The Back of Beyond: Travels in Australia

Copyright © Mark Moxon 2024

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This version was compiled on 30 March 2024

This work has been released under the Creative Commons licence Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). This means you are free to distribute this work to others as long as you retain this copyright notice, do not use the work for commercial purposes and do not alter, transform or build upon this work. For more details please read the full licence.

Front cover: The valleys of Kata Tjuta, Northern Territory

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Preface

This book is a collection of writing from the road, covering two trips I made to Australia in 1995/96 and 1997. This was part of a much larger, three-year journey that took me through Australia, New Zealand, French Polynesia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, India and Nepal, from 1995 to 1998.

The travelogue for all these countries and more can be found on my personal website at www.moxon.net, where you can also find travel tips, recommended journeys and further free books for you to download.

I’ve released this book and its companions via a Creative Commons Licence, which means you are free to distribute it to everyone and anyone, as long as you distribute it on a non-commercial basis and make no changes to it. If you know someone who might like this book, please pass it on; I make no money from it, but I do enjoy the thought of people reading it and recommending it to their friends.

Finally, please be aware that this book attempts to be humorous every now and then, so there’s a slight chance that it might cause offence to those who think my sense of humour is as amusing as a puddle of mud. On top of this, some parts will be out of date – which is why each article is dated – and others will betray the naivety of a traveller who discovered his way in the world by throwing himself into it headfirst. It is, however, an honest account of how I felt as I travelled the world for three years, and as such, I hope you enjoy it.

Mark Moxon

June 2014

New South Wales

Sydney

Written: 7 November 1995

I didn’t spend too long in Sydney, just long enough to see the sights, visit some friends, write some articles for cash, and to blag myself a job offer at Acorn Computers in Melbourne. I was also suffering from jet lag, culture clash and the hollow feeling you get when you’re just starting a potentially very long trip, so the highlights that follow don’t do Sydney justice. I must go back...

- Sydney harbour is just as beautiful as they say it is. When I landed it was a gorgeous day, the sun was out, and the Harbour Bridge and Opera House were spectacular. It’s also a pretty laid-back place, with none of the traffic that makes London such a grim place to live. Having a coffee overlooking Circular Quay is one of those things you have to do, so I did it, despite the price tag of A$3. They saw me coming, I reckon.

- The next stop: my first taste of an Aussie pub. Bear in mind that it was only about midday when I pitched up, but seeing as my body thought it was late at night, it was fair enough to have a couple. Unfortunately the tap beer was off – they were cleaning the lines – so I settled for a stubby of Victoria Bitter (a stubby being a 375ml bottle). It wasn’t bad stuff, if you like freezing lager, which I figured I’d better, seeing as that’s pretty much all they have in Australia. Ask for a lager, and you’ll get blank stares here; it’s all called bitter, even if it looks, smells and tastes just like lager.

- Sunday, and the heavens opened. Ironically Sunday was Water Conservation Day down in Darling Harbour, with water skiing shows, lots of stands, and a concert by John Williamson, whose folksy tunes about billabongs and gum trees have yet to make it beyond Australia’s borders. Everyone kept going on about how important it is to conserve water because it’s running out, and all the time water was chucking down in torrents. It was, frankly, bizarre.

- If there’s one beautiful sight, it’s a city from above at night. That night I went up the Sydney Centre Point Observation Tower, at that time the tallest man-made structure in the southern hemisphere, but in the shitty weather visibility was pretty well zero. So I waited, as there wasn’t much else to do, and soon the skies cleared and the most amazing sight appeared: Sydney by night. The Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, boats, a wicked lightning storm over Botany Bay – it was stunning.

- After a few days in the Youth Hostel in Glebe I moved to a hostel in King’s Cross, easily the seediest area in Sydney, with sex shows, 24-hour bars and hookers lining the streets; it’s not that scary after Soho and King’s Cross in London, but it was a lot more interesting than Glebe, which was what I wanted. My only memory is of the noisy couple having sex in the room directly above me that night. I swear the whole hostel broke into spontaneous applause when she finally came.

- The following Saturday I climbed the southeast pylon of the Harbour Bridge, for a spectacular view of the city. The only problem was that the rain kicked in just as I got down, so I sheltered for about half an hour before the storm really got going, with thunder and lightning and rain like you’ve never seen. Every time the lightning struck I heard these cheers, and after another fifteen minutes I realised that this was nothing to do with the weather – there was a pub just over the road.

It was great. After a couple of schooners of VB I’d met this South African guy who now lived in Sydney, and we went on a bit of a pub crawl which culminated in us watching the Rugby League final (England vs. Oz) in a pub, live from Wembley. Unfortunately I was so pissed by half time that I had to go home... which was quite fortunate, seeing as Australia won, and they like to rub it in if there are any handy Poms around.

- On Tuesday I contacted a lovely guy called Colin, whom I’d met through work at home, and who’d emigrated to Australia not long before. His story is worth retelling.

Colin is a writer of excellent children’s picture books[1], and he used to live and work in Cumbria, where I got to know him because he used Acorn computers for his work. Anyway, there was this school in Sydney where the teacher, Anne, had bought a copy of his book Looking for Atlantis, and her class had gone wild about it. Then one day, one of the kids asked Anne, ‘Could we meet the author?’ She explained that no, Colin lived in England, so they couldn’t meet him. The kids protested, and asked her why they couldn’t buy a plane ticket for him to fly out, and eventually Anne and her class organised lots of fund-raising in order to pay for Colin to come over for a two-week visit.

So Colin came out to Australia to meet Anne and her classroom of fans, and spent two weeks at the school showing the kids how he draws and writes his books. And guess what? Anne and Colin fell in love, and two weeks after getting back to the UK, Colin had left his unhappy marriage (which was on the point of breaking up anyway), packed up his computer and pens, and moved to Sydney. It’s a real life-affirming story.

Colin and Anne put me up in their house for a week, and it was great – what lovely people. We went to parties, had barbecues in the garden, and it all went far too quickly.

- On my last night in Sydney, before heading off on a tour to Melbourne, I sloped off to the hotel’s bar to see what was making such a huge noise. The name of the band, according to the board, was Jam Right, and boy, were they weird. They kept swapping musicians around, people from the audience kept joining in and singing vocals, and the whole thing seemed to be getting pretty random. It was only after an hour of this I realised the sign actually said Jam Night. Funny how it all started making more sense then...

[1] Though they’re not just for kids, like all the best children’s books. I can’t recommend his books enough; his full name is Colin Thompson. Tell him I sent you...

Sydney to Melbourne

Written: 9 November 1995

So, on Tuesday I set off on a coach tour to Melbourne. The company was called Stray Cat, and it was pretty good, though I saw so much in those three days that most of it is a blur.

The first stop was Canberra. On the surface Canberra appears to be the most boring city in the whole world – it has the same vibe as Milton Keynes, though I presume something happens behind the ordered, dull exterior. We did a tour round Parliament House and watched the Melbourne Cup, the Aussie equivalent of the Grand National, but there were no politicians in the house because of the race. We also stopped off in a shopping mall in Canberra to stock up with beer, which reminded me of the film The Stepford Wives where they replace all the women in the town with robots, and nobody notices. It felt slightly eerie, to be honest.

From Canberra we headed into Namadji National Park, and stopped off in a field full of kangaroos. What funny creatures; we all got off and stalked around, and they were really quite cautious. They’d just look at you until you got a certain distance away, and then they’d lollop away, stop, and start staring at you all over again. I felt miles away from it all.

Not quite as far as I felt when we got to our stop for the night, though: Bolaro sheep station. Talk about the middle of bloody nowhere; you couldn’t see any civilisation for miles in any direction. We made a fire in the main building and all settled round with our beers, just like real bushrangers. I nipped outside for a cigar, and you’ll never guess what I saw: a full rainbow, right in the middle of the night. I thought it must be the beer, so I popped inside to get someone else and showed them first before getting the rest of the team; yes, it really was there. I suppose the moon was just doing the same thing as the sun when you get a daytime rainbow, but it sure looked weird sitting there. Perhaps you get a pot of silver at the end of moon-bows...

Into the Mountains

Wednesday was mainly spent driving through Mt Kosciusko National Park, where Australia’s highest peak stands, shrouded in cloud. We stopped at these gorgeous little towns like Adaminaby, Jindabyne and Thredbo, which are the main resorts in the Australian Alpine area, and as a result they’re beautiful, but deserted in the summer. We passed Lake Hume, which is a man-made lake that stores water in the winter so the Murray River, one of the main rivers through southeast Australia, can be kept at a reasonable level through the summer. The lake fills valleys that were once filled with gum trees, and quite a few of the trees are still there, dead but standing, making it look like a ghost lake. It’s pretty spooky stuff.

Our stop for the night was in Bright, one of the most picturesque places to visit and, fortunately, void of tourists. We had the mother of all barbecues, and guess who got roped into the cooking? I’m now the world’s foremost expert on the Australian Method of Cooking Sausages. One thing that was weird is that Aussies cook chopped pumpkin on their barbies, and it tastes likes smoked carrot. I think I’ll stick to salad in future.

The last day of the trip we climbed Mt Buffalo – the view was amazing – and visited the place where Ned Kelly and his gang used to hang about. In the town where he lived there’s this huge model of him wearing his homemade armour, and it’s possibly the tackiest thing I’ve ever seen; it didn’t stop us all having our photo taken round it, though like good little tourists.

And that night we arrived in Melbourne...

Victoria

Melbourne

Written: 12 March 1996

That night we arrived in Melbourne, and the next day I rang Acorn to see what they wanted me to do. The next thing you know I’ve been picked up from the hostel, put behind a desk, and given a job... and as if that wasn’t enough, my boss Laurence, his wife Mary and their ten-year-old son Alistair put me up in their lovely house in the eastern suburbs. The day I arrived also happened to be the one Friday of the month when the staff stayed behind for a drink after work, on a sort-of morale-boosting piss-up, which was a pretty good introduction for the new boy, especially as I managed to get invited to a stag night on the Saturday (or buck’s night, as they say in Oz).

Bloody hell, they know how to throw a stag night in Melbourne! The details are a bit hazy, but I know we ended up in a strip joint called Bar 20, and I had to smuggle some shoes out to Laurence because the bouncer refused him entry in his trainers. I’d only been in Melbourne a couple of days and had landed a job, a place to stay, and an invitation to a lap-dancing joint... which didn’t seem too bad, really.

Hanging Out in Melbourne

Life in Melbourne proved to be much like life in any friendly, cultural city. Steady work meant that I could afford to go out regularly, and it wasn’t long before I felt as settled as I had been back home.

Laurence and Mary were incredibly kind, letting me stay for far too long, and Chris, a friend of Laurence’s, put me up for a week in his delightful house in Clifton Hill. Meanwhile drinking sessions with Andy (a friend I made at work), and Sheridan and Elizabeth (friends of Andy) opened up areas of the city that I definitely wouldn’t have found using my guidebook. Memories follow, in no particular order, in the hope that they will accidentally describe Melbourne:

- One Saturday we went up into the Dandenongs, the mountain range round the northeast of Melbourne, and visited a little village called Olinda. What a time warp! It’s full of these strange little shops and art galleries that sell aromatherapy oils, incense and strange furniture from India; I found the whole thing most entertaining, especially the peaceful hippies running the shops. Far out, man.

- It wasn’t long before I realised I needed to do some real exercise, so I took up jogging every weekday night, through the State Park in Doncaster East. There aren’t many people in Europe who can say they go jogging after work and see kangaroos, brightly coloured parrots, rabbits, creeks, gum trees and all of the rest of the park’s sights. It sure beats jogging round London, and it’s a lot healthier.

- Melbourne has a whole street full of cake shops, the famous Myer’s Christmas windows (Myer’s is a department store and its Christmas window displays are a part of Australian shopping culture), trams, the bay (which is the size of Somerset, so it’s not so much a bay, more a little sea) and a lovely skyline. Australian cities seem to rise out of nowhere, because the suburbs are so flat, though clear weather helps with the view, too.

- Chris once showed me his collection of Tasmanian postcards, to get me in the mood for when I went there in the New Year. But these weren’t ordinary Tasmanian postcards: they were black and white postcards from the turn of the century. That’s interesting in its own right, but the most incredible thing was that a lot of them were written on; they were postcards from Chris’ grandfather to his grandmother, before they were married, and when grandfather was in Tasmania and she was on the ‘northern island’, as Tasmanians sometimes refer to mainland Australia. The style of writing was superb, and so formal, but they were so obviously love letters. Try this for a quote: ‘I hope you will come to stay soon, for I am dead without you.’ It was just like something out of Mills and Boon, 1911. This island nation does have a history, after all.

- Melbourne is a very arty place: it’s more like Covent Garden and the West End, whereas Sydney is more like the Houses of Parliament and Tower Bridge, if you see what I mean. Melbourne has these lovely trams everywhere, which are easier to use than buses, and are much more fun. There’s even a restaurant tram, and a free tram for tourists. The railway network is also good, and you can get two-hour tickets for A$2.10 and all-day tickets for A$4.10 that enable you to use buses, trains and trams, all for the one price. It’s quite excellent, and a great way to get to see the city. There’s something reassuring about the way the tram has to follow tracks, so you know exactly where it is going to go...

- I quickly realised why it’s important to get up early on Christmas Day in Australia. The sun was up, the sky was really clear, and it was hot, really hot. As we sat on the veranda, munching freshly cooked ham and melon and basking in the sun, I really felt that Christmas in the sun was different. Sure, we had a huge turkey, roast potatoes, presents round the tree, and port after Christmas pud, but we also had a swim in the outdoor pool before lunch, a walk into the State Park to play with Alistair’s new Frisbee, and had to make sure the sunblock was on thick.

- At the risk of sounding a bit slushy, I must mention Laurence and Mary’s present to me for Christmas 1995. It was a bush hat that folded up into a little bag and could be sat on, crushed or folded as much as you like, and it bounced back into shape without any problem. A wide-brimmed hat is an essential piece of the Australian garb, and I loved my hat dearly, so much so that when it finally died after my voyage to Polynesia, I bought an identical hat in Brisbane, which travelled throughout Asia with me. I am now officially a card-carrying fan of the Australian bush hat.

- Wilson’s Promontory, the National Park to the southeast of Melbourne and the southernmost point of mainland Australia, is gorgeous, with beaches that blow the mind and moody mountains as a backdrop. The beach we visited is called Squeaky Beach, because the sand is so clean it squeaks as you walk on it, and I can confirm that this is indeed the case. Alistair and I had huge wads of fun boogie boarding on the two-metre waves, with great success. For the uninitiated, boogie boarding is like surfing, but you just lie on the board on your front, and ride the crests of the waves straight onto the beach. You actually go pretty fast as you glide the foam onto the sand, and it’s the next best thing to surfing; anyone can do it without any training.

- The Big Day Out on Friday 26th January was, indeed, a big day out. Andy and I went together, along with his girlfriend Elizabeth and her brother Alan; we lost Alan pretty early on, but the three of us spent a most enjoyable day watching Australian, American and English bands thrash around in the Melbourne Showgrounds. It was good to see some contemporary Aussie bands after the Tassie folk.

- I went to the polling booth during the Federal Elections, and even put a voting slip into the ballot box (it was Andy’s, not mine, I hasten to add before I get arrested). The politics in Oz was almost American; the party political adverts only went on about how crap the other party was, and I couldn’t remember hearing about any real policies. Shoddy is the word that springs to mind.

An English View of Australia

Written: 27 November 1995

When talking to people in Australia – people who actually live here, rather than tourists – you notice how different things are between Australia and England, even though, on the surface, they can seem almost anticlimactically similar.

Take Chris, a recently divorced university researcher who knows Laurence through Acorn. He lives in a lovely old house near the centre of Melbourne; I’m probably going to be staying with him for a couple of weeks while the Hardwicks take Laurence’s parents to Ayers Rock. Last Sunday Laurence, Mary, Alistair (Laurence and Mary’s ten-year old son), Chris and myself went off to St Kilda beach to stroll in the sun and look at the market, but Alistair felt sick – he’d been off school with a virus for the latter half of the week – so they left me with Chris to explore.

Chris is a quiet man who is rediscovering what it means to be single and in a big city, and as we were hanging out on St Kilda beach looking at the women in their swimsuits – like all men do on the beach, regardless of what they say – he commented how interesting it was to bump into someone who was looking at Melbourne for the first time. By my interest in the city I was helping him rediscover places that he’d forgotten about; he’s lived here for decades, but in the same way that I didn’t explore huge tracts of London when I lived there, he felt he’d not been seeing as much of Melbourne as he could have done.

This is where the little differences cropped up. I was telling him what I found fascinating about the place, and Australia in general, and he’d never thought of it that way. For example, most people know that in the southern hemisphere the sun goes round from east to west via the north side of the sky, as opposed to the south in the northern, and this is why people always get their sense of direction mixed up when they swap hemispheres. But not a lot of people know that runner beans grow round poles in a different direction in each of the hemispheres, because they follow the light round the poles. Little things like that are really weird to a stranger.

Houses and Cities

Another big difference that is really obvious to a Pom is that in Australia all the houses are flat. There’s so much space, there’s no need to build multi-storey buildings, so ninety-nine per cent of the houses are bungalows; in fact, nobody uses the word ‘bungalow’, they’re all just ‘houses’. Sure, some areas have houses with stairs, and there are skyscrapers in the city centres, but the suburbs are just full of flat houses with red roofs. It also means you can see all the trees between the houses, so although the amount of greenery in suburbia isn’t hugely different to that in the UK, you can actually see it when you look over the city.

The upshot? Every suburb in Australia looks the same, and it looks pretty boring too – red roofs and gum trees, acre after acre. If you’ve seen Neighbours, then you’ve seen most of the modern suburbs in Oz, though there are obviously exceptions, such as Balmain in Sydney. Here I visited some friends of my mum’s who had stairs, which I’m sure they regularly showed off to unbelieving visitors...

Another legacy of modern buildings and design is that all Australian cities (except inner Sydney) are built on a grid road system, so every junction is a crossroads. In the UK every junction is different (except in Milton Keynes) so it’s relatively easy to find your way around by memory, but here it’s impossible; every junction looks identical, and when you consider the number of orthogonal roads around, there’s a lot of grid to get lost in. It’s a nightmare when you’re used to windy roads and junctions with character. Add in Melbourne’s tram system – you have to turn right from the left-hand lane, so you’re not sitting in the central tram lane – and driving becomes a challenge, shall we say. Sometimes I’d rather have London’s chaos than Melbourne’s grid, because it’s more interesting, but to be fair grid systems are far better suited to traffic... they’re just a bit boring.

Talking of driving, get this: a lot of the cars here run on gas. Not gasoline, but real gas. They have big tanks in the back, and petrol stations have these special pressurised hoses that clamp onto the car and pump in liquid gas at about 20¢ per litre (about 10p). It’s amazing stuff, and you wonder why it’s not available in England.

The way people approach university is totally different, too. There isn’t any such thing as free further education here, so most students stay at home and go to their local university, which also makes sense considering the size of the country. The only problem is that you keep coming across these 21-year-olds who haven’t got a clue about coping for themselves, because they’ve never left home, or got into life as a student. They simply stay with mum and dad until they get a job, and then they buy a house, and some parents are really protective. Can you imagine a 23-year old saying, ‘I can’t stay out too late, my parents are expecting me back?’ Nor could I until I came to Oz...

