The Never Never

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Who would pick the hottest time of the year to venture out into the hottest part of Australia - certainy no one in a sane frame of mind but, of course, your own nomadic duo with an extended licence to travel. Unable to resist the allure of the fabled Uluru, we leapt at the opportunity to embrace the monumental emptiness and the oppressive heat of the Outback. We spent 3 long weeks on the highways and dirt roads of Australia, burning gas worth a carbon footprint of a legion of highwaymen, having the merciless red sun as a loyal travellling company and somewhere out there back of beyond, learning to appreciate the life of the Gray Nomads.

But let's start with Wilson Promontory, the southernmost point of the Australian mainland and our first destination after leaving Melbourne. Two days of leisure driving to the south-east and we arrive to the peninsula of Wilson Promontory, we take walks along all but empty glorious beaches, enjoying a cool summer breeze. In Australia, almost all the things are upside down, for instance, the further south you go, the cooler it gets. Then we turn back towards Melbourne, which we bypass to take the Great Ocean Road, a scenic coastal highway, and are rewarded with some of the most dramatic scenery Australia has to offer, especially 12 Apostles, unearthly rock stacks that rise up colossally from the Southern Ocean. A few more days along the coast and we come to Adelaide, the capital of Southern Australia. We arrive to the camping site quite late and are told that it is full. Too tired of finding another camping site, we simply park our mobile home on a nearby public beach where we stay overnight. The next morning after last dip in the ocean for some time to come, we divert from the coast and drive to the town of Port Augusta, the crossroads of Australia, through which roads from Sydney to Perth and Adelaide to Darwin pass. This is where the Stuart Highway, Australia's only transcontinental highway running from south to north through the heart of Australia, shoots north for incredible distance. I put Alice Springs on the navigation application and get advised to stay on the Stuart for next 1200 kilometers, without any deviations! This epic journey from the Southern Ocean to Australia's red heart is what we are about to undertake. During next two weeks, we traverse through barren deserts, rugged mountain ranges, derelict opal mining towns, abandoned rocket ranges and giant Outback cattle stations, stopping for the nights at simple roadhouses, that are the only sign of the human civilization within hundreds of kilometers of arid emptiness.

At the campsite in Port Augusta, there's an young Swedish couple in the kitchen microwaving fish fingers and rice when I enter with a basket of green king prawns bought from a fisherman in the same morning. While the aroma of chili and garlic getting fried fills the kitchen, I notice the poor bastards stealing glances at my culinary conjurations. For a brief moment I feel sorry for them but then I think what kind of a silly git makes fish fingers in a country known for its abundant seafood and instead I switch to Swedish and cheerfully wish them to enjoy their fish fingers. The expression of concentrated resentment and insinuation on their faces I get served in return is truly priceless, something to be savoured over a plate of sumptuous dinner of prawns and glass of refreshing Chardonnay. Did I mention already that in Finland we truly love our neigbours?

The next morning we hit the lonely highway and begin our journey towards Uluru. The next 1000 kilometers we drive by large parallel sandhills and vast open plains punctuated by iridescent salt lakes and occasional rocky outcrops. Whenever we get off the car, we are greeted by bone-white sunshine that pierces through the flesh like a X-ray. In five minutes, the palpable heat makes you indolent. Most of the sites we visit, Uluru included, are accompanied with signs adving you to finish your walk before 11am. After that the sun becomes unbearable. To keep the driver alert, on otherwise dull highway through featurless empiness we have road trains to entertain us. The road trains, multi-trailered lorries up to 50 meters long coming at you at full speed, some of it on your lane, never fail to make your heart miss a beat or two. To make the unforgiving land even more lethal, the road trains leave a trail of death behind them as the highway is littered with roadkills caused by the road trains. Either the drivers are high on speed or they have too tight delivery dates to meet, many of them drive throughout the nights, combined with the fact the many of the mammals in the outback are nocturnal, result is a carnage. Every few minutes we drive by yet another carcass, and note that if there is one type of animal that is not starving it is the carrion birds.

After a monolithic ride through the nowhere, seeing Uluru rising within our sights is a moment of jubilation. One of the greatest natural wonders of the world, the sandstone monolith stands 348 meters high and just like an iceberg, has most of its bulk hidden below the surface. Just seeing the unparalleled place in the sunrise makes every moment spent on the road to get here worth the effort. To the west of Uluru is another jaw-dropping site, Kata Tjuta, a massive pile of 36 weathered rock domes, estimated to be 500 million years olds. Archaeological work suggests that Aboriganal people have lived in this area for at least 22000 years. Has anyone else made a same mistake as us thinking that Uluru is very close to Alice Springs? A Fatal mistake! A few days before we are to reach Uluru it dawns on us that there is about 450 kilometers from Uluru to Alice Springs, meaning addiotional night in the desert before we can shake off the dust in a pool.

We go to take a look at the Dog fence stretched for more than 5'000 km. In Australia it does not to divide people, but separates dingos on the north from sheep on the south. Started in 1800 by the shepherd communities and eventually supported by the government, to be finished in 5 years. It is definitely a longest fence in the world. Which, as it said worked well for its purpose. We saw just one dingo, although on the northern part of the fence, but already dead. Guess what happened to the dingos inside the fence?

The need for water is a shared necessity for all life in the Outback. No wonder then that the aborigines consider the waterholes sacred. They believe that the path of the water springs was created by the ancestral beings of the Dreamtime. We visit a few of them either rock holes or soakage waters but since it is the middle of the summer, they are all dry.

Somewhere in the Never Never, we drive into a trouble with the law. We get stopped by a police officer, who doesn't seem very happy to start with. He, apparently signaled us to stop, while he was driving towards us. We thought these colorful lights were for some other reason than us. He had to follow us for a couple of kilometers with his sirens and lights on, but, well, there is no rare view mirror in a campervan, so we did not see, nor hear him as the voice of Johnny Cash was filling the car. Only when he dared , because we were quite fast, to overtake us, did we stop. And, hence he was unhappy. A girl's charm was put forward, Nastya goes with her best smile and big surprised eyes (green) to talk to the officer. Quite a long chat follows, with a demonstration of the 126km/h on the radar, for a 110km/h limit, and the guilt is accepted. The sentence was pronounced in Aussie terms, 'You have been a naughty girl, you should not drive this fast, be careful'. That was all ... may be Nastya telling him that she was a scientist played the trick ?

On our penultimate day in the Outback we arrive to Andamooka, a hot backwater opal mining town, where every other dweller looks like a member of ZZ Top. To make my wife overjoyed and overlook any potential minor flaws in my character, not to mention brutally butcher our budget, we go opal-shopping. We walk out of the shop with my wife outshining the sun and there is no prettier sight under the vast radiant blue sky.

Out on the wastes of the Never Never -That's where the dead men lie!There where the heat-waves dance forever -That's where the dead men lie!
Barcroft Boake - "Where the Dead Men Lie"

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Comments

[Andy]

Ah sun. -25 in Finland. Tight and crispy. The lack of D vitamin is murder, and I long for the sweet sensation of burning skin. On another equally cheery note, god bless the girl-in-the-car-dealing-with-the-police trick. I recently got a speeding ticket for 540€. qxblrtpkx. Next time I'm making a run for it...

[Anastasiya and Kalle]

You can run and you can get away with it
Cold might be good for your skin, provided you like that shrimp look on certain part of your body.