TASHY TRAVELS

Every Sunday, I am going to upload a post about the different countries I have visited and/or lived in since 2002.

I can assure you of some interesting stories.

AUSTRALIA 1 - PART TWO

With us, essentially, not getting anyway quickly in Poland, it was decided we would make a 3-month visit to Australia as I had been saying I thought our project would work better in an English speaking country. We set off in early March 2003 and returned on 1 June 2003. The following is some of what happened. I should point out that I had wanted to go to Australia since the early nineteen sixties. Now I was there.

This second post is part one of the four week drive we took into the middle of Australia and then west to the Queensland coast.

We had officially gone over to Australia on business but we wanted to spend some time looking at more than just Bondi. We decided to hire a campervan and go for a little drive around.

The roads, or highways, around Sydney were unlike those you would find in England but did remind me of pictures or videos I had seen of the great American free-ways. Wide, fairly straight and wafting through settlements to the right and left, they had, unlike British roads, been built for vehicles not horses. We hadn’t really planned where we were going, being in two minds, both mine, as to whether to cross New South Wales to South Australia and visit Uluru, or Ayres Rock as I had known it, or head to Queensland and see the Great Barrier Reef. We subsequently discovered, when hiring the van, that there were limitations on which state we could enter and Uluru would be out of the question so that sort of settled things. There was still an idea to go through NSW, down to Mildura, Bendigo, Ballarat, do a bit of gold digging, and come back to Sydney through Wagga Wagga. I just love these names. We would make a decision as we drove.

The first part of our journey saw us leave the metropolis of Sydney and gradually make our way inland. I had planned the route to take me through Bathurst and, if you don’t know why, you haven’t lived. I have been a motor racing fan all my life, well since 1957, July 20, to be precise. I have an ambition to drive around as many circuits, not these plastic Tilke things you see today, but real road circuits, as I can. I have driven Monaco, actually got lost and turned right too soon after Lower Mirabeau and went into a hotel but returned and completed as much as was possible. I have driven the bits of Le Mans that you can, but have never really had time to do much else. The Targa Florio, the Little Madonie to those who know it and a mere 72 kms long, Spa, the old Nurburgring, Rouen, Reims and Pescara, top of my list but there are others too. And if I can’t drive them, I at least want to have seen them. Bathurst was on my list. I’ve now seen it.

From there we continued and the roads became more and more deserted and the buildings fewer. We were heading for Dubbo. It was home, so my notes say, to about 30,000 people so out there in the outback, it was big. We spent a night there, looked around and then continued on to our second stop which was to be at Cobar. It would be here that we needed to decide whether to head west or go north. Because of this need for decision-making, we spent 2 nights on a lovely camp-site near Cobar.

We made our decision, deciding that most of the gold would have gone anyway, and the Great Barrier Reef called before that too disappeared. So we left Cobar and headed up to the New South Wales/Queensland border. One of the things you need to take account of in Australia is fuel. Call it gas, call it petrol, call it what you like, but if you run out of it in the outback, don’t try walking to the next town. You won’t make it. What’s more, the mobile phones we had didn’t seem to work out here and it can be a bit scary when you see no other traffic for several hours, apart from the odd road-train lumbering past.

My notes tell me that Queensland was half an hour ahead of New South Wales, time-wise. This seems silly so I may have made it up but as I decided at the start of these blogs to rely on memory and notes and not check things out with Wikidoodah or google, I’ll just leave it at that and you can check. If I made it up, aren’t I an imaginative sort?

We filled up in Cobar but knew we would need to stop again, for the night, and to refuel somewhere before we made it to a place called Emerald which, as it sounded clean and green, we had decided to make as our first Queensland stop. After driving for about 3 hours we came across a little hut and a petrol pump which was, if notes and memory are working well, just after we had driven through a placed called Enngonia. When we arrived, about 5pm at night, we parked, filled the van up with fuel, and went across to the “hut” to pay. The lady there told us we were welcome to camp for the night and, just as she said that, there was a power cut. We had noticed a bit of a wind blowing over the last few miles anyway and this may well have had something to do with it.