House buying is strange too. Here people don’t tend to buy houses, they buy plots of land, and when they’ve got enough money to start building, they do just that. As a result you get these housing estates with empty, overgrown plots, surrounded by neat little suburban gardens and twee red roofs, which looks kind of odd. Apparently in the north you get people building houses in stages; because it’s so hot, they can build the roof on pillars, then fill in the walls, then partition the rooms, then add water and electricity, all in stages that spread over years. That must be a wacky sight, roofs without walls in the bush...

Television

Television is a different world, too. There are plenty of English programmes on the Australian networks – one night we had To the Manor Born followed by The Good Life, with Heartbeat on the other side – but there are loads more advert breaks than at home, and they repeat the same adverts all the time. What happens is that you get companies sponsoring certain programmes, and part of the deal is that the company gets its adverts in the break; this means you see the same advert maybe four or five times an hour, which is pretty tiring. Another annoying habit is the advert break two minutes before the programme finishes, so if you want to watch the end of anything, you have to sit through those bloody adverts again. It really makes you appreciate the BBC.

Another confusing thing for the English visitor to Australia are all the signs saying ‘Cheap Manchester’ and ‘Huge Manchester Sale’ – even ‘Best Deals On Manchester Inside’. This one took me a long time to work out, but ‘Manchester’ is what Australians call linen, bed sheets and so on, presumably because they used to be imported from Manchester. This must be the only place in the world where you can put your Manchester in the washing machine and wash all the crap out of it...

Everyone drinks champagne here, too. Not the French stuff – anyone caught with French wine would be a social outcast after the nuclear blasts in the Pacific – but Australian champagne, which is rather a nice drop, to be honest. The main thing, though, is how cheap it is; you can get a good bottle of champagne for £5, and it goes as low as £3 per bottle. Back home we’re conditioned to think that champagne is expensive and for special occasions, but with prices like this, you can drink it all the time.

There are lots of other little things you notice about Australia, too. Absolutely nobody watches Neighbours or Home and Away except little kids, and nobody can quite believe that the Poms love it so much.

Lots of trees in Australia (gum trees, mainly) don’t shed their leaves in autumn; instead, they shed their bark in spring. As a result Australia is very green, much more so than people expect, and it’s green all year round. OK, the red centre is desert, but there’s a lot of rainforest and green parkland about.

People in uniform, like policemen and traffic wardens, wear shorts when the weather’s hot. Businessmen also wear suits with shorts, which can be a bit of a surprise; you keep thinking they’ve put on the wrong pair of trousers! There’s also an interesting approach to business called the ‘weekend beach attitude’; how can you get stressed about the job when you know you’re going to spend the weekend soaking up the sun on the beach? It’s great for relaxing, but not so good for hammering out a difficult business matter on a Friday afternoon.

Some things are the same, though. The national dishes (if there are such things) are pie ‘n’ chips and fish ‘n’ chips, and the way they cook them is just like in the UK (though the fish is normally much better). And do you know what the biggest news stories were last week? No, nothing to do with the Keating government or the Asian economic summit. The two headline grabbers were Princess Di and her Panorama interview, and the release of the first new Beatles material in 25 years. In some respects, I hardly felt that I’d left England.

The Pig Hunt

Written: 3 January 1996

It wasn’t the best of starts, by any standards. If we’d have known that the God of Pig Hunting Trips was looking down, going, ‘Sorry, lads, can’t help you,’ we would have thought twice. Cool, hip and armed with bows we might have been, but clairvoyant we were not.

I used to reckon I knew how to handle long distances; driving between London and Macclesfield every week for almost two years is good training, but nothing prepares you for how mind-bogglingly large Australia is, especially when you drive round it. The three-day trip I made from Sydney to Melbourne gave me an idea, but the pig hunt really drove it home. In outback driving, size is everything.

The place we planned to hunt for pigs is 1111km from Melbourne. It’s called Gunnedah, and it’s 250km west of the coast from Port Macquarie, which is 300km north of Sydney. The nearest place of merit is Tamworth, the Australian home of country and western music. Yes, it’s remote.

Warning Signs

We set off early on Boxing Day in two cars. One, Andy’s, carried Andy, Rick and me, while the other car, Dave’s, carried Dave and Steve. Five of us, two cars, loads of stuff... and lots of kilometres.

At about 9am on Boxing Day, Andy’s battery light started flashing, but as his car was pretty old and knackered, he said it was just a dodgy connection. We fixed it by ripping a strip off a cigarette packet, writing ‘OK’ on it, and sticking it over the light – out of sight, out of mind...

So when Dave pulled over in front of us at 9.30am with smoke billowing out of his bonnet, we thought, ‘No worries, we’ll fix this.’ One of the hoses connecting the engine to the radiator had split, so we did a quick roadside fix by fitting a new hose and refilling the radiator, and set off again.

It started to dawn on us that things were not going according to plan when Dave had to pull over again because the engine was knocking seriously. A quick look under the bonnet, and we’d blown a gasket: oil was dripping out, so we had to sort out a rescue. Luckily Dave was a member of the NRMA – the Aussie equivalent to the AA – so Andy, Rick and I set off for Morundah, the nearest blob on the map, to find a phone.

Just a quick word about the outback. It’s empty. The bleak, dry landscape goes on forever, the sun is scorching, and everything is a very, very long way away from everywhere. Morundah is a little place, and everything was shut, it being Boxing Day. Even the pub was shut, as the tumbleweed blew across its porch. Nobody was going to be driving through for a while, it seemed.

At least the public phone worked, which is more than can be said for Andy’s car. It was dead; the battery hadn’t been charging, and our loud music had obviously drained all the juice out of it. A moral is that sticking ‘OK’ over your battery light doesn’t fix the battery; we had to push start the thing, but thankfully made it back to Dave’s wreck.

I say wreck, because when the guy from the NRMA turned up, he had a look at the engine, turned it over, and announced in the blunt way that Australians do, ‘It’s fucked.’ The engine was blown, and it wasn’t going anywhere. We put Dave’s battery in Andy’s car and set off for Narrandera, the nearest place with life in it. Luckily there was room at the local caravan park, so we pitched our tents and resigned ourselves to the Aussie solution to all woes: get pissed down the local pub.

Rental Cars

The following day we got to the local wreckers and miraculously found a new alternator for Andy, which he fitted. At least one car was working now, but Dave’s wasn’t so easy. Yes, the local wrecker could get a new engine by tomorrow, but the garage couldn’t fit it until 2nd January. We had lost one car. Luckily there was a travel agent that rented cars, so we booked one to arrive the next day, and settled into life at the campsite, with its crazy swimming pool with huge slide and local Aussie holidaymakers. The people opposite had been coming to the same caravan park for 34 years without a change, and they thought we were a travelling rock group, which was kind of cool.

That night, as we were sitting round the tents – mine, incidentally, I borrowed from Chris, and it had no groundsheet, and didn’t even touch the ground in places – one of us spotted this thing in the tree next to us. I went over and it was a possum, this friendly thing about the size of a cat, with big, wide eyes and a mouse-like face. It was so sweet, and even ate a bit of food from us. I did the tourist bit and got some photos... what a cutie!

We also had loads of cicadas around the site, making a racket all the time. These little critters are one of the less desirable creatures you might meet; they’re like massive flies, with bodies about an inch-and-a-half long, and huge wings that make masses of noise. As a moth-fearer, for me they’re right up there with boring drunks and Barratt homes as things to avoid. They start their lives living in the ground as wingless bugs, and when they emerge they climb the nearest tall thing (normally a tree), shed their outer skin, unfold their wings and fly away. They leave the skin stuck to the tree, so when you get up in the morning, the trees look like they’re covered in huge bugs. It isn’t particularly pleasant...

By Thursday we were behind schedule, but back on the road. I joined Dave and Steve in the hire car because I had used my visa card to get it and what a difference! It had air conditioning! Power steering! An automatic gearbox! I almost couldn’t believe it was a Ford.

The air conditioning was, it turned out, an absolute blessing. It gets incredibly hot in inland Australia, and it got hotter and hotter as we headed north, heading through such delightful places as Dead Bird Lead Creek and Poisoned Waterhole Creek. By the time we got to Gunnedah, well after dark, Andy and Rick were knackered, but we chosen three were saved by the godly gift of air-con.

Those beers in the pub were among the best I’ve ever had, not because of the beer itself, but because they were cold, wet and hit the spot just right. Little did we care that a sign outside declared that this little pub was proud to be the host for the 1995 New South Wales Billy Boiling Finals[1], because the beer was gorgeous. We ended up staying in a field at the back of town, as it was too late to bother with a caravan park, so we pitched our tents by the local river, and got some take-out stubbies from the pub. This field had a good point and a bad point.

The good point was that it was out of town, so the view of the sky at night was incredible. You haven’t seen the stars until you’ve seen them in the middle of nowhere, and from the southern hemisphere you get a great view of the Milky Way stretching across the sky; it’s easy to see where it gets its name. We also saw some shooting stars; I loved it.

The bad point was that we weren’t alone. Rivers mean bugs, and with my tent being so, well, perfunctory, I got bitten to pieces. In fact, I can’t remember ever getting so many bites; on my left foot alone I had 20 itchy blotches in the morning. The others didn’t get bitten at all, even Rick who shared my tent; obviously Pom is a delicacy for bugs down here.

Police Marksmen

On Friday we moved camp to a site called Lake Keepit, and having seen the lake, that’s exactly what you could do with it. The brochure showed it as much bluer, but when we went for a swim we found muddy water full of strange little plants. Perfectly healthy and safe, but very strange on the feet, so I decided I needed some thongs (that’s flip-flops, or sandals, not sexy underwear, by the way).

Thongs need shops, so Dave and I drove to Gunnedah, with the additional mission of finding out where the best hunting territory would be. Would you believe that at the first petrol station we stopped at (or ‘servo’ as they’re called here) the attendant knew the president of the local bow-hunting club, and in fact he’d just filled up his car there. He suggested the tourist information bureau, where we managed to get this guy’s number.

So we rang the number, and got the local police station; the bloke we were after was a policeman, and he would meet us at the station in half an hour. We met him and had a chat about where to go, and found out that, in New South Wales, crossbows are illegal, so we couldn’t use the two bows we’d brought, making us one bow short. Then the policeman only offered to lend us his bow so we could all hunt – what a champion! We left for the campsite content in the knowledge that we were well in with the local coppers.

That night we went for real Aussie burgers, cooked in a pan in the dying sunlight. Guess what the secret ingredient of Aussie burgers is? That’s right: add beer. Bloody good they were too, but there was a bit of a worry when Dave was cutting up the onions on the barbecue plate, and he spotted a redback spider sitting there, watching him. Redbacks are the second most deadly spider in Australia, and untreated bites can be fatal, so we just let it be. Actually, they only bite if disturbed, but you never know. We’re all still alive, so it obviously didn’t crawl into the burgers.

Real Aussie burgers were followed by a real Aussie electrical storm. Andy and I sat in the car, watching huge lightning strikes and major rain action. Miraculously my tent survived reasonably intact, but the ants decided to take refuge in my sleeping bag... at least it seemed they did, judging by the number of new bites on my arms and legs in the morning. Remember, the outback has teeth.

Dripping Rock

Following the policeman’s advice, on Saturday we headed off for a place called Dripping Rock, 30km from Gunnedah, near the charmingly named town of Boggabri. Dripping Rock is a hell of a long way from everywhere; we had to travel for an hour down the dirtiest dirt tracks I’ve ever seen, and eventually we had to give up and stop, as the holes in the road were getting as big as the rocks beside them. Another wicked storm had just started up too, flooding sections of the road and making the fords a little too big for the Ford, but luckily we found a suitable camping spot on a little bug-free stream, and settled in for the night.

Sunday awoke to bright, hot, sticky sunshine. The area we were in was north enough to be sub-tropical, which means they don’t have summer and winter, they have the wet season and the dry season, and it’s turning wet right about now. Humidity and storms are the order of the day, and boy it’s hot. With this in mind we headed for Dripping Rock, which is one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen.

Imagine a semi-circular cliff, 50m high, with bush forest covering the area underneath, where a waterfall drops into a little lake at the bottom. Now imagine that this cliff is made of sedimentary rock, so the water seeps through and creates a waterfall all around a portion of the cliff, and that’s Dripping Rock. There was even a ledge going all around the cliff, halfway up, which we could easily walk around. It was like a piece of paradise, and was only a couple of minutes’ walk from our camp; in fact, the pond flowed into the stream that we camped beside.

The ledge proved to be most useful, as it went behind the waterfall and let you climb onto the rocks directly below the water; it formed a natural shower, which we used as much as possible. We would have gone swimming in the lake, but Andy had a go and got a leech on his big toe, so we stuck to showering. What a beautiful place!

As was the countryside around, where we hunted. Hills and valleys stretched as far as the eye could see, with trees everywhere, and spiders and bugs all over the place. The hunting consisted of going out in camouflage gear, armed with bow and quiver of arrows, and stalking animals. Unfortunately we’d lost so much time through breakdowns that we didn’t have time for lots of hunts, so we didn’t get to scour the area and work out the animals’ habits, but I spotted a couple of wallabies that got away, and found another one we stalked for about an hour, before losing it.

Imagine the thrill of walking silently up a four-wheel drive track, and finding a couple of grey wallabies at the top, oblivious to your presence. It’s incredible, even if, like me, you’re mentally and physically incapable of killing for sport – I was there for the stalking, in much the same way people pretend to be in the army at weekends and then go back to their accountancy jobs on Monday morning. Luckily (from my point of view, anyway) the only kills we got between us was a rabbit under the wheels on the way up, and a couple of budgies in the car radiator on the way back, so I didn’t feel too guilty.

New Year’s Eve

On New Year’s Eve we headed out to Gunnedah to party with the country locals, and party we did. I wish I could tell you more about what happened, but it’s all a bit of a blur, like all good parties. I do know that we headed out to Dripping Rock after returning in the wee hours, where the others lit a fire, and I fell asleep. The only reason I know we went to Dripping Rock is that I woke up there at dawn, one of the mellowest ways of waking up to the New Year that I’ve experienced.

We spent New Year’s Day hunting, and again we only spotted wallabies and didn’t shoot anything. It also rained like buggery; you’ve never been soaked until you’ve been soaked in an Australian forest. We spotted a funnel web spider – the most poisonous spider in Australia – and a whole family of redbacks, complete with baby sacks, all right next to where we’d been sleeping. In the outback, it doesn’t pay to be scared of spiders.

Tuesday signalled the end of the hunt, and the start of the long journey back. It was pretty uneventful, except for a huge accident that blocked the freeway for an hour, and we camped at Narrandera for, hopefully, the last time.

The next day we went to pick up Dave’s car, only to find that not only had the engine blown, but so had the radiator. Guess what the guy in the radiator shop said about the radiator? ‘It’s fucked, mate.’ And the guy in the wreckers? ‘It’s totally fucked.’ Luckily we found a replacement at the wrecker’s, and eventually got home to things like traffic lights, houses, people and other strangely urban concepts. It really was quite a special trip...

[1] A billy is a pot of water, and billy boiling is the art of boiling a pot of water. Country folk: they be mighty strange.

Lawbreaker

Written: 8 January 1996

I’m sorry, dear parents. You’ve spent 25 years bringing up your middle son to respect the system, and to live life without breaking any laws (or, at the very least, to make sure you don’t get caught if you do). I’m sorry to say that I have failed you miserably, and I can’t apologise enough that your son is a criminal, for on Monday 8th January, the Melbourne police arrested me. For jaywalking.

There can be no excuse. I heinously ignored the little red man at the crossing, and took the law of the land into my own hands as I crossed the completely traffic-free road to the other side. I can attach no blame to the complete bastard copper who pulled me over and gave me a A$15 dollar fine for contravening the traffic code of 1967. The fact that my Aussie friends couldn’t believe it when I told them, and that they didn’t know it was a crime either, can be no excuse. I hang my head in humility.

Bloody jaywalking! Whatever next? Being banged in a cell for talking too loudly, or smoking in the street? If I never get out of Australia, and you have to plead with the British Consulate to try to get me out of jail, I can only apologise in advance...

Tasmania

Dock of the Bay

Written: 12 January 1996

Having heard good things about Tasmania, I flew to Hobart, the state capital – it’s a short one-hour flight from Melbourne, and it’s easier (and cheaper) to fly than the 14-hour ferry trip aboard The Spirit of Tasmania. It wasn’t more than two hours into my visit that things began to happen, and I mean happen.

It all kicked off as I was wandering along the dockside in Hobart, heading towards this interesting-sounding heavy rock band who were playing in a warehouse on the quay – I never turn down the chance to find original local music, however loud the amps. I went over to the entrance, only to find a small crowd hanging round a corner of the dock, all looking down into the water. ‘There’s a car down there,’ said one observer, though there wasn’t anything to be seen except a couple of worried-looking men swimming to shore, carrying a little girl to a boat.

My neighbour at the dock told me what had happened. A car had been driving along the road by the dock, and had failed to stop at a pedestrian crossing, hitting a man crossing the road and flinging him off onto the sidewalk. The car then swerved through the car park that lined the dock, and shot straight over the side into the water, narrowly missing two kids who were sitting there.

Right next to the dock was a skateboard competition in full flow, and two skateboarders dived into the water and managed to open the back seat and let a little girl out, whom they carried to the shore: she was the lucky one. The car had sunk about five metres into the black water, so they couldn’t dive back down to it, but obviously the driver was still in there, apparently with another passenger. The police were soon on the scene, and it wasn’t long before the frogmen were in the dock.

I’d never seen dead bodies before. The first one up was an overweight woman in a black dress. It struck me how incredibly white she looked compared to her clothes. She was closely followed by an old woman, who looked just as pale, trailing white vomit in her wake while her eyes rolled lazily in her head. CPR ensued, and eventually they were carted off in ambulances. They were dead on arrival.

And all the time this heavy rock band was playing away in the background. Some requiem, eh.

Hobart

Written: 12 January 1996

My visit to Hobart had started off in strange fashion, and it continued to surprise me. The next incident was at a pub called Knopwood’s Retreat, where I was sitting outside having a nice, peaceful Cascade (the local Tasmanian brew, which is apparently made from the purest water in the world – it certainly tastes good). These two guys were sitting a couple of tables down from me, and an argument erupted, about nothing in particular. It got a bit noisy, and then one guy threatened the other – who was trying to calm it down, to be honest – and the publican jumped in to calm it down. This failed, so she called the police. Meanwhile the noisy one kicked over the calmer one’s bike, and walked off in a huff, and the calmer one got on his bike – a moped, really – and drove off down the road. Just at that moment the police arrived, and the publican pointed out that one of the troublemakers was heading off on a bike. The next thing you know it’s all red and blue flashing lights and screeching tyres, and the police car shot off after the bike.

We all thought that was the end of it – the publican even got a round of applause – but, whaddya know, two minutes later this yellow moped screamed past, followed by a cop car, closely followed by another copper. It turned out one of the men – the touchy one – was trying to come off heroin using methadone, which is bound to wind you up, I guess.

