Christmas, yes I know that was ages ago

Monday, February 22, 2010

So I spent my Christmas in Adelaide with Nic. The lovely Angelica came back from Kangaroo Island for one day before heading off for good and on that day we went out into the Barossa Valley to sample some wine. Geli did the driving which worked out well seeing as alcohol has no effect on her, and we dragged Nic along too, luckily she didn’t mind being a third wheel. We toured around visiting first a little town and trying some cheese then off to try the wine including Wolf Blass, Seppeltsfield and several others! It was a beautiful day and good to see my gorgeous German again before she disappeared, her plans would take her to Sydney for Christmas and New Years then to New Zealand before home.

For Christmas the Adelaide Central YHA or Jackie to be precise arranged a feast! Nic and I met up and went to hers for lunch, it was free after all and they didn’t know I wasn’t from their hostel. We had meat, cheese and bread followed by fruit and ice cream and goon which is appalling Australian wine in a box. It was a good lunch and we hadn’t much else planned so we gradually drifted back to mine, presuming we had missed the Christmas lunch happening there. We were wrong, and what a nice thing to be wrong about, Jackie ushered us in and told us to grab plates and tuck in, whilst Shon one of the fanatical staff members interrogated us about our tickets, which we didn’t have seeing as Jackie let us in for free. So to all people who say ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch!’ I just had two of them.

We helped ourselves to a lot; we had potatoes, chicken, salads, pasta, bread, good wine and then dessert; cakes and custard and chocolate! Half way through Jackie asked me if I wanted to help, I said “sure” and ended upstairs pouring out the custard and delivering the cakes downstairs, each time having to shoe away greedy guests who couldn’t wait. Then finally we got it all there, arranged it nicely, took a picture and demolished it!

I had gotten into the spirit of the joining in thing so when Jackie said “I want some volunteers, a group 1 and group 2.” I immediately put up my hand to discover it was a trick to find people to clear away glasses and wash up, although after washing up seeing as I had shouted “I’ll be both!” I got to learn from Jackie how to make Irish Coffees. Which meant getting given a bottle of whiskey and lots of whipped cream to play with, so it was fun, and that’s how I had my first coffee, with extra whiskey. Then with a little help from the whiskey the singing began, Jackie insisted that we perform various songs, and so we did. Rudolph was tributed, a Canadian pulled out a song about tying down a kangaroo, an Aussie had a poem no one got and then I got to sing “Im gonna be (500 miles)” solo because no one else could do the accent. Like all days the sun goes down and eventually people get tired and go to bed, the magic of Christmas lingered just long enough to send me to sleep feeling happy and contented and nowhere near as homesick as I had earlier.

The rest of the time went by in a blur of random stuff, mostly more sleeping, plenty of wandering about, and I also went out shopping to spend my Christmas money from home, on shoes, no I haven’t had a large dose of estrogen, I had just reached the point where my shoes were carving holes in my feet with their deformed and deteriorating selves. Also a friend of Nic or rather to be precise Nic’s boyfriend by the name of Conrad was coming to Australia, he arrived white as chalk and soon became pink as Barbie in the sun. He joined us for our random little expeditions including going to the botanic gardens and hunting round the market, which in Adelaide is awesome and well worth doing all food shopping in if you happen to go.

The best day out was to the polish festival, didn’t make much sense to me at the time, I had no idea any poles had made it as far as Australia, however it turns out they had, we even met one (or a half one rather, some of his ancestors were polish), at the hay throwing competition; this involves sticking a pitchfork into a bale of hay and lobbing it as far as you can, amazingly good fun. I took the lead on my first throw but was then outdone by our polish friend who was in turn outdone by Conrad, who was overtaken again by the Polish Guy and then Conrad finished it off by hurling it almost to the fence on the other side, I was only slightly put out by being beaten seeing as Conrad is at least twice my size and therefore it would be just silly if I was stronger, and the prize was beer, 1 for each of us.

So far I had not stayed anywhere longer than a few days so this for me was a very long break, and a very needed one. I discovered something about staying in one place, and that is I met more people, and got to spend more time with them proving that my previous speed of light travelling method was not only draining but also crazy as I missed out on loads. The high from Christmas had me in a good mood, so when a new staff member arrived I spoke to her straight away, Deniz who was so funny I was usually cackling like a madman around her, is “Turkish, German!” as she proudly announces anytime someone forgets the Turkish part. She would do funny things like wear wetsuit boots to her night job when they requested black footwear because she didn’t want to buy new shoes. Then there was Mandy and Iris; two friends who I promptly broke up, one of them liked me, then the other one did, then I failed to avoid the obvious trap. And all through I had Nic, keeping me company in the scorching Christmas heat, take that englanders! My Christmas was sunny and warm!!!