‘Don’t worry’, she said, ‘the lights will be back on at 6.30 pm’. Seemed a bit precise to me as, in my experience with what was then Eastern Electricity, when we had a power cut they never knew where it was let alone how long the power would be off. The “hut” which served as a restaurant for road train drivers and her home was pretty empty so we sat and talked until, as if by magic, at 6.30pm, the lights came back on and she cooked us a meal before we returned to our campervan for the night.

When we had left, it was a nice white colour. When we returned, it was orange. The dust storm, lasting only an hour or so, had coated our little pop-up in the rich, orange soil that was in this area.

During our conversation, she had told us about a school, a bit down the road, where her youngest son, aged 10, attended. She phoned the head and it was arranged for us to make a visit the following morning. We would drive her son to school, saving her the journey. Her daughter, 3 years older, went to senior school. In Melbourne, Thousands of miles away. There was no senior school near.

When we arrived at the school the next morning, I witnessed education as it should be. Two teachers, fourteen pupils, ages ranging from 5 to about 11, the pupils that is, the teachers seemed a little older, all happy, all working and all mixing beautifully. We took time out to talk to some of the kids and I had a really good chat with one young man who gave me, unintentionally, the best put down line I have ever received, well almost. It’s between him and the old New Zealand sheep farmer who, when I asked if he had lived on the sheep station all his live, replied ‘Not yet’. This young man though was chatting to me about school and life, and being Australian, cricket and I asked him what he found to do in the evenings. He had told me there was no internet, apart from at the school, and there certainly weren’t any facilities around, wasn’t he bored? For example, I said, using my best journalistic approach, what did you do last night. Hoping I wasn’t going to get watched tele, I wasn’t even sure if there was TV out here, praying I wouldn’t get played on my computer and thinking that played with my friends would need a follow-up question, I awaited his answer. ‘Last night?’, he repeated, ‘Last night I was up in the helicopter helping dad round-up the cattle. We do that once a week’. Exit pom, suitably impressed. What a fantastic life. It only goes to show how, from our viewpoint, we look around and think, ‘how boring’, only to discover it is anything but. It was a beautiful experience, a lovely school and I wonder what my helicopter cowboy is doing now.

As you get older, I think you look back at some things you have done and think ‘how’ or even ‘why’? That’s not to say you wouldn’t do it again because I would. Give me the fare, provide the campervan, find me good company and I’m off. But, on our little trip, only one of us was allowed to drive the campervan and only one of us did. My little friend spent many happy hours catching up on her sleep. Not that she really missed too much as this vast country is very empty in many places.

My notes for this particular day, say that we drove from Enngonia to Emerald via a place called Balcadine. It was about 1,100 kms. It took 10 hours. I hope that I am not now going to be contacted by the Australian police because I can’t remember your speed limits, but it was fun. I love driving and long runs don’t worry me. Years ago, with some friends of my parents, I had planned to do the 1970 London to Mexico rally but we couldn’t get organised in time. I did manage to fit in a few years of less adventurous rally driving in the 1970’s until children began to eat into any extra money I had.

But 1,100 kms in 10 hours, almost non-stop, seems a lot. I say almost non-stop because my then girlfriend would have needed a couple of relief moments without a doubt. She did not have my inverse camel like abilities. Anyway, we arrived in Emerald and settled into a camp-site there, where, in order to aid any recovery I needed, we stayed for 3 days.

Thinking about it, I did also drive from Argeles in the South of France to Calais, another 1,000 or so kilomteres in 10 hours back in 1994 but then I had a ferry to catch so that was different. Although I now remember a 2002 trip from St Malo in France to Frankfurt Oder in Germany, with a 2 hour stop in Cologne which took 16 hours in total. This was about 1,500 kms. We left St Malo at 8pm and I drove till 4am when my fellow driver, with whom we shared the car, took over. However I noticed at 5am that he was drifting off, so I suggested a breakfast stop and when we left the service station, I got to the driver’s door first. He never drove again but dozed in the front seat. My girlfriend having slept soundly all the way, in the back. This journey did include a spell on a German autobahn, no speed limit, where I spotted 267 on the old speedo. I hope it was in kph. I need to travel again soon.