The entertainment was so good I decided to stay for another beer, it being rather good in Tassie. As is the way with pubs, I bumped into this old English guy in the pisser with whom I struck up a conversation, and eventually joined for some more beer. Dicky was his name, and he was out having a beer with his son, Nick, who had emigrated to Sydney; Dicky was on holiday visiting his son, and they’d both come to Tassie for a holiday. What a nice couple of people; they even gave me a lift to the hostel, which was about 2km out of town, which isn’t a particularly big walk, but it’s a whole lot bigger when you’re zigzagging in a contented stupor.

Narryna

That night I decided I’d like to visit the Cygnet Folk Festival, a three-day collection of folkies and hippies on the south coast of Tassie; it seemed like a good place to find some real Australian music. However, the coach didn’t leave until late the next afternoon, so there was time to kill on Friday. I spent this visiting a folk museum in Battery Point called Narryna. The museum is actually a house built in 1836 that has been restored and filled with lots of interesting historical bits and bobs from the colonial days, and I struggled up the hill to the place carrying my overstuffed backpack.

You have to ring the doorbell to get in, and this quiet little man comes and lets you in. I obviously looked knackered as I dumped my bag, and I struck up a conversation with the guide as he asked me where I was from. I told him I was from London – I always do, because people have heard of London, and I can’t be bothered to explain about the Midlands, when they all think Liverpool is a suburb of London – and he told me about the history of the house. Five minutes later he looked at me and said, ‘You’re not originally from London, though, are you?’

Impressive deduction: I assumed he’d spotted an accent, and said so, but he said, ‘No, it’s just that you’ve got a sense of humour.’ Which was an interesting take on events...

Wandering round Narryna was delightful and very interesting. There were some great bits, with old collections of homeopathic medicines, and ancient books on etiquette, but the best part was when the guide invited me to have a cup of tea with him. It turned out he was a real Anglophile, and we sat and chatted for a couple of hours in the (authentically old) kitchen while the other visitors looked around us and assumed I was part of the staff. What a nice bloke he was; he gave me some great hints on what to see, and I told him the best parts of the UK to visit. He was planning to visit in about a year, and he said he knew that when he eventually got to England, he’d stay there forever. I hope he does.

Cygnet

Written: 16 January 1996

The search for traditional Australian music was beginning to feel like an impossible task. The contemporary Australian bands I’d come across on Triple J[1] were great, but the only rootsy music I’d heard was didgeridoo music packaged up for tourists, and myriad chill-out albums with titles like Tropical Rainforest, Red Desert and other such inspiring names. I wanted to discover music from the days of convicts and colonies, and the Huon Folk Festival in Cygnet seemed the perfect place to try.

The coach from Hobart to Cygnet passed through truly gorgeous countryside – Tasmania is one of the most beautiful states in Oz – and eventually I ended up in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere called Huonville, waiting for the only bus out to Cygnet. Cygnet is very near the coast and only has a population of 960, which might give you a vague idea of how isolated it is, so I killed time waiting for the bus by buying a copy of the Hobart Mercury, to find out what had happened to the two women in the car accident. I read with a sinking feeling that they were dead on arrival, and tucked away in the depths of the photo on the front page was me, peering out from under my bush hat, gawping into the dock along with everyone else. It was rather unnerving, to be honest.

The Metropolis of Cygnet

I eventually got to the hostel on Friday night, a lovely place perched on the side of a valley 2km out of Cygnet. It was beautiful – the view down the valley to Cradoc was spectacular, and the perfect setting for a folk festival. The people at the hostel were very friendly, especially three of them: Tommy from Ireland, who taught English at Sydney University and was on summer vacation, and Cathy and Maureen, both lawyers from Adelaide. It wasn’t long before the four of us were heading into town to check out the food and the folk scene, accompanied by a fifth hosteller called James, who was buzzing with entertaining stories about how he’d slept on the beach at Broome for six blissful weeks...

The pizza restaurant – the only food place open late at night – was a complete delight. The waitress described the pizzas as being more like gourmet meals with pizza bases, and after some live entertainment from a guitarist whose blistering talent was matched only by his impressive baldness, she was proved right. Meanwhile James had bumped into a friend of his whom he hadn’t seen for a year and who was heading off drinking, so we all wandered off to check out the pubs.

Country folk don’t muck about with silly pub names: the three pubs in Cygnet are called Bottom Pub, Middle Pub and Top Pub, for geographically obvious reasons. Just like beer fat, everything seems to congregate around the middle, so after sampling the local brews in all three, we settled for the spacious Middle Pub, and this was where my eyes were really opened.

Sure, I’ve seen folkies in pubs before. The Normandy Hotel in Melbourne, where Chris and I went a few times when I was staying with him, had a bunch of locals who got together to play jigs and reels, but that was more the sort of music that stayed in the background and made you glad that it did. In Cygnet, however, the whole pub revolved round the folk circle, with all these singers, fiddlers, guitarists, accordion players, penny whistlers, mandolin players and goodness knows what else... you name it, it was there, right down to the double bass. At first I thought the whole thing was rather random, but the way it works is that when someone finishes their song, someone else starts up, either as a solo, or as a riff (for want of a better word) and everyone gradually joins in. It’s all from memory, and it’s fascinating to watch. I sat there with Tommy, Cathy and Mo until about three in the morning, soaking up the atmosphere and the Cascade Draught. Before long James had disappeared into the night, and we decided to weave our way home to catch some sleep.

Scrumpy and Love

That set the scene, really. The next day we bought tickets for the various concerts and marquees around, and just went from pub to concert to pub to concert, meeting people on the way. We bumped into James and found out he’d stayed in a teepee that night, which had really set off his hay fever, so he was looking for the chemist; the poor bugger’s face was like a balloon. There were some stunningly good performers on offer, such as Alistair Hulett, a brilliant nationalist Scottish singer; Danny Spooner, an overweight, overbearing Londoner; and the Fagans, a prodigiously talented family ensemble that elicited as much jealousy as joy from the other performers. I’d never heard of any of these people before, and it made it all the more fascinating to discover them.

There was one more element of folk festivals that, as yet, we hadn’t managed to track down: scrumpy. As if by magic, we bumped into a stall in the Middle Pub that served 10oz glasses of scrumpy for A$2, with a variety of brews, all with different flavours, and all at nine per cent alcohol. It tasted divine, so while the girls headed off to a concert in the Town Hall, Tommy and I stayed in the Middle Pub to sample the wares and enjoy the music.

And that’s when Tommy, bless him, fell in love, and I learned how to make a farting sound in a didgeridoo, though not necessarily in that order. I started chatting to these two guys at the bar, one of whom was playing his didge, and he told me how it had taken him four weeks to get the hang of the circular breathing technique required to play it properly. He let me have a go, but I quite literally sounded shit, not to anyone’s great surprise.

Tommy, meanwhile, had spotted these two lovely girls sitting in a corner, enjoying the folk gathering in the next room, so we went over to chat to them. The man from Ireland was right, too: they were lovely, and it was obvious that he was falling for Verity Rose, the cutest one. It was a good sign that they walked up the hill with us as we headed home after a long night drinking scrumpy, before peeling off to head back to their campsite. As Tommy said, while walking the final 3km back to the hostel at dawn, ‘I’m a gone man.’ Bless him.

That walk was a hell of an effort, though. Dawn was breaking as we trudged up the hill, but the view was delightful. The valley bottom (which we were above) was filled with low cloud, so we could see right down the river, with this cotton-wool effect of the fog slowly evaporating as the sun rose. I saved a little bird’s life on the way, by removing some wire that its foot was tangled up in, and when we got back to the hostel, sleep wasn’t long in coming.

Folk Remedies

The formula for Sunday was similar, except Mo and Cathy had to fly back to the mainland, leaving just Tommy and me to fly the folkie flag. We spotted James in the street, on his way back from visiting the local Russian witch; she’d prescribed him some herbal drops that had completely sorted out the problem... which, funnily enough, seemed perfectly normal and in order.

After a truly excellent concert on Sunday afternoon, we headed up to the Middle Pub for the last session, and a real session it was. To Tommy’s eternal delight we spotted Verity and her two friends, so he set about charming the love of his life while the rest of us settled into the scrumpy. Then – horror of horrors – the other girls decided that, as they had to be up early to pick fruit in the morning, they had to go to bed, so I was faced with staying with Tommy and Verity and being gooseberry of the month, or going off to find another spot to explore. Being tactful I chose the latter option, and this is when the good god of folkies smiled on me.

There were two rooms at the Middle Pub: one, the large one, was where we had spent most of our time, and where the big folk sessions were happening, but the other, a small room on the other side of the pub, was where the festival performers had decided to gather to play. I spotted a gap in the corner by the bar, and after telling Tommy that I was going to join in the session, I slunk in with my scrumpy.

What an experience! The session was all singing, which is the best type because people listen to the songs then, and you can sing anything you like: folk songs, ballads, the works. Anyone can sing, and anyone is welcome, and after a bit more scrumpy – well, OK, a lot – I realised I wanted to sing a song. The only problem was that I didn’t know any folk songs from memory, so I thought it appropriate to educate the cream of Antipodean folk with some Billy Bragg, the Big-nosed Bard from Barking. So I started to sing Valentine’s Day is Over, just me with no instruments...

Someday boy you’ll reap what you sow,

You’ll catch a cold and be on your own,

And you will see that what’s wrong with me

Is wrong with everyone that

You want to play your little games on.

Poetry and flowers, pretty words and threats,

You’ve gone to the dogs again and I’m not placing bets

On you coming home tonight anything but blind...

And at that line the man whom everyone had been referring to as the ‘Master of Ceremonies’ – an ancient guy called Colin who was obviously highly respected as an elder of the festival – shouted out, ‘That’s me!’ referring to being ‘anything but blind’ (drunk), and it totally threw me. I had a complete mind-blank as to the rest of the song, but they all wanted me to continue, so I finished off the chorus, and they loved it. Imagine: me, a folk singer! Thank God I was drunk...

Tommy soon reappeared, having arranged to meet Verity the next morning, but eventually the landlord closed the pub and the session deteriorated, so we hung around outside for a while, trying to put off the long walk back to the hostel. It was here that us dregs left over from the session continued to sing for a couple of hours, watching dawn creep slowly over the mountains.

The next thing you know half the dregs have wandered off, leaving four of us: me, Tommy and these two charming middle-aged women, Delores and Moya, who had heard us sing and had sung themselves. Just as I was about to fall asleep on my feet – or on the steps of the pub, to be more accurate – they suggested that, as they had a car, perhaps we would like to come to their friend’s house for breakfast, where they were staying. Of course we would!

Home Sweet Home

You’ve never seen anything like it. The house sat on the shore of the river that flows through Cygnet, quite a long way from the town, where the river looks more like the sea (possibly because the mouth of the river is very close). The owner Rob, originally from London, had built the entire house himself, from foundations to roof to furniture to plumbing to goodness only knows what else you do when building a house, and he’d done it all single-handedly. We sat on the shore, drinking coffee and eating toast, as I slowly became more incapable of staying awake. The next thing I knew Delores was waking me up, the sun was about to start frying me, and I was dreaming of huge, menacing blowflies. I’ve never been so happy to take up the offer of a free bed to crash in.

So Monday morning disappeared into Monday lunchtime, and I woke up, utterly alone in a strange house, and miles away from my bags. It was rather disconcerting, but eventually some strangers came back to the house – a woman called Pam and her son William – and we got talking about the festival and Australia in general; she had come over from England years ago, so we had some common ground. It’s incredible how often that happens, as so many people have recent ancestors who were from England, and lots of older people can remember coming over as children. Most of the people I seem to meet are originally from Liverpool, for some strange reason.

Eventually Delores appeared – she’d been asleep upstairs, but I hadn’t seen her – and Moya and Rob returned from town, with a bunch of other folkies. We had a spot of lunch, and sat around feeling sorry for ourselves, as Moya hadn’t slept at all and Delores and I had had precious little. Plans were laid to get to this party that was being held to celebrate the end of the festival, and they very kindly invited me along, as Tommy was out with ‘the Lovely Verity’ and probably wasn’t coming back.

Quite why it took us 45 minutes to get there and only ten to get back I have no idea – the map has been blamed – but it was a simply gorgeous venue for a party. The house was out in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and there was a barbecue, folk music on the veranda, and all the wonderful people I’d met over the three days were there, along with many more whom I met that night. Delores was on fine form telling jokes – there is surely no finer exponent of this art than Delores[2] – and we met this wacky hippy teacher called Claire who had us in stitches, and ended up getting a lift into town with us.

Jammo was another excellent character at the party; he was thrilled to discover from another partygoer that everyone in Queensland calls each other ‘bloke’, as in ‘G’day bloke’ and ‘How are you bloke?’ He also told me all about the wonderfully poisonous snakes that live in Tassie; his advice, suitably influenced by his new-found knowledge of Queensland, was: ‘Watch where you piss, bloke.’

After dark, Moya and I went for a walk down to the river, and as we approached the pool of light coming from the little house’s garden, folk music lilted down the valley. It was a perfect sight, a collection of folkies all cosy in the light of the lanterns. It was just like something out of books I’d read as a child, and I was privileged to be a part of it; what a way to celebrate the end of a wonderful festival.

[1] Triple J is an excellent national Aussie radio station that plays alternative music pretty much all the time. Anyone wondering what modern Australian music is all about should check it out; the fact that Aussie music doesn’t tend to break beyond the country’s shores is no reason to ignore it. When Australians rock, they rock.

[2] Here’s one of Delores’ jokes for you, just to give you a feel. Take note of the emphasis in the punchline and imagine, if you can, an animated Delores telling it...

A man walks into confession, sits down and says, ‘Father, I’m a married man, but last night I slept with two gorgeous blonde 18-year-old twins, and I don’t regret a thing.’

‘That’s disgusting’, says the priest, ‘How can you call yourself a devout Catholic if you don’t respect the holy union of wedlock?’

‘I’m not a Catholic,’ says the man.

‘Then why on earth have you come to confession to tell me that?’ says the priest.

‘I’m telling everyone!’ says the man.

Bicheno

Written: 18 January 1996

Saying goodbye to the Cygnet gang, Tommy and I caught a coach up to Bicheno on the east coast of Tassie, hoping to get a connection to Coles Bay in the beautiful Freycinet National Park just south of Bicheno. Unfortunately the connection wasn’t possible, and after half an hour’s unsuccessful attempts at hitching in the fading light, we gave up and stayed the night in Bicheno, and very pleasant it was too.

Bicheno is a picturesque little port, and has a colony of fairy penguins that crawl around the coast at sunset. We hit the beach at sundown and waited around for a while, but we couldn’t see anything except for a wicked blowhole that shot water everywhere when the waves hit it. So we went off wandering, and before long we stumbled across nest with a baby penguin in it. It was so cute, but it was cowering away under a rock, so we left it and returned to the shore where, half an hour later, this tiny foot-tall fairy penguin waddled right past Tommy and into the rocks. There might not have been penguins exactly everywhere, but that made it even more special to see some.

Wednesday meant an early start to catch the coach to Coles Bay, which was simply stunning. We went for a walk that took in the beaches of Wine Glass Bay and Hazards Bay, some of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen. I just had to have a swim, but it was freezing; on the other hand, when you actually got numb, it was beautifully refreshing, and it was crystal clear, like all good beach swims. What a lovely area the east coast of Tasmania is.

Launceston

Written: 19 January 1996

I had the number of Claire, the teacher whom I’d met at the end-of-festival party in Cygnet, jotted down in my book; she’d said she would be going to the folk festival in George Town, so when I got to Launceston I rang her and got invited to dinner. It was gorgeous: homemade quiche, eaten in the garden with all these amazingly right-on women who lived in the house, complete with a view of Launceston that took the breath away. Launceston – named after the town in Cornwall that also lies on a river called the Tamar – is built across a valley, and Claire’s house is at the top of one side, so you can imagine the view.

One of the women at Claire’s, a visiting friend called Mandy, had to go off to do a cleaning job that night, so we went along for the walk and, of course, ended up helping out. Mandy had promised a beer for helping, and if there’s one carrot that shifts this donkey, that’s it.

The twist was that the place we cleaned, the Laurel House, was a rape crisis centre, so men weren’t allowed on the property; it felt kind of strange skulking into an empty building to clean it, knowing that if I were caught on the premises, I’d be in trouble. I sure felt I deserved that beer afterwards; a 10oz Boag’s seems to be the drink up the north of the island, but it tastes just like all other Aussie beers, cold and wet. Just what the doctor ordered.

George Town

Written: 22 January 1996

Yet again it all came together late on a Sunday night, in a little room in the Pier Hotel on the north coast of Tasmania. But this time I got the whole song out, and the listeners weren’t just punters, they were the performers...

Another weekend, another folk festival: this time it was the Tamar Valley Folk Festival, held for the fifth year in the industrial town of George Town on the north part of the Tamar River. Have you any idea how it feels to walk into a completely strange town, having only been in the state for a week, and to meet loads of people you know? It’s quite a buzz, but it started getting confusing when I’d go for a piss, and the bloke next to me would go, ‘G’day Mark, how’s the travelling going?’ This happened on more than one occasion, but the scary thing was I couldn’t remember meeting these people in the first place (though it must have been from the folk festival in Cygnet).

The weirdest thing happened on Saturday night, though. I was standing in the back bar at the Pier, watching these mad people do some strange Scottish dance, and this old boy taps me on the shoulder and says, ‘My mate here says you’re travelling round Australia. How’s it going?’ Now I’d never clapped eyes on either of these blokes before, and they hadn’t been at the folk festival in Cygnet, so how the hell they knew I was travelling was beyond me, but they obviously knew me as the travelling Pom who goes to folk festivals. Fame’s a funny thing, you know.

Getting to George Town

Claire (whom I’d met in Cygnet) had offered me a lift from Launceston to George Town on Friday afternoon, so I spent the morning wandering round Cataract Gorge, this amazing river valley just outside the city. That’s one of the lovely things about Tassie: the cities are small, and are generally close to stunning scenery, so you can walk out of the centre and, bang! It’s all gorgeous gorges and valley vistas.

Unfortunately George Town doesn’t fall into the category of ‘generally’: it’s an industrial town, and it’s not a particularly pretty picture. The folk festival, small as it was, was centred around the Pier Hotel and its grounds, where the marquees had been set up. The hostel where I stayed was, oh, let me see, about 30 yards from the pub where all the sessions happened, so there was no more of this walk-for-forty-bloody-minutes-to-get-home malarkey we went through in Cygnet. Unfortunately they’d run out of beds, so I ended up on an inflatable mattress in the front lounge, but at least I was inside.

Claire had some friends who had opened up a restaurant in George Town, so we went to visit, and had the most wonderful meal. If you find yourself in George Town, visit The Buffalo Café, and ask them to show you the electric cactus. You won’t regret it.

And so I arrived at my second folk festival in as many weekends. They’re interesting these things; a lot of the people at George Town were also at Cygnet, and most of them seemed to remember the Pom in the Hat. Again I met some wonderful people, and although it wasn’t quite as atmospheric as Cygnet – heck, the pubs closed at 2am, which was when things were just getting going in Cygnet – a splendid time was guaranteed for all.

The weather went ballistic on the Saturday afternoon, drenching the folkies and blowing down the marquees, but it soon dried out, and I spent most of the day indoors, listening to workshops by people like Alistair Hulett (on the history of the Poll Tax) and Martin Pearson (who spoke about ancient myths and legends).