The End of the Nullarbor

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Our last day was a fairly quiet one, stopping only for a trip down the longest still standing jetty and at a museum. The museum included all sorts of things from evolution of the country from its Gondwana origins to the history of the town as a stop for all trains heading in all directions, it was actually a lot more interesting than I was prepared for being rather sleepy that day, and I would have liked more time to explore, but when I realised I couldn’t see anyone I knew I figured it was time I left and rejoined the group that was probably waiting just for me. The jetty isn’t actually the record holder for longest jetty in the southern hemisphere, that belongs to Busselton, however that jetty has fallen down so is now shorter than the jetty we visited this day until it gets rebuilt.

The other members to our group were great and even included one extremely odd old Frenchman, who wore earplugs at all times. I think this might have been to block out all the random noises he made, which were many and totally bizarre; he would grunt and mutter, be silent for a moment and then start chatting to himself in French, only he had earplugs in so he clearly couldn’t actually hear any of what he was saying. He would appear out of the blue and talk to us in French and then walk off leaving us startled for a moment and then just cracking up, we tried not to laugh but really the comedy of it all was too much and we simply didn’t know how to react not having a clue what he was on about. He was a nice guy, but a little confusing.

Finally the time came for us all to depart, we arranged to meet up later and get some drinks and then Lachie dropped us off one by one at our abodes. It was odd to have spent so much time with them and then be going off our separate ways. I settled in at Adelaide Central YHA and relaxed so much I almost fell asleep then and there. Hoisting myself up I got showered and changed then headed out to enjoy our last night as a group. The journey was finally over, an end to camping and travelling so far, I had seen a hell of a lot in a hell of a lot of nothing and now the time came to do a hell of a lot of nothing in the city.

Sharks for some

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

The next day was the shark day for those that had paid extra, and the surf day for those that hadn’t. Well I’m a broke backpacker so naturally I opted to surf, which I did. The instructor gave me the shorter fibreglass board instead of the huge heavy foam ones and I attempted to make good use of it by taking on bigger waves, sadly they were too big and I just ended up falling face first into the waves as I tried to stand up, although when I switched back to the big board I found it so easy it was almost laughable, at least it was proof I had improved even if I couldn’t surf big waves yet.

After surfing we visited some more dramatic cliffs, then a sinkhole, that looked like it had dried out about 13,000 years ago and was full of sand. Then we went to the animal farm, yay! It was basically a small zoo; you got a load of seeds and grain in a bag, then went around the farm seeing the various animals and feeding them. They had Kangaroos, dingo’s (we didn’t feed them), birds that landed on you and ate from the hand, ostriches, donkeys, turtles, parrots that aimed for the fingers rather than the seeds, camels, cows and more.

We went to a café to await the return of the girls from their day with the sharks, and then it was off to the pub, where we would get beds again! We got some drinks, I sat down with my laptop and used the cafés Internet, and we waited. And we waited. Some of group wandered off to do some shopping etc. and we waited some more. An hour after they usually turn up Lachie called to find out what was happening, which was that they still wouldn’t be back for another hour, “Sorry guys, we wont be staying in the pub after all, I’ll go get us some food and then well head back to the campsite.” He then made a call back to base to mention the catastrophe and see if anything could be done, “Its ok guys were going to the pub.” And off he walked back to the bus. A lift had been arranged for the girls later, whilst we would drive to the pub straight away and get some pizza.

We were the only guests and as such we had our choice of rooms, the pub owner gave us a pile of keys and off we went to pick the best ones first. I managed to grab me a big bed and dumped everything then jumped into a much needed shower before heading down for dinner and then meeting the local drunks. One Lebanese guy who was absolutely hilarious kept buying me and Nic drinks and then showing us how to beat the arcade machines that dispense DVD’s and Nintendo’s, which was by this point almost empty having already been cleaned out by him during the day. Poor Nic was light headed on the first glass of wine (probably because she is so tiny), but our Lebanese friend wouldn’t hear no, everyone else was outside having a great time and at midnight we all shouted happy birthday out to Lachie who was then bought more drinks by our Lebanese friend.

Eventually we moved the party upstairs to our lounge area, got some music and people gradually drifted off to bed as we carried on drunken conversation, I was tipsy but the only one not drunk seemed to be Geli, her German blood I reckon. So far I had been in the tent with Nic every night so I jokingly apologised that I wouldn’t be able to keep her warm that night as I had been taken but she was welcome to join us if she wished, being totally hammered she almost accepted but luckily for her boyfriend back home, she ended up in her bed and not with Geli and me.