We now knew that 3 weeks was not long enough to do all we wanted and so something had to be abandoned. We had considered going to stay for a few days on Fraser island, just south of the Great Barrier Reef but heard some stories about wild dingoes so decided against this. Instead we took a day trip to Keppel Island and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

The ferry trip took, I think about, 45 minutes and when we arrived at Great Keppel Island, we left the boat, always a good idea if you plan to go inland. Our crew said we could either spend time on the main beach or check a resort that was inland or do our own thing. We had five hours before the last return ferry.

We decided to do our own thing and set off away from the beach to see what we could find. We had no map but knew, from diligent research beforehand, that it was an island, not that wide so if we walked in one direction we would reach the other side. We could then turn around and comeback. Simple. My great-grandfather worked for the ordnance survey, you know. I can navigate. I also had a co-driver when rallying who was car sick. Not the best quality to have but he was a superb mechanic and I needed him for that so I repaid him by letting him spend his weekends throwing up. I’m that kind of guy. It did mean reading my own pace notes to myself and, as we used to do road rallies in those days too, navigating myself through Hampshire and other such places. We won a couple of times so it can’t all have been bad.

But back to Keppel Island and at the end of the main beach we turned inland along a track. I say a track it was more a gap between a few trees. I adopted a pretty secure, safe piece of navigating. I used the position of the sun, keeping it in the same place as we walked. That way I knew we were going in a straight line. We began to climb uphill and, to be honest, it was a pretty tough trek. Then, suddenly, as we rounded a corner, a lizard, iguana, whatever, scurried across in front of us. To me, used to walking in the English woods and occasionally seeing a squirrel, it was an amazing moment. The animal, I have no idea what it was, disappeared into the bushes and we walked on although I must admit I became more aware of any rustling sounds.

After a while we started to go downhill but still couldn’t see what was in front of us for more than 10 or so metres because of the thickness of the trees. Then we emerged out of the trees on to the most amazing beach I had ever seen. There were miles and miles of golden sand, beautiful azure blue water, darkening as you looked further out to sea and incredibly, there was no-one, not a single soul, anywhere to be seen. It was the perfect, idyllic place to be. We sat on the beach, swam in the water and just enjoyed the most perfect quiet I had ever known. After an hour or so we saw a figure approaching from the far end of the beach. We watched, probably for over 15 minutes, as the figure drew closer, exchanged a word as he passed, and then watched for another 15 minutes until the figure, became a dot and the dot finally vanished. I later discovered this was known as two-mile beach so I guess he walked for at least two miles.

We decided to head back but a problem arose. We couldn’t find the opening we had emerged through when we found the beach. Also, after two hours or so, the sun had moved and in any case this close to the tropics the sun was virtually overhead anyway. The next hour or so was fun. We kept walking but didn’t really recognise any landmarks we had seen on the way. In fact all we could see were trees and they notoriously failed to identify themselves. Eventually, we emerged into a new clearing and decided to follow this in the hope that, if we did fail to get the ferry, someone might spot us in the open rather than hidden in the trees. It wasn’t too long before we realised we were actually walking down the runway of the only airfield on Great Keppel. We moved over to the side and eventually found the resort, the ferry and civilisation.

It was one of those days that, if you try to live your life rather than just existing, will stay with you for a very long time. We could have remained close to the ferry, we could have settled for a quiet drink or two in the resort but we didn’t. We went out looking, for what we had no idea and that makes it all so much better because when we found that beach, it was such a surprise, almost an honour, and nothing could ever take it away. You may lose the person with whom you shared the moment, but you can never lose the joy of sharing it when you did. It will be with you forever.

So, wherever you are, wherever you go, don’t take the easy route; explore, discover and gather those moments you can keep with you until the end.

