News: March 5, 2002 (Port Augusta, Australia)

March 5, 2002 (Port Augusta, Australia)

The Road Beckons

After spending several days in Robe, I dis-Robed and left on a Friday morning, heading west along the coast highway. I won't say that my time in Robe was "relaxing" because I haven't relaxed much on this trip since leaving the U.S. in early December. I'm always busy doing something: either planning my trip, working on e-mail, updating my website, working on my digital photos, or walking around and taking pictures. I haven't had any time, really, to just sit around, browse through magazines or day-dream. I won't complain though, because I haven't woken up to an alarm in almost a year and this sure beats working in an office.

After leaving Robe and driving west for a few hours, I rode an old-fashioned cable-ferry across Australia's longest river, the Murray. This was the second time that I've seen the Murray, the first being a week earlier on a steamboat in Echuca. I was thinking about driving into Adelaide that afternoon but Friday afternoons aren't a good time to visit large cities, so I decided to spend that night in the seaside resort town of Victor Harbor and visit Adelaide on Saturday. Victor Harbor was kind of interesting, but the best part was getting a much-needed haircut there from a friendly, outgoing and inquisitive Pommie (i.e., a transplant from England) for only US$7. Haircuts are really cheap in Australia -- in fact, I should come over here to Australia more often to get my hair cut.

Above left: Larry the Lobster in Kingston, South Australia.

Above center: "So ferry, cross the Murray..." Those of you under 30 probably won't get this joke.

Above right: The pedestrian causeway to Granite Island in Victor Harbor, SA, a seaside resort town.

Beautiful Adelaide

The skies were overcast Saturday morning as I crossed over a low mountain range and approached Adelaide, the capital of South Australia and its largest city. This apparently had been quite a week for Adelaide because a World Technology Conference had been held here early in the week, bringing together some of the smartest people from around the globe. Then on Wednesday, Bill Clinton made his first visit to Adelaide and the next day, Queen Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip visited Adelaide. Of course, this was all just a prelude to my visit on Saturday, the event that Adelaide was really gearing up for.

Although I'd heard of Adelaide for many years, I didn't have any preconceptions about the city because I knew virtually nothing about it, other than it was about the same size as Portland. I figured it was probably just another bland city, but I felt obligated to at least take a look at it for a few minutes before continuing on my way.

Once again, here's the popular 1960s Aussie group The Seekers. This is I'll Never Find Another You.

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As I drove towards the city, the area reminded me of the California's Sacramento Valley with its golden, rolling hills and scattered trees. With about a million people, Adelaide's only about one-third the size of Sydney or Melbourne and it's a lot easier to navigate around: no wild and crazy Sydney-type drivers here and no ridiculous "hook turns" as in Melbourne.

After parking in a garage, I walked around for what was going to be 30 minutes but ended up being four hours because, as I discovered, Adelaide is a city of clean, tree-lined streets, interesting buildings, and pretty parks. There's also a beautiful river that winds through the city, a nice university, an interesting museum, and a very lively and pleasant pedestrian shopping area several blocks long called Rundle Mall which was jammed with shoppers, people-watchers, and street performers.

You don't hear much about Adelaide, especially if you live in the U.S., but I thought it was far more pleasant than any other large city in Australia or New Zealand, including Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland. In fact, its nicer than just about any city I've visited during the last 12 months. As with Portland, it's a large city but it has a small-town feel to it, and although I would never admit that any city is as nice as Portland, Adelaide comes pretty darn close.

Above left: King William Street in Adelaide.

Above center: Buildings on Pirie Street.

Above right: A quaint shopping mall in Adelaide.

Above left: Bridge over the Torrens River near downtown Adelaide.

Above center: Fountain outside the Museum of South Australia. I spent about an hour walking through the museum, which has a great collection of Aboriginal artifacts.

Above right: A "living statue." This guy obviously needs to get outside more often.

Above left: Reflections in the steel orb on Rundle Mall. That's me in the middle.

Above center: Adelaide is the only place I've ever seen an aerial rock band.

Above right: Back at the parking garage. I walked around Adelaide for four hours -- it's really a wonderful city.

Maps of Adelaide

Flinders? Which Flinders?

I left Adelaide on Saturday afternoon and drove up into the Barossa Valley, a beautiful area near Adelaide, which has lots of vineyards and wineries, something like the Napa Valley in California. Unfortunately though, it doesn't have many places to stay, so I drove on into the city of Gawler, which, according to my Australian AAA Accommodations Guide, had a motel with 104 rooms. Saturday afternoon is usually the toughest time during the week to find a place to stay, but I was hoping that Prasad's Gawler Motel had at least one vacant room left.

