Shout - Out to:

TheDiplomad.blogspot.com - via DonSurber.blogspot.com

Part 1, Sydney to Wagga Wagga So, we flew to Sydney on April 12, and after the 14 hour flight failed to find our daughter, Disa (who lives in Sydney), there to meet us. After a few minutes of panic I found myself coming in the main entrance behind her - but recognised her because she had her dog, Snuva, with her! By this time, I had found a wheelchair for my wife, Mary, and even a nice young lady to push it. Not the most auspicious start; Mary's knees didn't respond well to all that cramped time in the plane. Well, Disa had rented a car for the occasion, and off we went to her place in the Sydney suburb of Annandale. Her house is smaller than the one she lived in before, but built on the same plan - front door to the left giving into the living room, and a narrow hall on the left past the bedrooms to the kitchen in the rear. Past the kitchen, a back "dining room" which has been added fairly recently (ie in the last 30 years). The main house is ALL masonry, even the interior walls, so it is very soundproof except for the neighbor with the really sensetive car alarm. Australian lightswitches flip down for 'on' and up for 'off'. They are typically mounted directly on the door trim about 4 1/2 feet up. The doorknobs are also at that height. Sydney tends to be humid, so the exterior walls have built-in vents. The house is quite old, over 100 years, and the back stoop is well worn sandstone dished like the steps in an old cathedral. We set out after breakfast at a local cafe and a rest to look for a car, mostly along Parramatta Road - the main road west from Sydney CBD towards the Blue Mountains. Fortunatly there are lots of car dealers on that one road. It took a bit longer than we had hoped, but we finally settled on a Mitsubishi Express van with sliding doors on both sides, 4-speed automatic transmission, and air conditioning. A '95 model with 110,000 KM on it (about 70,000 miles). Mitsubishi, Ford, and Toyota all build vans like this in Australia, very much like our Volkswagen Vanagon in size, which we consider the ideal size. While Disa signed the papers, I took a few measurements, to start the design process for our camper conversion. Many things which need to be done are done to the car after the sale, so we waited a couple of days for the registration process and these other things, such as repainting some rust spots inside. Finally, we picked it up and got busy buying wood and such and building the camping stuff. It's fun to go to lumberyards and hardware stores in a different country: there are subtle differences which is a cool part of travel. Grocery stores, too. Finally, I got the camp stuff finished, and Disa drove me around while we located everything, such as a vital item: a porta-potti, which we found at an RV store at Botany Bay. Disa and Mary made curtains and found some really wonderful curtain rods, exactly the right size, and perfect for the purpose. Disa's encyclopedic knowledge of Sydney made the shopping so much easier. We took a shakedown cruise to the Hunter Valley, north of Sydney, accompanied by Snuva - who provided a lot of backgroung noise (WHINGE whinge whinge). It's wine country, so we were off for the weekend. Got the WHOLE way to the end of the block where our first right turn sent the potti skidding across the floor. A quick stop, and we were on our way again. This was my baptism of fire on driving on the left - I'd driven a bit locally, but real traffic and freeways were quite traumatic. So much of driving is reflex that one has to learn all over again. After a couple of days in the Hunter, where we camped one night in the same place we camped on the first night of my trip in '97, it was back to Sydney where I built a solid bar to keep the potti under control and got some special foam cushions made at "The Foam Booth" to shield Mary from the harsh ride and harsh roads. Then we were stuck a bit longer in Sydney while the National Bank of Ausralia fooled around, taking their sweet time getting our bankcards to us. When we finally got underway, the packing and last-minute things took so long that we left just at dark, heading southwest on the Hume Highway in rushhour traffic. Driver Trauma! When we finally got clear of the city, we camped in a rest area, and awoke in the morning to a scene which might as well have been in Virginia: a grove of pine trees (NOT native to Australia) and only one eucalyptus in sight. We continued down the Hume, turning off for Canberra, Australia's capitol, to visit the exibit "Monet and Japan" in a museum there since Mary is a big Monet fan and visited Giverney when we were in France last summer. After Canberra, we went back north to continue our way west on the Hume, buying groceries in Yass where a man who has a plumbing buisness stopped me to discuss how he could build such a camping setup in a van he has for his buisness. He loves Mitsubishis - a nice affirmation. Next morning we took off on a less busy road at Wagga Wagga, and the real trip could be said to begin.

Part 2, Wagga Wagga to Pt Augusta

OK, we were heading west out of Wagga Wagga, New South Wales (NSW). Assuming that most folks don't have a map of Australia in front of them, I'm looking at my Hammond Atlas of the World, 1994, for reference.

Our route was almost directly west from Sydney, all the way to the west coast of Australia, with the detour south a bit to Canberra, as mentioned. We took the Hume Highway southwest from Sydney to avoid steep grades. If we had gone straight west, out the aforementioned Parramatta Rd to Katoomba, we would have encountered many steep, winding grades. Australia is mostly flat - flatter than Kansas - but all along the east coast is The Great Dividing Range, and behind Sydney it is steep, indeed. It took the early settlers quite a while to figure out how to get thru these mountains, as all the canyons penetrating the cliffs are 'box canyons' and extremely steep. Once they decided to approach some of the promontories instead, a road was able to be built. Curiously, had they just looked a few dozen miles to the south, where the Hume highway goes thru, it would have been a 'piece of cake' - when they DID get thru the mountains, escaped cattle were already there! Anyway, just west of the mountains the country looks a good deal like central California - rolling hills with grass, and trees in the wallies. Not much further west, where we are at Wagga Wagga, it levels out. Somehow one doesn't expect the level 'outback' to extend so far east into NSW. We set out to the west on the Sturt Highway. The highways are named, mostly, after explorers who worked in the area, and the route numbers are secondary to the name. The Sturt Hwy goes west thru the region known as The Riverina, a farming area watered to some extent by the Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers. The rivers are not very obvious until you actually come upon them. On the morning of our third day we spotted a 'gorge' just south of the road - and it turned out to be the Murray. It is cut deeply into the plains so no trees or other clues are to be seen from a distance. Our route took us thru NSW to Mildura, then thru a small corner of the state of Victoria (Vic) and into the state of South Australia (SA) at Renmark. By now we were into typical Australian 'bush'. Oddly, by American standards, the arid landscape, although it is at least as dry as our deserts, is pretty well covered by eucalyptus trees of many species, usually taking the form of "Mallee Scrub", an Aboriginal word for trees about 20-30 feet high, growing in clumps from a "lignotuber" - a central underground root clump. If the surface tree is burnt down or whatever, the clump simply regrows from the lignotuber. It's weird to see so much wood growing in such dry land. In addition to the Mallee, there are also plenty of Acacia, or "Wattle" trees, and where it's REALLY dry, Casuarinas and Allocasuarinas, looking for all the world like the junipers you see in Arizona and Utah.

