St H and I flew to Melbourne on Thursday the 5th of February. Our plan was to drive to Adelaide and back and catch some of the highlights in between. It was a pretty varied holiday but with lots of golf. Eight golf courses we played, I believe.
We arrived in Melbourne airport at around four in the afternoon. It's so dry in Victoria. A world away from NSW. After a Hertz cock up we were given a much nicer car than we paid for and off we drove towards the Grampians National Park. After a brief drive on the ring road we were driving through dry plains that reminded me of Somabula. It didn't take us long before we were in the Grampians and heading for the largest town in the park, Halls Gap.
The aptly named Halls Gap with Bellfield Lake behind
The picture above was taken the day after we arrived, on the way out of the park. We had to drive up a windy, narrow road to get to this look out point. This is when I realised St H's love for speed: the more precarious the road the better too. My camera has a smudge on the top left side of the lens, which I only noticed and cleaned later that day.
I saw my first kangaroo in the Grampians. There are hundreds of the little critters there. I managed to walk right up to one in near a restaurant in Halls Gap. The photo still turned out pretty badly so I won't post it here. We both decided that it would be nice to camp by a lake and so headed off out of town, carrying on in the direction that we came in. We found Bellfield, which is in the picture above, but decided it wasn't that nice. It looked like it was recently made for drinking water purposes and not very suitable for swimming. It was dusk now and on our way back to HG we were suddenly made aware of what a dangerous time that is to be driving around:
Do not pass go...
I was looking at the map at the time and got an awful fright. Probably less of fright, to be fair, than little Skippy got. Lucky he / she was little though because the only damage done was to the number plate.
Hitting the roo accelerated our desire to find somewhere to stay and so we chanced upon Tim's place which turned out to be a nice little backpackers 600m outside of HG. We chose to stay in a two-man tent that Tim had up permanently. That evening we dined out in the town, bought a bottle of bourbon from the local pub and got a bit drunk at Tim's.
The next day we played a volunteer-maintained course in the national park. Dry. Reminded me of playing in Gweru during the drought. It was a place fit for 'roos and flies and there were loads of both. I seem to remember shooting 40, and unfortunately I didn't take any photos. We then drove up to the look out point where that first photo is taken from, took a scenic drive through a forest (and saw an emu) and finally had a swim in a lake.
Both of us were keen to see some of this famous Australian desert and it seemed like a particularly convenient time to do it too, since we were heading towards a string of national parks with the word 'desert' somewhere in their name.
Red dots trace our approximate route
We decided to head to Ngarkat Conservation Park, which we assumed must be desert too. We passed through Horsham which struck me a being a rather pointless place. A bit nasty I suppose, but it was lacking in any kind of charm: low rise, arranged in a grid, modern and fucking hot. My most memorable thought was "why build a town here?" According to Wikipedia it has a population of under 15,000 and is the most conservative seat in its county. Anyway it was nice to experience the rural Australian town even though I would rather not live there (or even visit again).
Driving along the stretch of highway that enters South Australia there is a smattering of small towns - all of them gone in seconds. Otherwise, emptiness. Empty plains for miles. Nice cloud formations met us on the horizon, as if we were approaching the end of the earth.
Would you build a town here?
We stopped at Border Town (birth place of PM Bob Hawke) and bought a cheap cooler bag and a couple of bottles of booze and headed north towards Ngarkat watching the scenary in expectation of parched, arid land. It never really happened. Ngarkat is semi-arid at best. It is beautiful though and if it didn't have a ridiculous number of flies would actually be a nice place. As it is, it's intolerable. Not fit for humans. Or at least humans without bee-keeping suits. Fortunately the flies go somewhere as soon as the sun sets. Where, we wondered? Ultimately we were content that they were gone. The little fuckers.
Preventative measures. Not ideal for having a fag, however.
We took a walk, designed to show you all the flora of Ngarkat, but didn't find ourselves stopping to admire much. The thought did cross my mind: how did Aborigines survive here? Fuck knows, but if I were them I would have been mighty pleased that the honkies brought things called 'houses' with them.
Land of the flies
We spent the last two agonising hours of sun light finding firewood and drinking shots of tequila. And then they were gone. Just like that. And mosquitos weren't there to replace them either. Just peace and quiet in the middle of Ngarkat.
It's a bit deserty...
After a fit of drinking out of sheer relief and a fire that did us proud we collapsed in the tent, but only after I forgot to zip it up properly. In the morning our little friends were back in force and St H confessed that he was tempted to bludgen me to death and leave me for the flies. Fair enough, I thought.
It didn't take us long to leave and when we did, at around 9:30 the cars thermometer recorded 29 degrees. By the time we got to Keith it was 45. Incredible heat.
We arrived in Adelaide at around lunch time. I wasn't feeling very healthy.
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