Into The Wild West

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Ok so you know how its weird when you come across a place where you can see for ever and you can’t see anything much, like a desert, or if you’ve never been to one; like Yorkshire. So the Nullarbor plain is translated as Treeless Plain, the reason for this is because it has no trees, ‘big deal there are plenty of places without trees' you think. Of course this is true, there are, however can you look out the window of a train for an hour and detect anything different about the scenery? (when it's moving) if so than you have yet to experience the Nullarbor, it was much like travelling the Northern Territory where it all looked pretty much the same only here you could see for miles, and all you could see was these tough little cactus like shrubs that somehow lived there. Also when you went to sleep and woke up the next day, the scenery looked exactly the same, checked against photos, the only difference being the position of the sun. It really made you wonder if indeed you had moved at all or weren’t just stuck in some weird space/time paradox thingy where you can never leave.

We had one stop where we got out, at a place called Cook, and a weird little place it was. Just a bunch of abandoned buildings that somehow got there, (I have no idea how they got so far into nowhere, but they did) a little shop selling random souvenirs, even if no one lives there they will still try to make money outta you, and a few signs that appropriately summed up the place.

I travelled as far as Kalgoorlie but during the day and a half that I was on the train I got to know the others pretty well, including a Turkish lady who was off to Perth to join an archaeology course, a bunch of people from the other carriage, all a very cheerful friendly bunch and 1 guy who snored so loudly I thought perhaps we had truly entered an alien dimension. Sven joined me in my carriage, which had much more space and we flipped around the chairs (you can do that in Oz, flip round chairs on trains, no idea why but its brilliant.) so we each had 2 extra wide seats to ourselves, perfect. We chilled out and snacked, watched films, I disappeared to do a little writing, I came back and ate more, we told each other about our lives and other halves (blank in my case) and of course we slept. Nearing Kalgoorlie I was quite annoyed a my choice, whilst I wanted to see the famous little town and its little gold mine, I didn’t really care and I if I had carried on to Perth I would get to hang out with my new friends for a little longer instead of missing them as would happen as they were both leaving Perth on or before the day I arrived.

So anyways we arrived at night having gone a full day and a bit and went out to grab some food. There was a few of us and when I came back from dropping my bags off at the hostel there was even more, all sitting outside a Japanese as it was the only reasonably priced food around. I got extra as well as one of the german girls didn’t want all of hers. Two for the price of one! Sadly though the time came to say goodbye and I hugged lots of people and had only 1 e-mail, hopefully he had all of theirs… time to retire it was so back to the Gold dust YHA to start my life in the west.

Adelaide

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Leaving Coober Pedy was interesting; I remembered I had cleverly hung my towel out to dry just before leaving right next to where we were waiting for our shuttle and of course I had left without it even though it was right in front of me. So I ran back. I got the hostel sweaty and panicky not wanting to miss the bus, naturally even after I got back to the bus stop I still had to wait another 10 minutes before it arrived. The journey was not pleasant, it just happens to be one of those journeys where everything is slightly more crowded, so you are confined to one seat for the whole night, get approximately no sleep and arrive thoroughly tired and stressed.

So Adelaide it was and I had an energy drink to help me stay awake through the morning so I could meet Di at the YHA and chat about more free stuff she had arranged for me. By this time I was knackered from all my camping and heatstroke so all I really wanted was to lie down and sleep for a month, however I was offered a Surf Day and a Wine Tour so I couldn’t very well say no thanks I don’t like Wine or Surfing could I, not much point in me being in Oz if that was the case.

So I went on a Groovy Grape tour of the Barossa Valley, stopping at bizarre things such as a giant rocking horse and a whispering wall that allows conversations at great distances. We were half way to a winery when the bus screeched to a halt and our tour guide jumped out, ran across the road and leapt a fence all the while leaving us to scratch our heads in confusion. He returned proudly holding an echidna and proceeded to tell us everything about echidnas completing my experience of monotremes. Then we went and got drunk as you do, enjoying one good wine after another and some lovely scenic views. Some wineries were just about the wine and others were more about the way it was made and a tour of the actual winery rather than as many bottles as you can try. As the day progressed everyone became more and more silly and then we found an empty barrel, Dan our tour guide looked rather like a little gremlin hiding in it. Lunch was after the 3^rd winery, an odd way around in my point of view, mainly because I had forgotten breakfast, it consisted of kangaroo steaks and other stuff, which I forget as it wasn’t steak, however I did get more steak as someone couldn’t eat theirs.