At the end of our third day we camped on the shores of the Spencer Gulf, north of Adelaide. Looking at the continent from the perspective of the USA, the Australian continent is about the same size and of similar shape. You could think of Sydney as being approximatly where Savannah, GA is, and Adelaide at about New Orleans, though there are some mountains running along the eastern side of Spencer Gulf, unlike Louisiana!

That day we had spent at the very attractive town of Burra, SA, where we caught their annual antique fair. Mary got several things there. The prices for antiques were the same or lower than we see at the giant Hillsborough Antique Fair she liked to go to 3x a year when she had knees that worked. Had she but known she would have brought another large suitcase! There was a big sale room set up in the old town hall, and street fair stuff such as an old calliope, and rides on antique fire engines. I visited Burra when I was thru here in '97, and it's always nice. Wine growing is pushing north from the famous Barrosa Valley to here (the Clare Valley, which was very reminiscent of our Santa Clara Valley) and now they have grapevines trained on the storefront roofs over the sidewalks. (Erik says wherever they have 2 drops of water to rub together, they grow grapevines!) It was late autumn - equivalent to November - and the variety they chose had brilliant red fall color. Australia has no native trees or such that produce fall color, so Poplars, Liquidambars, and such are planted for color. Australian trees don't drop their leaves annually - but many do peel their bark! The leaves of most Australian trees are thick and leathery and hang edgewise to the sun, to reduce evaporation. Basically, if you see a tree with bare branches, it's either an import - or dead.

After Burra - too small to have a "real" grocery store - we visited Port Augusta, at the very top of the gulf, which has TWO supermarkets. Here we stocked up because our next stop was planned to be in Norseman, West Australia (WA), at the equivalent location of Flagstaff, AZ.

The prices in Australia were no different to the eye than those in the USA. Many items had virtually the same price you would expect to see here.

A few prices from our grocery reciept from Port Augusta:

Sliced Peaches in Mango puree $1.63

Diet Lemon Drink $1.90

Canned Stringbeans $0.90

Jar of Pasta Sauce $2.62

Bunch of Bananas $1.24

Package of Ground Beef for Spaghetti $4.45

Then you take into account that the Australian Dollar is valued when we were there at 52 cents, US. Whotta' deal!

It turns out that they are paying just a bit more for gas than we are. The price for unleaded was from $.85/liter on some days in Sydney (it varies daily, Monday and Tuesday being cheapest) to as high as - I think, once, $1.45/liter. $1.15 was commoner in the outback. Transportaition costs are accuratly reflected there, unlike the random pricing in the US. So, working the liter/gallon, and AU$/US$ conversion, gas at AU1.00/liter works out to about US$1.97/gallon. One of the few things that was more expensive.

Now we were ready to set off for the Southwest. I had been in Port Augusta before, but not west of there. They call it "the Crossroads of Australia", and for good reason: several roads lead there from the well-populated East, and from Adelaide just to the south, but if you want to go west or north, there is only one road in either direction: the Stuart highway (note, Stuart, not Sturt - different explorer) north to Alice Springs (near Eyre's Rock, now called Uluru) and Darwin, and the Eyre (Pronounced 'Air' - different explorer) to the west. That's IT, no other roads, although the "Oonadatta Track", several hundred miles of gravel road does sorta parallell the Stuart Hwy. partway to Alice Springs. Port Augusta is the 'jumping-off-place for the 'official' outback, & the last opportunity to stock up on food supplies & that most precious commodity - bottled water.

Part 3: Across the Nullabor - Pt Augusta to Denmark

Leaving Port Augusta, the road heads west over the northern part of the Eyre Peninsula (Pronounced 'Air' "Come for the fresh Eyre" as the slogan goes), which officially ends at Ceduna, which turns out to have pretty complete services, so a big 'shop' at Port Augusta wasn't entirely needed. About 100K west of Port Augusta we passed a roadhouse with a big plaster statue of a galah - a pink and grey parrot common in the area, and a sign advertising that it's 1/2 way across the continent. Parrots are quite common, the galah being the commonest in this area, further east we had seen huge flocks of Sulfur-Crested Cockatoos, and red, green and blue Ringnecks were often seen in the trees, as well as small green parrots along the roadsides.

Crows and ravens are also common eating roadkill. There were also "Australian Magpies", or Currawongs, which are very much like crows, but with a white beak and patches of white on back and wings. These birds have many variations of amount of white. They behave just like the crows along the roads. The crows - or ravens, or both have a "Caw" just like ours, but only to start: after starting with a vigorous "Caw, caw" they slow it down, and drop the pitch, so it fades down, as if the bird was dying. The currawongs have a lot of sounds - one of the commonest being an "oh,Oh!", sounding exactly like about a two year old kid spilling something. There is another black and white roadside bird called a "Magpie-Lark", about half the size of the crows and currawongs, and marked just like some of the currawongs with the most white. All of these roadside birds have the curious habit - unlike our roadside scavengers, they rarely fly at the approach of a car: they simply turn their back on the road and step a few feet aside, where they wait with raised beak for the annoying car to leave. It's a sort of backward salute. Naturally, if you try for a photo, they fly away.

