Roadtrip, Part 1

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Yay for road trips!

So my wonderful Danish friend had emailed me to tell me he was going to be in Australia and suggested we do a massive road trip. And as I haven't yet found a job and money wasn't too tight yet, how could I pass up this opportunity?

So on January 15th, I flew to Adelaide to meet up with Tue. There was a bit of a mix-up with the hostel, but luckily the lady at Backpack Oz was nice enough to find us a room at the Adelaide Traveller's Inn (which I must say is rather hard to find and not well marked at all!). Tue hired a car in Melbourne that morning and drove along the Western Highway, arriving in Adelaide that evening. For those of you not familiar with how big Australia is, this is about 730km (454 miles), which would take at least 8 hours.
We went for a bite to eat with my cousin's friend, Sam, at Geelong, a beach suburb, watched a spectacular sunset, then went downtown to the Austral, my cousin Ben's favourite bar in Adelaide.

The next morning, we were off. We didn't really have much of a plan, but after some breakfast, we decided to visit Mount Lofty, which Sam had recommended. There was also a wildlife park on the mountain, so we figured that might be worth a visit. There was an abundance of eucalypts on the mountain, and I wondered if there were any koalas around. So at a lookout, we looked and looked but didn't see any, so finally Tue headed back towards the car. Then he heard a munching sound, and looking straight up above the car, there was a huge, lazy koala!
Excited by the first wildlife sighting of the trip, we headed to Cleland Wildlife Park, and spent a couple of hours feeding the kangaroos and seeing Tasmanian devils, echidnas, wombats, emus, and walabies. It was too hot to hold the koalas (the park won't allow it if the temperature is above 35 (95F), and it was already 38 (100F) by the time we visited the park!).

Aesop and Gulliver had their own quacked adventure at the wildlife park. They had been fairly quiet the whole time, simply observing the animals as we fed them. Finally, I decided a photo was in order, and placed the two in front of a sleepy kangaroo in the shade. The 'roo looked at them, puzzled at these two brightly coloured ducks, and got up to inspect them.
For some time now, Aesop has been weaving fantastic stories to tell Gulliver, especially if the stories involve strange forms of Aussie wildlife. For example, Gulliver will not sit in the shade of a eucalpypt, as Aesop told him to be wary of the drop-bears that attack unsuspecting tourists. He also refuses to swim at any beach, for fear of the small sharks that only attack glow-in-the-dark duckies. So here they were, sitting in front of the kangaroo, who by now was quite interested in finding out if they were food...Aesop whispered to Gulliver that kangaroos prefer to eat purple coloured objects. Almost as if to prove Aesop right, the kangaroo decided to lick the two to find out; he tasted Gulliver first and then sniffed Aesop. And as the two duckies weren't nearly as tasty as the grass or the feeding pellets, the kangaroo left them alone and laid back down in the shade. Gulliver was not a happy ducky; Aesop made matters worse by telling him that the only reason he wasn't eaten is that the 'roo already had lunch and Gulliver tasted bad. And so the ducks went back into hiding in my bag.

We then wondered what to do next. Over breakfast we had pondered driving up to the Flinders Ranges. We figured this would be the only time to visit it, and we still didn't quite comprehend the distances between various places in Australia...so much to Sam's surprise, we started the drive up to the Flinders.

About an hour later, we wondered if that was such a good idea...and as the afternoon passed, we decided we were completely insane. The temperature climbed to 44 (111F), and we went through 9L of water by the end of the day (and we sweated it all out!). Of course our air conditioning didn't seem to work...Murhphy's Law, eh?

And not only was it bloody hot, but every time we stopped to take a photo, the flies would appear out of nowhere and swarm us. We'd be in the middle of nowhere, no signs of animal life, but those flies would be there. Why they were there, who knows.
Australian flies have got to be the peskiest flies in the world. They don't understand the swish of a hand, and they go straight for any openings, especially the eyes, ears, nose and mouth (in any order they choose). They also don't mind hanging onto your back in numbers so large that you'd rather see a hairy back. They don't bite, but they seem to have made it a species mission to annoy humans as much as possible. One experience with these flies, and suddenly the silly outback hats with the corks make sense...the corks keep the flies away from the face!

