From: "Pete" <[email protected]>
To: thegang
Subject: On the road again
Date: 17 June 2001 07:55
Yep, the potatoes are out of the ground, the weatherin Victoria is getting cold and your favourite antipodean explorer is on the move to warmer climates.
I finally left the tiny town of Alexandra after threemonths longer than I originally planned to stay on Sunday the tenth of June. Having been offered a lift by Paul, a fellow nectarine and spud picker who was heading north we loaded up the car and headed off northwards. The first stop was Tocumwal on the New South Wales side of the Murray River, to visit some friends of Paul's. So having been fed, sheltered and watered by total strangers, who proved to be excellent company, we set off for the snowy mountains on Monday.
So after several hours drive through flat farmlandwith long brown grass and a scattering of cattle, and losing count of how many times we'd crossed from Victoria to New South Wales and back again, we finally approached the Snowy Mountains. No snow was spotted in spite of this being the first day of the Australian ski season (don't laugh, I'm being serious - they have a bigger ski industry than Scotland, even if us poms expect the whole place to look like the Great Sandy Desert).
The approach to Thredbo, where we were staying, proved to be somewhat unwelcoming, the whole place being carefully geared to recieving skiers from Sydney and Canberra. The "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here" sign was just a little bit off putting (actually it said "No Entry without 4WD and Snow Chains" but it was still not exactly enticing us to Thredbo). So after several hours of negotiating winding roads we reached this large village (I guess it is the desire to be like the great swiss ski resorts that makes Thredbo a village, as a rule the Auastralian's don't have them, anywhere with more than one house calls itself a town.)
Approaching, as we did from the wrong side ("Tocumwal is that in Victoria?", the New South Welshman who managed the youth hostel would later ask us) we got hopelessly lost for quite some time before finally finding the tourist information and then finding the YHA. The next day the plan was to conquer Mt Kosciusko, Australia's highest peak. This is not as impressive as it sounds, as it only requires 6km of level walking from the top of the chairlift to the summit. Unfortunatly, a late start due to a hangover, the fact that visibility was about ten feet and that the rain was blowing in sideways meant we got no further than the Cafe at the chairlift station. After that we went back to the hostel and played chess while we watched the rain beat against the window.
Well after departing Thredbo the next day we drove to Newcastle via an hour's diversion after leaving the highway at Goulburn for fuel and failing to find it again. We did see the World's Biggest Merrino (a breed of sheep) at the petrol station though. Of course being an hour later than expected meant trying to negotiate the west of Sydney in the middle of the three hour traffic jam which is laughingly referred to as 'peak hour'.
After a night in an extremely seedy pub we relocated to the youth hostel and began to explore Newcastle.
Unfortunatly by 4pm we had seen just about everything we wanted to, so decided against staying any longer than we had already paid for. The most significant event was of course my first visit to a record shop since Melbourne, a long anticipated event which was no less joyous for the fact that I had to visit every record shop in town to find the CD I was looking for.
Other than that, a walk along the breakwater and a trip to the fort and maritime museum was about all Newcastle had to offer. The maritime museum was particularly disappointing, not containing a single word about the fort which it was located in.
So then a trip from Newcastle to Coff's Harbour, via a walk on the beach and a fish and chip lunch in Port Maquarie. About half way between Port Maquarie and Coff's we spotted the Ayers Rock Road house, which contrary to the Australian tradition is actually a fibre glass model of something smaller than the original.
After two days in Coff's we've seen the beach and the Nature Reserve, an extremely out of the way Historic Goldmine from which only two ounces of Gold were ever extracted. ("Bloody hell all those winding dirt roads with a donkey dragging mining equipment for only two Ounces!") A nearby Sikh temple proved one of the most unusual trips, in a very fish-out-of-waterish kind of a way. And of course the town's piece de resistence the Big Banana! Actually it was very disappointing, being several storeys smaller than the Big Merrino, and the gift shop didn't have nearly enough yellow plastic banana shaped things for me to buy anything either. I settled for a banana smoothie in the end.
Anyway, tommorrow, on to Byron Bay
Catch you all soon
No Worries!
Pete