So, after Ceduna, we are really headed west. The road plunges on thru the desert, and a short distance south - often mere yards, the desert comes to an end in sheer cliffs which fall several hundred feet right into the sea, and go for many hundreds of miles. Desert whale watching. This is the famous "Nullabor Plain", supposedly named in botched latin for 'null' - no, 'arbor' - tree. This stretch of road thus gets VERY bad press. Usually the guidebooks say something like "no trees - well..." as if there are a few stunted trees. Actually, though there are several stretches with nothing at all in sight but some low bushy stuff, most of the 'Nullabor Plain' is covered with 20-30 foot eucalypts which we found beautiful with their umbrella shaped crowns. The drive does take several days (no night driving unless you like hitting kangaroos) but we really enjoyed the constant, subtle changes in the trees and undergrowth. And the roadhouses which appear to be towns on the map, but which are usually just a gas station, semi-fast food place, and a very 'basic' motel. They are sited just far enough apart that you don't have to worry about running out of gas - but you don't want to pass any of them by, either. West of Caiduna, on the way to Belladonia, there is a stretch of road which is dead straight for over 90 miles, then a slight right bend, and about 50 more straight miles. One of the guidebooks (I checked at the library this morning) implies that you will be totally hypnotized, but we hardly noticed - there were still subtle ups and downs, and after all 90 miles straight isn't much different from 90 miles almost straight!

This land looks like it should be covered with farms and grazing cattle, but it is actually one of the dryest places there is. It does rain a bit in winter, but there is no surface water at all. When John Eyre explored it, even his Aboriginal scouts couldn't find water. They almost died, it was a very close thing. Problem is, the whole area is an almost flat limestone plain, with huge caverns underground, so any water just runs underground into the sea. At the Caiguna roadhouse there is a sign: "Please don't ask us for water, because you may be upset when we refuse". So, plenty of drought-tolerant trees and nothing else. We spoke to a couple from Kalgoorlie (we never went to Kalgoorlie, it was a bit north of our route). The husband had a heavy equipment company and told me that his equipment is being hired to go out into the bush and drill prospect holes for mining companies. He said that before water was finally piped from Perth, something like a 500 mile pipeline, the people in Kalgoorlie had to run railroads out into the bush to get wood to distill the salty water which was all that could be got from deep wells for drinking water. When the rail lines became impractically long, they ripped them up, and built another not far away from the first. He said they now find the abandoned camps in the bush from these days, entirely untouched, like ghost towns that no one even knew existed.

SO, two and a half days along the Eyre Hihghway brought us to Norseman - named after a horse who pawed up a huge gold nugget which started the gold rush to Western Australia. Here the road finally splits, going north to Kalgoorlie which is still mining gold, and south to Esperance, on the sea, where we went.

In Esperance, we treated ourselves to a motel (it was raining) and a steak dinner.

Then we pushed on for Albany, also on the coast - the next town, really, though it took most of a day to drive there, so we camped in a really nice place some hours north of Albany where I had an introduction to a retired gentleman who is said to consider a 40K run out into the bush to see a color variant of some obscure orchid to be the way to entertain a visitor. Sounded good to me!

Well, we had a nice camp dinner, and I even considered leaving the stove etc on the picnic table for the night, even though it was cold and windy. There were some nasty looking clouds, though, so I followed usual procedure and stowed it. Good thing, too! Sometime in the middle of the night it was pouring and blowing - one of the fiercest storms we have ever camped in. All was well in the morning, though, and good coffee and breakfast were made, although it was cold work!

Heading for Albany ( 'Al Bany', not like the Albany in New York) we passed thru a small mountain range - like the Cacoctins in Maryland. These mountains, the Stirling Range, were weird! Exploring a dirt road in the mountains, I saw a "Grass Tree" which looked different from other Aussie grass trees - had a bunch of club-like things sticking out a all angles rather that just a tall straight flower spike. So I got out to take a photo, and realized that NOTHING growing there looked like anything I'd seen before. I knew that the flora of WA was unique, but this was more different than I was prepared for.

This area has been seperated from the rest of the world for something like 200 million years, and even seperated from the rest of Australia for some 50 million. Even now, the Nullarbor plain keeps most wildlife from crossing, and for several million years about 15 million years ago, it was a REAL desert of drifting sands. The southwest has had a nice, rainy climate all the while, ever since it was split off from Antarctica, back when Antarctica had plants! To make it even stranger, the land has been just about exactly the same for all that time, and many nutrients have been leached out of the soils, with no volcanoes or overunning seas to replenish them. Looks like great farm country, but for years, no crops would grow until this was discovered, and a few pounds per acre of 'trace minerals' made it fine for farming. They say that there are 8,000 species of wildflowers in W.A., most of which grow nowhere else. We met some folks who had photos of some clumps of wildflowers which grow in ONE PLACE, only, and can't be grown anywhere else, even with soil dug from their home. I have not been able to verify this.

Now I was really drooling to look up the plant guy in Albany, but when we got there in pouring rain, his phone didn't answer. Well, it WAS saturday, he probably had things to do, so we had fish and chips, and pushed on to find a place to camp on this rainy night.

Next morning, we soon came to the town of Denmark in spitting rain. I realized too late that the two gas stations were IT, so pulled over to turn around. The street I turned into was next to a Catholic church, and mass was in 8 minutes according to the sign. We quickly spruced up and went in - sat 'way in back. St Mary's was just a little church - about 50 people at mass. There was the usual general invitation to "A Cuppa'" - tea or coffee and cake next door. We went, and met a few people, including two 'Tony's - Tony Jones and Tony Shepherd and his wife Elanor.

Leaving church, we decided to get a nice lunch, and then call the guy in Albany. Went to the cafe we liked the look of, and the damned door wouldn't open, so a customer inside politely came and helped - "Hi, Tony, fancy meeting you here" Tony Jones was sitting with Tony and Elanor, so we sat with them. In the course of the conversation, when they learned that we were car-camping, Tony Jones said he had plenty of land, we could camp at his place. "or you could camp in our driveway" said Tony Shepherd.

They were all just having coffee, and soon left, both giving us phone numbers.

We ate our lunch, and tried to phone the Albany guy - no answer. Frustrating.

The weather was improving, so I stopped to get a photo of the church. We were in a quandary as to what to do - wanted to call Albany again before we got too far away, and it was getting late, but we felt 'funny' about imposing ourselves on either Tony - hell, they were just 'saying that', right?

