NSW Road Trip

Upon my return from the outback, Peter and I ventured northwards in search of thrills. Byron Bay was our target because, apparently, thrills are easy to come by in that part of the world. Peter didn’t seem so keen on Tuesday morning but I persuaded him that it was a clever idea and that he had taken leave so we might as well do something rather than loiter in Sydney for a week.

Although not as empty as some states, NSW is for the most part a place of small towns and emptiness. Empty of humans, that is. The magnificent gum forests that line the roads are probably filled with possums, kangaroos, koalas, emus and all sorts of other Australian fauna. Very considerately, I thought, someone has installed little bridges which hang high above the roads to help the aforementioned fauna to cross the motorways.

The towns are not dainty and picturesque as towns sometimes are in Europe, but rather practical and designed with the motorist in mind. Australia’s beauty comes from nature most of the time, but there is plenty of it to make up for its lack of architectural grandiosity. Peter and I decided, for what it’s worth, that people in these places spend their time fishing, taking their kids to BMX, riding horses, water skiing, playing golf and all the things that people in Gweru used to do. Small town life.

We stopped overnight in Port Macquarie, which used to be a prison within a prison; a place where transported convicts who reoffended were sent. Peter and I had played poker the night before at a pub on Lachlan Street and now we stayed in Port Macquarie – both places named for the early 19th century governor who ended up lending his name to so many places in Australia. Apparently it’s a really nice place in the daytime, but on a Tuesday night it hasn’t got much to offer two young people in search of a few beers. The “hotels”, like many in NSW, are soulless gambling houses with garish decor and walls of television screens showing racing information. A special mention must go to the town’s Irish themed pub whose only Hibernian attribute was a tacky toy leprechaun behind the bar.

We ended up spending most of the evening drinking a few beers back at the hostel where we met a Cornish girl called Churchill who claimed to be related, albeit in a convoluted way, to Winston.

We started the second half of our trip early the next day and punctuated the journey with a stop off in Coffs harbour where we played ten pin bowling. Peter got five strikes in a row in the second game and scored 195. We also stopped, but did not get out of the car, to photograph the big banana.

(I’d also like to mention that I’ve seen the big pineapple in Qld, too. That was when I was with Nigel around Mt Coolum. That’s four “big things” that I saw in my time in Australia. I still haven’t worked out why exactly the Aussies need or want these things, but there you go: four big things off my list.)

Around this time we decided we were going to spend the night in Nimbin, which is about 50km inland from Byron (although 70km by road). It’s where the coppers turn a blind eye to pot, which was good enough reason for us to want to stay a night there. The GPS took us off the motorways and onto small roads which wound their way through a very civilised looking, hilly countryside where small neat fences and big cows were drawn on the landscape.

Nimbin, which emerged eventually from this anesthetised country, is a good example of why human beings shouldn’t smoke too much dope. Its residents look about 20 years older than they probably are and a lot of them couldn’t really give a shit about giving you that beer or coffee that you just paid for. But dealers line the main thoroughfare and we got what we wanted soon enough.

Some people who go to Nimbin for a day stay for a month (if you believe internet forum comments), but Peter and I were content with a day. It’s a bit over-represented here in photos but that’s only because I only took one photo of Byron, and that was with my mobile.

The YHA, 15min walk from the village, where we stayed.

So Thursday came and it was time for the short drive to Byron. Photographic evidence is thin, as mentioned above, and quite frankly I can’t think of much to say about Byron apart from say that it’s a decadent place, full of backpackers getting drunk and acting foolishly. Nothing wrong with that of course, and I gladly joined in, but not worthy of mention in this esteemed organ. No seriously, Peter and I met up with three English lads in our hostel and got drunk and stoned with them every night and frequented a naughty bar called Cheeky Monkey. We played poker with ticket stubs for chips and Peter even suggested that we all drive to Nimbin again since they had not seen it. It seemed like an odd invitation to me because Peter didn’t really seem to think much of Nimbin the first time round. Sure enough we got there, had a schooner of Coopers, a joint and fucked off back to Byron.

So here it is, my one and only photo of Byron Bay:

On Friday or Saturday Peter and I were cajoled by the hostel staff and the three Englishmen into staying Saturday night for a barbeque (the promise of thirty girls arriving in time for the barbeque by the conniving hostel staff mesmerised Peter, in my opinion). This meant that our drive back on Sunday was a monster.

