Finally a bit more of Australia and a trip back home!

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As always since my last blog quite a lot has happened! When I last wrote I was preparing to get organised for my trip back home. Before that though I got to celebrate Paddy’s day and my final night out in Alice for a while, both of which included plenty of alcohol and fun times!! I then began to pack up my things which believe me after settling for 10months in the one place was a difficult task. It most certainly didn’t all fit back in to my rucksack... so I took what I needed and then stored the rest at Doc’s as I knew my days in Alice weren’t over yet and that I’d be back! Then instead of flying out of Alice to Sydney and catching my flight home another perk of my days working with adventure tours popped up. I managed to get a free tour from Alice down to Adelaide with Doc. This was great another part of Australia I was getting to see, finally leaving the Northern Territory and moving into South Australia!

I really need to note here that I’ve just spent $10 on a magnum ice-cream and a small packet of crisps, god damn outback prices kill me sometimes L More on this story later!

This trip with Doc was great. It was nice to be on the road travelling again and getting to explore more of Australia that I hadn’t seen before. Day one off the tour started off very hungover as of course the night before I was saying goodbye to Alice for a bit. Anyways after spending 2 hours on a transfer bus where I slept off my previous nights overindulgence, I met up with Doc at Erldunda, a roadhouse I was only to familiar with from my tours, but here for the first time ever I didn’t turn left I kept on going down the Stuart highway towards South Australia and on towards Coober Pedy. First stop, after of course the obligatory photo of the NT and SA border signs, was the breakaways. The breakaways are ”one of South Australia’s outback gems”, they are a striking rocky landscape of flat-topped mesas. Then it was on into Coober where we visited Josephine’s gallery and kangaroo sanctuary. This is a very special place; Josephine and Terry are a couple who take in orphaned kangaroos that have been usually rescued from their dead mothers pouch on the roadside after they have been hit by a car. Many of our tour guides have rescued kangaroos by stopping and checking the pouches of dead kangaroos for joeys, many die as they are too young but Terry pointed out a few that our tour guides had rescued in the past and that were doing well. He then had fed the kangaroos as we took some photos. Then after some great Pizza and a few drinks in the underground bar we headed to our accommodation for the night, an underground cave in the Umoona opal mines!!

Maybe I should explain a little about Coober Pedy..... So Coober Pedy is a very small quirky outback town that is often referred to as “the opal capital of the world” because of the large quantities of precious opals that are mined here. It is renowned for its below-ground residences called “dugouts” which are built due to the scorching day time heat which is often over 40 degrees. Most residents live in these caves/dugouts where the temperature remains cool and constant and they don’t have to pay for air conditioning, a pretty unique way of living! So of course during our stopover in Coober what other kind of accommodation would we stay in?! After a great night of sleep in our cave we started the morning with a mine tour, where we learnt all about mining for opal and life living underground! Then after a wander through the town and of course a few purchases of opal we were off again. We headed off road for some dirt road driving along the Oodnadatta track through the Strzelecki Desert area on the way to a place called William Creek. Along the way we passed the “Dog fence” the longest structure in the world!!! The dog fence/dingo fence was built in the 1880’s and is over 5500km long and was built to keep dingoes out of the fertile South East of the continent (where they’d been exterminated) and to protect the sheep flocks. Next we arrived at William Creek a “middle of nowhere pub” (I bought a top with this exact logo!) where I’d a drink and a great chat with the pub owner a hilarious outback character J Next stop was at” Mound Spring” a really cool water Oasis and “the bubbler” kind of like a hot spring in the middle of the desert. Water from the great underground Artesian Basin filters to the surface forming slowly bubbling ponds and mounds from the sediments and salts as the water evaporates, pretty fascinating to see in the middle of this arid landscape! Onwards we went towards Lake Eyre, which is the lowest point in Australia and when filled with water it is the largest lake in Australia! I was here at a very special time as I got to see water in the lake which is a very rare occurrence, it is more commonly viewed as a dry salt pan but recent heavy rain allowed for me to view the lake as many people never get to see, that is with water!! After this we passed through the eccentric, amusing and amazing Mutonia Sculpture Park. Here was a really random collection of artwork in the middle of the desert that was made by hippies in the 1960’s from war scrap material in protest against atomic testing in Australia. Last stop of the day was at Marree where we were to camp for the night. And as opposed to all my “camping trips” that I do at work this was actually real camping where we had to put up tents and we slept in sleeping bags. But we had a major issue here the Mosquitoes were unreal there was actual swarms visible right before you everywhere you went, got quite a lot of bites despite using almost a bottle of repellent, but guess that’s the joys of camping!