Well, as I pulled back on the road, a white car blinked it's lights, and, recognizing Tony Shepherd, I pulled over. They had said that we "have to see green's cove", and Tony said "Follow me - I'll show you where we mean." When we followed them off the main road, they pulled over and told us it's just a K&1/2 further down the road - "And when you come back, go up this little road, last house on the left, we'll have a 'cuppa' waiting!"

So, we did , and we did, and wound up also having some supper, and were re-invited to camp in the driveway (driveway sounded originally like it was in town, but no, nice country place with a view of the Antarctic ocean, and a beautiful cape. Well, we could camp in the driveway, but for the frogs. I never saw ome but they SOUNDED as big as german shepherds! So we wound up in their guest wing. Tony is a watercolor artist, ex architect. Great house! Hot water free - solar in summer, by pipe thru the woodstove in winter. Lots of other neat things - the house was built of 'mud brick' made of soil from the land mixed with 10% cement. ALL water collected from the roof into a 30,000 gallon tank, no well of city water. They had two ponds out front, just in case, also. Very nice.

Next day we had to tear ourselves away, and my call to Albany was still unanswered. The guy's name was pretty unusual, too, and there was a listing for someone of the same name owning a photographic studio. Tried that. No answer. So I had to give up on him, and some undoubtedly great plant hunting.

Part 4, From the West to the Red Centre

After we left the wonderful people in Denmark, W.A., we headed northwest away from the coast to the Big Trees. With lots of rain and geographic isolation, three kinds of Eucalypts have evolved into giants.

First, we came to the forest of 'Tingle' trees - just an aboriginal word, not THAT huge a thrill, and not like some sort of nettle which might make one tingle. I had often wondered about that name! The trees are huge, and a walkway has been built up into them where they grow in a gorge. The walkway is narrow enough that you can easily hold onto both railings, and is reinforced entirely from below, so there are no cables or such to obstruct the view. which is pretty awesome! The highpoint is about 40 meters off the ground - about 130 feet, and there you are among the leaves and branches, just like a bird or squirrel. There are plenty of treetops above, and a lot of space below. Using a camera feels as if it's TRYING to jump out of your hands into the void. Tony Shepherd, the architect, made sure that we knew that "if it didn't sway a bit it would be too brittle, and break...", but Mary still didn't like the movement. Mind you, her knees hurt a lot, so she doesn't feel too sure on her feet. At least the walkway eases up and down, so even a person with walking problems can do it. Mary particularly didn't like the fact that the platform areas, supported on top of foot-diameter steel pipe posts, swayed also! After being in the treetops, there are also walkways along the ground - harder to negotiate, what with steep stairways and such.

The whole area contains patches of Jarra Trees, not as big as the others, but a very valuable timber tree. The wood is a very beautiful purplish red, hard and durable. It is so rot resistant that even though it is a fine furniture type wood, in the old days it was mostly used for railroad ties. It was also exported - some streets in London, and Berlin are paved with Jarra blocks!

The really big trees are the Karri, which are only just a tad smaller than our California Coast Redwoods. They often have the smooth, grey eucalyptus bark rising like marble columns into the sky. Very impressive. Not as good when the peeling bark is still hanging on, but many are so smooth. The Karri is also a valuable timber tree, a less dark red than Jarra, and not cut much now, as the old groves are so beautiful. In the old days, Karri timber was used for piers and wharves, as it is very durable in salt water.

The trees are so tall that the only way to build fire lookouts years ago was to make a platform in a tall Karri on a hilltop. There are several of these one can visit near Pemberton. We went to "The Glouchester Tree"; there is a climbing arrangement of iron rods, kinda' like 'rebar' pounded into the trunk about a foot apart in an easy spiral around the tree - 'way 'way up. Not for us. We took photos of each other on the tree, but not further up than we would want to fall! The guys who built it had to sit on one rung of this open air ladder while boring holes and pounding in the next rung. The story is that a guy was up on ome of these lookouts when a storm came up, withlightning all around. He phoned the boss with his fears and was told that there are plenty of tall trees that have survived. He said "there are also hundereds lying on the ground - I'm leaving!"

On one dirt road among the Karri's, we came around a bend to see a large kangaroo lounginf in the middle of the road. He looked at us with disgust for interrupting his nap and slowly got up. There was a lot of peeled bark on the road which crunched under our wheels, so we got the impression that we may have been the only car in days - this isn't a heavily travelled area.

From Pemberton, it was straight west thru Virginia-like landscapes (with different plants, of course: just trying to give you a feel for the area), then a bit south to the town of Augusta (not Port Augusta), and then a few miles to Cape Leeuwin, where the Southern (Antarctic) ocean meets the Indian ocean. I dipped a finger in for a taste of the Indian Ocean, and have now tasted all the oceans. They are all salty. I climbed the lighthouse, and Mary gaurded the door. It's only climbable with a docent, who locks the stairs when a group is in ther, and sure enough, several people came and expected Mary to let them in. As if she could, without a key. I had hoped to paddle my inflatable kayak out to this world-class cape, but there were some 'sleeper' waves that might have dumped me in the cold water, so I wimped out. Turns out that was a good idea, because the boat is quite suceptible to winds, and wouldn't have been fun there with about 270 degrees of ocean around!

We spent the night not far from Augusta and had breakfast in a nice little cafe where we had lunch the previous day. Then north to Margaret River - a somewhat "touristy" town which for some reason Australians consider to be the goal of a trip to the Far West. We opt for Augusta. It's wine country, but so is Augusta, and for that matter, anyplace in Australia where there is enough water.

We went up almost to Bunbury, a small city north of there, and the roads actually began to be full of traffic and all that 'city' stuff - McDonald's and all, so we were off into the countryside. Drove on and on thru an idyllic countryside just about as far from the hustle and problems of the modern world as one can get. It felt "50's -ish". So, when we stopped for gas at an open-fronted supermarket in Collie (HAD to go thru 'Collie', since our dogs are Border Collies) the young lady who pumped the gas, upon hearing my American accent said: "What MADE you come HERE?" It's all in your perspective - teenagers don't want 'peaceful'!