I think I thought, is that tautology, that the further north you went in Australia, the drier it became. I don’t know why I should choose to be so stupid but I did. In Yeppon we were just below the Tropic of Capricorn and tropical weather is not just hot sun. It rains. Deserts are dry and empty of vegetation, the tropics are not. So, some parts of the interior of Australia are dry, the Queensland coastal region is not. One day we stopped for lunch and went for a quick walk and came across this waterfall. It was cool, it was clear and it was flowing. What more could you want from a waterfall? If you wish, you may answer this, basically rhetorical, question or, just ignore it, let me ask what I want, and read on.

Of course there were vines, or whatever, hanging down and I adopted my best Tarzan pose, closer in fact to the hairpin on the Zandvoort race track in Holland than to the legendary hero that Johnny Weissmuller helped to create. Due to the lack of a 50-strong film crew, Jane had to take the photo so sadly it was just ‘me Tarzan, you aim’; of cheeta there was no sign. I think it was probably lucky that I didn’t try to swing across the water as my grip seems a little on the low side and the ratio between my body weight and the strength of the vine is also open to question. Further luck, for you at any rate, is the unavailability of a loin cloth or, at least, one of sufficient dimensions. There’s nothing wrong with dreaming.

Later, we found this wildlife park, where you could feed kangaroos and walk amongst them. Kangaroos are bright little chaps aren’t they? When you walk into their locked enclosure, carrying a bag of whatever we had just bought that they might like, they wander up to you and take the bag. Despite approaching his antiquity, I have never had a rapport with David Attenborough and his love of animals. To be honest, I find a rapport with many humans difficult. I stayed well away from these lovable creatures and allowed my girlfriend the pleasure of communicating with them, by way of being a provider of food. I wasn’t certain that they found the bag sufficient for their dietary needs.

We went inside and had a chat with the owner who told us he also had a koala and a snake. Koalas are cuddly, I quite like them. Snakes are not and I don’t. In fact, I am having to write this with my feet off the ground, because that is the effect snakes have on me. He wrapped the slithery thing, I can’t even mention the name any more, around my girlfriend’s neck and came back with the tame koala. ‘Don’t come too close’ he said, as my girlfriend stood up, still packaged by a thingy, ‘as this little thing is a meal to him’. He put the little koala on a table, motioned my girlfriend toward him and unwrapped her and disappeared with the whatsit.

He returned a few moments later and told us a little bit about the life of the koala, which now looked as though it might be a bit longer. They are very docile things, apparently sleeping for up to 18 hours a day. They are also nocturnal so, even when awake, life is still not a bundle of light and laughter, Their diet of eucalyptus leaves causes this, not because the gum leaves have a comatose effect but because digesting them takes so long. He told us he had trained this little koala to jump off the table into his arms. ‘However’, he added, ‘no one has ever got a photo of it’. Now he may well tell this to everyone but the words ’no-one has ever…….’ usually set off the red rag and bull syndrome within my personality.

So, here is the picture. I am sure others have managed it, but this is my effort, added by that lazy, little, cuddly creature, taking his time before leaping. Oh, and koalas are not bears, they are marsupials and carry their young in a pouch. And, life being stranger than my surreal fiction, a mature male koala has a scent gland in his chest, which gives off a sticky substance which he rubs on his trees, indicating his territory. If another koala arrives on those trees, maybe he is said to be on a sticky wicket?

Some time later we were driving down the Queensland coast and stopped for a bit of exercise on the beach. Two things amazed me. One was the size of the sand dunes backing on to the beach, they were there and had to be climbed, and the other was the number of notices warning you of what to do if stung by a box jelly fish. Die, would appear to be quite a serious option. It seems that, once stung, death can occur within five minutes although it would appear coating yourself in vinegar may be of some help. We, then, found a lifeguard on the beach, by now it was late April and winter was approaching and he told us he had not known of any deaths through box jelly fish stings. The worst months are October to May so we decided against a little swim. We asked if he was a surfer and he said ‘no, he wasn’t that stupid’. Pressed for more details he said last month there had been about ten surfers in the water when a shark was sighted. They had stayed in the water and the shark left. Risky, I would have thought but there.

So instead of risking our lives with the marine life, we did a bit more exercise, improving our catching ability. Looking at the photo now, it would been far funnier, if the ball had been thrown to my left. Luckily, it wasn’t and yet another superb catch was taken

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