picked up the rental car and started our 14-day self-guided tour of the outback and the wild west.
If you look at a large map of the western third of Australia (1MB image file), you can see two basic areas. The south (called the Southwest here) includes all cities south of Perth -- wineries, mountains, rivers, caves, lovely forested country. North of Perth the land quickly becomes red, void of large vegetation, with mountains, gorges, long stretches between isolated small pockets of civilization, but interesting nonetheless.
We spent four days in the southwest. First staying at Dunsborough (with snorkeling along the mile-long jetty at nearby Bussington), eating homemade ice cream at a place that had ice-cream eating emus (a native bird that resembles an ostrich), and then visiting a cave where they take you down and let you wander on your own--unheard of at any other cave. Along the way we got lost on Highway 10 which stops and starts several times and intersects itself twice -- in fact, whenever we didn't know just which direction we were traveling, we could be sure we were on Highway 10!
We tested the wines of Margaret River and found them lovely. In Pemberton you can climb the highest fire lookout in Australia. This is the Gloucester Tree -- 60 meters high and you reach to top via 132 two-foot spikes nailed into a living tree in a spiral formation (so you can only see a few steps ahead) with only some chicken wire at your back to prevent disaster -- not for the faint of heart. This was Tim's test of courage -- when Di headed up with just a little hesitation, he wasn't going to be left behind even though heights are not his thing. The view at the top was great. However, our legs and arms hurt for the next two days -- not from the exercise but from holding on so tight and stiffening our legs to prevent slipping. Within hours we followed this with the TreeTop Walk, a walkway elevated 40 meters above a sensitive Red Tingle (type of eucalypt tree) forest -- the walkway was easy traveling (it had protective railing and graded walkway so you could see below your feet) but swayed and bounced somewhat like a swinging bridge. We ended our southwest tour at Albany and the southernmost point in Australia. Nearby blowholes and windswept rock formations were on the ocean with blankets of heathlike vegetation along the beach -- we think this is what the highlands of Scotland look like.
On our way to up north we went through several towns with interesting claims to fame. There's Wagin, home of the "big Ram" the largest statue of a sheep known to exist. Then Northam with the longest pedestrian bridge in Aussie and home to the rare white swan (all the other swans here are black). Then New Norcia that looks like an old Spanish town with a monastery and churches. Are we tourists or what?
What a contrast up north! First, the area starts with wheat farms, then to cattle/sheep farms (called stations), then mines (gold, tin, asbestos) then to land so dry and rocky you wouldn't think anything could survive. The names of the towns and areas were fun to say aloud -- Meekatharra, Kumarina, Karijini, Karratha, Willuna, Kallgoorlie, Pilbarra, Ningaloo, Minyla, Paraburdoo, Wittenoom. These are the names that bring to the mind of Aussies the days of the Gold Rush, wild western towns, and independent men and women pioneers....like we associate Dodge City, Laramie, and Boot Hill with cowboys, panning for gold, and covered wagons.
We traveled the Great Northern Highway, driving fast (130-140 kilometers per hour) up to 1,200 kilometers a day. The scenery was the Outback ...endless red soil with occasional breaks of mountains, emus, kangaroos, lizards, and gas stops at roadhouses. A roadhouse is essentially a gas station with a snack shop, maybe a very small motel and inevitably a collection of parrots, roos, and lizards. No houses, no stores, nothing. Each roadhouse had a name and appeared as a small dot on the map....they were 200-300 kilometers apart and were the only humanity we saw on the way. There were a few small towns mostly consisting of one or two run-down hotels, twice that many taverns, a petrol station and a Foodland grocery store.
We had expected true desert (like the Sahara) but there was always some hardy vegetation. The land is predominantly dry but there were constant reminders of what could be....floodways (trenches perpendicular to the road that would hopefully carry water off the road..when it rains, it pours here so flash floods are not uncommon), constant thunderclouds in sight, and recent rains brought tiny but beautiful examples of wild flowers that only show up after a wet spell. Our only real sightseeing stop was at Karajini Nat. Park but unfortunately, all but one waterfall was only accessible with a 4 wheel drive vehicle (which we didn't have). We don't begrudge the time spent going north, however, the Outback was a time to relax and reflect (if you weren't driving). Every landscape has its own type of beauty.
