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The Aussie Experience (Continued from previous page)

The morning we spent with the koalas was another cold and overcast day on Victoria's south coast. The decision was then made to head into the next state traveling west which is into South Australia (although the majority of the state lies on the south-west coast) Our plan did however include taking in the remainder of the magnificent sights of the Great Ocean Road.

The coast on the western side of Victoria was spectacular and in complete contrast to the earlier described eastern portion of the highway. The coast here was rugged and untamed, very little civilization. Entering the water here by any means other than boat is impossible as the Ocean shares its ferocity here against enormous cliff walls and unbelievable rock structures. We visited the most renowned sites of the majestic rock formations. The twelve apostles stood like soldiers standing guard over the ocean, beaten by waves and as inexplicable in their sense of duty as they are in their origin, massive limestone rock jutting out of the water randomly scattered in a small area, unlike anything we have ever laid eyes on before. Our favourite sight followed; aptly named the Loch Ard Gorge. The inlet here formed by the pounding surf appeared as if somehow the ocean had taken a bite out of the landscape. The sound and sight of the force by which the water battered the walls left little room for imagining how powerful and ever changing Mother Nature can be. Following this sight we visited the bay of islands characterized by hundreds of small islands crowing into a small bay, another sight indescribable in words…

Our journey continued as the Ocean Road ended and we once again joined the main highway in search of a warmer place to spend the night. After two failed attempts to locate an adequate free campground (another task which usually encompasses a great part of the navigator's day) we finally found a place close to the South Australia boarder. This was our first night in total seclusion. It was extremely peaceful and the trees surrounding us sheltered us from the cold ocean breezes. We sat in solitude by the fire. The only evidence of this age and time was the fact that I sat by the fire with the laptop computer and sputtered out parts of this story in my sad attempt to share this magical journey.

The morning brought us into south Australia and the bottom of the west coast. With every kilometre we drove north the temperature increased. As beautiful and welcome as the warm weather was we unfortunately (or fortunately depending on our mood) encountered a bump in the road (or a turn in the adventure… Our poor car started with a mild clunking and by the end of the day sounded like a machine gun ricocheting down the highway. To make the day even more fun we got pulled over for speeding (15 km over the limit) thinking that the police officer would simply ask for license and registration (seemed logical enough) we had it ready when he arrived at the window. He surprised us by asking Steve to come and sit with him in the patrol car. The most shocking aspect of this was, something that we could never imagine happening in Ontario, the Cop had Steve sit in the front passenger seat, the floor of which contained all the gear that our cops would have in a normal sized car… he showed Steve the reading of the radar, handed him a ticket for $230, smiled and said “welcome to Australia”

Our car continued to get worse, the last 50 km into Adelaide were done in prayer, and the car held on until we saw the first motel off the highway. Since it was Sunday we knew there was no hope on getting the auto to the doctor until the following day. Monday morning we finally found a mechanic. At this point it seemed as if the previous day's problems did not exist at all and the mechanic agreed. He told us that the car had simply gotten too hot and that he should be fine. We had already paid for a 2nd night in the motel (anticipating a long day in the shop) so we parked at the motel and headed into the city where we (yup us) actually spent the majority of the day downtown. Adelaide was nothing like Sydney or Melbourne. The layout was simple, easy to follow, extremely charming and eccentric (for a city anyway) the major mall was like many we would see at home with one thing missing…the roof...the majority of the mall was outside with various tower sections that could be accessed by elevator.

We worked here on our never-ending quest for cassette tapes. One would figure that in a country where half the population drives cars almost as old as us there would be some access to tapes. Unlike back home there seems to be a complete lack of 2nd hand music stores. People in the music shops regarded us with looks of shock when we asked where cassette tapes could be purchased. One guy even told us that he didn't' think they were made anymore and the only place to go looking would be an antique store (are we really getting that old…I still remember getting my first ghetto blaster…) eventually we did discover a small selection of over priced cassettes (it is easier to find records...They were everywhere) and discovered that go-los (dollar stores) and gas stations are really the only vendors of these much sought after treasures…we have since added 4 to our collection.

