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Published: October 8th 2007
sorry for the delay in writing guys, but i have been a bit.....well..... lazy!!! My apologies for all.
NOW!!! Onwards we go towards South Australia.
We head along the highway towards Mount Gambier. This quaint little place is actually a volcanic crater surrounded by 3 lakes. The most photographed of these is the blue lake. Now, no one really knows why the lake is blue. Some say its because of some kind of bacteria that grow there, others say its due to light affecting it. I think its probably bacteria. Anyhow, there's actually not that much to see here otherwise. You can dive the blue lake, which has amazing caves to dive through.......................but we didn't fancy this much, and wanted to continue through. So we thought we'd get the camera out, take a picture of the blue lake (which incidently wasn't all that blue), and get going. NO BATTERY!!!! Great!! So we just headed off. Not a great story i know, but somewhat amusing as we had stopped specifically for this reason.
Next stop was a little town called Robe. We had to make this stop, as we had been driving all day (some 500kms), and we planned
picnic in the mountains
the flinders ranges. SAto stop here. We stayed at a great campsite, and took a few days to explore what was the first settlement of europeans. History also dictates that the chinese landed here too. This was because, due to the influx of chinese coming to the goldfields of Victoria, the government, in a ploy to stop them coming and taking the gold, put a $10/head levy on them when they landed in Ballarat. This was, ofcourse, very expensive for them at the time. So, in cunning chinese style, they landed in Robe, and walked the 500 odd Kms to the goldfields, thereby escaping the levy!!
ADELAIDE
Adelaide is a funny city. Australia is very laid back, but Adelaide is positively horizontal!! Everything seems to be slow, and.....well, dreary!! Its a lovely place, very green and colourful. But the people and the place are so laid back, you wonder if you've missed something!!
We stayed at the Adelaide shores Caravan park, and this has to be one of the most beautiful campsites we have stayed in. It is set back from a beach, and is only a short bus ride into the city centre.
Adelaide is where we celebrated
our 5 year anniversary. It was truely one to remember. We had a slap up fish dinner, and lots of wine (from the barossa valley), and then proceeded to run around the streets acting silly and playing hide and seek in the dark streets of adelaide. As you may all know, Carmen does not drink much, so proceeded to regurgitate the nights intake all over the streets of Adelaide city. $200 all over the street. FANTASTIC!!
The next day was a more gentele day, nursing sore heads and wallet. We visited the famous Bradman museum. For those of you who don't know, Don Bradman was probably the finest cricketer of any generation. The infamous bodyline series between England and Australia, was invented with Bradman in mind, in order to negate his fantastic batting, Douglas Jardine (the captain of England) made a game plan of deliberately trying to hurt the batsman, by bowling around the wicket and into the body of the batsman, thereby preventing them from scoring. Nowadays, with protective equiptment, this sort of bowling has been outlawed, and does not hold the fear it did then!! I had a fab time in here, and managed to take my
mind of the previous nights events!!
The surrounding parts of Adelaide are very beautiful. We visited a small german village called Handorf.
Hahndorf 28 km southeast from Adelaide and it is one of the oldest settlements of Australia. Settled in the 1839 by German Lutherans who left Prussia to escape religious persecution, the town took its name from the the ship’s captain. It is a pretty little place with one main street and a major tourist’s attraction. There is the “Hahndorf Academy” established 1857with an art gallery, a craft shop and a German museum. The "Beerenberg Strawberry Farm" offer the possibility of picking own strawberries between November and May and it’s also renowned for yummy rose petal jam, chutneys and sauces.
German beer, sausages and a wonder round, and that was the village. We were there for 2 hours or so, and thats all you need.
We proceeded to Mount Lofty, the highest point in SA. Fantastic views.
On our way back we stop at Cleland Wildlife park. Here we got to hand feed kangaroos, and see Original Dingos (nowadays they are all interbred, and there a very few complete, true dingos), tasmanian devils, More
the big lobster
imagine eating this big boy!!! koalas, emu's. Its great to just walk amongst them (except the Dingos and tas devils). Carmen went to feed a kangaroo, but the biggest of the lot came, and frightened her to death!! It was quite amusing!!
There are some beautiful walks along the coastline, and we even managed to capture a rainbow on camera (now that we had batteries!!). As you can see, my waistline has been expanding somewhat exponentially, and my hair is following suit. However, this was no excuse for the amount of flies we had started to encounter since leaving Port Campbell!! These wern't just any flies. These were aussie flies, and aussie flies (in reflection of their human sporting attributes) don't give up that easliy!!! NO NO NO!!! swipe them away, and they come back at you, trying to get into your mouth, nose, ear.........infact any orrifice that is open to them!!!!