Scenery became more varied as we cut west to the coast. First night stop was at Karratha and we stayed in a very small trailer in a massive trailer park (they call it a caravan in a holiday park). The van was "en suite" which usually means "with bathroom and toilet attached". Here it was a small building with two separate baths for two vans....like a bathroom duplex. Bug heaven! Beetles, spiders, crickets....but Tim gets the prize for sharing his shower with a small scorpion! Hot nights, marginal A/C. But parrots sat in the trees right outside and we saw literally hundreds of aboriginal rock art drawings (and no other people) at a site not far from town. Later we snorkeled at a local beach seeing lots of fish and a friendly sting ray.
Our next stay was at Exmouth. If Tim was tested by the tree climb, Di's anxiety level was maxed out by the night dive we did at the Naval Pier here. We entered the water as the sun was setting and used torches (flashlights) to see fish, a lionfish with filigree fins outstretched, hermit crabs, and even a wobbegong shark (napping -- thank goodness). We each had a glowing light attached to our air tanks but could only see each other if we were within a few feet. Being nervous means you use up air faster so Di was the first one out of the water. (I could say that it really was quite an experience and I am glad I did it once, but I think I'd rather go climb a tree!) The next day we dove at the Murien Islands, offshore of Exmouth. We went through an underwater arch and saw both hard and soft coral, mantis shrimp, and a huge (but friendly) potato cod. Later, Tim snorkeled with a couple of reef sharks and did a second dive seeing a leopard shark over 2 meters long. A rule of diving is to stick near your buddy, but the way Tim attracts sharks, I may have to reconsider. We couldn't help but notice how very calm the ocean was...little did we know it was the proverbial calm before the storm.
Despite the shark viewing, we really had two marine life sighting goals in the area. First are the whale sharks. These fish can get as long as 40 feet and eat only plankton (so we were assured). If you are lucky, you can snorkel next to these monstrous beauties for a few minutes. Exmouth and the town south of it, Coral Bay, are where they hang out starting in March. The second hoped-for sighting was of dolphins at the town of Monkey Mia (pronounced my-a)..you stand in the shallow water just off shore and the dolphins come to you, swim nearby, and may even let you hand them a fish. We were told that if the dolphin gives you a fish, it is rude to refuse it. The dolphins show up at Monkey Mia all but a dozen days of the year.
At Coral Bay we boarded a boat and got ready to don our snorkels when a whale shark was sighted by a circling plane. Whale shark sighted by plane...we rush in the boat to the area....we stand at the boat's edge ready to jump in the water...the shark dives deep....and we never see it again in the hours we are out there....Marine Life: 1, Tim and Di: 0. (did see a tiger shark, dolphins, and a hammerhead shark and swam with a ray, though). Again, calm water prevailed. This whale shark hunting is an expensive proposition so we headed south to Monkey Mia for dolphins.
Well, we waited from 7:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. but no dolphins came to shore (did see a couple far-off fins, though). The rangers said this was unusual, lucky us. Marine Life: 2, T and D: 0. We showed up again the next day and again no dolphins.....a rare occurrence in the logs of dolphin sightings. M.L.: 3, T and D:0. But a fierce windstorm the night before had destroyed a local boat hire. As we watched the sky and heard the news we knew the calm seas the previous days were a portent....Tropical Cyclone Vance was coming our way!
Staying just ahead of Vance we headed south on our way back to Perth. Near Geraldton we took two short fly filled hikes to Kalbarri N.P. gorge and natural window and later sampled the local crayfish (called a rock lobster when exported, it has a big edible tail like our lobster but no claws). Then we stayed at Cervantes (to see Pinnacles Rocks) and heard stories of disaster all around us. Exmouth, where we had stayed four days before, was almost completely destroyed by the cyclone. The nearby inland town of Moora was flooded by rains from Cyclone Elaine, closing the road we were to take back to Perth the next day. We were unsure until just before we left town whether we would be able to get through or not. The road opened the morning we left and as we drove over the bridge at Regan's Ford, we saw torrents of brown water rushing just under the bridge. I guess we were lucky, we only missed seeing some dolphins and sharks....people here had their homes and lives permanently altered.
We completed the W. A. circle tour with a few days in Perth, eating Thai noodles, ferrying out to the zoo (with a walk-in tamarind cage and a great butterfly house), walking the botanical gardens, and spending the day on Rottnest Island. The island reminds us of Mackinac Island: no cars allowed, just bicycles. You can ride around island and stop to swim or snorkel or photograph the very friendly Quokkas (a small marsupial.. the "rat" that Rottnest was named after). Saying good-bye to Western Australia, we headed on a plane to Australia's Red Centre.
Cheers! Keep in touch.
-- Di and Tim
| Page Top |
Map |
Itinerary |
Last |
Next |
| Tim and Diane's email address is ttdk@aol.com | ||||