If you aren't looking at a map, consider that this corner of Australia is shaped a lot like the west coast of the USA - Augusta would be where San Diego is, Bunbury about at La Jolla, and Collie around El Cajon. Our next destination was Hyden, to see Wave Rock, a granite outcrop with it's one side weathered to the shape of a huge, cresting wave. It actually is impressive. Hyden is about where Las Vegas would be on the US map. There are some small towns, but so little population that to conserve money and rescources, the roads are just paved - one lane - down the middle. You play 'chicken', pulling off on the extra-wide shoulder when a car comes at you. We got to Wave Rock in the afternoon, and camped off the road around 25 miles east of there - a really nice "home", as we call it ("if we lived here, we'd be home now") - a little loop left over where the road was straightened when they got around to paving it. Nicely screened from "traffic".

Imagine the shock on the truck which did come by at about 6:45 the next morning. Here he is, driving thru almost empty country, wheatfields for mile after mile, no cars, no houses, and here beside the road stands this bearded guy with a camera, photographing the brilliant sunrise! Where'd HE come from? Came from the camper just thru those mallees. Woke up, noticed it was getting light, screamed: "Mary, it's a world-class sunrise!" and went running thru the trees getting dressed and stuffing cameras in pockets. Got that sucker, too! A real good one. Poor Mary missed it - I had thought she was almost awake because she was rolling over as I shouted. She wouldn't have had time to get thru the trees for a really good view - these things don't last long, and she does move more carefully than I do.

One of the neat things about this area is it's remoteness, but that carries a penalty - there are no roads going back east: it's north, or south, take your pick. Even though we'd been to Esperance, to the south, we decided to go there rather than thru Kalgoorlie, north of us. Glad we did. It had been grey and rainy when we first were in Espreance, and this time the weather was glorious, and the 'Bay of Isles' at Esperance was beautiful. On a map it just looks like there are some islands offshore, but from the waterfront it looks like another coast, blue above blue water. Then back to Norseman, and off on the Eyre Highway again. Originally, I had considered taking the train to Pert, and getting the car there to avoid doing this road twice. SO glad we didn't. This way we got more time with Disa, and we got to see that lovely country twice. It even worked out that when we originally came west there were a lot of clouds, so we weren't driving into the sun in the warm afternoons, and going back east the skies were blue, for a different perspective.

Have I mentioned that the sun - although it goes east to west of course, APPEARS to go the other way, because in the southern hemisphrer, east to west is COUNTER -clockwise? Takes some 'getting used to' Mary decided not to worry about it, and declared that "the sun rises in the south and sets in the north - so there!"

A couple of days on the Eyre HIghway brings us back to Port Augusta, good grocery stores, cheaper gas, and fish and chips at Barnacle Bill's. The girl behind the counter remembered us, so we got to talking. I asked why they didn't list crab among the range of seafoods (Port Augusta is on a gulf and is a big fishing area) - since I had seen photos of huge crabs that looked like Chesapeake Blue Crabs on stearoids. Apparently they DO catch them - 'there's a place about 20K down the coast west of here where I hear the water is full of 'em". Apparently they are just caught by those sport fishermen who happen to want to. Unusually for a young person, she really liked the idea of the way we travel, stopping whenever it gets dark - and even offered the opinion that since "All cities are basically the same - just city" that travelling the countryside is cool. I'm in full agreement.

I did say that Venice is worth the trip, and she agreed, having been there twice. I'm pretty sure she was a refugee from Yugoslavia, there are a lot of them in the area.

SO, we 'hung a left' at Port Augusta and headed north on the Stuart Highway (remember - not Sturt, different explorer) for Ayer's Rock, now called 'Uluru'.

When I was here in '97, we didn't have time to go west, so we made an "executive decision" that a treeless area along this highway was "part of the Nullarbor Plain" - and I'd say we were right. The road goes northwest thru the "Gawler Ranges", a couple of small mountain ranges somewhat similar to Nevada, complete with some salt lakes (east of here, on hundreds of miles of dirt roads, is Lake Eyre, a huge and very shallow depression which becomes a lake when it rains up in Queensland, about a thousand miles away).

To increase the resemblance to Nevada, the road goes thru a restricted military test site - Woomera - jointly under the Australian and US military. You have to understand that there is a LOT of country out there. Remember that Japanese fringe group that gassed the Tokyo Subway with Saran Gas some years ago? Well, they own (owned??) a big slice of land north- west of Ayer's rock, and it's thought that they tested their own Atomic Bomb out there - but no one's sure. THAT kind of 'lots of land' - I always say that if someone misplaced Texas out there and it was more than a mile off the road, no one would ever find it.

Anyway, drove for two days north, and turned west at Erldunda, to drive about 5 hours to Ayer's Rock. Costs $15 a person to get in (shucks, that's only $7.50 US) and it's worth it. Driving toward here, you pass Mt. Connor, south of the road - looks like an Arizona Mesa that 'got misplaced', but Ayer's rock is this huge red 'rock' - they say it's unconnected to similar strata below, but is 'the world's largest pebble' - I don't know. The sides do certainlt look like they just continue straight down into the ground. Probably the weirdest thing to me is are the areas where wind erosion has dug pockets in the sides. I've seen a lot of wind erosion, and it's usually rounded caves, but these are irregular clusters of pits which don't seem to follow the strata, and it looks like the surface - whatever the local strata - is a hard shell, with these 'shapes' inside. It looks kinda' 'organic', like it is a huge animal with some skin off - or a huge flying saucer which has been rusting since it crashed a couple of million years ago, and the internal machinery is showing here and there.

The place is administered by/for the local aboriginal tribes, and so there are some contradictions. They 'ask' that tourists not climb the rock - and provide safety chains. There are sacred sites at various places 'Please no stopping or photographs" the signs say, and there are parking areas and paved trails - even wooden boardwalks over a sacred pool. So if you don't take pictures like everyone else, you will be the only one.