Tired we returned to the motel eagerly awaiting the morning, getting back into our tent and back into the wilderness. The car did not agree. About 50 km north of the city we had to pull into a little town off the side of the highway. There is of course a bar, a motel and a small store. We need a new drive shaft and we are holed up in our motel room until the morning when the car surgery is over. Oh yeah…did I mention that the temperature has reached 40 degrees C. today... From one extreme to another. The heat is heart stopping (yes I love it…I can honestly say I'm not cold…)

We know now, with money running out quicker than expected, that we will look for temporary work when we reach Perth (Western Australia) a couple of weeks from now…what we will do and how we will go about it still remains a mystery…as does every second of every day that we follow this most amazing life path.

From Two Wells (where we were stuck with car repairs) we continued north west intending on exploring the Eyre peninsula, little did we know that we would be able to see most of it from the highway (even though the trip around to the bottom is about 800km). Picture the prairies with some strange brush and patches of exposed red soil. The landscape remained basically the same until we hit the last town before turning south along the peninsula. The only change in the scenery was the odd large patch of what appeared to be snow, however these strange phenomenon were actually dried up salt lakes, with (obviously...) only the salt remaining on top of the red soil. The land here is so desolate. It is amazing the difference after traveling through the vast tree lands, tropical rainforests and mountain ranges of New South Wales and Victoria, to be faced with such a drastic change in climate and scenery.

This day was around 38 degrees (still quite comfortable) after a disappointing journey to what we thought would be a cool free campsite (too isolated…even for us…we were scared…) we headed into the final town on the mainland strip. Whyalla (where the outback meets the sea, is their slogan) This place was weird, cool but weird, the red desert dirt reached right to the border of the Ocean. The few trees were most likely planted by man. This red dirt, sand, soil, whatever you want to call it, is impossible to avoid, it gets into everything, much as does regular sand and dirt, this just shows up a whole lot more. The smart people who built this town took this particular factor into consideration and decided to make the entire city red. The sidewalks are red, the houses are red the buildings are red and most people even had red rocks in their front gardens instead of grass (easier to keep alive with so little water available, we guess)

For a country completely surrounded by water it is amazing how little there is available (in the remote regions) In most cases long exposed pipes run alongside the highway bringing in water from other towns. Most buildings (including campgrounds) have “town water” and “rainwater” the rain water is collected in massive barrels (picture a normal barrel and multiply it by at least 15) they are filled by the flat roofed homes and buildings, by way of the surrounding eves…we're guessing during the wet season…which isn't for a long time yet. Coming from Canada one would assume that it was logically the town water that one was supposed to drink…seeing as it has traveled from a long way in order to be available….well, we were wrong, and how do you think we figured that out…yep…we drank it, lots of it, needless to say we've lost some weight in all the wrong ways over the past few days. Look for the rainwater barrels…this was a very difficult lesson learned.

We attempted the following night to stay at yet another remote camping location, it is proving to be very different in the desert than in the woodlands to find suitable free camping, it's there but it's very remote and often inaccessible by conventional vehicle. The next one we were to find was only 2 km in on a gravel road, it was on the beach amongst the dunes and brush. It was stunning; we spent about an hour on the beach after setting up and headed back to camp for dinner. It was breezy at first but suddenly; out of seemingly nowhere (but I'm presuming the south) the wind raged reeking havoc on our poor beaten tent. Eventually after many failed attempts of better anchoring it in the sand and brush it was actually picked up by the wind and flipped over (this was oddly humorous). Definitely emergency evacuation time, we folded up camp with everything inside the tent, threw it in the car and drove into the next town that had a sheltered campground, it was almost dark by this point so we just set up and crashed, appreciating the solid fence that sheltered us from the wind.

