Melbourne - Alice Springs by going up the guts.
Trip Start
Aug 07, 2008
1
14
22
Trip End
??? ??, 2009
Alice Springs,
Northern Territory,
Australia
Thursday, May 21, 2009
A-The local Aussie gives us some roo knowledge
Anyway, having said all that, our first backpackers in Adelaide was actually one of the best we stayed in and not a bad introduction. Having arrived so early in the morning, our room was not ready. We had no plans for the day, as Phil and Katherine (Phil's girlfriend) were busy, so we dropped our bags off and went for a wander. The centre of Adelaide is nicely compact, so it meant we could walk into town and get our bearings. After that we spent the rest of the day relaxing. Over the course of the next few days we covered a lot of ground around Adelaide, whilst catching up with Phil, who was a great host and guide along the way. I should say thanks to Phil and Katherine at this point, as not only did they take the time to hang out with us and show us all around their city, they did it whilst in the middle of moving to Melbourne, literally, as they left Adelaide the same day we did!
First up was a quiet night out with Phil and Katherine, we had a nice Thai meal in the old part of town, followed by a couple of cheeky beers at the Exeter, an Adelaide institution that has live music and is run down enough to be cool for the kids , but not enough that you wouldn't want to go in there. It was a good night and gave us an opportunity to catch up with Phil and get to know Katherine a little bit. Next day, Phil was having his last day at work and we were off for a night out in the evening. Suzanna and I spent the day on a walk around Adelaide. We went into the South Australia Art Gallery, then along the River, through the Botanical Gardens and then to the Adelaide Wine Museum, which gave a good insight into what to look for in wines and some history about how local wines have evolved.
B-Emu comes in close to say hi to 'the Poms'
No free samples though. That evening Phil and Katherine picked us up and took us back to Hyde Park!!?? Not that one, the one in Adelaide. And so it was, a quiet night in their local pub, watching the cricket and putting the worlds to right. It was great, although Katherine had to leave us after a couple of hours as she had to work the next day. Despite Katherine leaving, the three of us continued our quiet night out. After the Pub shut, we headed back into the centre of Adelaide and went to a nice looking bar, the name of which eludes me, but it wasn't right for us really, as we wanted to put the worlds to right some more and it was a bit loud (I'm allowed, I'm forty!!), so we did what you should and did a shot each and then found another pub. We stayed there until it closed at 3 am, leaving satisfied that if the world was in our hands, everything would be ok and from there it was home to bed..............no it wasn't, we were drunk as we'd been drinking for hours and we wanted to sing!!, so we went to the Karaoke place next door!! We had our own room and were brilliant! That's not me just saying that, the machine said it. Phil and I scored 99 and Suzanna and I scored 100!! (we've assumed the score was out of 100, but aren't sure on that). And so it was, after an hour and half of Karaoke, closing time, so, despite us still wanting more, this time it really was home to bed and a mighty hangover in the morning. As I said, a quiet night!? Next day, Suzanna and I had to be up by 9am as we were moving rooms, so it was into the 38 degrees of heat, hangovers and all, until our new room was ready.
C-Ahh a wombat but careful they bite
We survived, but went into our new room as soon as poss and rested for the remainder of the day. Sunday, we were out with Phil and he took us into the Hills around the city. We went to a great small animal park, that had examples of most of Australia's wildlife, and in their own habitat, so not all locked in cages. We saw, Kangaroos, Wallabies, Tasmanian Devils, Wombats, Koalas, snakes (in display units, thankfully) and reptiles, as well as loads of others, including Emus, most of which liked Suzanna so much they kept following her, very funny!! From there it was off to Mount Lofty Summit, a nice lookout over Adelaide City and then we went to Handorf Village, a quaint place, that was originally started by German Immigrants, way back when, and is now a nice place to go for a wonder and a coffee. It was also a good place to end another good day in Adelaide. Next day, we headed to the beach at Glenelg. It was to be our first bit of sunbathing, so we made sure we slapped on the sun cream. Two problems with that, it was really windy, so we got covered in sand and invariably we missed a few bits with the sun cream, so got burnt a bit, including Suzanna's arm pits!! I won't bore you with how that came about, but rest assured that we've laughed about that quite a bit since. Apart from the beach itself, we didn't rate the beach area much. Maybe obviously, it was totally set up for families, so didn't offer us much, except for a lot of very annoying families!! and, that was about it for Adelaide.