About 15 miles away, to the west, there is another rock formation - 'The Olga's', named after a Queen Olga of Spain. (No kidding, and I can't explain it, either. OR why a queen of Spain would be 'Olga') These are an entirely different kind of rock - pebbles and boulders naturally cemented together (Ayer's Rock is sandstone), and eroded sort of like granite erodes, say, at Joshua Tree NP in California - big rounded things with sharp crevices in between - sort of like a close -bunched herd of elephants from the rear. Unfortunatly, the best view is from a platform built on a big red sand dune, too difficult for Mary to get to. Similarly, the road between Ayer's rock and there, going back to Ayer's, keeps approaching some really good views - and sweeping down into valleys just before the view is complete. I know that the 'hills' are sand, but one does keep wishing that the route could somehow favor the sight of the thing you came to see.

We camped at a roadside rest area east of Ayer's Rock, same place I camped back in '97. There were a lot more other vehicles this time, including a retired couple who now live in their camper, and some young guys in an old Suzuki 'Samurai' (Called a 'Sierra" in Australia) which had bolts falling off the engine and wouldn't start until I came over with jumper cables.

It was so clear that night, and we were JUST far enough north, that we saw the Big Dipper - upside down - lying flat on the horizon. Cool, seeing a north circumpolar constellation and the Southern Cross at the same time.

Part 5, From the Red Centre to Echuca

We left our intrepid travellers sleeping in a roadside rest area about 1/2 hour east of Ayer's Rock. At about 4 am a truck - a road train - pulled in front of us and several other travellers. I thought we would be stuck until he moved, but there was room enough to drive. Notice the wheels. We have mentioned the size of these things, and this illustrates it very well - it's a 62-WHEELER, count 'em! 5 sets of doubles on each trailer. That's 10 per side, 20 per trailer, 60 total, and 2 steering wheels up front. Try passing THAT at 60 mph on a dirt highway! It's scarey enough on a paved two-lane.

After we had breakfast and helped jump start the car mentioned in the last installment, it was a couple of hours back to the Stuart Highway and then back toward the south.

Driving all day, we passed a RoadTrain which had driven off the road on the wrong side, and toppled over! Must have fallen asleep at the wheel. Very impressive and scarey! There was another truck in attendance and they said no help was needed from us.

We pushed on a bit further into the evening than we normally would, parking just north of Coober Pedy in a spot I had also slept back in '97, where the horizon is flat all around, 360 degrees. Not much cover for kangaroos to hide and leap out at us, and it was Saturday evening - we wanted to go to mass at the underground Catholic Church in Coober Pedy at 10 AM.

Coober Pedy (aboriginal: "White man in a hole") is an opal mining town, and since there are lots of holes in the ground, and the temperature is mostly around 100 degrees F, many folks just make their home in cleaned-up mines. Same with the church. Nice, year-round temperature around 70 Degrees!

So we get to church about 9:45, and a lady (turned out to be Sister Cheryl) was coming over to cars and explaining that this was Parish Picnic Day: the Picnic and Mass would be held outside town about 12KM, on the Oonadatta Track - a dirt highway which heads SE about 300 miles. So we followed her dust cloud (hadn't had 'a decent rain' for 15 months) to where a dry streambed with a couple of stunted Eucalypts provided some shade. Unfortunatly they didn't stop the wind, which blew the Crucifix off the Altar (a card table), and required a folded cloth to keep the Hosts from blowing away. Gotta give Father John credit - he did it all very well, even in the wind, and with flies crawling on his face - never flinched, although the homily may have been a bit short!

No way the picnic could survive the wind, so we all adjourned to Father's 'shed' - his garage! We quickly stopped at the store for chips and dip so as to contribute and not freeload. Lay's Potato Chips! A great kalamata olive dip I'd like to find here. There were the usual potato salads, and great sausage made locally from beef grown on a nearby 'station' (although where they grew pasturage, we don't know), and burgers, and lamb on the 'barbie'. A lot of food for a small group! Turns out that Father also did mass the previous day at Ayer's Rock. One of those priests with a couple of hundred square miles to cover (or maybe thousands - not many people!) After the picnic, we headed south for Port Augusta again. So did Father - he had to attend an important Diocesan Golf Match.

The next day as we approached Port Augusta, we stopped at the Arid Lands Botanic Garden, a government study and display site for plants of the 'Red Centre'. One entire garden area was given over to 'Eremophila', or emu plant, which has over 250 varities, from inches high ground cover to small trees. Mary wants to locate an importer in CA & turn our place over to emu plants. If they'll grow in the outback, they should do fine here!

Then groceries, gas, and our 'usual' fish and chips from Barnacle Bill's - a favourite! After that, we headed northeast (yet another left turn at Port Augusta) toward the Flinders Ranges.

As dusk deepened, and here there was PLENTY of cover for kangaroos, we finally found a rest area with another camper already in residence. Spent a cold night and awoke to a scene which could hardly be told from the back road between our house and San Jose, in California! In the US, the white-trunked trees would have been Sycamores, here they were Eucalypts, so if you don't look closely...

As I passed coffee into Mary in the van, I said: "We're just a couple of miles up Uvas Road from our house, we can be home in about 10 minutes!" It was almost creepy! So we pushed on north where the Flinders Ranges - actual mountains - sawtooth skyline looks down on the ruins of farms started in a particularly moist period about 100 years ago. Then the climate turned back to normal, and the farmers had to abandon their homesteads.

We went all the way to Wilpena Pound, a syncline where the mountains dish up on all sides, enclosing a valley almost like a crater, with only a tiny gorge allowing access. Unfortunatly, only hikers can really go in, as there are no roads, so we felt kinda' ripped off having to pay to enter a National Park with nothing special to see. But what the hell, it was only $5 Australian - $2.50 to us! All the rest areas on the highway to/from Wilpena Pound had signs "requesting" no overnight camping. Except one, a real nice one with huge shady Eucalyptus an 'Cypress-Pine' trees. The whole area was thick with kangaroos and emus. We quickly counted 20 roos within a few minutes and saw a flock of 11 emus.

Next day we pulled off the road at a wind-swept rest area where my sister, Disa, and I had camped in '97, and which felt like "The End of The World". As we pulled back onto the road, there was a sign: "Digital Phone Area", so we went back and used Disa's cellphone to call her at work in Sydney. Weird to be able to call from out in the wilderness. Then we went back to Quorn, a pleasant little town with a cool antique shop where Mary bought a lot of neat stuff, and I talked astronomy with the proprietor. Turns out there will be a total eclipse across the Eyre Peninsula and thru here next year. Coming into Hawker, we managed to get photos of a huge flock of sulfur-crested cockatoos - big white ones, bigger than crows.