The next day (maybe the day after who knows anymore) the temperature hit 40 again; we stopped for the day on what was supposed to be a beachfront campground. We were so looking forward to setting up the tent and diving into the cool ocean. Well…like most things in life…easier said than done. We hopped across the burning beach (mostly made up of broken shells) and into the water, oh what a relief…plunging ankle deep into what felt like bathwater, it was so hot we could have made some very salty coffee, the tide was so low the shallows went out for probably about half a kilometre. You can eventually reach the cool water but after the swim, by the time you make it back to the shore via the bathtub muck route you're pretty hot again. Sunbathing proved also to be out of the question, as we lasted about 5 min in the sun before retreating under the shade of one of the few trees. Only one logical plan left…cheap wine. Made things better, until it decided to mix with the contaminated water already in our systems…maybe not such a good idea…enter night. Didn't cool down below about 35, no wind, no breeze and us, quite ill, pretty drunk and in a tent. Not a pleasant combination. In the middle of the night we soaked our clothes in water and put them back on. Our beautiful clean clothes that were actually hand washed that day. (I've been wearing the same thing for about a week (ok, better part of a month…but they were washed last week)…usually way too much effort to dig out clean clothes that are only going to get dirty again anyway….the glamour…it's astounding, haven't seen make up or a hairdryer in a month now…even the thought of it takes too much energy)

Needless to say, we decided to move on the next day. Our goal being, as aforementioned, to head to Perth and look for some work, well with the temperature hitting 45 degrees it would have been a little too hard on us and our car to attempt to travel very far. The next stretch of journey (now that we have completed the Eyre Peninsula) is to head across the Nullarbor Plain which is an area over a thousand kilometers long without any trees, basically just a big chunk of rock connecting southern Australia to Western Australia (with the tiny towns offering one gas station and sometimes a motel and/or campground). Being an average of 200 km apart We weren't up to putting ourselves through that part of the journey yet, needed supplies and the local weather reported the remains of a cyclone coming through from the north, which translated into wind blowing in from the outback instead of from the ocean, in other words blasting with furnace-like heat (can't believe last week I was complaining about the cold) Opening the car window just a crack (while the a/c was on…only low...) was somewhat equivalent to having 10 hairdryers on max blowing in the window. A couple of weeks ago we holed up in a motel to escape the rain, tonight we hole up in a budget cabin (shared toilet of course) to take comfort in the cool draughts of the coin-operated a/c and await weather change that is due to come in tomorrow to bring the temperature down to a beautifully comfortable 32.

We flew across the Nullarbor Plain with 14 hours of straight driving, the sky was overcast and since the average summer temperature on the Nullabor is 41 degrees we figured we would take advantage of the gray day. It was actually a nice drive and gas cost a mere $1.36/litre (you don't have much choice but to pay it when the gas stations are more than 200 km apart in some stretches of the desert) we were also carrying with us over 30 litres of water since it is extremely scarce in this region and many people have died of dehydration after their cars had broken down on the side of the road. We stopped twice along the road (other than gas stops) once to see the coastline from the top of the limestone cliffs and again to explore the ruins of an old telegraph station from the 1800s; that was quite an impressive sight, to imagine that at one time this building had actually served as the only link between eastern and western Australia.

We crossed the border into Western Australia (the biggest state in Oz and otherwise known simply as W.A.) via the border check for people attempting to smuggle fruit, yes fruit, they do not want fruit flies to enter W.A. for fear of total crop devastation, thus every traveler has to have their vehicle inspected for any traces of fruit. During the long stretches of nothingness I discovered that an interesting way to pass the time was to count the number of bug bites I could actually see on the front part of my body, I got to 53, it would have been even more interesting if I could actually count all the ones that itched like crazy but that I couldn't actually see the location of.

We discovered that bringing large quantities of water with us was a brilliant idea as most of the rest stops had signs announcing that water was not available due to desert shortages.

Finally arriving at the end of the Nullarbor we stopped for the night and set up camp in the dark (oh, did I mention that it was also raining…) it turned out that it was only 7:30pm, but there is no daylight savings time in W.A; we're told it has something to do with cows... guess we'll have to look into that one. As we were setting up a guy from a neighboring campsite came over to offer an extra torch (Aussie term for flashlight) as he walked away I realized that there was something strange about him…he didn't have an accent (or he had the same one as us, however you want to look at it) I shouted after him to come back and as it turned out he was Canadian as was his companion, both from around Toronto, we spent a few hours talking with them and trading travel secrets as we were all heading in the direction that the other came from. We acquired their guide to free camping in western Australia and they did ours for New South Wales. He also gave us some very useful contacts for finding a job in the Perth area…coincidence…I think not.

Here we go again…(next page)