Surf and Sun picked me up early the next morning and dragged me down to Middleton beach, newly decorated with seaweed, so much there was almost no beach left. Tom our instructor got us going and then switched my board for a shorter one and got me turning, finally I can surf for real! The waves were great in the morning and really good for practicing, nice and orderly, unfortunately they became a bit scrambled later on and we ended up with messy waves all crashing into each other and only a few waves were caught in the later part of the day, but I was happy, I had learned to turn! Eventually tom took a little film and I naturally chose that moment to fall over painfully winding myself on my board and looking like a total plonker. What made it more embarrassing was the size of the wave, which would be less than a foot high, however I did manage to get it right after so it was ok in the end.

My last day in Adelaide before heading off on the Indian Pacific was spent with Sven, a shy guy who I met on the wine tour and a couple of nutters I had seen the night before playing a crazy game of ping pong whilst running in circles round the table. The Ping Pongers were; Bob, a guy with a hunch and Franzi, a pretty redhead, direction being provided by Bob who seemed to know everything; we visited the aboriginal art centre, I had just bought some edibles and didn't want them to go 'wrong' in the heat so i ran back to the hostel and said i would meet them at the Art centre, typically I arrived seconds after they went in to watch a show and had to sit outside for ages and wait for them! Then we went to the botanical gardens before getting some shopping and preparing a fast, speedy but large dinner as Sven and myself had to be off fairly soon.

An Update...

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Hello faithfull and lovely readers.

I wish to tell you that my blog is in the Northern Territory at Alice Springs however I am in South Australia having already been to and from the West. My trip has been amazing and full of fun however I have been moving slightly too fast to tell you in time so I have got behind, just so you know and don't think I'm still up North, and I currently don't have a moustache even though I will be uploading pictures with my moustache intact, it's not Movember but it was...

So on with the story.

The time came to leave again and off I went, this time to a little place in the middle of nowhere, just like everywhere else in Australia, called Coober Pedy. This place manages to be different however in that most of the buildings go downwards not up. In order to save on Air Con they just dug down and put everything underground where the heat is much more consistent; being cool when its 50 up top and staying cool when up top freezes during the night. A place where you pray underground, read underground, eat underground but search for opals above ground. Opals of course being the only reason anyone lives in that part of the desert, it being nothing like an oasis.

I met an English Bloke here and we went on our own opal hunt for a blistering and utterly un-lucrative hour, well perhaps the one I found would have fetched 5 cents and his might have stretched to 6, however that means little in Oz where they have abandoned the use of 1 and 2 cent coins meaning everything is simply rounded to the nearest 5 multiple. So altogether we had 10 cents of opal and a big headache, plus several sneezing fits from the dust. Time to go underground! We visited a church, which was open, but no one was home, so we sneaked about and found a tunnel, leading deep into the ground, which ended in a spooky room/cave with no lights that rather reminded me of a resident evil scenario. The backpackers, run by a lovely guy named Martin, with a superb beard also reminded me of resident evil with its eerie underground layout, all thoroughly exciting and jolly good fun.

The only interesting thing we found above ground was the Spaceship from the film Pitch Black, which was about a random deserted planet, filmed around Coober Pedy, appropriate. I was kind of expecting the Spaceship to have at least a sign or perhaps be enclosed somehow but no, we crested a hill to see a road with a Spaceship parked forever, right next to it, just there in the middle of an underground town was a Spaceship by the road looking as if the owner simply couldn’t be bothered to come back and pick it up, only in Coober Pedy.

A Treasure Hunt

Sunday, December 13, 2009

It is here again, this time it shouldn't be banned by Youtube, Soundtrack is different but hey, sacrifices sometimes have to be made. Hope you like it.

An Oasis

Saturday, December 12, 2009

We got back. That much surprised me. I paid the girls the money I owed them for the trip, which was very little considering what we did and off I went to the YHA, which was full, so off I went to some other place down the road which took about 5 hours and 3 bath tubs of sweat to reach, carrying just my day bag as I had left the bigger one in the YHA, both bags would have killed me in that heat.

Funny how things work out, I was pretty annoyed at walking so far and wasn’t too wowed by the other hostel, however I did meet a gorgeous woman from Taiwan here who made my dinner a lot nicer and I also bumped into my good friend Marc who walked out of the darkness in a sinister fashion to surprise me at around 11 whilst I was up typing. And then the next morning as I went to get brekkie I encountered a couple who were on one of my earlier bus journeys and who were also the same people I had bumped into at Kings Canyon. Still I have to wonder at how often I meet the same people and how easy it is to keep bumping into them, it’s one of the great things about travelling somewhere like Australia where there is so much space and so few towns in between, everyone ends up in the same places so it is almost like walking around your home town where your likely to see people you know.

