| 28apr2004 G'day from Oz... sorry it's been a while since the last update, but oh well... there's a lot to update in the last month, so go to the loo and/or grab a cup of coffee before you start... Just heard that it's been up over 90 degrees in CA recently so I'm glad to be here in the nice cool Australian Outback, where I don't think I've had a day over 85 despite being basically travelling through the desert the last 8 days on the "Face the Outback" camping tour by Wayward Bus. Wayward runs a whole slew of different point-a to point-b bus tours, mainly in southern & central Australia, with the motto of "Let the others rush." So since I didn't want to be driving by myself over long, sleep-inducing distances thru the desert, this seemed like a good way to experience the Outback. Wayward had us camping out 5 of the 7 nights on the tour... 2 of those nights in "swags". Never heard of a swag? Me neither. Basically it was this human-sized canvas top-loading envelope in which you sqeeze in yourself, your sleeping bag, your sleeping pad, and perhaps a change of clothes. If you're an Australian rambling about in the Outback more than, say, about 75 years ago, in the morning you would roll up your swag, load it up on your back or your horse or your camel, and press on to your next destination. The tour passed through several dusty outback towns as we rolled north from Adelaide towards Alice Springs, taking a few detours off the Stuart Hwy to visit the Flinders Ranges and drive along the Oodnadatta Track. We spent one night in the quirky opal-mining town of Coober Pedy, where many "buildings" ranging from hotel rooms, hostel bunkhouses and people's homes to churches & pubs are actually dug out of the ground. This is because summer temps can reach 50C degrees while winter lows can be below freezing. However the 'dugouts' maintain a relatively stable 20-26C all year round (the C to F conversion is left as an exercise for the reader). Of course, everyone's highlight of the centre of Australia is to visit Uluru (aka Ayers Rock)... you've all seen it, it's that really big red-orange rock (well, at sunset from the right direction it's red-orange) with the vertical crevices & flat top that's pictured in every travel brochure about Australia. It's about a 350 meter climb from the base, but it's estimated that 2/3 of the rock is below the surface of the ground.... that's one big rock! Turns out the top ain't that flat, as I found out after climbing it... after a steep Half Dome-type of climb alongside a chainlink "bannister" you kinda dip up & down a bit before you reach the summit & the expansive views of the surrounding desert. It's not a sandy desert like the Sahara, but more like the high desert in Nevada with a fair ammount of brush growth. As some of you may know, Uluru is a sacred Aboriginal site and as joint administrators of Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park with the Aussie govt, the local Aboriginal group Anangu request that people do not climb the rock. For a long time, I'd wanted to do the climb & it was one of the things that drew me to coming to Australia in the first place... but then about 3 years ago I read about the Anangu request and had a sorta moral dilemma in my head about whether to do it or not. What ended up being the deciding factor for me was hearing from Australians about their feelings about whether to climb or not, in particular, a the guy in Sydney who gives the Didjeridoo demonstrations (I think his name was Jeremy) at the Northern Territory Aboriginal Culture Center near Darling Harbour. He is of Aboriginal descent and believes that the rock (and other natural sites) should be open for anyone to appreciate in any way they see fit as long as it's not destructive... this seemed to be the prevailing opinion among most Aussies I met. So maybe I used these opinions to rationalize to myself that it was OK to do the climb, but I like to think that I do have a good respect for nature whether or not it's a sacred site for a given culture so, <shrug>, well, I can live with that... <stepping down from soapbox> Before the Outback tour (I guess this update is gonna go backwards, kinda like that Seinfeld episode), I rented a car in Melbourne and took a week to drive myself from Melb to Adelaide via the Great Ocean Road and the Grampians. The Great Ocean Road runs along the southern coast of the state of Victoria, through dozens of shorefront resort towns and beaches. It was a tad cold for a landlubber like myself to go for a dip, but I did get in some good walking in the hills and along the cliffs several points along the way. This is a great route for the lighthouse-chasers out there, and I even saw my first (and only, so far) wild Koala lounging in a eucalypt above the road on the way to the Otway Lighthouse. I spent a couple days in Lenore as well, doing some of the walks in the hills through some pretty thick coastal forest (and getting a bit wet during one particularly rainy stretch!) After 4 1/2 days on the Great Ocean Road, I ventured up north to the mountainous (by Aussie standards!) Grampians National Park. On the way, a quick detour to take a 2-hour walk around the ancient extinct volcano Mt Eccles made for a nice break in the drive away from the rainy south coast I then spent the better part of the next day driving around the hills of the Grampians. Australia is pretty much the oldest chunk of land on Earth, so what pass as mountains here are rather small by world standards, having been worn down by erosion over hundreds of millions of years. In fact, continuing backwards in time, while en route from Sydney to Melbourne on another one-way bus tour by Autopia, I hiked up the tallest mountain in Australia. Part of the Snowy Mts, Mt Koziusko (sp?), at just under 2300m was quite a walk, particularly challenging during the first 45 minutes chugging uphill beneath a ski lift (which does run year-round for those taking the easier way to the summit)! The Autopia tour was a 3 1/2 day tour that spent the first 1 1/2 days in the spectacular Blue Mountains (named for the blue glaze on the horizon given off by the eucalyptus trees that dominate the scenery). We did some nice walks the first day, down into a canyon & hoisted back up by a tram that got up to 49 degrees steep (there's some awkward English, but you know what I mean!), then later among the hulking stone pillars The Three Sisters that hang off the edge of a cliffside. I ended up spending a full week at Balu & Anitha's shuttling myself into Sydney & back again on most days. Hit pretty much all the usual tourist sites... the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, the Aquarium, the Botanical Gardens. Acutally, the Gardens might have been the highlight, especially the hundreds of screeching bats hanging in the trees in the center section of the park. Seeing platypus and doing the shark walk through underwater tubes was quite cool as well. Also got to spend a day walkng around some of the less touristy neighborhoods with my friend Olga I met in NZ. A bus/bike trip up to Hunter Valley with Wobbly Wine Tours was wobbly as advertised, thanks largely to Max the wacky German winemaker who poured generous portions of his odd concoctions. But Balu & Anitha's splendid hospitality was probably the biggest highlight... many thanks guys! I know I'm missing some cool other stuff, but I'm getting tired now myself, so I'll leave the rest for the photos... adios from Alice Springs! --- 02apr2004 Arrived in Australia last night... took a lonnnnnng shuttle bus ride through the Sydney (sitting in the front I got to kid with the driver about his propensity for getting through 'orange' traffic lights!) then took a spectacular ferry ride from Circular Quay to Manly as the sun was setting behind me with the Harbour Bridge silhouetted in the orange sky behind it. I'm staying with my gracious friend Balu (my ex-colleague from Roche) and his family... wife Anitha, young daughter Anya, and Balu's mum Indira. The next few days I'll spend in & around Sydney before heading down south to Melbourne and onwards along my big clockwise loop thru the centre up to Darwin, east to Cairns, then back down south thru Brisbane & back to Sydney. |