Bread, Fish and Bear

So our wonderful but brief rest ended as we set off again for a little more fun. We stopped at colton a town of 2 buildings, to get breakfast at the bakery. No one was there, this rather confused us as there was a very limited selection of hiding places, we searched what little there was to search but we weren’t very productive and eventually gave up with no bread. So we got brekky elsewhere and moved on to the next hotspot, a coastal tour of some bizarre sculptures. Each one individual, and I mean that, there was a melon shaped man on a bike, a row of square heads and a pair of thongs to name a few.

In the afternoon we went swimming with tuna. You could feed them as well, giving the big fish little fish but you had to be wary of the seagulls who like to snatch anything and everything, especially fish away from people, oh and they also crapped on me, luckily I was wearing Angelicas hat at the time. Then they crapped on my arm and my leg. ‘Bugger this!’ I thought and promptly stripped off and dived in aiming for the nearest fish to take it out on. Unfortunately my attempts to catch the tuna were about as successful as my attempts to avoid bird crap. The big fish swim around like children given a double espresso, half sugar with some caffeine pills thrown in, only without the inevitable come-down.

That evening we pulled into another campsite, but this time with a monumental difference, this campsite had bears! And obviously by bears I do mean Koalas, big bears are not native to Australia, in fact the only large predator on land in Oz is the croc, and most of the time they aren’t on land. So I decided to head out and try to hunt down one of the drop bears not so dangerous cousins and attempt to make friends, Geli (Angelica) came with me.

The first grunting beast; (for those that don’t know Koala bears grunt, we discovered this while setting up our tents and hearing a noise like a large angry boar in the bushes which scared the crap out of everyone) was just plain grumpy. Some were asleep, some were defensive, some were just confused and then we found one that was only half asleep, confused enough to not have a clue what was happening but too tired to care, and this fella we named Bob. I of course had no idea whether Bob was male or female but this was no hindrance, if Bob was female than it should simply be short for Kate, a joke that only people who know Blackadder will get, so sorry to those who are just confused now, go watch Blackadder. Anyway I wanted to hug a Koala, or at least touch one, and this I got to do even though I was told I shouldn’t touch them, I couldn’t help it though they’re just so cute and cuddly!

Sand and Sealions

Monday, February 8, 2010

Up early again for what promised to be the best day yet. A start of sand boarding and then a swim with Sea lions! Oh yes it was awesome! We actually started by visiting some cliffs with a cave and generally a very scenic look to it, which we spent ages at, I was in no hurry being a little tired from staying up with Angelica so I didn’t object but eventually we were dragged away to hurl ourselves down sand dunes.

Ok so for those that didn’t guess, sand boarding is hurling yourself off a sand dune with a board underneath you. It was great fun; I managed to take a little chunk out of my finger somehow, which prompted amusement and patronising comments from Angelica when I complained. Most of us had a go and much screaming ensued so at least I wasn’t being the most girly. I had as many goes as I could and at the end raced with an English chappie who was Woofing at Coodlie Park. He won.

Shaking sand out of every possible hiding place we then headed off to do the most amazing thing I have done yet. The guy who runs the Sea lion and dolphin swim has been friends with those critters for 18 years, a huge amount of time (to me) in which he has probably had the perfect life, nothing quite compares to the feeling of wonder, being in the water with those Sea lions and 18 years of it, what a thing to do.

It was freezing on the boat; I think the general feeling about getting in the water was one of dread, however when we jumped in we were shocked by how warm it was. In fact much warmer than being on the boat and we were swimming for an hour in the water, only getting out when we were thoroughly wrinkly. Half way through the guy who owns the company jumped in, and then we got to see the magic happen. Ok so I said it was warm, by that I meant warm in comparison to an ice cube, or the wind up on that boat, so I found it very surprising to see him swimming about in just his bathers. He just floated down there underwater for ages, with the Sea lions right next to him. Not only did he seem to be able to hold his breath for about half an hour, he also was so comfortable with the Sea lions and they with him, it was like they were his kids. Nic damn her, discovered the secret to getting a Sea lion to kiss her, and me with my wonder photography managed to get a very crappy photo of what was an epic sight! The way the Sea lions swam around us, showing off by swimming circles around us land beings and the way they were so cute and funny looking made the whole experience totally magical. Nic and I just sat there on the boat after, shivering and grinning at each other like we’d just won the lottery and learned how to fly at the same time!

