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 3rd 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.
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