D-Wallabies
We had a final meal with Phil and Katherine to say goodbye and then a quiet day waiting for our bus to take us to Coober Pedy. We had a great time in Adelaide and that was as much to do with Phil and Katherine as the place itself, so thanks again to them. It was fab sportsfans.So, we left Adelaide on another night bus, which was uneventful again, I'm pleased to say. It took eleven hours and got us into Coober Pedy at about 5am. I'll tell you a little bit about Coober Pedy at this point, for those that know nothing about it. Coober Pedy is a mining town and has been for a long time. They mine for opals and it is all done on a small scale. People get rights to a small area of desert and they can drill as many wells as they want in that area. People normally work in pairs, with one person down the well and one person up on the ground. From what we saw it is very hard work for little reward, but as with most prospecting or gambling, the little bits they get are enough to keep them going and then every now and then, someone will make it big and everyone else is re-invigorated. The other thing about Coober Pedy is that it gets so hot out there, most people have built there homes underground, which makes for a sparse landscape, but it did mean our backpackers was underground, which was pretty cool , literally and figuratively speaking.
So we got to our backpackers at 5 am and thankfully we could go into our room, which was 6 meters underground and nice and cool. Only thing that put us off slightly, was that the walls to our room did not go to the ceiling, so we could hear every snore, whisper etc from all the people in the other rooms!! And unfortunately for them, it seemed our early arrival woke a bunch of them up, oops.
E-This big bruiser is a Red Kangaroo
We figured the reason for the lack of wall was to help with airflow and keep the moisture down, because, as you could probably guess, there are no windows 6 meters under ground.When we woke up we headed out into "town", only to find out why people live underground, it was 40 degrees in the shade and if your wondering, yup that's officially flipping hot!! All we saw on our stroll were a few shops and a bunch of aboriginal people, taking up any shady spots they could find, drinking strong beer and arguing with each other. It was a bit intimidating and not a good introduction to the town. I should mention the aboriginal situation at this point and try and give some detail of what we made of it all. It is one of those difficult situations, where we learnt a bit about their culture and about some of the terrible things that were done to them under the banner of making them "civilised", which gives us a want to learn more and be compassionate to them. But, the reality of it is that the ones we saw in the towns, seemed to do nothing to help themselves, or have a desire to. They seemed to sit around all day drinking and arguing and often appearing aggressive and threatening. All of which is not a good view for us tourists to see. So, having got that impression we tried hard to understand better, but it seems they do not want us to know much. We found out there are plenty of aboriginals who live life the way we are led to believe they do, in various parts of the outback, but in doing that they don't want us tourists bothering them, also, we heard lots of old aboriginal stories on our way up the guts, but subsequently found out that all the stories the tourists hear are actually stories told to the children and that the real stories are kept to themselves.
F-Tassie Devil
All of this meant that our overriding impression was that aboriginals sit around getting drunk all day and that most Australians have a low opinion of them because they believe the government give them so much, which they in turn waste. The really frustrating thing for us was that we wanted to learn more and understand better, but it seems the aboriginals are completely insular and the rest of Australia is fed up with the situation. We know there is so much more to the whole situation and I could easily have upset people, but this is our impression , rightly or wrongly. So, back to Coober Pedy. With poor first impressions, we decided we needed to get on a tour and find out more. It couldn't be that bad!? Next day we set off and I'm pleased to say we had a great time. Our guide had lived in the town for 17 years, he'd been a miner, making and then loosing his fortune (he eventually gave up throwing good money down a mine when his wife gave him the ultimatum of her or the mine!!??) and he gave us a great insight into the town and it workings. He pointed out loads of the houses, which to look at are just dust mounds, he took us to the mine fields and explained how they worked. He also took us to the local graveyard, which has some quirky graves. It also gets a lot of visitors due to friends going out there on various days of the year, like birthdays, Christmas etc, to have a beer with their old mate. From there we headed through the town, having the huge number of clubs pointed out to us, on our way to see the local golf course! The clubs are for the different ethnic groups that make up the community, of which there are to many of to mention here, but it sounded a bit like it was all the countries in the EU.
G- How good?
As for the golf course. It's a full 18 hole course, but with no grass!? You carry a patch of astro turf with you and you can place your ball on that each time you play a shot. Other points of interest included an underground church, the 5600km dog fence and the home of a local legend called Crocodile Harry. He used to be a crocodile hunter in the north, hence the name, but when they banned the shooting of crocs, he came to Coober Pedy to mine. His home is full of, well, stuff. It's worthless but has created a legend that is part of why people come to town. The guy used to invite people into his home and get them to leave something. It was usually bras from the girls and nothing in particular from the rest of us, but it's reputation was enough to get it used in Mad Max Beyond the Thunder Dome. It, like the rest of Coober Pedy was a little bit quirky, but despite initial impressions of Coober Pedy it was quirky in a good way and when we left we decided we quite liked it.From Coober Pedy we headed to Alice Springs and to head out to see the Crown Jewel of the centre, Uluru, or Ayres Rock, depending on your generation. Alice Springs was a disappointing place. It seemed to me to always be sold as this Las Vegas type place that people visited to have a good time. Well from what we saw of it, reality couldn't be further from the truth. There is a Casino there, but it's out of town and the town centre has nothing really, a few shops, a couple of restaurants and, unfortunately, a lot of Aboriginals hanging around all day, getting drunk.