From Hawker, we worked our way back to Burra on different roads. Burra was a lot quieter on a weekday afternoon than on a Festival Sunday! Then east toward Renmark (on your map, a town on the Murray River). We slept in a rest area a bit east of Renmark, where there was frost on the car in the morning - the only time on this trip.

In the morning, we turned south before Renmark, taking a tertiary road straight south just west of the SA/Victoria border to Pinaroo. In the spring of '97 I had found some really interesting tiny plants along this road, and I wanted to see what it was like in the fall. Couldn't even find the 'area of botanical interest' sign which would pinpoint the area. Bummer. Also bummer was that Pinaroo, which had been a neat town back then, was being repaved and was hardly accessible! Our route did, however, take us over the Murray River on a free ferry at the town of Walkirie. That was neat, so we headed for Echuca, a town on a big bend of the Murray which has the world's biggest fleet of paddle-wheel boats. In its hayday, Echuca was home to over 150 paddle-wheel steamers. Took a ride on one, treated ourselves to a romantic candle-lit steak dinner at "The Cock and Bull", and a motel for a good shower.

Part 6: From Echuca to Cowra

Heading north out of Echuca, we passed the town of Strathmore, home of the "Strathy Hot Bread" bakery, which had won an all-Australian beef pie contest. Got a 10" beef pie for $7.65! And it really was good! Had that and part of a similar-size cheesecake for supper, from "The Cheesecake Shop" back in Echuca. They have a shop in one other Australian town - and one in Poland!

Entering New South Wales, we were greeted by 'Speed Cameras' and, for trucks (Heavy Vehicles) - 'Elapsed Time Cameras'. 'Big Brother' lives! We went almost straight north to Parkes, where there is a huge radio telescope dish. Usually reserved for deep-space radio astronomy, it was used during the first moonlLanding as part of the communications with the astronauts when the regular system 'went down'. There is a movie, 'The Dish', that everyone in Australia seems to have seen, about this incident. We tried unsucessfully to find a VHS tape of it (Australia uses European-type TV). The movie does make the Australian scientists look a bit like hicks, but it's still interesting. They also gave invaluable aid during the Apollo 13 flight. Although not technically part of the system at that time, they of course were tracking the flight out of their own interest, and within minutes of realizing there was a problem were sending technical data to Houston, before it was even requested; they recieved a special commendation for their help. Outside the visitor's centre there is a small apple tree which is a cutting of the famous apple tree where Issac Newton had his 'falling apple' insight into gravitation. Also an 'Upside Down' globe to show schoolkids, and adults, that Australia isn't REALLY 'Down Under'. The visitor centre is manned by real scientists from the observatory, which is neat, because you can get intelligent answers to questions. Rick Twerdy, one of the scientists, was on duty the same as he was when I was here in '97. He said he remembered me. He designs a lot of the stuff on display, very education-oriented. We got there shortly before the 4 pm closing, and he asked if we'd like to see the 3-D film they'd developed. We said we would but didn't have time. He said, "So I close at 5 instead of 4", and shrugged. This friendliness and helpfulness was typical of so many Australians. The film was quite good, by the way. We got some great photos of the dish, lit pink by the setting sun, and pointed toward the moon. Last time I was there the dish was immobile, but this time we got to see the huge thing swerve around twice.

The next day we visited the town of Cowra, where a prisoner-of war camp was during World War II. The camp housed both Italian and Japanese prisoners. The Italians were so happy to be out of the war that they were trusted to get jobs in Cowra and on local farms. After the war, many chose to settle permanently in the area. The Japanese, though, were so ashamed at being captured that they were very hostile and finally staged a breakout which cost several Australian lives and over a hundred Japanese lives before they were all rounded up. In the Chamber of Commerce Visitor's Center there has a charming little show wherin a trick projection system is used to project the image of a young lady on a sort of diorama of artifacts from the breakout, and explains what happened. It's so well done that she really looks almost like a miniature, 6-inch tall girl.

Part 7: From Cowra to Sydney

When we left Cowra we were so close to Sydney that we headed back that afternoon. The area around Parkes and Cowra is very much like California in appearance. The roads were starting to actually have "traffic", so it felt like we were in 'civilisation': Sydney. Before getting back, though, we had to pass thru the Great Dividing Range, mentioned at the start of the trip. From where we were, it was now low road like the early cows took, it was right over the top. The ground gradually rose, with occasional vistas down wide valleys, and toward dusk we got to Katoomba, also mentioned earlier.

Now, having been driving on the left for over a month, I thought I had this thing licked. Not so. Swooping down steep mountain roads, at night, in heavy traffic, put a whole new color on driving. Driving on the left all that time I thought I was used to having oncoming cars just to my right - but when it's a steady stream coming at you, it makes one nervous. Slowly the traffic built up, so I was still kinda' 'white-knuckled' even as we got out of the mountains on the Great Western Highway.

Finally we pulled onto good old Parramatta Road - and the lanes felt so NARROW. Fortunately, Mary was doing the navigating so I could concentrate on keeping us out of trouble. Then we turned off Parramatta Road onto Annandale Street, where Disa used to live - and hit the "Mother of all Road Dips". Everything in the car was tossed around, Mary's knees got bashed, panic. We recovered and went the couple of blocks to Disa's present house on Young Street. Safely back at 6:59 PM - nice and dark. Remember, June in the southern hemisphere is equivalent to December back here.

Prying my hands off the wheel, into the house, greet the dog, Snuva. 12,920 Kilometers - 8,010 miles. Safely 'home'.