Back again over the hundreds of NSW creeks and narrow bridges and small towns and the huge rivers and the Dutch village in Coffs Harbour and through the town with the famous pie shop and past the place where the GPS goes crazy and thinks you’re driving in the bush and over the bridge in Brooklyn and home to Marsfield. And the end of a great trip with a good friend.

The Red Centre

I went on a three day tour of Australia’s world famous reddish and arid heartland – how could you not if you in Alice Springs? Well one reason is that it’s 500km from Alice, but if you’ve been in Australia for any decent amount of time you’d know that 500km is not very far at all.

There were about 24 of us from America, Bavaria, Canada, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Spain, Switzerland and Sweden and our tour guide was Dave from Qld.  The group was fairly young for the most part and everyone seemed to get along very well. Dave was a really nice guy who told us the earth was 45,000 million years old. His job was to take us to Uluru, the Olga’s and King’s Canyon (1500km over 3 days) and to give us the odd talk on geology and native beliefs.

On the way we drove over a 360 million year old river (the Finke) which is apparently the oldest in the world. The landscape sure looks old. It looks like it’s been battered and burnt and torn apart forever. I remember thinking that about the Zambezi valley but the RC looks even older and more raped. It all used to be under a sea according to Dave, which is why the Olga’s are rounded like pebbles.

The Olga’s are what the honkies called these 36 dome-like structures. The Aborigines called it Kata Tjuta which means “many heads”. Dave asked us to ponder how the Aborigines knew all the heads had only one body, i.e. that all 36 domes were part of one big rock. I figured it was a guess.

When we got back to the bus I caught a glimpse of some outback wildlife.

By the end of the trip I came to realise that Outback wildlife (at least the visible wildlife) is all pets that have escaped and come to flourish in the desert, remote from the clutches of man. The camel above is one of over a million and there are hundreds of thousands of brumbies and dingos too.

We missed the sunset at Uluru which struck me as a schoolboy error, given it’s legendry beauty at the close of day. We had to settle for Kata Tjuta, but none of use seemed particularly disappointed.

The five o’clock start the next morning was most disagreeable after 2 litres of “goon”. It’s difficult to take sunrise near a big rock seriously when you’re still half pissed from red wine. My photo is illustrative:

 

With a more light I improved but couldn’t fit the damn thing in the picture.

After the photography it was time to either climb the rock or do the 9km walk around it. Seven or eight of us were irreverent enough to ignore Aborigine pleas not to climb Uluru and the rest walked around it. When I was canoeing in Katherine I got talking to a lady from Queensland who told me, “when you go to Ayers Rock do me a favour and climb it, I’m an Australian and it’s my bloody rock too.” Fair dinkum.

It almost fucking killed me in the end.

The sign on the right implores you not to climb Uluru but a dotted line shows the best route and metal posts are provided for the steep beginning.

Kata Tjuta in the distance above. It’s 36km away from Uluru.

Like Ngarkat, the “Red Centre” is awash with flies but they didn’t seem as aggressive as their South Australian cousins. Some people had fly nets but I found that chain smoking is probably as effective.

We headed now for our final destination which was Kings Canyon – Dave’s favourite place – but not before we had an another opportunity to take photos of what must be the world’s most photographed rock. (And this time I managed to fit it all in).

On the way to the canyon we stopped a few times, once to look at a salt lake and this mountain:

Once to look at some brumbies:

We also stopped to pick up firewood and to stalk some more camels before getting to our campsite just before sunset.

It’s true that King’s Canyon is beautiful and it’s easy to see why it’s Dave’s favourite. But after finishing my 4l goon it was quite wasted on me. We had a great fire all evening and the group got merry and I bruised my leg on the buses tow hitch by stupidly trying to jump over it in the complete darkness. So another 5am start probably wasn’t easy for anybody.

This spelled the end of the tour. Now it was just driving and desert and brumbies and camels and more driving and plenty more desert.

Alice

I was told by a Victorian in Darwin that he had “never seen so many Aborigines in a single place and that I should watch myself in Alice”. It is interesting that he, as an Australian, should express surprise that Aborigines do actually live in significant numbers in some parts of Australia, and, that he feels the need to warn foreigners about them. A German guy called Magnus that I met in Alice said that he was warned in Coober Pedy never to take a lift from a “black fella”.