That night we all went dancing, but perhaps this was where I ended and real folkies started. I eventually bottled out when this middle-aged woman grabbed me for one of these dances, and I told her I didn’t know the steps. ‘I’ll show you,’ she said. ‘It’s right foot there, left foot and slide, and then break into a normal waltz.’

‘Ah, waltz,’ says I. ‘Now that’s where I have the problem.’ Thank goodness the dance finished then; she found the concept of someone not knowing how to waltz quite alien. Modern times, I don’t know.

The concerts were good too, with such folk luminaries as Fairport Convention’s Dave Swarbrick, a trio of amazing singers called Simpson, Gillespie and Wright, and people like the Fagans, who had played Cygnet. Sunday, however, would prove even better.

Sing Along Again

When I eventually got up on Sunday ‘morning’, everyone else was hanging out somewhere in the festival, so I just wandered about, and eventually ended up having brunch in The Buffalo. What luck: just as I was finishing a divine BLT sandwich, in walked Simpson, Gillespie and Wright to do a singing workshop. These three women are really rather talented, and Claire had been going on about how great they were for days before, so how chuffed was I to join in the workshop? Just a little: it’s actually quite a laugh singing these folkie tunes, in the round, in harmony and all the rest. You just have to get over the clothes first...

It’s also an interesting way to watch folkies in action. It’s always annoyed me a little the way that folkies constantly smile when they sing their little songs, but I started to get a glimpse of what it’s all about. The one thought that went through my head, watching people young and old singing traditional songs from olde England, was that I hoped they had also tasted the joys of other types of music. For my part, I’ve got drunk to heart-rending blues, I’ve enjoyed headbanging to the heaviest thrash metal (and even strained my neck in the process), swung to funky jazz, drifted to guitar-layered indie rock, danced for hours to happy house music, cried to beautiful ballads, and done goodness only knows what to all sorts of other types of music. But your average folkie doesn’t understand what they call ‘bloody heavy metal’; when someone put the jukebox on in the pub, they all sat there complaining about the noise, and all I could think was that Live’s ‘I Alone’ was a damn good song, and I wished they would stop fiddling and accordioning and turn the bugger up. It takes all sorts, I guess.

Then, after the farewell concert, came Sunday night. The session was in full swing, with Beatles numbers, traditional folk songs, anything that people knew really, but then Claire came back from getting a round in, and whispered that there was a lovely little session starting up in a tiny room at the front, and it looked worth joining. So off we went, and found this tiny gathering of about eight people, which included two of the Fagans, Martin Pearson, Kerrie Maguire, one of the organisers (whose name I didn’t catch), one of Simpson, Gillespie and Wright (though I don’t know which one) and some others I’d seen on stage. Claire and I pulled up a stool each, and settled in to listen.

They were doing ‘a round’ – not the type of song, of which ‘London’s Burning’ is an example, but the sort where you go round the circle of people, each person singing a song of their choice. The criterion was that the song had to be English, and they each sang a song, brilliantly. My heart missed a beat when Claire whispered, ‘You’d better get a song ready, then’, and I realised we were sitting in the circle. And then they were all looking at me expectantly, waiting for a song. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that the only round I was familiar with required a bar, so I launched into song.

Now I’m no singer, but they loved it. Good old Billy Bragg: I knew that, one day, playing his albums incessantly would come in handy. I sang the same song I hadn’t managed to finish at Cygnet, ‘Valentine’s Day is Over’, and this time I got through to the end without stumbling; the thrill of having a whole room fall silent to hear you sing – a room of the cream of Australian folk musicians, no less – sure beats a lot of other thrills... and so ended another wonderful Tasmanian folk festival.

Launceston to Port Arthur

Written: 26 January 1996

A fuzzy Monday morning saw me return from George Town to Launceston to pick up a rental car for the week, easily the best way to see Tassie. It was great to be back behind the wheel, even if a yellow VW Beetle wasn’t quite the Ford Falcon we’d rented in New South Wales; in a Beetle you really feel the corners and bumps in the road, especially if you’re constantly breaking the speed limit[1].

Driving through Tasmania is a wonderful experience, with beautiful landscapes and plenty of little towns that haven’t been overrun with concrete or high-rises. They say Tasmania is the last real wilderness in Australia, and during my circuit of the island I saw what they meant. The route I took was the obvious one, but staying as out-of-the-way as possible: I struck west from Launceston in the middle of the north coast to Stanley at the far northwestern tip, where I stayed a night; I then headed south, halfway down the rugged west cost to Strahan (pronounced ‘Strawn’, to rhyme with dawn); then I cut east through the middle of the island, past Queenstown and the Lake St Clair area (where I spent another night); and finally I drove down to Hobart and Port Arthur on the southeastern tip.

Each area of Tasmania has its characteristics and charms. The east coast, home to Bicheno and Coles Bay, is the drier area, and is very much like the wilderness areas of England; in fact, Tasmania’s Midlands area is often used for filming movie scenes set in England because it is more like cinema’s interpretation of countryside England than England itself – there are too many satanic mills in the mother country for the moguls’ liking. The west and southwest is rugged beyond belief, and the southwest in particular is largely unpopulated. The south coast is rugged too, but has more bays and coves, and the north coast is relatively industrial and isn’t so daunting. All this in an island that takes four hours to drive across: it’s the holiday motorist’s dream.

So my first destination was Stanley, population 580 and home of the Nut, a kind of small Ayers Rock in the sea. Climbing up the Nut was a serious piece of exercise; 152m straight up is tiring, but the view was worth it, as was the sunset. The Nut is supposed to be 12.5 million years old, which is pretty much how I felt when I eventually reached the summit.

The West

The next day I drove for miles, down through the rugged forests of the northwest, and over stunning mountains to the west coast and Strahan. What a gorgeous place, with just 600 inhabitants and some great forest parks around, not to mention the 33km Ocean Beach to the north. I went for a walk in the People’s Park, home of the Hogarth Falls, a picturesque waterfall surrounded by rainforest. It’s amazing to walk into these forests: outside it’s hot and sunny, but under the high ceiling of trees it’s cool and quite dark, the perfect setting for a waterfall.

On from Strahan I arrived in Queenstown, a mining village due east of Strahan and set in the most weather-savaged terrain I’ve ever seen. ‘Terrain’ is the right word; ‘landscape’ seems too tame. The area has been completely ripped apart by man, and there are opencast mines all over the place, but the incredible hues of the rock mountains have to be seen to be believed, as do the roads. There are hairpin bends everywhere, and in a Beetle you feel every single one.

After Queenstown I drove over Lake Burbury, surely one of the bluest lakes in the world, and stopped for a walk at Nelson Falls, part of the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park. Yes, it was another waterfall, but this time even more spectacular; if I’m not careful, I could be well on my way to becoming a waterfall fetishist.

Finally I pulled up at Derwent Bridge, a little town on the southern point of Lake St Clair, the deepest natural freshwater lake in the whole of Australia, and home to one end of the 80km-long Overland Track, a bushwalkers’ Mecca. Perhaps one day I’ll come back and do this walk, which takes about five or six days to complete; it starts off at the idyllic Cradle Mountain and ends at Lake St Clair, where I spent Wednesday morning walking.

The landscape round Lake St Clair is beautiful and tranquil. I did one of the shorter walks, which took me five hours of trudging through rainforest, marshland, rocky plains and rivers. ‘Trudging’ is exactly the right word: it even sounds like the noise you make when walking Tasmania’s parks. If it were a real word, ‘sludging’ would be another; lots of rain had fallen the night before.

The track led up the mountains to two glacial lakes, Lake Sorrow and Forgotten Lake: lonely names for lonely places, though with a stark beauty that’s humbling. There was an optional extra track going up Little Hugel, a small mountain but still quite a challenge, so I thought I’d go for it, and after some seriously wet climbing through rainforest, up vertical rock slopes and onto the top, the whole park lay at my feet. It’s quite a feeling, climbing for an hour completely on your own, and standing right at the top of a mountain, especially when you know that if you stumbled and twisted an ankle, you wouldn’t be found for days.

It’s also quite a feeling when you can see a storm rolling in on top of you, and you know you’ve still got to get down, so I took a couple of self-timed photos – Edmund Hillary conquers mountain-type shots – and headed back, timing it perfectly. The heavens opened as I drove off, and they stayed open all the way to Port Arthur, right down in the Tasman Peninsula on the southeast of Tassie.

Port Arthur

Port Arthur was the site of the worst-of-the-worst penal prisons, and it’s still got that air about it. The port itself is rather beautiful, but sitting on the slopes behind the port are the ruins of some really nasty places, like the Model Prison (where convicts were isolated completely for months) and the Penitentiary (where inmates eked out an existence in tiny cells). It’s an amazing place, but it’s deeply spooky, especially if you visit the Isle of the Dead – Port Arthur’s cemetery on a little island in the bay – or take the night-time ghost tour, which consists of an hour-and-a-half of lantern-lit tale-telling among the eerie ruins. Atmospheric isn’t the word; it’s brilliant.

I spent the Thursday afternoon and Friday morning exploring the south coast of the Tasman Peninsula, though it wasn’t quite as spectacular as I’d imagined it would be. With names like Remarkable Cave (which it is) and the Devil’s Kitchen, you can probably imagine the sort of rugged coastline there is. It’s also the kind of attraction that’s really hard to visit without your own car – in fact, the whole of the Tasman Peninsula is poorly served by public transport – so renting a car was a great flash of inspiration. I’m beginning to think that it might be a good idea to look into buying a car and a tent, and going round Australia via campsites...

So that was Tasmania. In Australia, they say, dwell the salt of the earth; if that’s true, then Tasmania has the whole condiment set, including a silver mustard jar with spoon and blue glass lining, and a handcrafted vinaigrette jug. Visit it: you’ll love it too.

[1] I didn’t break the speed limit on purpose – the speedometer was in miles per hour not kilometres per hour, but I only realised at the end of the trip. I thought those corners were a bit tight...

Victoria

Session Musicians

Written: 7 March 1996

Occasionally you get a drinking session that lives with you as a classic of its type, and this was one of them. Soon after returning from my trip round Tasmania, I’d suggested to Andrew that we pop out for a beer on a Friday night, and maybe catch a band: nothing too heavy, just a beer. He suggested Brunswick Street[1].

The first band we found were appalling, but that didn’t matter – if there’s one thing Melbourne isn’t short of, it’s bands. So we grabbed a copy of the local freebie music guide, had a quick flick, and discovered our mission: to get to The Club on Smith Street. So we set off...

...and stopped at a long, thin bar on the way, which had this funky groove band pumping out serious vibes onto the street. We ordered a bourbon and coke – the most popular Aussie drink after beer – and settled in, but just as we got into it, they took a half-hour break. So it was back to the mission: to find The Club.

I’m not too sure of the distances, but we eventually got there at about 1am. There it was: The Club, proudly announcing that Manic Suede would take the stage at 2am. In we went, coughing up the entrance fee, and settled into a few games of pool peppered with yet more beer.

Manic Suede were excellent and quite apt. They were manic, and I just swayed.

It was while drinking a beer at the bar after the gig that I realised that it was getting light outside. This came as a bit of a shock; I had thought it was about 3am, but it was actually 6am, which gradually turned into 7am, when the place shut. Time to go home...

...not! One thing that must be done after a drinking session is to have a kebab, and it appears that the rules are the same on both sides of the world. In Australia they call them souvlaki, and the best souvlaki in the world are served on Lygon Street, Melbourne (according to Andrew). So we wandered off to Lygon Street, taking in the sights of the city, wondering where the time had gone. Irritatingly the souvlaki shop was shut, but you can’t go home without souvlaki: those are the rules. So Andrew decided that, as we were up and still alive, we should see some of the alternative sights of Melbourne while waiting for the souvlaki shop to open. We saw the trams opening up, and even blagged a free ride on the premise that Andrew was showing his Pommy friend the sights of their fair city. We saw street performers starting up and Saturday businessmen rush to work, but the sight of the day had to be The Carlton.

The Carlton is a 24-hour bar, and it’s the shadiest hovel I’ve ever seen, especially at eight in the morning. We met the dregs of society there, and beat them at pool. There were drunk Aborigines, including one guy who lectured Aboriginal history at Melbourne TAFE (the Aussie equivalent of colleges of further education); there were drunk Maoris, including one guy who told me all the shady places to visit in New Zealand; there were drunk Aussies; there were drunk travellers with jet lag... you name it, they were there, and drunk. You only visit The Carlton once, but it’s an eye-opener.

Enter the Pokies!

So is Young and Jackson’s Hotel, which houses one of the finest collections of pokies in Melbourne. The pokies – short for poker machines – are the Australian equivalent of fruit machines, and they’re a serious problem. Until about two years ago gambling was illegal in Victoria, and everyone used to go to the border towns for their gambling. Now it’s been legalized, and it’s spread so quickly it’s become a serious social problem. A good night’s debauchery wouldn’t be complete without a gamble, so we hit the pokies.

Pokies use computer screens, and each has about ten different games to play, all of which eat your money. We were only there as an exercise in tourism, but you should have seen some of the men there – all men, of course – who were pouring money into these things; it was really rather lonely.

Things got a little hazy at this stage; I know we watched some skateboarders for a while, and then climbed over some fountains before having a run-in with the local police, the usual thing... but having a souvlaki is the rule, so we made our drunken way back to Lygon Street, where the souvlaki did indeed live up to its reputation. Suitably refreshed, we crashed out in the park for about four hours, until five o’clock in the afternoon. This was more or less unintentional; the next thing we knew it was five o’clock, but what can you expect after an all-nighter?

In fact, when I woke up, Andrew had gone, and I made my dazed way off in the direction I thought would take me home. It was only by bumping back into Andrew – who had gone off for a leak, and had panicked when he’d lost me, because he didn’t know where we were staying – that I realised I was going in totally the wrong direction. We made it back eventually, after making up the rule that we had to have a beer in every pub on the way. And when we got back to where I was staying we realised, ‘Hey! It’s Saturday night. Where shall we go?’

But that is another story...

[1] Brunswick is one of those amazing streets: it’s a combination of shady clubs, posh restaurants, and fascinating little shops selling arty goods that you can’t really believe anybody buys. It’s a haven for the bizarre, and as such it’s a hoot.

Buying a Car

Written: 7 March 1996

Car salesmen are the same the world over: they are soul-sucking demons from hell who should be avoided at all costs. The same seems to apply to people selling cars privately, just not as badly. I hate buying cars and everything that goes with it, I always have, and I think I always will, but it’s the only way to see a country like Australia. Not long after I got back from my trip to Tasmania, I decided I was going to have to get things rolling if I didn’t want to waste my entire year working in the city, so Andy and I spent a number of evenings looking at cars being sold privately, and it brought me down, to be honest. I have no real idea what happened during the first week of looking – not a lot, really – but I eventually ended up buying a car with a good engine but a knackered body for A$750 (£375). It was a bargain, but not roadworthy.

The Roadworthy Certificate (RWC) is the equivalent of the UK’s MOT test, but you only need one when buying or selling a car, and this one was so cheap because it had failed the RWC because of the body. We therefore needed to get the body fixed up to get an RWC, and the car needed further work to make the engine mechanically sound. If you’re crossing deserts you don’t care about the bodywork, you just don’t want to break down...

Since buying my first Australian car, I’ve been to goodness only knows how many backstreet mechanics getting the bodywork done, the electrics sorted, the stereo wired (the most important bit, of course), the wheels aligned, the engine overhauled... and I’ve learned a hell of a lot about cars in the process. Ever seen deep inside an engine? I now have, and if it goes wrong at that level, I know I’ve got no chance of fixing it, but at least I feel that I’ve done everything in my power and my budget to make sure this car makes it round Highway One. If it does break down miles from anywhere, I’ll be pretty annoyed, but I’m also a member of the RACV, the Aussie equivalent to the RAC and AA, and something tells me that will prove to be the soundest investment of all.

Ready to Drive

So, at last I’ve got my wheels, all legal and insured to the hilt. He’s a gypsum green Toyota Corona, 1977 model, he’s called Oz[1], and he’s running pretty well. The idea is to go clockwise round Australia, but I don’t want to tie myself down to any particular plan; it’s a long, long way round this continent, and my finances are looking pretty poor after my manic visit to Tasmania and the cash I’ve lashed out on the car, so we’ll just have to see what happens.

I’ve got a good collection of stuff in the boot, too. My tent (a three man tent – yeah, like you could fit three men in there, I don’t think) is one of those dome ones which takes about two minutes to put up and doesn’t have any of those annoying poles, just three carbon fibre rods that break down into little bits. I’ve also got a blow-up bed and a pump that works off the car’s cigarette lighter; it’s OK but it has a built-in pillow, something that might end up driving me mad, seeing as none of the normal mattresses I’ve come across in the world have a slope at one end.

The cooker and lamp are of the same type, and can either run off normal liquid stove fuel or – get this – unleaded petrol. You pour the petrol in, pump up the pressure by hand, light it and whoosh! Heat and light. I’m writing this by the light of burning Mobil Super petrol, which costs a whacking 35p per litre – it’s considerably cheaper than gas, and I much prefer these filament burner-type lamps to electric light. The cooker is ferocious and I burnt most of my first night’s meal, but I’m slowly getting the hang of it; it might have been expensive to buy, but it’s very, very cheap to run.

All the rest of my stuff is pretty normal: tons of emergency ‘add-water’ rations, an Esky for keeping everything cold, some big water containers, one of those wooden-ball seat covers which I got because it was the cheapest seat cover I could get, a metal petrol can containing 200km of spare fuel... it’s all there, and fits into the car. I’ve even got a fold-up card table and a deck chair, so it’s all very civilised as I sit outside at night, reading by lamplight and trying to ignore the moths attacking me. I think I’m going to read quite a lot over the next six months, but what a wonderful place in which to read...

[1] All of my cars have had names. There was Syd (my first car, on loan from a relative), named after Syd Barrett; Colin (my Talbot Horizon), named because he was a C-reg, and ‘Colin the Car’ sounded cool at the time; Jefry with one ‘f’ (my first Golf), named after a line from a Pixies song; Floyd (my second Golf), named after Pink Floyd, for no apparent reason except he was a reddish colour, which is vaguely related to pink; and Oz (Toyota Corona par excellence), named for obvious reasons. When I buy a car in New Zealand, I’ll call him Zed, after the letter Z for Zealand, with a passing reference to that great rubber-burnin’ scene in Pulp Fiction... ‘Where did you get the bike, honey?’ ‘This ain’t no bike, baby, it’s a Chopper.’ ‘Well, where did you get the Chopper, then?’ ‘Zed.’ ‘Who’s Zed?’ ‘Zed’s dead, baby, Zed’s dead.’ Sheer poetry...

Australian Greetings

Written: 12 March 1996

There’s one way to tell different cultures apart that’s foolproof: just listen to how strangers greet each other in the street, or how people talk to each other in shops or banks.

In America, for example, it’s all ‘Hi, nice to meet you’ and ‘Have a nice day’, normally accompanied by a broad grin.