Unfortunately we didn’t find any dolphins, we looked, and were poured hot chocolate and tea whilst we searched as so many of us looked as though we might be hypothermic, we had after all been in the water for and hour when normally groups only spend about 15 minutes in. It got so bad I tried to sunbath by hanging off the side of the boat, then going to the front and eventually just using Angelica for warmth and I think at one point we both sandwiched Nic as she was turning blue. The last thing on the agenda was to visit some rocks that were supposedly millions of years old, though I always do wonder how exactly people know this. They were good climbing anyway, and I ended up taking my top of in the sun, seeing as it was wet it was actually keeping me cold.

I said last thing on the agenda however Hassie had one more in store for us; a wildlife tour of his land, I went on the later one with my 2 favourite girls and Nic was so cold I had to keep an arm round her the whole way. We saw a lot of Kangaroos, one of them hopped a fence whilst Hassie chased it in the car, and there were also wombats. Hassie led the way whilst we wandered over some of the empty wombat holes and we were told to tread carefully else we might end up in a wombats house, then later we drove up to one with 2 wombats that were out and about, they were smaller than I had imagined. Small and solid, dark brown and almost like newborn puppies, they have a hilarious defence mechanism, which utilizes their ‘butts of steel’, and they are nocturnal like so much of Australia’s wildlife.

That night we had beds! Man the excitement was overwhelming, not only showers and toilets of a civilized standard but beds too! They were dorm beds however so I presumed sharing with Angelica would have been out of the question. Although the French guy in my room did use earplugs...

Reaching base camp

Saturday, February 6, 2010

After we left the farmhouse/petrol station/ghost house we visited the coast again, for more windy times on more cliffs, this time the wind was even stronger if possible, and I took photos for proof. Up till now even though we had been doing the Nullarbor tour we hadn’t yet reached it, so this was the big moment, when we would be officially on the Nullarbor Plain!

Nullarbor means no trees in aboriginal, and the Nullarbor is just that, a massive expanse not unlike a desert but instead of having nothing at all, it simply didn’t have any trees. The Nullarbor does have plenty of bushes, small bushes that grow to about a foot high cover it, so really it is like a massive field! A really, really massive field! The ground of the Nullarbor as I previously found out is like a sieve, any water that hits it immediately sinks through, so when it rains, which it does 3 times a year, and yes we just happened to be there to see a 3^rd of its rainfall, the water sinks straight through the ground and only the little cactus like shrubs are able to absorb enough to survive.

The dog fence, cunningly named is another interesting part of this area, built to keep dingo’s out of the more inhabited areas it is a little fence about 5000 km long. This would make it the longest fence in the world, starting from the coast just a few km’s away from the road we were on, it stretches all the way to Queensland. Which if you ask me is completely bonkers, however it does make for an amusing world record and it does indeed keep the dogs out. The fence naturally being exceedingly long is also exceedingly difficult to look after; therefore it is up to the landowners whose land happens to be inflicted with this fence to keep it in good nick.

After this brief geography lesson we encountered a town, civilization!!! It was in the form of a nice little seaside plaice called something I forget and it had a shark in one of the buildings. Yes that’s right, a shark, Lachie told us to head over to the petrol station where there would be a shark. So off to the petrol station we went, inside and what do we see, a bunch of snacks and rude magazines with a little tourist merchandise. Ok then so maybe we have the wrong building, we look around for chocolate and finding none of interest we decided to go in search for chocolate elsewhere. I figure we might as well give the shop a good scour, maybe its some painting of a shark somewhere, who knows. So we walk around and take a corridor leading past the toilets to find a 5 metre white pointer staring at us as we round the corner. Suspended from the ceiling, mouth gaping, looking as though it intended to eat you and had sat there waiting for you to swim past.

We admired the shark for a while and found out that it was the towns choice of big model because someone from the town had caught one, a shark that was actually even bigger than the one in front of us, they had to scale it down because it was too big to fit in the room. Everywhere in Australia has something big, I don’t know why perhaps it is to make for something. There’s a big lobster, a big banana, a big prawn, a big rocking horse, a big rock and now we had found a big shark!

The founders of the company, Hassie and Jo lived at Coodlie Park YHA, a place that is very off the beaten track and here we stopped for 2 nights. When we got there we were all very excited by the prospect of a shower, I was so excited in fact that I had a shave and looked almost human afterwards. And then we were presented with a scrumptious feast of lamb, sausages, potatoes and all things Australian and we had the company of the group heading the other way too so we got to hear about all the things in store for us. We also had 3 people from the other group that were to join us and head back to Adelaide so as the girls pointed out, I would no longer be the only guy, again they forgot to include Lachie in the equation, something which had been annoying him every time they said it.