Australia’s white-dominated culture regards the indigenous man with ambivalence at best and suspicion at worst. Not much appears to have changed since the settler days when the Aborigine caused a nuisance; they are still wholly incompatible with the white Australian endeavour. The Aborigine, however, has been significantly sidelined in this society over the years and now most urban centres are almost completely depleted of the original inhabitants of this country.

Alice Springs has around six or seven times more Aborigines than the national average, which is apparently only 1%. So it is Alice that acted for me as a sort of looking glass into what I have always been told about and never witnessed, and that is the invisible – but all too real – barrier between black and white in this country.

It is Australia’s apparently unsolvable conundrum. It is an irrelevant fact that this problem was created by white peoples’ actions in the past. What matters is what this liberal, tolerant democracy can do about removing a barrier which leads to, amongst other things, a 17 year difference in life expectancy between the ethnicities.

Kevin Rudd said sorry last year which was bound to have warmed the hearts of millions of urban liberals but done little else. Besides, Australia is a small country and has a lot to worry about at the moment. It’s coffers are reeling from the great onslaught of the GFC and, maybe even more scary, Afghans are arriving by the boatload.

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So anyway, Alice is a small town with a disproportionate number of scruffy Aborigines. I was only there for two nights and a day, which I think is plenty.

This is the Todd River which runs (underground maybe) through Alice.

The town from a nearby hill.

Another picture of the Todd running parallel to a road I never went on. It might be the road to Adelaide.

The road to Uluru runs through that gap in the hills. A golf course / oasis is in the foreground.

The main street in Alice.

…and the famous flying doctors!

The Ghan

The Ghan took me from Darwin to Katherine where I went canoeing in a river. Unfortunately it wasn’t in the bit of the river where the “famous” Katherine Gorge is but it was nice none-the-less. Twice I got out of the canoe to walk in the bush and was happy to hear the “thump, thump” of kangaroos darting out of the shade away from me.

The oldest farmstead in the Northern Territory, where the canoeing happened.

A Boab tree. They’re from Western Australia and look to me like the Baobab’s little cousin.

This fella was close to the homestead.

I just like this photo.

The Ghan never lived up to my expectations, however. Most of the scenery rushed by during the night and it was pretty impossible to sleep. In hindsight I’m not sure what I was expecting.

 

Darwin

Almost half of the population of the Northern Territory – an area much bigger than South Africa – live in Darwin and it’s still barely big enough to be called a city. Flying over Darwin is a visual treat: a low rise city heavily smattered with lush green parks, surrounded by strange and beautiful unreflective turquoise blue water which is occasionally muddied by the reddish earth which dominates the land. A river with fat sluggish tributaries snakes towards the ocean and seems to engorge the city, which is left teetering on a flimsy peninsular.

On the ground the air is hot and thick with moisture and the place appears to have been deserted in a prior decade. Darwin’s isolation, I think, allows it to lag behind other parts of Australia in social norms and for the first time since SE Asia I was allowed to smoke inside.

After a night on the sauce with various people who I’ll never see again I had a day to look around Darwin.

Scenic Darwin.

The above is plaque commemorating Ludwig Leichhardt’s 1844 journey which was approximate to the trip I had just taken on Jetstar but took a bit longer.

It took me ages to find a way to the beaches that I had seen from the plane and in a deserted park on an abortive route I met a lizard who seemed fixated on something high up in a tree. I felt as if I had interrupted some kind of ritual.

I eventually found a pebbly beach beyond the Darwin Harbour. Usually Australian beaches have a large sign detailing a list of petty prohibitions but Darwin beaches have small signs with one important warning: Don’t fucking swim.

Still, it was pretty to explore the bay.

Surfers’ Paradise

When I travelled from Coff’s Harbour to Bundaberg I was surprised to find that there was a city by this name, but as it turns out it is actually a suburb of a city called Gold Coast. I went there with my cousin Mandy on Sunday the 26th of April. It’s a beach with bolted on apartments and shiny skyscrapers.

Botswana to become a nation of helmets

According to AFP, “Botswana, which has one of the world's highest HIV infection rates, has launched a scheme to circumcise nearly half a million men to curb the spread the disease, the health ministry said Thursday.”

I was very impressed with the Batswana Government’s efforts to distribute condoms and promote AIDS awareness when I was there. This move does not convince me though. Will circumcising men dissuade them from using a condom and will the implementation of a mass circumcision be carried out efficiently and hygienically?