In Britain there are millions of different rules, depending on the social situation. At a cocktail party, before the beer’s kicked in, it might be ‘Hello’, followed by a pregnant pause, and then both parties saying ‘Lovely out, isn’t it?’ or ‘Bit nippy today, don’t you think?’ followed by each person apologising for interrupting the other, followed by another pregnant pause and nervous laughter, and so on and so forth. Or, if it’s two strangers passing in the street in London, it’s an almost antisocial silence, where both parties pretend not to notice the other; in the North, it might be an ‘Awlrite’ or an ‘Ello’, and a nod of the head. Whatever it is, if it’s your home you understand the rules, so passing people in the street isn’t difficult. It’s not even an issue.

So why am I finding it so hard to grasp the basics of Australian greetings? Well, you’ve got the good old ‘G’day’, which is nice and easy and a good way of hiding your nationality under a generic phrase. But just as common – no, more common – is ‘How are ya?’ phrased as if the person really wants to know. It’s not ‘Howyadoin’’, which is generally regarded as rhetorical: no, the way people say it implies you must answer. But how?

‘How are you?’ ‘G’day’ – No, this doesn’t make sense, but it’s something. It’s what I use when I panic.

‘How are you?’ ‘I’m very well thank you, how are you’ – OK, it’s obvious you’re a Pom, and it’s good for parties, but in the street? You’re ten yards past the other person by the time you’ve said it, and you’ve left him or her with a question, which is not fair unless you’re on the pull.

‘How are you?’ ‘How are you?’ – No good, too many questions left unanswered.

‘How are you?’ ‘Good thanks’ – This is the one, apparently. When this is the method used, both parts are taken to be relatively meaningless, they’re just politeness. If you want to continue the conversation, as you might in a shop or bank where you’re there for a couple of minutes, you might append your own ‘How are you?’ which is a signal for the other person to say ‘Good thanks’ and then move onto the weather or the cricket scores.

You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to work that little piece of social interaction out. And they say that Australia doesn’t have a complicated social code...

Great Ocean Road

Written: 13 March 1996

The Great Ocean Road follows the Victorian coast west for 243km from Torquay, just south of Geelong, to Warrnambool, not far from the border with South Australia, and its name sums it up: it’s a great road that follows the ocean. It’s also one of the most breathtaking drives around – it hugs the coast, sandwiched between the sea (which I think is called the Bass Strait, but it varies depending on which map I look at) and the various mountain ranges inland. It’s one way to test the steering on the car, anyway... one slip and you’re history, geography and biology all rolled into one.

My first stop was Lorne, a popular tourist spot on a lovely bay about an hour from Geelong. If I was here with the boys from London, you know exactly what sort of holiday this would be: beers for breakfast, down to the surf beach for sunbaking[1] and swimming and more beers, then back to the tent for a quick kip, a shower and then on to the pub to check out the scene. Luckily I’m turning into my parents, so instead I spent two days in Lorne, testing out my camping equipment and getting the hang of living under the stars. Typically the weather wasn’t great – really cold at night and a bit cloudy in the mornings – but I survived the first real pitching of the tent, the first self-cooked meal and all the rest of the stuff that soon becomes second nature.

I spent the first afternoon lazing around on the beach, but on Sunday I decided to go on a bush walk to Erskine Falls, 8km north of Lorne. They were gorgeous, and I saw my very first snakes on the way back, slithering off the path just where I had to walk to get home. The secret is to stomp around; snakes are more afraid of you than you are of them. Not surprisingly, after a 16km round trip on foot, I hit the beach, jumped some of the surf, and relaxed. If you’re not careful, Lorne can very easily become a procrastinator’s paradise, so the next day I headed off west along the coast to Apollo Bay...

...which is another coastal beachside resort, but slightly smaller and therefore less crowded. The inland geography changes to rolling hills around the bay, although the Great Ocean Road is both hairy and spectacular between Lorne and Apollo Bay. It gives Apollo Bay a much more ‘open’ feel, with its long curved beach and one street of touristy and expensive shops. I get the feeling that when you’ve seen one beach town you’ve seen then all, but so what? It’s still pleasant.

Amazing Scenery

The Bass Strait stretches as far west as Cape Otway, my first stop on leaving Apollo Bay. Cape Otway is a really treacherous area of the coast – for ships, not Toyotas – and there’s a great little lighthouse 14km off the Great Ocean Road, so I took the turn and went on a guided tour of the blighter.

Bloody hell, there’s always one. Take any collection of people who are on a guided tour, and there’s always one person who wants to talk to the guide as much as is humanly possible. It’s so annoying: we’re paying the guide to tell all of us about it, not just you! If I had a penny for every over-keen know-all who’s tried to hijack a tour I’m on, I’d be able to buy quite a few penny chews. Still, it was a most pleasant tour, with a very informative – and patient – guide, and the view along the coast from the top of the lighthouse was astounding.

The coast between Otway and Warrnambool is incredible – Warrnambool is Victoria’s fifth biggest city, and signals the end of the Great Ocean Road, but we’ll come to that later. In the meantime, marvel at the Twelve Apostles! Prepare to be amazed by London Bridge! Steel yourself for Loch Ard Gorge! Gasp in awe at the Arch!

Yeah, OK, it’s amazing coastal scenery, but after a while it did get a bit like, ‘Oh. Another amazing and unlikely rock formation etched out by the sea over millions of years. Must tell the kids.’ Yes, the coast is incredible, and London Bridge – which used to be two arches, like a bridge, until the landward one collapsed in 1990, stranding two extremely surprised, not to mention lucky tourists on the newly formed island – is wonderful, and the Twelve Apostles – huge stacks of limestone, 12 of ’em, that rear out of the sea right next to sheer cliffs – are like 12 Old Men of Hoy all together, but somehow it didn’t quite click for me.

Meanwhile, the Great Ocean Road ends in Warrnambool, which turned out to be an oldies’ paradise. I hadn’t seen so many pensioners in one place since the last time I went to Southport on a cold and windy day. So Victoria’s fifth city turned out to be one of its most boring, but all I wanted was some kip, some fish and chips, and a tank of petrol, and for that, it did the job.

[1] Australians don’t sunbathe, they sunbake. In fact, Australians don’t even sunbake, they cover themselves in sunblock when they hit the beach. Only tourists sunbake; it’s an indication of the seriousness with which Aussies take the threat of skin cancer.

The Grampians

Written: 15 March 1996

Interestingly – at least, interestingly when compared to Warrnambool – Tuesday turned out to be a Bad Shoe Day. By accident I left my pair of incredibly smelly and rotting canvas shoes in the car park at Loch Ard Gorge, which was sentimentally tough but a good thing in retrospect, and then that night my thongs snapped[1]. I prayed that God would look after their little lost soles, and tried to move on.

On Wednesday I headed off to Hall’s Gap, 200km away to the north and deep in the heart of the Grampians, an impressive range of mountains at the southern end of the Great Dividing Range, which runs parallel to the east coast of the continent. Wow! You’ve never seen anything like the approach to the range across the dry, flat land of the southwest of Victoria. Slowly, ever so slowly, these huge forms appear on the hazy horizon, so jagged that they look like black broken glass. One minute, the horizon is totally flat, and then these shapes appear that reach to an apparent elevation of about 30° as you drive straight for them – it is quite a sight.

Close up, the Grampians are even more amazing, and I instantly decided to spend a good two days at the campsite at Hall’s Gap. After pitching my tent, I managed to fit in a couple of bushwalks: first I walked to the Balconies – flat bits of rock jutting out of the top of a mountain that you can climb to the end of and look over, if you like a fright like I do – and then to Sundial Peak – a 4km round-trip that produced spectacular views of lakes and wooded peaks, right next to the flat, dry farmland I’d just driven through. I returned to camp with my appetite well and truly whetted, to find the caravan park full of friendly little kangaroos munching on the grass.

It occurs to me that ‘bushwalking’ isn’t something you come across back home, even though I now take it for granted. It’s not a case of arriving somewhere, looking at the sun, working out where south is and disappearing into unexplored rainforest – at least, not intentionally. National Parks, which are everywhere, and include places like the Grampians, have Ranger Stations where you can get maps of the marked walks around, which range from five minutes to five hours to five days. There are paths and signposts and protective railings on the nasty bits, so it’s relatively easy to go bushwalking safely, and without needing huge amounts of gear (though if you want a real bush experience, you can, of course, go off piste, as it were).

Lost at the Pinnacle

Having said that, a funny thing happened to me in the Grampians when I went on the day-long Wonderland Tour walk the following day. I was making my merry way to the first stop on the walk – Venus Falls it was called, though the summer had reduced it to Venus Dribbles – when I came across a couple having a rest in the shade. Well, we got a-talkin’, as you do when walking these tracks, and they invited me to walk with them, so I did, not having so much as talked to anyone for about a week. Up to the Pinnacle we trudged, me, Dave and Karen, eventually getting to the top – the views you wouldn’t believe! – and then continuing along the trail, following the white arrows painted on the rocks.

It was then that Karen noticed that we hadn’t passed a white arrow for some time... we were lost. We backtracked, and after about half an hour (which seemed like much longer in the burning sun) we found some more arrows, which we followed... and eventually ended up back where we’d started, at the Pinnacle! So we tried again, and this time found the trail, but if I hadn’t been with other people I could have been well and truly scuppered. The fact that later on Dave and I climbed a mountain – more incredible views, peering over a sheer cliff face – while Karen stayed at the bottom, and we got totally lost on the way back down, only proves that painted white arrows aren’t the best way to mark a trail. When coming down, we nearly walked over a cliff edge; there’s nothing like a thrill to clear the head.

Dave and Karen, it turned out, are from just north of Adelaide, and they invited me to visit them, so we could go walking at a place called World’s End. It should be interesting; when we got back to camp we got well and truly hammered on Diamond lager, so if I do get to see them in Adelaide, it should prove to be another fun experience.

I also met an old guy called Danny, who had pitched his tent next to me. He was an interesting bloke; he was recovering from a brain tumour, and was taking time off to explore the areas of Australia that he’d driven through while selling computerised tills to shops over the years. We kicked into his bottle of rum he had brought along, and kept drinking after Dave and Karen went back to their cabin (lucky them, they had a spa in their apartment!). As if meeting three great people wasn’t enough, while we were coming back from the bottle shop we saw these two guys having a barbie in the campsite, and went over to chat. It turned out these two – Michael and Remko from Holland – had just spent four days in the bush, walking around and camping wherever they fancied: an amazing experience. They were hitching around, and I offered them a lift in the morning to Mt Gambier, down on the south coast of South Australia, about 400km from Adelaide.

[1] This is not as rude as it sounds – ‘thongs’ are what Australians call flip-flops or sandals.

South Australia

Mt Gambier

Written: 16 March 1996

Setting off from the Grampians, with the car crammed full to the brim with Pom, Dutchmen and extra backpacks, I noticed the car was rather unsteady on the road, so I slowed the pace down. At first I thought that the car was giving up the ghost, which was a bit worrying this early in the trip. But no: in fact a serious wind storm had started up, which buffeted us all the way to Mt Gambier, across the border in South Australia. Apparently there was a cyclone in Western Australia, and we were feeling it all that distance away.

The town of Mt Gambier is built on the side of three huge volcano craters, one of which – the Blue Lake – is full of water to a depth of over 70m. It’s quite a sight, driving round the rim of a huge crater, full of deep blue water; for half the year the lake turns grey, for some unknown reason, and the town has a festival to celebrate when it goes blue again. Any excuse for a party in Australia...

However, the township of Mt Gambier didn’t look all that thrilling, so we decided by unanimous vote to drive to the beach 29km away, to a tiny little fishing village called Port MacDonnell. The sign that greeted us proudly proclaimed that Port MacDonnell has the largest fleet of lobster boats in Australia, which didn’t exactly sound that thrilling, but in fairness the beach was beautiful, and the sea was pure blue. After struggling to put up our tents in gale force ten, we hit the beach; some things about Oz are spot on, even in the wind.

South Australia is the driest state in Australia, but when you’re a Pom you’re never far from rain, and the winds gave way to the most almighty rainstorm I’ve spent in a tent for a while. Luckily the tent held up well – no leaks at all, and it didn’t take off in the gales – but the car didn’t fare quite as well. I first noticed the problem when I opened the back door in the morning and noticed that my fold-up table was soaking, along with most of the parcel shelf behind the back seats. The worst was yet to come... my rear stereo speakers, which are in the parcel shelf and face upwards, were full of water; I looked through the grilles and I couldn’t see speaker, just pools. They seem OK, but if my stereo blows, I’ll be gutted. I’ve sellotaped the window seals up, because they’re obviously completely crap, but hopefully that cyclone will have blown itself out when I tackle the Nullarbor Desert. I don’t fancy opening my car door, only to have torrents of water pour out onto my feet...

Anyway, the next day we went into Mt Gambier, did a bit of shopping, and I left the guys on the main road so they could hitch to Adelaide. As for me, I headed north to Naracoorte, where I saw some truly beautiful caves, and then I turned due west to Kingston SE, about 300km south of Adelaide down the coast. It was here that I discovered that it’s illegal to park on the side of the street if your car is facing against the traffic, which is why all the cars parked along the pavement in Australia face the same way, namely in the direction of the traffic. That sounds like a strange rule when you’re used to haphazard English parking, but the reason? If you’re facing the wrong way when you park your car, the police will give you a ticket for parking too far from the kerb, meaning too far from the kerb on the other side of the road! Some things are too strange for words, but hey, I learned my lesson with the jaywalking ticket in Melbourne, so when in Rome and all that...

The Coorong

Written: 17 March 1996

On Sunday I left Kingston SE[1], passing the 30 ft model of Larry the Lobster on the way out, and headed north to a little coastal town called Port Elliot, via the Coorong.

The Coorong is completely strange. It’s a National Park that goes along the coast below the Fleurieu Peninsula, just south of Adelaide. Essentially the coast goes north-south, with the sea on the west; running parallel to the coast, in the sea, is this huge sand dune called the Younghusband Peninsula, which meets the coast at its southern end, but leaves a gap to the sea at the north tip. The dune stretches for 145km, and if you’ve followed this so far, you’ll understand why the long, thin ‘lake’ between the coast and the sand dune dries out in the summer, and fills up in the winter. Imagine a 145km-long lake that is very shallow and quite thin (compared to its length, anyway) and you’ll get the picture.

I caught the lake when it was dry, and you’ve never seen anything like it. I drove for miles along this awful unsealed road on the west side of this lake – imagine driving over corrugated iron for ages, and you’ll k-k-know w-w-what it-t-t f-f-feels lik-k-ke – and it was quite amazing, with dune on the left and flat wetland on the right. But nothing prepared me for the vastness of the lake near the Chinaman’s Well, a well dug by the Chinese some years ago. I walked to the well, decided to head into the bush for a little wander and suddenly – wham! – there was nothing but flat, white ground for miles to the right and to the left, with the sand dune a considerable walk straight ahead. It was so big that it melted into heat haze at each end; it’s the sort of place that you can imagine someone trying to break the land speed record... and it’s so big it makes you dizzy. I walked out into the middle of it and just danced around; if anyone saw me they’d have thought I was quite mad. Perhaps I was...

[1] I never found out what the SE stood for when I was in Australia, but Cassie Blatchford emailed me to say, ‘In South Australia there are two towns called Kingston. To distinguish between the two, one is called Kingston SE (because it’s in the southeast of South Australia), and the other one, a little town on the Murray River, is called Kingston on Murray.’ Thanks Cassie – that’s another mystery cleared up!

Adelaide

Written: 21 March 1996

When is a capital city not a capital city? When it’s a capital town. Adelaide, capital of South Australia and home to 957,000 Australians, two-thirds of the population of the state, is miniscule when you’re used to cities like London, Birmingham and more locally, Melbourne and Sydney. It’s only seven times bigger than Hobart, and Hobart is tiny – indeed, even those who live in Adelaide refer to ‘the town’ rather than ‘the city’.

This has its advantages. The most obvious is that you can walk everywhere in the centre, and anywhere else is a very quick drive away. But there are other advantages, such as the availability of parking spaces really close to the centre, uncrowded beaches and a chance to explore the entire city in a relatively short period, something you can’t say about Melbourne or Sydney.

However, there are disadvantages. Adelaide isn’t one of the great cities of the world, and although it is charming, it can’t compete with the bigger cities when it comes to sights; it has just one street where there’s any real nightlife, and it’s not the most amazing experience; the beaches are fairly average compared to those down the coast; the city isn’t big enough to support a tram network, and in fact only has one, out to the beach; and things like petrol aren’t quite as cheap as in the bigger cities. But I enjoyed Adelaide, albeit briefly[1], and it made for a pleasant stop before I headed off for the Nullarbor Desert and the first real test of my plans to drive round the continent.

Arrival and Exploration

After the Coorong I headed up the coast to where the Fleurieu Peninsula starts, and hung a left to Wellington, where I crossed the Murray River (one of the most important rivers in southeast Australia) on a cable-driven car ferry. Then it was a short drive down to the coast and along to Port Elliot, a picturesque spot on Horseshoe Bay, itself a cute little beach with granite boulders either side of the bay. Luckily the wind that had plagued me in Kingston had died, so I managed to get the tent up without getting Mary Poppinsed up into the sky.

The following morning I visited Victor Harbour, down the road from Port Elliot, and walked along the long tram bridge that connects the harbour to Granite Island. A horse-drawn tram goes up and down the tramway, and the island is a particularly pleasant place to wander around while watching the sea batter the granite rocks on the shore. If you go to Granite Island you can see fairy penguins, but I had to move on, and move on I did, all the way to Adelaide, 90km to the north.

The campsite I stayed in was on West Beach, about 8km west of the city centre (which is not exactly far considering it’s a beach). The beach was fairly nondescript, with a bit too much seaweed, but you can’t really complain when you’re that close to a city. That night I drove into town and wandered around; my one memory of that wander is a strange old man, who started talking to me at a pedestrian crossing, and kept babbling on for four whole blocks before turning off the street. I didn’t understand a single word he said, but it was definitely Australian, of a sort. I rather warmed to him, whatever it was he was trying to tell me.

I explored Adelaide for the next couple of days, and there’s no doubt it’s a gorgeous place. I visited the State Museum (which was very good, and free); I walked through the botanic gardens, which are quite spectacular; I went up to Light’s Vision, a statue which shows the spot on a hill where Colonel Light sat and designed Adelaide’s street layout, and from where you can see the whole town; I wandered past the interesting architecture of Adelaide’s many old and solid buildings; I checked out the university, which turned out to be an interesting spot, right next to the botanic gardens and teeming with Australian students moving from lecture to lecture or just sitting under the trees studying or chatting... in fact, I simply walked for miles, because Adelaide is a walker’s town.

At Home in Yankalilla

While in Adelaide I decided to ring up one of the people I’d met while doing telephone support for Acorn in Melbourne, who’d invited me to get in touch when I was in Adelaide. He and his wife live south of Adelaide but on the west coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula, an area I hadn’t seen, so on Thursday I went down there to stay the night.

It was lovely; what a sweet couple. Charles and Ena were originally from the Midlands, near Cannock Chase, and they retired about seven years ago. They decided to live in Australia, mainly because most of Charles’ family now lives here, and they have a house just outside Yankalilla, a tiny village some 89km south of Adelaide. They made me feel right at home, with a guided tour of the surrounding countryside and beaches, then back home for a cooked roast and plenty of port. Charles and I swapped advice about computers, I told them about my travels, and it turned out Charles had been a magazine printer so we talked about editing, publishing as we whittled away at the port. I found them and their way of life quite incredible – getting water pumped from a borehole, feeding possums in the back garden, seeing all sorts of wild animals hanging around, taming local wild cats and keeping them as pets... it’s not your normal retirement home, is it?