Yep -- in fact, they had 104 vacant rooms left. Mr. Prasad's eyes lit up with anticipation when I walked into the lobby, then he gave me a funny look when I asked if he had any rooms available (after eyeing the empty parking lot, I was just being polite). After checking in to my choice of 104 rooms, I realized that it was a bit creepy to look outside and see a virtual ghost town of empty motel rooms stretching off into the horizon. "Jeez, what's wrong with this place?," I kept asking myself with visions of the Bates Motel dancing in my head. I felt a little better, and better for Mr. Prasad, when another car finally pulled in around 9 p.m.

As I pored over my maps that night in the empty Gawler Motel, I noticed a place a few hours north of town called Flinders Ranges National Park which confused me at first, because I'd run across the Flinders name several times during the previous week. Let's see, there was Flinders Island near Tasmania, Flinders Chase National Park on Kangaroo Island south of Adelaide, Flinders Street in Adelaide, and a Flinders River in some town that I'd passed through a while back. Whoever Flinders was, he must have been one important dude (or she must have been one important dudette).

The photos of Flinders Ranges National Park in my Lonely Planet guidebook looked intriguing, so I decided to head up there Sunday morning for an hour to check it out -- and I'm really glad I did. In fact, I was so glad that I ended up camping there for two nights. As I discovered, Flinders Ranges National Park is a beautiful place on the edge of the Outback with lots of red rocks, kangaroos and, amazingly enough, native pine trees -- one of the few places in Australia where there are native pines.

This was still during the summer so the park was mostly empty, which was rather nice. When I walked into the quiet Visitor Center, the two attractive, young women standing behind the desk perked up. However, I attributed their enthusiasm not to my exotic American accent, my dashing good looks, nor even to my incredibly suave demeanor, but rather to the boredom and isolation that they’d endured during the previous few months. They eagerly showed me a map of the park, and when I told them that I was looking for solitude, they suggested the Aroona Campground, about 20 miles north and in one of the most remote parts of the park.

I thanked the ladies for their time, hopped in my Camry, and headed up to Aroona Campground, which I found an hour later after driving on miles of dirt roads and after crossing several creeks with trickles of briny water. Sure enough, the campground was empty, so I set up my tent and ate dinner watching the sun set over the meadow, while kangaroos and emus wandered about -- the Australian equivalent to where "the deer and the antelope play," I'm sure. It was a very warm, quiet, and pleasant evening.

Above left: Heading north through the Clare Valley on Sunday morning.

Above center: Quorn, a small town in the Outback, featured in the Mel Gibson film "Gallipoli."

Above right: A deserted house along the old Ghan Railway, central Australia's lifeline until it was abandoned in the 1950s.

Above left: The Visitor Center at Flinders Ranges National Park. There weren't too many visitors this time of year -- it's too darn hot, I guess.

Above center: The roads through the Flinders Ranges are a bit primitive. Please don't show Hertz this picture.

Above right: Despite the bushflies, the Aroona campground was the nicest place I've camped at since leaving the U.S. This is one of the few places in Australia that has pine trees, so I felt right at home.

The next morning I decided to go for a hike, so I packed my Eagle Creek daypack with a few bagels, my two cameras (one digital and one film), and a couple quarts of water. After I’d hiked for eight miles across the very hot and very dry Outback, I realized that the two quarts of water weren’t nearly enough, especially since I’d gotten … ahem… a bit lost. Of course I don't admit that very easily, having spent six years studying geography and mapping in college and another six years working in the Rocky Mountains as a wilderness ranger. To be honest, it wasn’t my fault because the map wasn’t very good, which reminds me of Traveler’s Rule #17: Whenever possible, blame the map. I staggered back to the campground late that afternoon, very hot, dusty and thirsty. A quick bucket of water over my head and two ice-cold Diet Pepsi's later, though, and I was a new man.

I saw lots of kookaburras at Flinders Ranges. Here's Lazy Harry singing about them.

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I hadn’t seen anyone in the quiet campground since I'd arrived the previous afternoon, so I was surprised when a lanky guy carrying a large backpack approached me, with my hair still dripping, and greeted me with a smile. “I was just wondering if you were driving out tomorrow,” he asked in an Aussie accent. When I told him that I was, he asked me for a ride back to his car, which was parked about eight miles away. He told me that he'd gone backpacking for a few days and that he didn’t want to hike all the way back to his car. I told him that I’d be happy to give him a lift to his car the next morning. With a warm handshake, he told me that his name was Jeff and said that he'd be back in the morning, then sauntered off to a campsite on the far side of the campground.

Sure enough, the next morning Jeff dropped by my campsite again, so I threw his backpack in the back seat of my Camry and we headed out. During our slow drive on bumpy, dusty roads, we had a pleasant conversation. Jeff said that he’d just finished college near Brisbane and was exploring the Outback for the first time -- rather bravely, I thought to myself, after he told me that he’d just bought his car second-hand for $300. Jeff was eventually heading north to Darwin, where he’d landed a job with the National Park service. He was a quintessential Aussie – very cheerful, inquisitive, and thoughtful. When I dropped Jeff off at his weather-beaten car with bald tires, he thanked me profusely and I gave him one of my travel cards and told him to keep in touch. It was a pleasant start to a pleasant day.