After breakfast it was back to the YHA with me and back on the net, which wasn’t working at the other hostel. I noticed we had some new talent, a phrase I would not normally use due its derogatory connotations (so don’t ask me why I’m using it now, I have no idea.) There were a lot more pretty girls than before and one who stood out; a tall, dark, auburn beauty that I later found out had a boyfriend, what a shame. However we still stayed up talking, scoffing chocolate and watching films together. We both agreed that Valkyrie being a Nazi German film with only American actors was utter tosh, Tom Cruise is not a convincing actor at the best of times and when trying to be a German Hero his ‘skills’ are somewhat misplaced. Needless to say I found her company very charming and was again sad to be heading in the opposite direction.

The Red Centre

Sunday, December 6, 2009

I arrived in Alice Springs, or at least part of me did. I felt as if half of me had entered a different dimension and wouldn’t be leaving soon. I also had no idea how I would get to Uluru as I really had no money left at this point, I think my bank account held less than $90, so I was feeling a little tense and wired when I arrived. However after a while I settled into Alice Springs hostel, which was a pretty nice place and decided seeing as everything had worked for me so far I would simply chill out and let things happen. So I came to the conclusion that waiting wouldn’t provide food as well and that I would still have to shop for it, shame that, however whilst I was at the supermarket I did meet a couple of German girls who said they were taking a car out to Uluru right away, that was quick I thought as I asked if I might tag along in their spare seat, they said they would have a think and get back to me, I offered them dinner that night and then found out they were fine with me going, hurrah for cooking!

So I cooked up some roast potatoes, steak and veggies, which tasted pretty damn good! Yes I do appreciate my own food, very Un-English I know. Eventually the decision was reached to leave the next day, hallelujah I could at least have one night in a bed, before the next adventure. The only thing that went wrong that night is someone stealing my beautiful blue knife, I mean come on, who steals a knife?! So far I had lost my wallet, scarf, hat and now a knife, all very important whilst backpacking and all were probably stolen, ‘I have no money people, be nice.’ So I had a lovely night of sleep and arose to an early, mad start, off into the desert this time.

For some reason the girls didn’t like air con so they left it off, it wasn’t as much of a problem at first as it wasn’t that hot in the morning, but it got hot fast and still they didn’t turn it on. I did ask eventually but they said they didn’t want to use it and seeing as I was the extra in the group I couldn’t very well demand it, it wouldn’t be British. So there I was in an oven with four German girls who preferred their own language, I soon passed out.

Uluru is pretty damn big, although I have to admit at first I thought it looked small, then when you get close you realise how massive it is. Just one huge big red stone, in the middle of a desert. We went in and chilled out at the shop for a while, leaving the oven behind us, ‘Oh sweet salvation’ and got some ice cream before taking a walk around the rock to experience its majestic beauty. The beauty part got a little lost half way through a mouthful of flies but it was definitely there for a while. Unfortunately I couldn’t climb it as they don’t open the climb when the temp goes higher than 36, it was 46… the girls agreed to come back the next day if the climb was open but then wed go to Kata Tjuta early to do the walk there before it got too insane.

As should now be obvious, it was of course, just at the insane point, before they close the walk off and refuse to let anyone through, and of course the climb at Uluru was closed, due to it being 46 again. So the walk around Kata Tjuta was intense and extremely wearying, this combined with the fact that flies were hounding me like a 2-day corpse and I had not slept the night before (it turns out that the desert is bloody cold at night in a tent) made it all in all a trying day, then we drove to Kings Canyon, with no Air Con.

The Kings Canyon walk I am rather proud of, the girls didn’t want to do it, but were happy to wait for me to walk around. So I pretty much ran it. 2 hours later I was back at the car park. I did do this first thing in the morning however hence how I am still alive. The Canyon was the best bit for me; beautiful and dramatic with enough time to appreciate it even at my fast pace, it made the biggest impact. I even took some film whilst there, then overtook people and took more film, somehow when I‘m in a beautiful place I have the energy of a madman, and it’s very useful. The view at the end of the Canyon is fantastic, even though it’s just of the car park that’s too far in the distance to really stand out, I was pretty high too, so high I could hardly make out the 4 girls standing on the platform down the bottom, who I soon figured out were my German friends. When you come around the other side of the Canyon there is a gorgeous view of the cliff that has recently been exposed leaving a sheer wall of multicoloured rock. Unfortunately there is also 5 times the amount of people, in my case anyhow, although I didn’t mind much when I realised I knew some of them.