Up till now, I hadn’t been taking advantage of my situation, surrounded by women, or so Angelica told me, in fact it almost sounded like I was being told off! “Oh I’m sorry, would you like me to take advantage of you?” I asked, “No, but I mean come on, your surrounded by girls, you should be enjoying it more.” It was funny; the one time I decide to restrain myself and not be whore-ish a beautiful German tells me off for it. Well I took that as a sign that I could just be myself so I kissed her.

Sleeping in a ghost house

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

The next day it was more driving, on more long roads, reaching one point Lachie told us was “The edge of the world.” Which was really just a lower portion of plain, however its positioning and the way that it seemed to stretch on for ever did make it seem quite edge of the world like, I think perhaps the lack of anything on the plain might have contributed that effect too. Then off to Eucla, a charming little telegraph town, we stopped by a sand bank, with a chair on it, moving past this welcome we came to the town, one long departed building. The place had been buried by sandstorms a while ago and simply left to fall apart.

The south coastline happened to run quite close to the road, so a viewing was natural, the first being our lunch stop. It was obvious that here was where the plateau ended, in a big long line the ground fell away in an incline that reached down to rather harsh looking beaches, perhaps that was just the weather though. The second time was rather more dramatic, forget what Lachie said earlier about the edge of the world, this would also be the edge of the plateau but the difference being instead of a slope the ground just was and then wasn’t, here we were standing on massive cliffs that went as far as you could see in both directions, a sheer drop with the waves angrily pummelling the base of the cliffs we were on and the wind threatening to knock you over, quite humbling really, and the only thing between us and Antarctica was water, and maybe some sharks.

That night was perhaps our most interesting camping wise, we went off the road and up to what used to be the road from west to east. Just off this ancient road there was an old petrol station, which had been abandoned when the road got moved and it went out of business, and this was where we stayed. It was complete with a ghost house, barn, shed, outside ‘dunny’ and even its own car graveyard. Now you might be wondering what the hell a car graveyard is, perhaps that’s not even the right name for it as no cars were buried but that’s what I’m calling it, it being about a hundred rusted out, broken, wrecked cars. The whole place was utterly fascinating, and is now an infamous little shelter for passers by who know of it.

I wandered about the place with Nic, taking photos of cars, lots and lots of photos of cars, we found a funnel web hole, Lachie on his way back from searching for something he never found and eventually when we wandered up to the old barn we found Linda (a friend of Helen who was naturally lovely) sitting in the doorway looking quite creepy, it turned out she had liked the place because it was away from the main goings on of everyone else and felt very peaceful, to me it was just creepy, things left about as if people expected to come back.

Straight roads

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

The next morning we were up for a hike, the weather had cooled slightly so it was a pleasant enough walk up one of the nearby hills that had a rock at the top, this rock I attempted to climb, then noticing the spider webs 2 inches from my nose I attempted to flee. Angelica and Nic had kindly waited for me and we strolled down to the lookout to find the others already swimming. The view was spectacular naturally, the usual one white sand, blue/green crystal clear water, blah blah you know it already.

On the road again, this time a really long road. Really long and really straight, at one point it was just hills but no turns, so you’d crest one hill to see another 20 in the distance and just wonder how long it could go on for, then we came across the 90 mile straight. When we hit this particularly long bit of very boring road surrounded by nothing there was a little tree people had used to put random objects on, littering, however it was amusing and Lachie gained a huge purple hat from it. Just before this boring road there was something even more random than a purple hat in a tree, a NASA mistake. This NASA mistake consisted of a satellite that NASA, the clever buggers, attempted to crash over the ocean, and missed, by quite a large margin as anyone who knows anything about Australia’s size can tell you. Part of it had landed right next to the Nullarbor, in fact several large chunks of metal had landed in this little town that was little more than a name on a map, I think the satellite pieces outnumbered the inhabitants.

After a lot of driving we reached our next stop at our shelter for the night, which was just that, a big metal roof. No walls. We set up tents on the rock solid ground and hammered like crazy to get our pegs in before the tents blew away, which was difficult in the circumstances. This was the place where the good weather got away, Australia’s weather in the south starts in the west and then takes the same road we did along to the east, we had been following the hot stuff since Perth but now it had got away and the clouds that were following it had caught up with us. We heard the rain, however the Nullarbor has this remarkable aspect, as soon as water touches the ground it acts like a sieve, and the water literally falls straight through as if there was no ground there, and this is why there are no trees in the Nullarbor Plain. I got up for a pee after hearing the rain stop and it was dry, there was no water on the ground, weird I thought, maybe it hadn’t rained after all, but I changed my mind upon witnessing my pee disappear into the ground as well.