Before I leave Flinders Ranges National Park, I want to describe a creature that I was introduced to here -- the fabled Australian bushfly. Bushflies don't bite, but they are very aggressive, especially around any source of moisture, such as your eyes, lips, ears, and nose. They're especially bothersome during the hot summer months (i.e., now), which is when they're most active. Bushflies are like the Hare Krishnas of the fly world, because they won't take "no" for an answer. They're a little smaller than American houseflies, but they're a whole lot more troublesome and are like a different breed. Indeed, comparing an American housefly to an Australian bushfly is like comparing a poodle to a wolf. Despite the pesky bushflies, though, I enjoyed my peaceful stay at the Flinders Ranges.

And as for the name Flinders? I learned that all these places were named for Matthew Flinders who, in 1802, was the first person to sail completely around Australia. Good thing his name wasn't Magillicuddy.

Above left: I hiked for five hours through the desert one hot afternoon and saw a few kangaroos and a lot of huge spiders with huge spider webs. This is a view of the Flinders Ranges... before I got lost.

Above center: The Aroona Valley, where I camped for two nights.

Above right: With all the pine trees and red rocks, this area reminded me of Zion National Park in southern Utah.

Above left: I've seen a lot more emus than kangaroos on this trip so far, including a flock of six in the Flinders Ranges.

Above center: Jeff and his $300 car.

Above right: Don't show Hertz this picture, either. I crossed this creek several times and it got a lot worse than this. I only scraped bottom twice, though.

Beware of Killer Gum Trees

The American travel author Bill Bryson wrote a wonderfully humorous book about Australia a few years ago called “In A Sunburned Country,” and if you want a good idea of what the Land of Oz is like, I recommend reading it. As I discovered while wandering through a Sydney bookstore a while back, though, Bryson’s book is called “Down Under” here in Australia – same book but different title. I have no idea why they changed the title here, but then I haven’t figured out a lot of things about Australia yet.

Not to get off the subject of Bryson’s book, but why Australians and Americans call the same item by different names has been a source of constant amusement during my trip. If nothing else, it keeps my mind occupied during those long drives around this very large country. An obvious example of this is fuel: what Americans call “gasoline” is what Australians call “petrol,” which I still haven’t gotten used to saying. I caught on a lot faster to calling paved roads “sealed” and calling dirt roads “unsealed,” calling ketchup “tomato sauce” and a flashlight a “torch.” I guess those alternative phrases are all fairly logical. However, I still haven’t figured out why my favorite fast-food restaurant, “Burger King,” is called “Hungry Jacks” here (same logo, same Whopper, same Value Meals, but different name).

Anyway, getting back to “In A Sunburned Country,” one of the passages that I remember in that book was when Bryson discussed the snake situation here. As he put it, of the world’s 10 deadliest snakes, all 10 live here in Australia -- including the Taipan, which will kill you so fast that often the last words of someone who innocently approaches a Taipan is, “Hey, look at this sna…”. End of sentence.

Bryson seemed obsessed with all the things down here that can kill you, like snakes and some of the world’s deadliest spiders. Of course, north of here there are crocodiles to deal with. As I learned from Bryson’s book, freshwater crocodiles, or “freshies," are harmless to humans but the saltwater variety, or “salties,” are definitely not. In fact, salties will go out of their way to ruin your day, as the numerous tourists who get eaten each year find out. Unfortunately, salties are found in freshwater as well as saltwater, so the only way to be safe from crocs, I guess, is to not go in the water… or near the water.

As I’ve learned, it’s a good idea to stay at least 10 feet back from the edge of ponds because salties can -- and will -- jump out to snare unsuspecting tourists who stray a little too close to the water (remember that scene in “Crocodile Dundee”?). I’ll take that advice to heart when I visit croc country in a few weeks.

Down here in southern Australia though, along with the snakes and spiders, I recently learned that I have to contend with another deadly menace and one that Bryson didn’t mention: Red Gum Trees. Red Gums are one of the many species of eucalyptus trees in Australia. They’re quite large and stocky with stout, brittle branches that have a nasty habit of suddenly breaking off, even when there’s no breeze, and crashing to the ground. Believe it or not, several people each year in Australia are injured or killed by Red Gum branches. In fact, every National Park that I’ve visited so far has posted warning signs about the Red Gums, advising visitors not to linger or camp under Red Gum trees.

The spiders and snakes don’t really bother me, but I’ve gotten a bit paranoid about the Red Gum trees, and every time I walk under one, I nervously glance upward and quicken my pace. There are a lot of good ways to die, but getting killed by a tree isn’t one of them.