The next morning we were greeted by one of the best sunrises I’d seen in a long time, beautiful pink sky over the expanse of the outback. After breakie (Australian’s rarely use full words when they don’t have to!) we went to see some pretty massive ochre pits. Then it was on to meet Talc Alf, whom is a true Australian outback character that makes carving out of talc and who had some very interesting theories about language that are way too in depth to explain here! But check out this link http://www.roadlesstravelled.com.au/lyndhurst-talc-alf-carvings-oodnadatta-track/ if you want it’s amazing how he describes even just the first 6 letters of the alphabet. Afterwards we stopped at a gigantic hole, an old coal mining area which had a massive bridgestone tyre which achieved a world record for most kilometres travelled and hours in service so obviously we got a few photos inside the tyre! Next we started to go through the beautiful Flinders ranges and we saw wild Emu’s (my first time), wedge tale eagles (wedgies) which are Australia’s largest bird of pry and can have a wing span of up to 2.2m and Euro’s (a type of kangaroo). We walked Wilipena pound and watch sunset from the lookout, another night of “proper” camping followed, however with very few mozzies this time thankfully.

We began the following day by visiting Yourumbulla caves which is an aboriginal initiation site where there we saw old aboriginal paintings in the caves, also spotted more Euros (the animal kind!) on the walk up. We stopped at the ruins of the Kanyaka homestead which was a sheep and cattle station that was established in the 1850’s and a lot of the original stone walls still stood. Then on our way into Adelaide we did some wine tasting in two wineries! After arriving in Adelaide Doc and I dropped off the rest of the passengers and we’d the evening free however after quite an intensive 3 days it was a few drinks and bed early! Doc and I spent the following day in Adelaide chilling out together then finished the day by heading out to Glenelg, a little beach side suburb 10km outside the Adelaide (which is actually the oldest European settlement on mainland Australia) to have dinner and we watched the sunset over the beach. Next day Doc headed off to continue touring and I’d two days to kill in Adelaide before my trek home started, these two days seemed endless!!

Finally the morning came where I was to start my LONG journey home. First short hop from Adelaide to Sydney took only just over 2 hours, then it was time for the big one, boarded in Sydney destined for Abu Dhabi which was a 15 hour long flight. After 2 hours in Abu Dhabi airport the final leg to make it to Ireland was another 8 hours. All in all it’s a bloody long way from Australia to Ireland!! It was great to have Fiona meet me in the airport then we waited for Ben to arrive who was coming in from America. Then it was about 3 hours in the car and I was back in home in Donegal after almost 2years!

I’m not going to go into all I did in my month back home because it was a VERY busy month I’ll just say that it was fantastic to see everyone and that it was hectic! We traversed Ireland top to bottom and side to side visiting Dublin, Antrim, Derry, Limerick, Cork, Belfast, Tipperary and Galway. Did way too much drinking and eating and put on about a stone in weight but it was so great to see everyone and only till next June till I will see you all again when I’m home for Fiona’s wedding. When I was at home I got to celebrate Fiona’s 30^th, Ciara’s 18^th and “mini Christmas” which was a full on turkey and ham dinner cooked with all the trimmings and presents on Easter Sunday! This was because I has missed two Christmases away from home and was probably going to miss more in the future, it was great J Some amazing times were had with family and friends all over Ireland miss you all lots and was fantastic to catch up with you all.

My time at home came and went all too quickly and then it was off to what is fast becoming my new home, Australia, the land down under! So Ben and I set off and this time we had Shane in tow as he was going to find out if the grass was greener on the other side too! So after some sad goodbyes it was time for the tremendous journey again. After another eternity of travelling, it was a little better this time as I had some company we arrived at Sydney airport. Here I had an unnerving experience where they questioned me quite thoroughly at immigration querying my visa. They wanted to know details of my previous year in Australia and wanted to check on my farm work they lady questioning me went away for what seemed like an age and actually rang the lettuce farm where I had worked to confirm I’d been there so I was scrupulously checked out, but thankfully it was all good and they let me into the country for another year!!

