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I had made my decision. It was time to leave Melbourne and my mind was clear that my final stop in Australia would be Tasmania. All that remained was for me to get to a travel agency and identify a tour with the kind of company where I'd be guaranteed to meet people of a similar disposition to myself. This I managed to accomplish, but the story doesn't end there. Oh no... whoever was in charge of recruitment at Peterpans Backpacker's Travel saw to that. In his wisdom (and I'm in no doubt whatsoever that he was a he), he had recruited one of the most gorgeous, bubbly and friendly travel agents you're likely to meet. And in your heart of hearts you know it's all in act but men are weak, hell, I'm weak. "Ok, you wanna go to Tasmania. Hey, that's fine, we can sort that out no problem. Actually, I did a tour myself last week and it was the best thing I've ever done in my entire life..." I stopped her there. "Wait a minute, best thing in your life? That's pretty big talk, I'm not really in a position to be missing out on trips that
are the best thing in your life, what was it?" And so I was sold an 8 day camping trip through the Outback to Alice Springs. Which left from Adelaide. I'll remind you I was in Melbourne. "Well you could do the 3 and a half day trip from Melbourne to Adelaide via the Great Ocean Road to get you there." How could I say no? Probably very easily but that's not the way the conversation was going. So instead of a short flight from Melbourne to Hobart, a tour of Tasmania and a $600 bill, I was facing a voyage half way across an arid desert in the height of summer where the temperatures are known to scrape 60 degrees. Celsius. And back. Not to mention that the bill had become $2000. Life ain't easy when your arms are made of rubber...
And so began my stint as a 'single traveller'. It was with a sizeable portion of apprehension I approached the tour bus, constantly reminding myself that if I was open and friendly there would be no problems. A young German Beavis lookalike beat me to it however, introducing himself as we loaded our bags. He was
travelling with an 18 year-old Dutch poker genius and so my travel buddies for the day were established. In fact, I was to discover from the outset that meeting people in this environment was a piece of cake. Bill, our camp-Steve Irwin-esque guide helped foster this spirit, allowing us to write our names and nationality on the windows with a marker pen. Even on such a short trip, the bond the group shared was fantastic. When you're spending every waking moment in each other's company, trekking together, preparing food together and socialising together it would appear that there's little choice other than to 'get on' but somehow it never seems forced. Of the party of 17, I was particularly friendly with a cockney couple in their 60s: Val and Tel, who I would christen Frank as in Sinatra which he thought was great; a lovely middle-aged French woman who would exchange a warm smile in return for the shells I gathered for her at every stop; and a couple comprising of a Dutch guy and an English girl, only a few years older than me with whom I would stay up and get canned after the rest had gone to
bed.
The Great Ocean Road itself was built to link all of the towns in Victoria's southern coast by ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) troops returning from World War I. And as with their heroics in plains of Gallipoli, they again did their country proud, this time in the form of a feat of engineering, a product of blood, sweat and tears that would attract vistors for centuries and beyond. The road winds its way through natural marvels that take your breath away; sites of geological splendour such as the 12 Apostles: great pillars of limestone that have stood their ground as the surrounding coastline has been eroded by the sea and the elements. Several of the apostles are crumbling to this day but that takes nothing away from the photo opportunity which to the delight of Beavis and to the chargrin of the others waiting on the bus were plentiful.
Sadly, our melancholy was brought to a juddering halt as we passed the site where 200 Aboriginal men, women and children were massacred as they were forcibly marched over the edge of a cliff during one of the settlement clearances. Indeed, we were to discover
a great deal more of Australia's grizzly past from Gordy who runs the Aboriginal reserve at Coorong National Park. He told of how his tribe had survived some 60,000 years on the land obtaining their water, nutrients and medicines from the leaves of plants, shrubs and other forms of bush-tucker. This was until Captain Cook arrived under the promise to his King that any settled land he discovered should remain untouched; a promise that was broken when he encountered the Aboriginals at Botany Bay, declaring it was 'terra nullius' or land owned by no-one. Understandably, Gordy was still bitter to the core about how his people were treated in the centuries to follow, himself becoming part of the 'stolen generation' of Aboriginal children of mixed parentage who were 'assimilated' into the white culture by placing them under foster care where they would be subject to torturous sexual abuse and emerge as alcoholics, drug-abusers and glue-sniffers. The jingoistic nationalism on display in the South Sydney riots a mere 2 months previous were a sign to him that in spite of the legislative reform in 1967 granting Aboriginals the status of human beings, all was not as it should be just yet.
I contemplated the horror of it all during my kangaroo BBQ lunch and reflected on the importance of acquiring a 'warts-and-all' view of the places you visit in order to be a more informed guest. It's easy to become dazed in an utopian trance when travelling from one beach paradise to the next but this served as a timely reminder that the mind's eye must always be sharply focussed on reality.
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Johnny Mac
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Jealous as hell
marty living it up - U KNOW IT! Keep up the lonely planetesque blogs, excellent work. We saw the apostles too, in the dark! Another story for when u get back!