We stopped in Port Wakefield for a hot, late picnic lunch, and were shocked to watch an old man go by. This town in the middle of nowhere was completely deserted in the afternoon heat(flies the exception of course), and out of nowhere this grandpa on his electric scooter goes wizzing by. It seemed a bit out of place. Who knows where he came from or where he was going, but he seemed determined to get there (I would too in that heat!!).

We stopped in Port Pirie late in the afternoon for a swim...by this point we were desperate for any form of water. We followed the signs to a beach, which was rather sad-looking. But if the locals swim there, so can we. So we jumped off the jetty into the salty, warm water. And I managed to cut my foot on the barnacles on the ladder, so the swim wasn't so refreshing and rather painful. After hobbling back to the car and bandaging my foot, we continued north to Port Augusta, where we took a break. We finally made it to a tiny town called Quorn set among the hills (after spotting a few kangaroos in the dusk), where we stayed the night in a almost-empty backpackers called Andu Lodge. It was a lovely place, and it seemed a bit funny to us that the place could sleep 60, as there were only 5 guests that night including us. We cooked a nice dinner in the huge kitchen with the food we had bought at a roadside veggie stand, and watched a movie before passing out for the night.

We had made it to the Flinders! The next morning we set out for Alligator Gorge, recommended to us by the owners of the hostel, Sam and Paula. It was absolutely beautiful, with its bright red rock formations.
And I finally saw a kookaberra! I had been hearing these birds make lots of noise for months, and had never seen one. As we entered Mount Remarkable National Park, where Alligator Gorge was located, the kookaberra was just sitting on a branch with his back to us. Odd looking birds.
We spent the morning walking around the gorge, then decided we had to make it back to Adelaide that day. And off we went. This time we drove the inland route, and stopped in a town called Laura for ice cream, which apparently is famous in the region. We stopped in Adelaide for supplies, and continued south until dusk, stopping in Meningie, where we stayed in a cabin on Lake Albert. So in one day, we had driven from the Flinders to the Limestone Coast, probably about 600km. We slept very well that night.

We spent the next day driving along the Coorong National Park down the coast, stopping to see pelicans at a lookout, and the Granites, which are massive rocks. The coast is pretty uniform along the parklands, so these rocks stand out as the only formation in the area. We then continued onto Kingston, passing the giant lobster, and stopped in Robe for a bit of a nap and a climb up a rock wall at the beach (I was so concentrated on actually getting up the wall that I forgot to take photos!). Tue then decided that we had to make it over the state border by sunset, so we set out for Portland, Victoria. We made it by dusk to our accomodation, which was one of 5 caravans in an old couple's backyard (Bellvue Backpackers). We were very amused by this accomodation, which had taken us a while to find as we had taken a wrong turn and headed several kilometres in the wrong direction!

So in 3 days, we had covered the southern Flinders (about 430km north of Adelaide, drove the distance twice), Coorong National Park and the Limestone Coast (about 450km south of Adelaide).

We saw a lot on the road, and couldn't get pictures of everything. Some of the more amusing road-side attractions were huge sculptures along the A1 north of Adelaide, families of emus in the fields along the roads in the southern Flinders, and lots of signs that got our laughs. One of our favourite signs was one for Snowtown. I even saw a mailbox decorated with a snowman! Snowtown, in the outback? Wishful thinking?
The other signs we found amusing were the Floodway signs. The area is extremely dry, and with the heat it seemed ironic to have flood warnings and 2 meter high flood markers. Apparently flash floods can occur after massive rainstorms in the area, even if they are extremely rare.

South Australia is extremely scenic, and we had only seen a portion of it!

Now onto Victoria!

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Photos

He'll eat us!
A curious 'roo isn't sure what to make of Gulliver & Aesop

Glenelg at sunset
Night one of our roadtrip was spent enjoying the sunset at Glenelg

Sunset over Glenelg
The sunset on the first night

Tazzy Devil
This little guy quickly sought shade after I snapped this shot

Stare-down
The geese seemed eager to compete with the roos for food.

Red Soil
It's views like these that remind us of what country we're in!

Flinders Ranges
Our view of the Flinders as we drove into Quorn.

Alligator Gorge
The view of Alligator Gorge in the southern Flinders Ranges.

Floods?
We saw lots of these signs...which seemed out of place in this dry area.