After a night in Sydney Shane headed on up to Roma in North Queensland to meet up with Elaine, Ben and I stayed for another night and Ben gave me a one day whirlwind tour of Sydney my first actual visit to the city even though I’d been in Australia for a year! After waking up at a stupidly early hour because of jetlag we eventually got up and headed toward circular quay where I got my first glimpse of the bridge and the opera house. We then got a ferry over to Manly where we strolled around and sat on the beach for a bit. Next it was onwards to Darling harbour which was really pretty, then a visit to the powerhouse museum before meeting up with a friend of Ben’s for dinner before bed! Next morning it was off to Ben’s home in Narromine. We caught the train instead of flying and had a really scenic journey through the Blue Mountains. We spent a week at Ben’s house with his family where I got properly initiated into the family doing lots of things around the place. I helped cut down and clear away lots of dead trees and had a massive bonfire afterwards to burn all the rubbish; I learnt how to drive a manual quad and was scooting around with a trailer full of leaves and bushes. We collected up some fencing from one of the paddocks (a big field to you and me!) and one day I spent in the butchers helping to make sausages that they would sell at the farmers market, this was certainly a novel experience for me! Then it was off to their pub in Gilgandra 80km away to stay for the weekend and help out over mother’s day weekend. Serving the locals was fun and one old guy took a great shine to my Irish accent and gave me plenty of tips which is always welcome! After a few days at the pub it was back to Narromine where we spent a little more time doing some jobs, during this time I spent a day sewing saltbush seeds out at their nursery!

We then packed up and headed over to Newcastle along the coast, this is where Ben had gone to University; we stopped at a few wineries in the Hunter Valley region on the way then met up with some of Ben’s old friends from uni. We went to the farmers market for a morning where Ben used to work and caught up with more of his friends. Ben got to spend a day with his son Dash which was great; we took him out for a day along the waterfront then went over to a friend’s house with him. Another one of the days I caught up with Bec a girl who I’d met in Darwin when I was up there and who I’d kept in contact with. We were then off again onto Macksville where Ben was actually born and where some of his relatives still lived. We were going here to look after his Aunty Minnie’s house for a week while they were on holiday. We had to look after the chickens and the cat. We had a great time here the house is situated on a river and we were free to use the boat to go into town and to go fishing (my first time ever-caught nothing!) which we did however the weather turned out to be a bit crap so we got rained on a few times but still enjoyed playing “grown-ups” for a week in “our house”. Fresh eggs for breakfast, having a friend over for a barbeque, Ben trying to teach me how to play golf, riding around on motorbikes and quads, watching dvd’s and generally just enjoying chilling out after a hectic couple of months was lovely. We visited Ben’s Granny at the bottom of the road a few times and we also spent some time over at Nambucca heads visiting with Ben’s other Nan and Pa who were in a nursing home over there. I spent some more time with my friend Bec, we visited Watagans National park in the Hunter Valley region and did some touristy things around Newcastle for a weekend while Ben babysat dash. Ben also celebrated his 30^th birthday while we were here and I bought him a skydive!! However we were to wait for week before we actually got to jump because the weather was pretty crappy and it was better to wait for a clear day.

But the day finally came and on the 5^th June 2012 Ben and I jumped out of a plane from 14,000ft over Coffs harbour. Andy and Di (Ben’s parents) watched from below as we hurtled towards the earth for a complete 60seconds of freefall before the parachute was pulled. It was terrifying, amazing, exhilarating and the biggest adrenaline rush I have ever felt seeing the ground rush toward you at a million miles an hour before the chute is pulled then gliding down with the parachute over the amazing East coast of Australia was truly an experience never to be forgotten. Just check out the photos!!! Then the next day it was back on a plane again this time firmly strapped in as we headed back “home” to Alice!! We’ve been back in Alice now for 6 months busy working away and having fun with lots of goings-on as usual but think I’ll leave that for the next blog!!

By the way I’d so many photos to upload on this blog that I ran out of patience at the end and discovered a nice little trick... for those of you who don’t have facebook I can now just send you on links to photos I’ve uploaded there that you can copy and post into your browser to view my photos without having to join facebook! Click on the first photo to enlarge it and then just keep clicking on the photos to see the next one! Here is the link for my skydiving photos https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151053668102163.432093.540552162&type=1&l=3272c4cef0 Would be great if someone lets me know if this actually works as it’s the first time I’ve used this function!

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Comments

[Mum]

Hi
Great blog Elaine. Some of the places you mentioned are in the book you sent for my birthday! And Dash is REALLY cute. Chat soon. Mum xx

[IrishGlobetrotter]

@ Mum
That's great you were able to assoicate some if the places in the book with some of the places I've been, might have to borrow that book when Im home in the Summer and read it myself! xx