Luckily we didn’t stay out again, I had by then enough, of superheated food that went off in 5 minutes, a sun that made you want to cry with its intensity, which of course you cant, as you have evaporated and the freezing nights that pass by without any sleeping involved, not even in a good way. Instead we drove back and today was so hot I even managed to convince the girls to turn on the Air Con, truly I had ascended!

Kakadu and away

Saturday, December 5, 2009

So the next day we naturally missed the sunrise again and decided to head back to Katherine just to film a little more. That done we headed off to finally visit Kakadu which was the whole point of the trip anyway, or so I had figured. During the long car journey I bombarded Kate with questions, something I had been doing pretty much every second we weren’t filming. She did all the driving (a lot of companies wont rent out a car to someone under 21) and we talked about a story I have been working on for a while pointing out that my female characters were a little underdeveloped, I had 1, and about 6 male characters with more popping up all the time. So maybe she had a point. She also explained pretty much everything there is to know about Reiki, which was rather fascinating.

Eventually we got to Kakadu and our intended spot; Ubirr, we viewed the art and climbed up to enjoy the scenery, stopping every now and then to film something that I had no idea what I would do with, so far the film had been in many directions and none of them worked so I was feeling a little stressed about the whole thing. We climbed the rock and I tried not to faint as we stumbled about in the sun, getting excited by the prospect of something to climb and then almost injuring myself in my delirious, overheated state. Ubirr is a rock, a big rock, which has a wonderful 360 view of wetlands, rock and more rocks. Ok so perhaps that explanation was a little rubbish. We could see for miles in every direction, right into Arnham land (aboriginal land where permits are required for entry) one side and a lake on the other, then of course the rest of the view would be the rocks I mentioned which were equally spectacular. When we finally left it was almost sunset, we had planned on getting at least half way back so as to be able to drop off the car in the morning easily… with 300km to go this of course didn’t happen, in fact nothing so far had really gone to plan, not that it was a bad thing.

Finally we woke up before sunrise, at last! Not that we did anything with the sunrise after all but never mind. It was time to leave the Northern Territory at last, and for that I was quite grateful, having slept in the roasting car the night before due to the amount of wildlife around us, I was feeling pretty yuck, also I hadn’t really slept much. All in all it had been an intense 3 days, with plenty of madness and confusion, an information overdose, far to much heat and all whilst attempting to make a movie. Kate dropped me off at the Ghan train station where I then found out after she left that I hadn’t been able to sort out my ticket after all (I had no idea of the ticket situation due to the outback having no phone signal, me having no phone battery, my solar charger that powers my phone actually melting in the heat and not having actually spoken to the person who was activating my ticket) and that I wouldn’t be able to board this train. Bugger.

In the end one of the managers gave me a lift back into town where I booked my greyhound ticket instead and found Kate in her favourite café. Kate figured seeing as we had a half hour we might as well make use of the twist of fate and turn me into a real Reiki practitioner. So now I have magic healing hands of Reiki, which means I got a burger and then sat on a bus for 21 hours completing yet another sleepless night.

Katherine

Friday, December 4, 2009

So the plan was to wake up before sunrise and head off somewhere else in Litchfield, maybe film the sunrise and hopefully get something done whilst the day was still just hot. Naturally we woke up late and missed that opportunity, so we messed about with the camera for a while and enjoyed breakfast before heading off to find the next location, we turned off at one location but it lead to an unsealed road so we turned back, the next turning was the same, and so was the next, eventually we had driven about 100km and been nowhere, we figured seeing as we were heading towards Katherine we may as well just head there, so there we did head.

Katherine Gorge was awe inspiring, huge, beautiful and with a bloody great view at the top! Naturally in the heat I struggled just to reach the building next to the car park, we had a quick meal of a pie or something and then off we went, swimming. According to Kate the river did have crocodiles in but we should be fine as long as we stayed near the other people etc. only problem was we wanted to film… as it turned out the people nearby came in handy for that, an English girl filmed us while we splashed around and I pretended to be attacked by a croc. Funnily enough it was kind of like method acting, I wasn’t really sure if Kate was simply doing the typical Aussie thing and trying to scare the Pom (English person), or if there really were crocodiles in the river, so whilst I was splashing about and disappearing under water I was also imagining vividly what would happen if there were crocs and one was biting my leg.