The Mitsubishi performed very well, and the camping worked out very well. Lots of folks like to say: "To me, camping is a hotel without Room Service!". Well, where we went roughly half the nights were spent far from the nearest hotel - same as when we travel in the western US. We have everything we really need in our little "Tin Tent" especially our OWN BED! Not too soft, not too hard, pillows just as we like 'em. Covers just right - particularly important to me, as I 'sleep hot' and rarely use even a regular blanket, even in cool weather - I brought a 'string blanket' (thermal blanket) with me from home, woven with a loose, open texture to let heat out. Mary, who is always cold at night, had 2 quilts! We had food selected by US, cooked to our taste. Had SUPERB coffee every morning, hot and right after getting up, never weak or cold. This is very important to me, particularly as that damned "French Roast" coffee is becoming so prevalent in the US, and now in Australia, too! (From Mary: Erik is a great cook! I've always said that every girl should marry a good cook! When we go camping, it is MY vacation also, so Erik does all the cooking & clean up.)

Yes, I did have to cook in the cold, and sometimes in the dark, and often as not with the stove sitting on the ground. We've travelled this way for over 30 years, all over the US, Europe, and now Australia. It's our 'only way to go' - especially as we travel to see the country, not the cities, which by and large just mean: Lots of People. Crowds. Cities - particularly the smaller ones are, of course, a lot better in Europe, where they are old,and nearly every one different from the next.

Mary: This gave us plenty of time to see Sydney, now that it was 'winter' and there were fewer tourists. Because of my knees, we had to be selective, but still I chose to do enough to drive my knees into my hips, We took a bus from Disa's house to Circular Quay and the downtown area known as 'The Rocks' at the heart of the Sydney Harbour waterfront. The old colonial buildings here are beautiful, & those that are not in use by the govt. are being used as hotels, restaurants and business offices. We walked several blocks, unfortunately steeply uphill, to the Sydney botanic gardens. Erik wanted to find someone who could identify pictures (pickies in Strine, the slang part of English they call the Aussie language) of flowers he couldn't identify in the available references. Checking the map at the entrance, the offices were at the complete other diagonal end of the park, as far away as they could be. I chose to wait on a comfy bench in the rose garden near the entrance, reading my ever-present book. Although small, the garden has a nice selection of roses, from hundreds of years old up to current tea roses. And just as I had read, the Bourbon roses had the sweetest, most complex scent of any there. (I believe in stopping to smell the roses.) Erik couldn't find anyone to help him, so we took off past the quay to the Sydney Opera House. Such a unique building, as I'm sure everyone knows. What I didn't realize, because most pictures are taken from the side (because there is a point of land photographers can stand on, always an important point) is that there are really 3 complexes there, a concert hall, the opera house, and (the 2 small 'shells' behind them) a restaurant. There were no performances so we weren't able to get inside. There are 2 huge staircases to get up to the opera house, & the elevators were not running, so we were unable to even look in. We did however walk completely around the opera house along the water. Quite a building!

The Sydney Harbour Bridge on the point next to it is more massive than is apparent from photos. It was built around the time the Brooklyn Bridge was built, to fix it in your time frame. This was before engineers really knew the tensile strength of steel, so built a heavier, more massive object than was really needed. The rivets are bigger than Erik's fist! If you saw some of the 'colour' coverage at the Olympics, you may have seen groups of people climbing the top arch of the bridge. Not my idea of how to spend my summer vacation! I don't do heights. The walks in the Tingle treetops was enough! But to climb it you have to sign all kinds of disclaimers, take a little class in safety beforehand. Each person wears a complete, heavy bodysuit with a life line, a heavy cable that is attached to the suit & fits into a channel on the bridge, so even if you did manage to fall (which would have to be a deliberate jump because you're walking between 6-ft high 'fences') you still couldn't go anywhere & would be hauled back in. You can't wear any jewelry, & if you have to wear glasses, they are tied & taped to your head. No purses, briefcases, not even a camera, nothing that could fall down & hit someone. They take pickies of you at the top. The bridge was expected to be the longest in the world, but the Brooklyn Bridge measured 21 inches longer, much to the disgust of the Aussies. We took a bus to within 3 l-o-n-g blocks of Disa's office, met more of her friends there, then got a bus home.

The next day we took the bus back to Circular Quay for a less taxing day for my knees--we took a boat around Sydney Harbour. Had a great time! I thought I'd be sitting the whole time, but ended up popping up every minute or so to take a pickie! Saw many of the areas that have been reconstructed or renewed for the Olympics, the Botanical Gardens, the expensive housing along the water, the repro of the "Bounty" sailing ship, Darling Harbour, the 'highest natural point on sydney Harbour, 33 ft high, where the original observatory was originally, (which was confusing since there are huge hills & cliffs surrounding the harbour) and of course, past the Sydney Opera House and under the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Next we took the bus to Queen Victoria Building, built in the late 1800's during her reign. This is a beautiful building, with lots of iron "lace", mosaic marble floors, stained glass windows, & 5 balconies of shops. We went into several art galleries, antique shops, souvenir shops, but the only purchase I made was at The Body Shop - a pair of shower gloves I've never seen anywhere else but in Australia. They're stiff stretchy nylon terry cloth gloves that you soap up & scrub your body with. The building also houses special exhibits--clocks 2 stories high, a jade marriage coach with mannequins garbed in fabulous marriage costumes, repros of some of the crown jewels, etc. Nice place to shop! Want to go back! Then we went to a market held weekends across from Disa's office that sells all the Aussie souvenirs you could want at fabulous prices! Unfortunately, we got there just as they were closing & never got back for a huge shop! Then we met Disa at her office again & went to a Japanese restaurant for dinner, then walked over a raised pedestrian bridge to Darling Harbour for dessert. The ped. bridge ended in a 'tower', where you could pick up the elevated light rail into downtown Sydney, take a ped. bridge over Darling Harbour, or go down to ground level to the restaurants at the wharf. We ate at an outdoor restaurant right on the water, across the harbour from where the Olympic wrestling took place. Had a sinfully delicious pecan pie ala mode with a cappuccino. Disa, and even Erik who rarely eats dessert, also indulged that night. There's a beautiful fountain there, encircled with whimsical statues of cranes. Then, to my knees delight, we took a cab home!

So, two months in Australia, lots of time visiting Disa (who was probably glad to 'get her life back'), and some great outback experiences.

It cost about as much as a nice cruise - and we still have the car waiting for our next Aussie trip!