This became particularly problematic when we kept heading westwards. Our next stop was Port Augusta. This stop is the centrepoint before either heading north to Uluru and alice springs, or westwards towards WA. It is the start of the barren, dusty roads. Putting up a tent with hundreds of flies
trying to annoy the hell out of you, leading to feelings of acute homocide, and bordering on suicide, was not the easiest of tasks. However, we had a laugh with the strangest couple we had met on our travels. Two guys travelling together. One German (clement) the other japanese (mitsu). Both sleeping together in a two man tent, the mind boggled as to what was going on there!! But they were great people, both with a strangely equal sense of humour. We spent the night playing pool on a hammered pool table (slanting, rips in the cloth and cues that sounded like metal when hitting the ball).
We made a detour up the outback road, towards the Flinders ranges. This is a fantastic part of the world, full of intregue, wonder, history, and the most fantastic scenary. Wilpena Pound sits on the outskirts of the outback. We get our first glimpse of what it would be like, and its barren land leaves lots to the imagination. Visions of Peter Falconio and his girlfriend Joanna Lees in their campervan, hounded down by the monster that is John Bradley Murdoch, flood our brain, and set a feeling of aprehension at the
kung fu pidgeons
they call this the pidgeon mohawk!! thought of what is to come.
Putting that aside, we enter a park, which is surrounded by a bush camp. Menial facilities, but for anyone who takes a visit here, put aside 2 days or so to stay and explore. The whole this is very well done. There's great bush walks, starting from little 2 hr walks to longer. there are camp fires with story telling from indigenous people, Treks with Rangers who help you explore the mouth to the outback. We had a fantastic time, although short, roaming the paths, and finding some interesting places.
We then started our long trip across the Nullabor. This is the long stretch of road linking South Australia to Western Australia. It has the longest stretch of straight road in the world, and is the latin name for "road with no trees". This was aptly named, because.......well there just wasn't any trees for miles and miles. It was desert, and we wondered what the outback would hold for us when we eventually got there!!!
It was hard to keep your concentration. Imagine if you will, a car race (think playstation!). You've got 50 laps of a test circuit, which is
uhm!!! there's supposed to be a drought!!?
everywhere we went, we saw examples of water wasting on a grande scale. And there were water restrictions throughout all of australia!! basically a circle, and no other cars. You go round and round and round, nothing to see really, and nothing to really focus your attention to, except the white line in the middle of the road. This is the Nullabor!!!
We did see lots of dead kangaroos on the side of the road. It seems to be a hobby here, although from the size of some of them, its no wonder that they have roo bars on the front of their cars here. That would be big damage. Shame we didn't have any ourselves.
We stop overnight at Ceduna, and stay hotel room, which kinda reminds me of a brothel (not that i've ever been to one you understand!!). It was basic, but expensive, as its the only one for miles!!! We also noticed that petrol seemed to have gone up in price tenfold. And you really don't have a choice, you either pay, or well, you don't go anywhere!!! The hotel had a tele with one chanel, and a bar in the main bit, which had strange looking men. Least to say, we stayed in our room all night, and left first light!!! On the outskirts of
3 famous bats
bradman collection Ceduna is a warning sign about the last reliable water. This marks the end of cultivated country and the beginning of the deserted, almost treeless land that creeps towards the Nullarbor Plain. The highway stays close to the coast and there is always a little scrub and other vegetation on the plains or on the sand dunes that lie between the Highway and the ocean.
Leaving first light actually turned out to be an ace move, as we saw eagles feeding on the dead kangaroos by the roadside. However, by the time we stopped and reversed back to get a picture, the damn thing would fly away. We came realy close to hitting one at one point, the bird taking ages to get in the air, and just passing on top of our car!!!
The border village was somewhere we had been warned about. The border crossing between SA and WA is there, basically to prevent fruit, veg and nuts from passing over, thereby containing fruit flies contaminating WA. It is the strangest thing!! We actually ate most of the fruit we had, before we got to the border, but forgot about the grapes and stuff we had
the famous baggy green cap
Bradmans first baggy green cap in one of our cool boxes. We stopped, they asked us if we had anything, peered into our car and boot, then waved us on. Now what kind of border control is that. We could have had anything there, and they didn't check anything really!!!
We are now in WA, and the clocks have gone back 2 hrs!! So, instead of being 5pm, its actually 3pm. Feels like we're in another country!!! We've finished with SA, and it does feel like we haven't done the state justice really. SA is a strange place!! Not sure whether we liked it or not. We may revisit the place again before we go, but for now, its bye bye SA, and Hello WA. Work is needed pretty soon, and its not that far away anymore!!!!
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Mark and Marias Great Adventure
Mark & Maria
the flies, the flies... the bl**dy flies!!!!!!!
Oh, how well we understand you!! No-one can truly appreciate how badly they can drive a man (or a woman!) to insanity unless they've experienced them first hand... glad you survived the experience! And sooooo jealous you're on the road again!