We even got to see a comet. Over the previous few nights there had been this huge comet in the sky, but you could only spot it if you were looking, and then the tail suddenly became obvious. The view from their house was really clear, as they’re so far from city lights, and I was quite spun out by it all. It proved to be yet another excellent contact in Australia; what a delightful country this is.

[1] This is probably the best way to enjoy it, rather like very loud music or rich chocolate mousse. Otherwise you might find yourself getting bored, which is what happened to one friend from Melbourne who had to spend a year of university there. ‘It felt like exile,’ she said with a wince...

World’s End

Written: 25 March 1996

My world is very small tonight. There’s a babble from the creek as it pours over the stepping-stones, and the stars are visible over the light from the fire. The shadows flicker up the multi-coloured trunks of the Red River Gums surrounding the little clearing where my tent and cooking equipment reflect the light. The nearest civilisation is 20 miles away, and I’m totally alone; there isn’t a human for miles around.

The fire is incredibly hot, but it’s throwing off enough red light to light my computer screen, so I can type. There are animals all around – I occasionally hear the rustle of a possum looking for food, the croak of a frog, the call of a wild bird – and the weather is warm, still and clear. This is what bush camping is all about: fire, the sounds of the world, and isolation.

Dave and Karen, the couple I met in the Grampians a week ago, left earlier today. I’d rung them on my way through Adelaide, and we spent Friday night in typical Aussie fashion: drinking ridiculous amounts of beer. It felt good after abstaining for most of my road trip; drinking and driving would be bad (so I obviously don’t even go there), but getting up, packing away a tent and driving with a hangover would be another thing altogether.

We arrived here on Saturday afternoon after a journey through some of the smallest towns in the world, ‘we’ being three humans and two dogs, Thor being a cute little black puppy, and Tia a very fat Staffordshire bull terrier, with the nickname of Lumpy Dog. Our destination: World’s End, 150km northeast of Adelaide and somewhere in the vicinity of Burra, the place where the copper was discovered that saved South Australia from bankruptcy. It sounds quite close to civilisation, but there’s nothing to the north and east but desolate outback.

When we got here, we set up camp and started to get a good fire going, and the whole Saturday night was the most incredible experience. We cooked on a little cooking fire that Karen made, as Dave had brought the wrong connector for the gas barbie (which didn’t make him too popular); you make a cooking fire by digging a little hole, lining it with rocks, and putting the red-hot coals from the main fire in the hole to create a really intense, smoke-free heat source that’s perfect for cooking.

We marvelled at the night sky and saw the comet in the northeast that I’d first seen in Yankalilla. But even more impressively, we fished for yabbies in the creek, and caught a fair number. Yabbies are like prawns with big pincers like lobsters; they’re freshwater crayfish, and you catch them in a yabbie net from waterholes in slow-flowing creeks, and chuck them into a boiling billy of water, which we had on a stand over the fire. Yabbies are lovely – they taste like fishy prawns – and there’s something amazingly Australian about catching yabbies in a creek...

Family Reunions

The next day we went for a bushwalk into the hills round the camp, and hung out by a watering hole for the afternoon. It was really hot, and when we got back to camp that afternoon, we discovered that our creek had been invaded by a family reunion.

Apparently family reunions are all the rage in Australia; people can sometimes feel a bit rootless here, and if a family member bothers to trace the family tree – and a lot of families do – then the family reunion is a must. It normally takes the form of a big gathering at a convenient spot, and this family thought that World’s End would be convenient. It’s a nice spot for a reunion, without a doubt, but it’s a bit harsh coming along to a public site, setting up a loudspeaker and stand, getting what must have been over 200 people together, and ruining the peace. So as soon as we saw all these cars arrive and everyone putting their nametags on, we went bushwalking again.

How amused were we on our return, then, to see the last car trying to leave, but coughing, spluttering and refusing to work? Dave and Karen had to go, and rang the RAA for the poor family who were stranded, but I saw an opportunity and roped in the kids to collect firewood. We then sat there in my camp, making tea and waiting for the RAA to find the end of the world. You should have seen their faces; they thought I was a serious bushman, with my dirty clothes, campfire, cooking stuff and so on. They were horrified at the prospect of spending the night there, stranded under the stars, but I couldn’t wait. Luckily the RAA man fixed them up, but not after I’d got another address and an invitation to pop in if I was ever back in the area.

And so I’ve been left alone, miles from anywhere, with just me and a fire and a campsite, sitting under the southern stars, with the firelight flickering on the bushes, and the possums tackling the mess left behind by the day’s visitors. It’s paradise... and it’s all mine, for this little moment in time.

Flinders Ranges

Written: 27 March 1996

It was a shame to leave World’s End behind, but I had plans for some serious bushwalking in the Flinders Ranges to the north, after some hearty recommendations from Dave and Karen. After a quick bath in the creek and porridge for brekkie cooked on the fire, I headed north up the dirt road, aiming for Burra.

Driving down dirt tracks is an art, and one you learn quickly if you know what’s good for you. There are plenty of hazards, like the massive dips that indicate floodwater channels, potholes where anything could have happened and corners with loose shingle (which are pretty challenging in a rear-wheel drive like Oz). It’s no picnic. An added thrill is that of the dust trail; if you look behind you when you’re driving along you can’t see a thing because you’re chucking up a huge dust cloud behind you. That’s no problem – it’s behind you after all – but when you pass someone coming the other way, you’re both totally blinded for a while, and that’s rather entertaining if it happens to be on a corner. It’s also quite a sight if you stop and look at the still, barren landscape around you, and see a dust trail on a distant road; it looks like a fire, but it’s moving along, so it can’t be.

Another amazing thing about the outback is the strange localised weather phenomenon called the willie-willie[1]. Imagine mini-whirlwinds that reach up into the sky, but are only about 20 feet across; they’re a bit like little tornados, I suppose. They occur quite frequently in the dusty outback, and once I came over a hill to find about five of these things whirling away over the fields. They’re quite amazing, but they don’t half create havoc if you drive right past one; there’s a lot of energy kicking around inside a whirlwind. It made the journey to Burra that little bit more interesting, anyway.

Burra is a pretty little spot; at least, the town is. I had a traditional Aussie meat pie there, something I’ve grown to love (if it’s possible to love food with all the goodness taken out... which, of course, it is), and went off to see the mines that, according to the local blurb, had saved South Australia from bankruptcy. They’re no longer mined, but they’re quite a sight; the mining was opencast, and all that’s left are huge craters that are half full of water, with old buildings dotted around in a kind of mining ghost-town pose. It was interesting, and a good stop on the way to the Flinders Ranges.

Wilpena Pound

I drove down more dirt roads and eventually reached Wilpena, 300km north of my last campsite. It was getting late, so I cooked up, lit my lamp and settled in for a read. Or that’s what the plan was, anyway.

Wilpena must be the most bug-infested place in the world (note that I say bug-infested, because the most fly-infested place is the Nullarbor). I sat there with my lamp, and these little bugs kept falling on me from the trees, moths kept flying round the lamp and straight into me and I got eaten by mozzies, again. I was writing a letter at the time, and I was so moved I caught a mozzie and sellotaped it onto the page. I don’t know whether the recipient appreciated it.

It was worth all the hardship, though. Wilpena is at the only entrance to Wilpena Pound, an amazing natural structure that defies description. Imagine an oval of mountains, 8km wide and 17km long. The inside of the oval gently slopes in a bowl shape, but the outside of the mountains is sheer cliff, so you can only get into the Pound via a pass carved by Wilpena Creek on the eastern edge of the oval. I spent a whole day walking right across the middle of the Pound to Bridle Gap on the other side, a return journey of some 15.5km, and the views were astounding. When I reached Bridle’s Gap, near a mountain suspiciously called Dick Nob on the west side of the Pound, I could see a huge range of mountains to the east – the Elder Range – with a massive tableland of scrub in between. It was a good job the sun was out for the photos, as on my return the heavens opened, cooling me down and making the arid interior of the Pound smell like a wet blazer.

That can of beer I bought on my return was one of the most heavenly treats in the world...

[1] At least, that’s what they’re called in Western Australia. Many thanks to Ian Belford, who emailed me with the name plus a warning that he nearly saw someone decapitated by a willie-willie; a bit of corrugated iron that was trapped inside the whirlwind narrowly missed a cyclist’s head. Be careful out there!

Western Australia

Nullarbor Desert

Written: 30 March 1996

Wednesday marked the beginning of my journey west towards Western Australia and, ultimately, the state capital Perth, on the other side of the Nullarbor Desert. I spent the day driving the 415km to Wudinna, a convenient stop at the north of the Eyre Peninsula, where I met some guys from England who had just arrived from Perth. I got some handy driving tips off them, which helped me feel a bit more confident about driving such huge distances through the outback.

But the most memorable thing about Wudinna was my cooking. I’d stocked up on provisions at Port Augusta, a rather forgettable industrial port, and one of the things I bought was a 500g box of minced kangaroo meat. Supper for my last night in civilisation was therefore fettuccine with kangaroo bolognese, which was gorgeous; it was like traditional bolognese, but with a more tangy and meaty taste. It’s hard to describe the taste of kangaroo, but if you ever get the chance to try it, do; it set me up for the longest drive of my trip so far... the trek across the Nullarbor Desert.

No Trees

Someone comes up to you in the street and says, ‘Desert.’ What’s the first thing that comes into your head? ‘Sand’ maybe. Or perhaps ‘very hot’. How about ‘dry’? Or ‘yellow’? Maybe even ‘lemon meringue pie’, if you’re hard of hearing.

But the Nullarbor Desert, which fills an awful of a lot of central southern Australia, is none of these things, especially lemon meringue pie. It’s a totally flat, vegetated area, although it’s more scrubland than anything else; the name is a corruption of the Latin for ‘no trees’, which isn’t quite accurate, it’s just that the trees are either stunted to the size of bushes, or so straggly it’s hard to believe they’re alive. There are resident kangaroos, camels, snakes and all the other strange animals that inhabit this side of the globe, and being a desert, it’s normally very dry... but not when I decided to cross it. Oh no.

The real trip west across the Nullarbor begins at Ceduna, a sorry little place 770km from Adelaide that exists to provide a last town before the end of the world. The only settlements between Ceduna and Norseman, some 1200km to the west (and itself 720km east of Perth), are roadhouses and Aboriginal settlements, neither of which are terribly inviting.

The road is, well, pretty straight. The landscape, while different at one end to the other, looks the same as you drive along; it’s flat and covered with little bushes and struggling gum trees. The only variation – and, believe me, any variation is a good thing – is the number of trees. Don’t take your kids on this trip unless you’ve got Valium for the whole family; they’ll drive you insane. Luckily I enjoyed it and discovered a number of interesting things along the way, but then I do have a good stereo and in the desert nobody can hear you sing.

I did the trip in two stages, the first from Wudinna to Ceduna and on to the Nullarbor Roadhouse (538km), and the second from the Nullarbor to Norseman (912km). I camped at the roadhouse, which happened to coincide with a desert downpour, forcing me under cover to cook my kangaroo burgers (just mix kangaroo mince with corn flour and some herbs, and fry ’em: very tasty). This soon forced me to concede that the best way to spend the evening was in the bar, making the inside of my head as soggy as the back shelf of my car. It was a good job I did spend the evening in the bar; when the wind blows in the desert, it doesn’t blow, it howls. That’s just one of the strange things about the outback.

Aboriginal Land

One aspect of Australia that is more apparent in the desert is Aboriginal land. There are a number of large areas of Australia that have been given back to the Aboriginal people – mostly unproductive desert areas, it has to be said – because they have managed to prove that they were there first (this is intriguing: the guidebooks always go on about how Aborigines lived everywhere, but of course they never get given the good parts, like the cities or the bits of land sitting on large mineral deposits). A number of important sites, like Uluru and Kakadu, are now Aboriginal lands, but are leased back to the government for use as National Parks; however, most areas aren’t leased, and you can’t go into them without a permit. One such place, Yalata, is crossed by the Eyre Highway (the road across the Nullarbor) though as long as you stick to the highway, you don’t need a permit.

That’s why there was a notice in the roadhouse bar, which said that if you were travelling in the direction of Yalata or Maralinga Tjarutja, another Aboriginal area to the north of the highway, you couldn’t buy beer to take away, only low alcohol beer. The reason for this highlights a cultural situation in Australia. Because Aboriginal people never made wine or brewed beer, their first experience with alcohol was when the white man arrived, and as a result their metabolism never grew accustomed to it: Aboriginal biology has no tolerance of alcohol. The unfortunate side effect is that it takes very little to get an Aborigine off his or her trolley, so alcoholism is a serious problem among Aborigine communities, which is often quoted by white Australians as a reason not to trust the Aborigines.

The communities on reclaimed Aboriginal land, like Yalata, therefore ban alcohol from the area, as the whole point of the community is to live as they used to, living in harmony with the land, and not spending their lives lying in the gutter... hence the sign in the bar.

Sights of the Nullarbor

There are lots of strange things about crossing the desert, and one of the most obvious is the road train. Imagine a large lorry, and add another similar-sized lorry onto the back, and you’ve got a road train. They go ridiculously fast, and I got three cracks in my (new) windscreen courtesy of road trains coming the other way and stirring up stones from the side of the road. They’re quite a sight.

Another sight is the coastline for the 100km before you reach the Western Australia/South Australia border. There are plenty of lookouts along the way, and the cliffs have to be seen to be believed. The Nullarbor plain used to be at the bottom of the sea (which is one reason for its sandy soils and lack of vegetation), but over time it rose straight up above sea level, and you can see the evidence in the cliffs; they’re huge, white and totally vertical, for as far as the eye can see (except, of course, when the weather is miserable, as it was for me). The sea pounds away with no remorse, and the Eyre Highway passes within a few hundred metres for quite a long stretch.

The first lookout isn’t a lookout as such; it’s a gravel road that takes you 10km to the Head of the Bight, the most northerly point of the Great Australian Bight. It’s not long before the Nullarbor Roadhouse, and I saw the sign and thought ‘what the hell’ and went for it. It was only after an age of driving along this awful unsealed road that I realised that if I broke down, or had a puncture, nobody would be along to help for ages, if at all. That’s one reason why I carry 30 litres of water, 20 litres of spare petrol and a week’s worth of food in the car; it’s the recommended minimum if you’re planning to visit the outback. Luckily I didn’t have a breakdown, and the Head of the Bight was quite a sight, but I was glad to get back to the safety of the main highway.

As you head west after the Nullarbor Roadhouse, the cliffs kick in, and you can go right to the edge and peer over, if you don’t get vertigo. Possibly the spookiest part is looking at the cliffs along the coast from you, and seeing how the edges look really unstable, as if they could fall in at any time. After a while of going west the cliffs gradually turn into flatter scrubland, with these incredibly huge sand dunes lining rough beaches; if it didn’t look so dangerous, these beaches would be paradise.

Every now and then I’d drive over what looked like pedestrian crossings – in the middle of the desert! – which came in pairs, a kilometre or so apart, with a sign saying ‘RFDS Emergency Airstrip’. It took me ages to work out that RFDS stands for Royal Flying Doctor Service, and they use the highway to land in emergencies.

Eventually you reach the border, 185km past the Nullarbor Roadhouse, where the lookouts stop and the drive gets long and pretty boring. It wouldn’t be so bad if there were a bit of variety or something on the radio, but there’s neither, and there’s nothing to stop for on the way. Norseman, the first real town in Western Australia, is like an oasis; I stopped the night and had a long, hot shower for the first time since Wudinna.

‘Sounds a bit unhygienic’ you’re thinking, and you’re right, but water is really scarce in the desert. At the Nullarbor Roadhouse there aren’t any taps, the showers are A$1 for five minutes of hot water – so I had a cold shower, and because it’s so hot in the desert, it was actually rather pleasant – and the only water you can buy is bottled. It was a good job I’d packed plenty of water; there are signs in all the garages that tell you there’s no water available, due to serious shortages; this is a desert, after all.

Desert Rules

Because it’s a wilderness, the Nullarbor has its own rules. The most obvious one to a driver is the Waving Rule, another nicety of Aussie culture that I think I got the hang of, but I’m not sure. The idea is that, because the desert is so empty, you wave at oncoming traffic to say hello. That’s easy enough, surely. Then why did only half of those to whom I waved wave back? Did they spot my Victoria number plates and think, ‘Bloody Victorians, I hate them’ and ignore me, or was it more sinister? And why, whenever I decided that enough was enough and I wasn’t going to wave to these ungrateful buggers who didn’t reciprocate, did someone then wave at me? The solution: just wave at everyone but don’t look at them, so it doesn’t matter if they wave back; you’re being polite, end of story. The only problem is that when you’re back in civilisation, you have this urge to wave at every living thing, and that doesn’t really work when you’re driving through a busy town centre.

You might also be thinking that 912km is a pretty hefty drive; at an average of 100km/h it’s nine hours of driving, and that’s no joke. However, I crossed three time zones during the journey, so by the time I got to Norseman I’d put the clocks back by two-and-a-half hours, making it just about the right length for a day’s drive. There’s logic in there somewhere... but whatever, by the time I’d reached Norseman, had the local police check the car to make sure I wasn’t carrying any fresh fruit, vegetables or wool, I realised I’d arrived in Western Australia, and pitched for the night. At last I can genuinely say, ‘G’day from WA!’

Esperance

Written: 1 April 1996

Esperance is a picturesque little town. I had a day to kill there, so I wandered around, just exploring, and I discovered this wonderful little museum packed with seemingly random exhibits. City museums are one thing, with their multiple levels, priceless paintings and mummies from ancient Egypt (it’s funny how every museum seems to have something from a pyramid), but little town museums are a different kettle of exhibits altogether, and they’re a hoot. This one was typical – an old, disused railway station, with junk scattered everywhere – but I thought it was particularly interesting. I went in there because they had bits of the Skylab space station that fell to earth in 1979 over Esperance, and as a budding space cadet I just had to see them: those things had been in space, man! But there were other bits and bobs that were worth the effort, none more so than the unexpected appearance of a BBC Master Compact on display; this computer was only released in about 1985, when I was using BBC Micros at school, and seeing it in a museum made me feel ancient...

That afternoon I left Esperance and turned back on myself to visit the Cape Le Grand National Park, a beautiful set of granite hills set in scrubland right on the coast. The most intriguing peak was the 262m-high Frenchman’s Cap, so called because the top of this mountain is home to a huge cave that goes right through the peak, so when you look at it, it looks like a cap on top of the mountain. I bounded up the very steep granite surface, and reached the top in record time; the view was well worth it. On the way up I passed a group of middle-aged women having a breather, and I met them again at the bottom, as they started to get out lunch for them and the rest of their family. Whaddya know, five minutes later I was joining them for lunch, chatting about my trip and where I was from; the group consisted of a family from Birmingham and the relatives from WA that they were visiting. What a lovely collection of people... it just shows how easy it is to meet people in the countryside compared to the cities, where people are much more aloof.