H- 99!!
So it didn't make for a very nice place. Having said that, we found a reasonable backpackers that seemed to have the busiest bar in town and did evening meals for $5 (that's very cheap) and jugs of beer in happy hour for $5 dollars (that's very very very cheap!!). We also went to the Flying Doctors Museum, which was quite interesting and helped explain what is an integral part of life out here. The real reason we were in Alice, Alice, who the ......... Is Alice (I sang that part of the song a lot whilst in Alice) was to go on a trip to Uluru. We decided we would do the trip in a day, which meant being picked up at 6 am and not getting back until 1.30 the following morning!! This was due to Uluru being a 5 hour drive from Alice and the fact we wanted to do a tour that took in the sunset at "The Rock". So, with sleep in our eyes, we set off on a day of adventure and all things Aboriginal. Right from the start it was a good tour. Our guides where excellent. They where very knowledgeable and informative, pointing out things along the way, as well as telling us stories from the Aboriginals and the settlers. There were two of them and they worked as a tag team, which meant we had info and sights coming at us for pretty much the whole day, well until we started the return journey, when we all fell asleep. The first major sight seeing spot was Mount Conner, which as you can tell from the picture is often mistaken for Uluru. Then we saw some salt lakes, which where nowhere near as impressive to look at as Uyuni salt flats in Bolivia, but the fresh water table underneath is where most of Australia's fresh water is, so it's important to say the least.
I- 100!!!
From there we headed to Uluru's township, Yuluru, for lunch. This place is soooo expensive, so if ever your planning a visit and want to stay here, save hard first. After lunch and a quick bus tour of the town, we headed to the Olgas. These are made up of the same type of rock as Uluru and in Aboriginals eyes are equally as sacred. We took a walk around some of them, but we didn't get much detail on them, so really only saw them as a warm up to the main event. One thing I should point out here, is the flies. Oh my god, the flies. I reckon that unless you've been here, you just wont be able to imagine the number of them. We took a picture to give you an idea, but the ones you can see on my t shirt are just the tip of the flyberg. There are thousands of them around each person, and they go for the moisture in your sweat and breath, so are trying to get in your mouth and up your nose the whole time. I reckon they would actually send you mad if you didn't have one of our very fetching fly nets. We were advised to get them, so we did, but lots of our group didn't, at first, but the whole group had them by the end of the day! Anyway, back to the tour. From The Olgas we headed to Uluru. We spent a good amount of time at the rock, going to various points and getting explanations on what certain caves and recesses where used for by the Aboriginals and stories of animal gods that created gouges and markings on the rock when they fought for supremacy (yup, turned out they were kids stories). From there, we headed to the Aboriginal centre, which helped explain some of the Aboriginal feelings about the rock and about western mans influence on their lives. That, and the day, was all wrapped up with a BBQ overlooking the rock at sunset. All very nice, even though the sunset was particularly underwhelming. So, did we like Uluru? Yes we did, and whilst there's no getting away from the fact it is only a rock in the ground, it's deffo the most impressive rock I've seen, and the stories, be it from the Aboriginals, or the first adventurers to come across it, to the first westerner and aboriginal who started taking tourists there, to the present day "adventurers" who get themselves in all sorts of trouble walking in the area, it's all very interesting, funny and kind of magical. So, with the sun set and another day in 41degrees of heat under our belt, we headed back to Alice Springs, getting to our room at just gone 1.30 am. It was a long day of sightseeing, but a good one and one we'd recommend. From Alice we continued north, but I'll stop here and let Suzanna take you up to Darwin and across to Cairns.
Take care everyone and please let us know how you are doing and what you think of the blogs.
Tobs and Suzanna
xx
Comments
Whatever next?
Still you continue on your merry way around the world, vying for our attention with your tales of the glory and splendour of places most will never see. Have you stopped to think at any time just how many friends you could have lost over the course of your travels? I doubt it.... But then again, will you care. you'll have pages and pages of pictures to look back at, pages and pages of 'blog' to re read and remember.... Friends, Pah, who needs them!
Nice to see Mr Leysley though.
Jog on!