After this we climbed up to the top just to punish ourselves a little more, and checked out the view, which I mentioned before, Gorgeous. After that I noticed there were two ways back and remembered seeing another that went along the top of the gorge rather than back down all those stairs, I said we should take that, thinking we had done the worst and it couldn’t be any harder than the climb up. I spent much of the walk back apologising, it took at least an hour maybe 2 and seemed to be going in the opposite direction to the car most of the way which was thoroughly disheartening. This meant it was almost sunset by the time we reached Katherine town to grab some food, (sandwich stuff which I promised to put together on the way) before we headed off to Kakadu. There is a rule in Australia: unless you are a huge bus and cannot be hurt by large objects do not drive at night, you will hit a kangaroo, or perhaps several, and they will damage your car, and probably you as well. This is not something to scare the Pom’s I was on a bus over night, we hit 5. I know people who rented a car and drove at night, they were unfortunate. So we stayed in Katherine that night, much to my dismay, however we were lent a mattress by an ex Pommy who was feeling generous and that meant at least it was partly comfortable if still stupendously sauna like.

Litchfield

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Talk about a fated meeting. I had yet to see the North except for Darwin but I didn’t have anywhere near enough money for a tour of Kakadu. Kate had already been on a tour but she wanted the chance to go back by herself before she got stuck at work in Darwin. The car rental gave unlimited mileage, however only for a 3 day rental, so what the heck we thought, and went for it. I paid for the car, Kate paid for everything else. At 5 the next morning we headed into the outback.

We figured we would head into Litchfield, the nearest National Park and see as much as possible in a day then travel to Kakadu for the next 2 days. We loaded up and jumped in the car, put on the first of a bunch of CD’s I had made for the trip and off we rolled. Half asleep I was staring quite blankly out of the window when I noticed the sun, just popping up over the horizon in the wing mirror, screeching to a halt we hopped out and took the fist bit of footage of the journey, we had begun! We made another stop just as the temperature was getting unbearable, at about 8 O’clock to film the remains of a bush fire still smoking, handily placed just for us to notice it. Eventually we made it to our first intended stop at a beautiful fall, the heat being already way into the unbearable stage at about 9 O’clock but luckily the sun wasn’t yet high enough to shine over the fall so the whole place was in shade, plus of course there was water to swim in. Majestic and beautiful it would have made a perfect place to film; typically I had forgotten the camera.

We swam and Snorkelled a little as Kate had brought goggles, spying lots of fish but mostly murky darkness that kind of freaked me out a little, I don’t like deep water. However it did mean I knew where the rocks were underwater so when I climbed up the fall I knew where to jump back in and where I would have a slightly less comfortable landing. When we got out Kate said that if you dropped some bread in the water hundreds of fish would appear out of nowhere, so to prove it she did. The bread hit the water and one nanosecond later every fish in the known galaxy was suddenly fighting over the one measly bit of bread. Literally there were more fish than water and they seemed to pop straight out of the rocks, never before have I seen a fish pop out of nowhere like that and certainly not in the thousands, quite a spectacle. Time for our own food we went and found a little stream for our picnic and conversed about Angels and the taste of Ants whilst a dragonfly flew in the same pattern for about half an hour right next to us. Perhaps it wanted our food or maybe it had been given bad directions, who knows.

When we got back to the car I was genuinely shocked, it wasn’t even midday yet and yet the car was hotter than a poker pulled from a fire, we had barely begun, and for the next few days there was nowhere for me to hide, I was living in the harsh hot and entirely real outback. At least we had air con in the car for a brief respite before arriving at our next stop, where we actually filmed something and it turned out to be perfect. We went off the beaten track to find a little section of river complete with Goanna’s, a little fall and a snorkelling experience that resembled swimming through an underwater city. My hope of living till the end of the day was restored as soon as I got in the water and my body temp dropped from about 120 to 45.

We stayed at a campsite that night and realised when we got there that we hadn’t quite prepared for this trip. We had no swag, no tent, only one sleeping bag between us and just a billy can to cook with. Somehow we managed, we borrowed a tarp, which we put on the grass as it would be softer than our designated dirt square, I used a sleeping bag liner and Kate used her Sleeping bag, luckily it didn’t rain. For food we improvised, beans I ate cold out of the can, toast we made on a barbecue, sausages were easy, veg… hmm… never mind, we had oranges, that’s healthy right?