Beautiful Coastline

My next destination was Bremer Bay, a tiny coastal town at the western end of the Fitzgerald River National Park (there are quite a few National Parks along the southwest coast). I arrived at Bremer Bay in the dark, after a considerable drive down some evil dirt roads, and pitched my tent in pitch black – something that becomes second nature after doing it every day for over a month.

The morning of April Fool’s Day I awoke to the sound of the sea, not uncommon when you’re on a coast-hugging trek. But Bremer Bay was quite beautiful, with a huge curved beach and deep blue surf, and I would have lingered longer if it hadn’t been for the call of the National Park up the road. Somewhere in that park was a mountain with my name on it, and I was going to conquer it.

West Mt Barren was the nearest one open to the public, so I headed out there; there’s a disease called dieback that gets spread by walkers, and it’s particularly prevalent on the southwest coast, so some mountains are closed off periodically to trudgers like me. Dieback rots plants’ roots, so it’s the botanical equivalent of athlete’s foot, but don’t try telling that to an Australian. Here Athlete’s Foot is a shop that sells sporting footwear, and tinea is the fungus that hangs around in showers. Another useful tip from Dr Mark’s Travel Almanac...

Anyway, West Mt Barren was delightful, and the sun beamed down as I headed up the slope. I was rather pleased that I’d got there in one piece, as the dirt roads through the park were particularly challenging; one thing I’m getting rather good at is doing controlled skids around corners, and it’s all down to those driving games you get down the pub. I knew those Wednesday nights down The Crown in St Albans would come in handy one day.

It’s hard to describe being totally alone on a hill, surrounded by barren scrubland and beautiful coastline in the distance. But it’s even more amazing when a wedge-tailed eagle decides to do its hunting right around the corner, and keeps swooping over your head. I’m no ornithologist, but even I’m amazed by birds that big and graceful[1]. Not a sound, just gliding into the sun... it’s quite a sight.

Point Ann

Having conquered West Mt Barren, I continued down the dirt road from hell to Point Ann, surely the most wonderful beach in the world. Here I was, completely alone, miles from civilisation, and there was this beach going, ‘You know you’re hot, you know you’re sweaty, so go on, jump in,’ which is exactly what I did. Nobody on the beach, not a cloud in the sky, endless, squeaky-clean sand... there isn’t much more that paradise can offer. I dried out in the sun, got out my guitar and serenaded the sand dunes, something I’d never do if there were any chance of someone actually hearing me. Still, the crabs enjoyed it.

Behind Point Ann is St Mary’s Inlet, which is... an inlet! But it’s no ordinary inlet, as it’s so flat it goes on for ages. I stalked through the bush and round the side of the water, and eventually battled through the undergrowth to the inlet itself. The tide happened to be out, and there was this huge – and I mean huge – flat area of white sand, surrounded by gently sloping bush. It had the same feeling as the Coorong, just smaller, but I still danced around like a madman, adding boot prints to the roo marks all over the place.

It couldn’t last forever, though, and although I could have camped the night, I wanted to get to civilisation and to a long, hot shower, so I packed up and skidded my merry way to Albany, further west along the coast.

[1] Be careful where you repeat this phrase...

Albany

Written: 3 April 1996

Albany is cute, but it drove me insane, almost literally. It seems to be an Australian thing, not bothering with road signs or making them so hard to find that by the time you spot them, you’ve missed your turning. One theory is that in a country where roads are all orthogonal and people work in blocks, you don’t need road signs, it’s all a case of ‘two blocks west’ and so on. I think that’s crazy: in a world where everything is at right angles and the roads look pretty much the same everywhere, you surely need signs even more. My pet theory is that it’s a bravado thing; when I see a bumper sticker that says ‘Real Men Do It Without Road Signs’ I’ll know I was right all along.

So after getting lost a number of times, I did eventually manage to get to the top of Mt Melville to look over the city – not one of the world’s most inspiring panoramas, it must be said – and I eventually found the right direction for Torndirrup National Park, the most visited park on the southwest coast. I couldn’t, however, work out why this is the case; I like National Parks because they’re challenging, they’re as near to wilderness as you’re going to get in this day and age, and they have beautiful walks, stunning sights, and hardly any tourists. But Torndirrup is the most popular National Park because it’s close to Albany, which is a tourist centre. Sure, I saw the Gap (a reasonably impressive cliff), I went to see the Natural Bridge (not bad, I suppose), I visited the Blowholes (which steadfastly refused to blow), I climbed Stony Hill (where the view was good, but not mind-boggling), and everything was pleasant enough. But what was mind-boggling was the group of people I met there.

Backpackers vs Travellers

When I got to the top of Stony Hill after an easy five-minute stroll, there was a little group of people there, and when I got my camera out to capture the view, one member of the group offered to take a picture of me, with the view included. He then proceeded to explain what it was I was looking at – the Gap, Natural Bridge, Blowholes, Albany – and I listened politely, not mentioning that I knew all this, thank you, and I wasn’t a complete moron and did know how to read a map, so nice to have met you. It turned out that this guy was a manager of the Youth Hostel in Albany, and he had a tour in tow, so I instantly forgave him for treating me like a tourist, especially when he asked whether I would like a cup of coffee, seeing as they were about to have one.

‘Thank you very much, that’s very kind of you,’ I said and I sat down to enjoy coffee and biscuits with this little group from the hostel. And that’s when I realised what has happened: in the time since I last stayed in a hostel, back in Port Arthur at the end of January, I’ve developed into a traveller, and these people were backpackers. The distinction is subtle but important; I go where I want, precisely, even to the point of driving past a sign, doing a double take, reversing back and following it just to see what’s there (I’ve got 200km of spare fuel in the boot, so I won’t run dry). But backpackers are bound by the laws of Coach and Hostel: they need both to exist, and travel from one place to another, staring at the world through bus windows, and meeting other people from within this culture, mainly other Europeans, Asians, Americans and so on. They think they’re travelling, and they think they’re really experiencing Australia, but they’re only experiencing part of it. Ask them if they’ve met any nice Australians, and they only talk about tour guides and hostel managers. These people made me realise that getting a car – even one that has not only eaten up my funds, but also chewed the cud seven times and converted it into milk – was a great move. If I did it again, I wouldn’t change a thing.

One handy thing about backpackers, though, is the discount they get at museums, and the guy from the hostel got me into the Whaleworld museum for a dollar less than normal, and then gave us all a guided tour of the old whaling station on the peninsula, and most interesting it was too. Actually, it was rather horrific – we saw where they chopped the whales up, and boiled the blubber to release the oils, and the harpoons they used to kill the whales, and so on – but it was well worth the visit. So perhaps I should stop being too critical; after all, backpackers are still nice people. They’re just not quite the same as travellers.

Porongurups and Stirling Ranges

Unsatisfied by the views at Torndirrup, I decided to spend the afternoon in the Porongurups, a range of hills to the north of Albany. The Porongurups are home to Castle Rock, a mountain that sounded about the right size for an afternoon’s climb. It was gorgeous, with these huge granite boulders perched precariously (or so it looked) on the top, and the view was worth the effort, even if I did get mauled by a huge cloud of flying ants when I reached the summit. The area round Albany is truly weird; it’s totally flat, but you get these big triangular mountains that just appear out of nowhere, and when you climb them you can see for miles. This is what happened at Castle Rock, though the best was yet to come...

After Castle Rock, I headed north again towards the Stirling Ranges, a bigger range of mountains still. As it was getting late, I pitched camp in the National Park; a lot of parks allow camping at specific sites, and although you don’t get any amenities, they’re really cheap, and their locations are second to none. The beauty of them is the silence and the ruggedness; you don’t get too many families with kids in National Park sites, as they tend to need the amenities. I sat in a clearing that night, reading my book by the light of the full moon, and the way it lit everything up was quite beautiful, albeit rather eerie.

The next day was when the weather started to turn; since the Nullarbor things hadn’t been too bad, with cloudy mornings, beautiful afternoons and freezing nights, but on Wednesday, the rain came to say hello. Luckily I had an early start and managed to climb Bluff Knoll, the highest peak in the Stirling Ranges, before the weather joined the party, but I could see it rolling in from the peak, and made a hasty return to the car to drive to Pemberton.

Pemberton

Written: 5 April 1996

It was getting pretty murky as I drove from Bluff Knoll and through Walpole, visiting the Tingle Tree and Circular Pool, the first being a huge karri tree, and the second being, well, a circular pool. The whole area to the west of Albany is home to the most amazing forests you’ve ever seen, with really tall trees stretching up into the distant canopy, and driving to Pemberton, my next destination, was a delight, especially as I was leaving the weather behind.

Pemberton is as pretty as a picture. Imagine a tiny village completely surrounded by huge karri forests, and you’re almost there. One of the main attractions of Pemberton is the Gloucester Tree, a 61m karri tree with a lookout at the top; it’s open to the public, and you can climb up a rickety old ladder of steel rods set into the tree, all the way to the top. It’s a scary climb – one mistake and you could easily fall to your doom – but the view is amazing. The lookout used to be used to spot fires, and as a result the top is above the forest canopy, giving quite a view.

The caravan park I stayed at had a fireplace for every site and a huge pile of logs out the back that you could raid as much as you liked, and it didn’t take me long to get a pile of wood together, seeing as the night was drawing in. And then it happened: despite the fact that I was miles from the beach, my site got invaded by a family of Germans, who didn’t speak a word of English, but who took over the picnic table, expressed extreme interest in my fireplace, and well-and-truly towelled my beach. My response? I decided to hit the bottle shop and make the best of a bad job.

Which I did, in style. Putting down their utter disregard for privacy to a forgivable difference in cultures, I proceeded to have the most interesting Pidgin English conversation with the family; at least, I think it was interesting, but it’s always hard to know what the subject is in Pidgin, especially alcohol-Pidgin. Never mind; they offered to feed me steak and salad (seeing as I’d offered them all a beer and was being extremely polite about their invasion tactics) and we had a very pleasant evening by the fire, talking gobbledygook.

But I paid for it in the morning. I don’t know why it is – old age, something they put in Aussie beer, a developing stomach ulcer perhaps, who knows? – but sometimes I wake up after only a few beers (not necessarily too many) and feel just awful, much worse than with a normal hangover. I reckon that this time I got a serious hangover because I hadn’t had a drink since the Nullarbor Roadhouse, and I was out of practice.

Thursday was, therefore, a bit of a washout; no sooner had I finished my Coco Pops for brekkie than I was throwing them up. Suffice to say I wasn’t going anywhere, and I paid for another night in the caravan park, feeling very sorry for myself. To compound the agony my air mattress had sprung a leak in the night, a slow one that let the air out over a matter of hours, so I woke up at five in the morning, lying on cold, hard ground and aching to the core. I felt terrible, and it was all my own fault.

But here’s a perfect example of every cloud having a silver lining. Pemberton has a thriving wood industry, and one of the offshoots is the local art and craft set-up. When I felt a little better I walked to the Fine Woodcraft Gallery to ease my aching bones, and I was truly stunned. What a place! The most amazing woodcraft was on display, from all-wood clocks to whole furniture displays to sculptures, all made out of the most beautiful woods. The proprietor of the shop was a friendly soul, too, and when he found out I was a computer journalist, he took me to the back to show me his Apple Mac, of which he was justly proud. It’s little touches like this that make these visits worthwhile, and I felt compelled to buy something to remember the shop by; when I walked out of the shop I was the proud owner of a little sack of fragrant herbs that were specially mixed to promote alertness while driving, ideal for hanging up in the car.

But even that couldn’t shake the ache I had behind my eyes, and to add insult to injury, Thursday night was when the weather I had spotted in the Stirling Ranges finally caught up with me. There I was, with my fireplace finally all to myself, and a large pile of logs, and it suddenly went very cold and started to rain. So when I got up on Friday, the tent was soaked, the car was sodden, and my enthusiasm was dampened... but I wanted to move on, so move on I did.

Cape Leeuwin

Written: 6 April 1996

My first port of call after Pemberton was Augusta, right on the southwest coast of the continent. I drove to Cape Leeuwin lighthouse, the most southwesterly point of Australia, and the only place where you can see the Indian Ocean to your right, and the Southern Ocean to your left. After climbing the lighthouse, I headed north to Jewel Cave, and went on an hour-long tour of this most amazing sight. There are about 150 caves in the southwestern tip, four of which are open to the public, and they are stunning, much better than the ones I saw in Naracoorte in South Australia. I would have liked to have seen them all, but the prices they charge are not exactly cheap, so I went for the most picturesque. The other highly recommended one, Lake Cave, has a huge underground lake, but I’m far too scared of dark water for that... that’s one phobia I still have to conquer.

I then realised that not only was there precious little between me and Perth except for roads and holiday resorts, but it was also Good Friday, and every man and his wallaby was heading south for the weekend. The logical solution? Go into town for some peace and quiet, and it worked. I arrived at Fremantle (a suburb of Perth, effectively, though the locals count themselves as a separate town) on Friday night, and found it totally dead, completely empty, and with plenty of vacancies in the camping ground. I’ve since found out that the only two days in the year that Australian pubs close are Good Friday and Christmas Day, which might have had something to do with it.

It’s now Easter Saturday, and I’ve had my first taste of Perth in the form of Fremantle on a Saturday. The sun is out, the market is swinging, and the atmosphere is cosmopolitan, chic and quite wonderful. I’m going to get a beer in one of the wonderful pubs (or ‘taverns’ as they call then in Western Australia), and I’m going to pamper myself. I think I could fall in love with Perth; I might get a job here for a couple of weeks, but I still have to move on before too long if I’m to see northern WA. But that’s a whole new adventure, and I’ve got me some city dwellin’ to do first.

Isn’t this fun!

Drop Bears

Written: 12 April 1996

It’s quiz time! You should by now have a pretty good idea what the general Australian psyche is like, so see if you can identify who’s talking to whom in the following conversations, all, of course, overheard on a bus. It’s the same two people in every instance, just to make it easy. Here we go...

Conversation A

‘Of course, you’ve got to be careful of drop bears: they’re everywhere at this time of year.’

‘Drop bears? What on earth are they?’

‘Well, they’re these bears that are distantly related to koalas, and they hang around in trees, sleeping most of the time.’

‘What’s so dangerous about that?’

‘Well, when a drop bear gets hungry, he sits there, up in the tree, looking round for something to eat. And he sits and sits and sits, and waits until some unsuspecting animal wanders under his tree and then – wallop! – he drops down on top of ’em. So if you happen to be walking under a tree when a drop bear’s looking for a meal, you’re in for a nasty shock.’

‘Yeah...’

‘But the worst thing is the claws. Because they have to climb trees, they’ve got long, sharp claws for gripping bark, and if a drop bear lands on you, the chances are he’s going to rip huge gashes down your back. It’s not a pleasant way to go; the loss of blood can be enough to kill you, even if he decides not to eat you.’

‘No shit...’

‘Yup, and they just love trees in sleepy suburbs, so watch it when you’re walking to the pub, eh.’

‘Yeah... thanks man.’

‘No worries. Anytime...’

Conversation B

‘Of course, you won’t be able to open a bank account with an Australian bank.’

‘Why not? I’ve had no problems in places like England.’

‘Didn’t you know? You can’t open a bank account in Australia if you’re a woman.’

‘What? That’s ridiculous!’

‘Well, it’s the way it is. You can only open a bank account if you’re a man. Works really well, too; you can keep a woman in her place when she can’t deal with banks.’

‘In this day and age, I don’t believe it...’

‘It’s true. Would I lie to you?’

‘Err...’

Conversation C

‘You know you told me that you guys all ride around on kangaroos in Australia?’

‘Yeah. Well, they’re easy to park, cheaper than running a car, and they go really fast round town.’

‘Yeah, you told me. But there’s one thing I don’t get.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Well, how can you tell if a kangaroo is a police kangaroo, rather than a normal one?’

‘Easy. It’s got a flashing blue light on its head.’

‘Ah... right.’

Conversation D

‘You know Tasmania? The little island off the bottom of Australia?’

‘Err... I guess so.’

‘You know it’s right on the edge of a huge rift in the ocean floor?’

‘No.’

‘Well, it is. Anyway, a few years ago it started to break away from the ocean floor, and Tassie’s slowly falling into this massive underwater canyon.’

‘Really?’

‘Yep, and they had to build these two huge chains to attach Tassie to the mainland, so it won’t drift off and disappear underwater. Massive buggers they are, with huge anchor points either side of Melbourne.’

‘Wow. That’s amazing.’

‘Isn’t it?’

Solutions

Yes, they’re all genuine conversations between serious Aussie wind-up merchants, and gullible tourists, who end up genuinely believing that Aussies ride around on kangaroos, have problems with drop bears, don’t let women open bank accounts and chain their island states to the mainland. I kid you not: I nearly fell for the drop bear story in Melbourne (but not quite) and there’s plenty more where they come from. Never trust an Australian who grins wickedly all the time...

Kalgoorlie

Written: 20 April 1996

Before arriving in Perth, I’d fired off an email to the city’s Acorn dealer and said it would be nice to meet up, and much to my surprise he invited me round for a chat. Wouldn’t you know, my visit coincided with the girl on technical support going on holiday, so when we met up and I mentioned in passing that I was looking for a job, it suddenly turned a job interview. Much to my delight, I got offered three weeks’ employment, starting in a couple of weeks’ time; it would end up turning into five weeks of very satisfying work, charging up my coffers with impeccable timing.

After exhausting the sights and sounds of Perth, I decided to kill my last free week before work by heading due east from Perth to Kalgoorlie, the gold mining centre of WA, and the place that secured the future of the state. There was no point in rushing, so I plotted my course before setting off down the freeway.

My first stop on my journey east was York, a pleasant little town that proclaims itself to be the oldest town in WA after Perth. It was nice enough, if a little quiet, and proved the perfect place to relax in preparation for the journey into the outback. The only excitement was an incident involving this guy in a unit adjacent to the caravan park, who was obviously beating the shit out of his girlfriend, though she managed to escape and drive off in his car, which was a relief.

The next day I headed off to a little place called Hyden, home to some weird and wonderful rock formations. The most famous of these is Wave Rock, a strange wall of stone that has been eroded into a frozen surfing wave, complete with vertical stripes that make it look like a huge ice-cream breaker. Also in the area was a strange sight called the Hippo’s Yawn, which looked just like a hippo’s mouth, but to be honest I’ve seen more fascinating places; Tourist’s Yawn is perhaps a more accurate name. One thing that is amazing about Wave Rock, though, is the wind. The area is so strangely shaped that when the wind blows through the treetops and you’re hanging round the rock, the sound is really eerie. I was wandering around the back of the rock, keeping away from the busload of Japanese tourists who were destroying everything in their path (including the peace), when I first heard it – and it sounded utterly ancient. It’s moments like this when you realise what a deeply spiritual land this is.

Wave Rock is also home to the largest collection of moths I’ve ever seen. I set up camp in the nearby campsite, and there I was, sitting by my petrol lamp and minding my own business with a good book, when suddenly all hell broke loose. I’m used to moths coming along to share my light, but this was more like a moth storm. Despite me constantly moving my chair – a rolling stone gathers no moths, after all – I eventually gave up and let the buggers use me as a bedroom. Two minutes later I looked up and saw this two-inch-long furry sod sitting on my knee, soaking up the rays, and, calm as someone whose mind is still involved in his book, I just brushed him off onto the floor, before it hit me just how big he was; it was only then that my skin crawled and I had to stand up and jump out of the light to calm down. Still, it’s an improvement on screaming a lot and having to find someone else to deal with the problem for me...

Dreaming Sites

The next morning I set off up a dirt road towards Southern Cross, which is about 200km west of Kalgoorlie, and on the way I visited a place called Mulka’s Cave, home to some Aboriginal cave paintings. It strikes me that I’ve not said much about Aboriginal culture so far, so I’d better explain how the Aboriginal myths hang together.

All the Aboriginal tribes have their own stories about the regions they inhabited, and these stories all come together to form the mythology of the Aboriginal people. The mythology is collectively called the Dreaming, so when you visit parts of Australia and read about how the Aborigines believed the landscape was formed and so on, you’re reading part of the Dreaming, and in its entirety the Dreaming describes how everything was formed, from the earth to the animals to the laws of the tribes. For example, the story of the Coorong involves this guy chasing a huge fish about, thus forming the huge dune during the chase, and making the Murray River really wide at that point with the fish’s passage. Mulka’s Cave also has a story in the Dreaming.

The story goes that this unmarried couple had a child, and because it was forbidden to have children out of wedlock, the child, Mulka, was born cross-eyed. This made it impossible for Mulka to aim his spear straight, so he couldn’t hunt animals for food, and was forced to kill and eat little children. This diet made him so large and fierce that the local tribesmen decided to rid themselves of the menace. They chased him out of his cave, and eventually killed him some miles away, where they dumped the body on an ant’s nest, without a proper burial. You can still see the handprints of Mulka on the roof of his cave today.

The idea behind the story was to make sure that people didn’t flaunt the tribe’s marriage laws, rather than trying to stop people from eating children. The handprints are there, too, along with some pictures of hunting that were probably added later. It’s quite a thrill seeing these pieces of history, especially when places like Mulka’s Cave are so far off the beaten track that very few people will bother. Even I wouldn’t have bothered if I weren’t taking the back road to Southern Cross.

Another interesting thing about Mulka’s Cave, and indeed Wave Rock, is that they are water catchment areas. What this means is that when it rains, water pours over the rocks, and the enterprising local council has built a series of channels and dams to store the water; after all, it’s so dry out here most of the time. It’s strange to see these ancient rock mounds topped with modern concrete walls to direct the water; it’s a bit of a shame, but I suppose it’s preferable to huge pipelines from the coast.

My next stop was Southern Cross, a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere that was as peaceful as most little outback towns are. An interesting gimmick in Southern Cross is that every street is named after a constellation (as is the town), and indeed there wasn’t a cloud in the sky that night, so the stars were spectacular. But nothing much happens in Southern Cross, so after barbying some snags (that’s cooking some sausages on the barbecue to you and me) I hit the sack and awoke on Wednesday to wonderful weather and a straight road heading into the rising sun, all the way to the Eastern Goldfields.

Kalgoorlie

Kalgoorlie is really stranded. Gold was discovered there towards the end of the last century by these wandering travellers looking for grazing land, and the place went ballistic, with crowds of people heading for the desert with gold in their eyes. The only problem? There’s precious little water out here, and plenty of them died, or had such terrible living standards that survival was a serious challenge.

The solution, built at the turn of the century, was a huge pipeline from Perth all the way to Kalgoorlie, with storage reservoirs on the way and pumping stations along the route. It’s still the way that the goldfields get most of their water, and you notice it when you follow the main highway east. I’d been plying the scenic route until Southern Cross, but then I joined the highway, which has this huge metal pipe along its side all the way to Kalgoorlie. It’s quite a strange sight, especially when you get a straight bit that cuts through trees, and you can see two parallel cleared strips heading off into the distance, like a huge railway track. And the way it glitters in the rising sun is quite something...

Kalgoorlie is an oddity. It’s in the middle of nowhere, at the end of this pipeline, and it’s beautiful. The buildings are exquisite, built when the gold was producing fabulous wealth, and the whole town is surrounded by mines that are still worked. I visited one of these opencast mines, but got turned away while they blasted, so after a quick beer I went back, and you’ve never seen such a big hole in the ground. When you first see it you think, ‘OK, it’s big,’ but then you look down and see trucks in the bottom that look like Tonka toys, and it’s then you realise it’s just huge.

I also visited the town museum, and as with other smallish towns in Australia, it was pretty good. I’m not particularly interested in mining or gold (though I probably wouldn’t turn down the latter), but it just seemed right to be reading all about it in Kalgoorlie.

Back to Perth

Thursday came along and I decided to head back towards Perth, so I drove south to Kambalda, another mining town, to see the salt lake there, Lake Lefroy. Imagine being on top of a hill, with a searing blue sky above, a dull, reddish desert all around, and this huge, flat, white lake surrounding most of the hill; it was quite a sight in the hot sunshine.

It was a reasonably uneventful journey back to Merredin, except for my lunch stop. I pulled off the road into a picnic spot, and saw a sign to a lookout, just 200m into the bush. I jumped at the chance to pop into the bush and stretch my legs, so I wandered over to this rock outcrop, and what should I see at the nearby waterhole but a flock of emus. They soon spotted me and ran off into the undergrowth, but it was a fascinating sight; the view from the lookout wasn’t half bad, either.

Merredin was where the weather broke. It rained. And it rained. I sheltered in the campsite’s kitchen, where I was joined by a friendly Siamese cat and a Japanese guy who was cycling across the Nullarbor, which struck me as a pretty intriguing way to spend your life.

Friday saw me arrive in Toodyay (pronounced ‘Toojay’) in the Avon Valley, only 90km from Perth. The idea had been to go walking in the local National Park, but the weather was so bad I settled for a tour of the Old Gaol (where I learned the story of Moondyne Joe, the convict who just kept escaping) and spent the rest of the day sheltering in the tent. That’s because the tent is more waterproof than the car...

...a fact that became quite apparent on Saturday. I drove to Perth and booked myself into a hostel in Scarborough, just down the road from where I was going to be working, and it kept niggling me on the way that the area smelt like Stilton cheese... but it was only on unpacking the car that I discovered the mould in the rear passenger’s floor space. Yes, my car is mouldy, and I’m strangely proud of the fact. I might even try to grow some mustard and cress next time it rains...

Rottnest Island

Written: 28 May 1996

After a few weeks back in the office routine, I finally got around to visiting Rottnest Island, a popular place to visit just 20km west of Perth. Rotto, as it’s affectionately known by the locals, was first ‘discovered’ by a Dutchman in the 1690s, and was named Rat’s Nest Island in Dutch, due to the local inhabitants – quokkas – that look like huge rats. They’re actually marsupials, and on closer inspection they’re like a cross between a rat and a kangaroo, and stand about a foot tall. They’ve also got cute little faces, which is perfect for survival in the tourist age (even if you’re not supposed to feed them).

Rotto is an interesting place. You can’t bring a car onto the island, and the most popular way to ‘do’ the island is by bike. As the island is only 11km long (that’s just under seven miles) it’s an easy bike ride to explore the whole thing, but I decided to walk it, and it turned out to be a good idea.

Rottnest is pretty well untouched once you’re out of the tourist settlement on the east end of the island; at least, that’s how it looks when you’re used to the city. However, there are some serious gun emplacements left over from the second world war, a grand old lighthouse right in the middle of the island, and some other little settlements, all of which turn the relatively scrubby landscape into something worth touring. There are a number of salt lakes inside the perimeter of the island that dry up in summer, but as it was winter when I visited, they were reasonably full.

The coast is quite varied within a short distance. The north and west coasts (insofar as an east-west lozenge shaped island can be said to have a west coast) are very rugged, and the eastern coast has sandy beaches, but the fun part of the island – and the reason it is well known – is the quokka population. Sit down and break out the food, and you’ll get these cocky little things climbing up your legs, jumping on the table, all to get a little taste of your lunch... but they’re so cute it’s great fun. You can see why Rotto is a fun day out for the kids – and big kids, of course.

Perth

Written: 16 June 1996

Perth was where Lady Luck smiled on me, and gave me not just one job, but two. A couple of weeks into my stint at the city’s Acorn dealer, the head honcho from Acorn New Zealand, whom I’d met when working for Acorn in Melbourne, was visiting Perth to talk to the dealer about developments in the company, and to reassure them following the closure of the Melbourne office, which had been announced not long after I struck west. Much to my surprise, he only went and offered me a job at Acorn in Auckland for when I got to New Zealand, which suddenly opened up huge possibilities for my ongoing travel plans. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know...

Exploring Perth

So I worked during the week, and spent the weekends exploring Perth and its surroundings. Highlights of this wonderful city – well, edited highlights anyway – follow, in no particular order:

- When I first arrived in Perth, I contacted a friend of a friend called Glen, who kindly offered to put me up for a week of barbecues, golf, drinking and gambling. The Saturday I spent in his company proved to be particularly interesting; Glen, his friends and I headed out to the pub in the afternoon for a few drinks, and ended up having a bit of a flutter on the horses. A lot of pubs in Australia are also bookies, with sports-friendly TVs dotted around the place and a separate counter for betting; it’s quite unobtrusive, and good for the bookies’ business, obviously. Anyway, three of us – Glen, Rick and me – went in for a tiny flutter, putting A$2 each into something called a trifecta (which I didn’t understand at all) where we each picked a horse from the same race, and if those three were the first three across the line, ignoring the ordering of the three, we’d win.

Incredibly our second race (of three) came up; we’d accidentally picked the first three in the race, and our A$6 bet won us a whopping A$365! I couldn’t believe it, but when I got handed A$100 cash and we still had a drinking pot of A$65 between us, I soon got the hang of it. It was typical beginner’s luck – I don’t bet, even on the Grand National, and I was the one who filled in the winning slip. After a win like that, how could we fail to celebrate?

But that was just the beginning. Gradually everyone left the pub to go home for supper except for the three of us, so Glen rang up his mate Tyler to see what he was up to. It turned out he was off to play cards at this bloke’s house, and we could come along if we wanted, just bring the beer. Red rag to a bull...

I don’t know much about cards, but I remembered the rules of blackjack from way back, and luckily that was the game rather than poker, which I don’t understand at all. The three of us who won on the horses were there, with Whitey (the guy who owned the house) and a bloke called Digger. I’d have been quite intimidated if I hadn’t been so merry, and I was a bit concerned when I came away with A$75 more than I arrived with, but nobody seemed to mind that I was looking suspiciously like a hustler. When we left at 4am, I’d managed to drink all night, eat a huge pizza, and still come out about A$150 up on the whole day. I couldn’t believe it...

- On quite a few occasions I visited Kings Park, a luscious botanical garden that overlooks the centre of Perth, with a breathtaking vista of gleaming skyscrapers, the deep blue Swan River, and the greenery of Perth’s trees, all laid out at your feet. One particularly memorable visit involved an afternoon of sitting under a gum tree, writing articles, followed by a deep red sunset that lit up the skyscrapers in the weirdest way – as Kings Park is to the west of Perth, I was between the sun and the city. Slowly the city lights came on, and within an hour the view has turned into a classic cityscape by night. It was really rather memorable.

- The centre of Perth is quite compact, and you can walk around it pretty easily; there’s a number of historical buildings, but not quite as many as in the eastern state capitals, as Perth took considerably longer to develop. It’s the most remote capital city in the world, and it wasn’t until gold was discovered in Kalgoorlie in the late 19th century that things started to take off. Still, places like Government House (surrounded by walls and trees, though unfortunately closed to the public) and St George’s Cathedral (a large, red church dwarfed by skyscrapers) are worth the visit. With such a small population, there’s precious little traffic or pollution, and parking is a dream.

- Work has its perks, too. There’s a rather posh public school in Perth called Scotch College, where every pupil has a Pocket Book computer (just like mine), and I’ve been commissioned to write an article about them. The teacher in charge of the computer department, who also happens to be a housemaster, invited me out to dinner one Friday night; Barney (the housemaster), his wife Candy and I went to Fremantle, and had a very entertaining meal on the ‘cappuccino strip’, the main drag in Freo. It’s little things like this that make what I’m doing so different to the ‘year off before university’-type round the world trip. I’m getting paid to write articles, and I’m also getting invited out to dinner; I can’t lose! One thing’s for sure: Barney’s going to get a pretty damn good write up...

- So, lots of entertainment, conversation, food and drink... and a nice warm feeling – a stark contrast to the hostel that weekend. For the first time since using hostels, I’d found a place with a really sound bunch of people: not too many naive Poms, some interesting Aussies and a good location, close to work and close to the beach. But there’s always a bad side, and Scarborough’s bad side was called Clayton.

Clayton was the local loony; it’s part of the hostel culture to have at least one misunderstood alcoholic, with a string of disastrous love affairs behind him and a problem with reality. Clayton had already gained a name for himself in the hostel with his irrational mood swings, and after the news hit of the gun massacre at Port Arthur, we were all a little wary of the man. Anyway, when I returned to the hostel on Saturday afternoon, Clayton was crashed out in the corner of one of the communal rooms in the hostel, obviously after a heavy session the night before. That wasn’t anything surprising.

The fact that he was still there, immobile, well into the evening caused little concern, until someone tried to wake him and found that he was totally out of it, and had blood all down his face. The hostel manager called the paramedics, and when they got there Clayton was totally spun out: shaking like a leaf in a typhoon, unable to hold a glass of water... he was a wreck. They found a prescription for Prozac in his room, which they thought he might have tried to overdose on, and then he was in the ambulance and being whisked away into the night. We never saw him again; poor Clayton.

- The freelance writing has also taken off rather pleasingly, as I’ve managed to get commissions worth more than £1700 over the next 12 months, and that goes a long way on the road. It seems that all the favours I did other freelancers by giving them a break when I was an editor are turning back to me; now they’re in the editorial seat, and I’m getting all the work. I never thought of being nice to people as an investment before, but it’s paying off handsomely.

- I also stayed with a lovely couple called Rags and Judy – Judy worked with me at the Acorn dealer – from whom I rented a spare room and good company. It turned out that Rags was really into his sailing, and in a fit of Shiraz Cabernet he asked me if I wanted to come along. It was quite an experience: four men in a yacht, Rags, Bernie, Ken and me, racing round the sea with just the wind to push us along. I sat there, clueless as to how to read the winds, change the direction of the foresail or hoist the spinnaker. I don’t know much more now, but I can safely say that yachting is up there with fishing in the ‘quiet day out, male bonding’ stakes. I’ve never been in a race where you’re constantly competing, but in such a slow, mellow way. Maybe if I can find some sucker with a yacht in Queensland, I’ll give it another go.

- I’d been meaning to change the oil and oil filter in my car for some time – whenever I took out the dip-stick it’d be covered in thick, black sludge – and I finally got around to it in Perth. It’s the first oil change I’ve done on my own, and although it’s not a major task, it’s good to know I can do it. I’d spent the week at work hacking this chemical container into something to catch the oil, and it worked a treat. Lo, Mark the Mechanic! Rags also hacked around with the engine, sorting out the distributor to stop the engine ‘pinking’ – it had been making a fair old racket when accelerating – and now it’s running as well as it ever has. It was good to see that the day’s work would have cost me about A$140 in a garage, but only cost me about A$20 in parts in the end.

- I’ve really got into libraries lately, for some reason; they’re really peaceful, and they give you a great idea about what people read and think about in the city you’re visiting. You also get an interesting cross-section of the city in the clientele, with students, businessmen, mothers and children... it’s a fascinating microcosm, and it’s totally free. It’s a bonus if the library is beautiful, as with Melbourne, but even the ultra-modern Perth library has a strangely compelling atmosphere. I have no idea how these libraries compare to English ones, as ‘library’ and ‘leisure’ are two words that were previously incompatible to me, but I certainly enjoyed whiling away the afternoons, typing away between the bookshelves. I truly am becoming middle-aged...

The Baby Ward

Written: 17 June 1996

There are lots of defining moments in life. Your first proper drinking session; losing your virginity; realising that some of the music your parents liked isn’t all that bad; growing your hair before realising that it doesn’t suit you, then cutting it off, before growing it again; realising that the only thing love and logic have in common are the first two letters; learning to drive, and then learning to crash; leaving home and getting to grips with laundry, banks and two-minute noodles; sitting in a field in Glastonbury, finding reality a problem; being a best man... and that’s just a start. But one of the weirdest is one of the most innocuous: the other day I visited a baby factory, and it blew my mind.

I spent my last few days in Perth at Ron’s house (Ron being a friend of Steve, the service manager at ECS, the Acorn dealer where I’d been working). Steve and his wife, Anne, were staying with Ron until their new house was ready, as it was still being built, and I needed somewhere to stay before heading off on the next leg of my trip; Ron, bless him, came up trumps. All three were wonderfully kind to me, I have to say.

Anyway, Anne had about seven weeks of her pregnancy to go, and on Sunday 16th June she realised the baby had stopped kicking, so she went to the hospital. They induced birth straight away, to stop the baby from dying; it hadn’t got enough water in the womb, or something along those lines, so Ron and I got a call from Steve on Sunday afternoon to say that he was a Dad. All together now... ahhh!

On Monday we all went to visit, my first visit to a premature baby ward. Bloody hell! It was a stunningly bright white ward, with tiny little creatures dotted around, some in incubators, some in clear plastic cots, all hooked up to beeping machines and oscilloscopes. And there, among this amazing collection of life struggling to gain a foothold in the world, was Steve and Anne’s little baby, lying in a glass box with tubes and sensors hooked up to him, pink as a sunset and breathing like an engine. The fingers! They were so tiny. A little sucking mouth, a stubby nose: what a cute little thing he was.

But the atmosphere was what hit me. I don’t like hospitals much – not many people do, really – but this one was different. Everyone was there for a purpose, to bring a squealing, chundering package into the world, and the optimism was quite amazing. A room full of newborn babies, with goo-goo eyed mothers clucking around, fussing over the little blighters; it’s a sight I’ll not forget in a hurry. It almost made me broody.

Still, it didn’t take much imagination to take it from a maternity ward to something far scarier, at least as far as I was concerned. A few nights before I’d had a dream about an ex-girlfriend ringing me up in the bush – how, I don’t know – and telling me that she’d had my baby and I had to come back to look after it. Obviously my maths isn’t too good in dreamland, but whatever the implausibility of the plot, I woke up in a cold sweat...

Not surprising, then, that it was wonderful to be setting off on the road again.

Drive-through Heaven

Written: 18 June 1996

The drive-through: that’s the best thing about Australia’s huge distances. At least, I think it’s down to the distance; it could be the American influence, but because everyone in Australia has a car, you can get pretty much everything at a drive-through.

Sure, we have drive-through McDonald’s in the UK, but they’re not everywhere like they are here; and here you’ve also got drive-through Kentucky Fried Chicken, drive-through Hungry Jack’s (the Australian name for Burger King), drive-through Chicken Treat, even drive-through Red Rooster. Yes, Australia likes its junk food.

Then you’ve got the drive-through bottle shop, surely the best idea in the world. Going to a party? No worries: just go via the bottle shop on the way and pick up a carton of tinnies and some smokes. It makes all the difference; if you’re sitting at home, vegging out, then the fact that you can drive to the bottle shop and don’t even have to leave your car makes it that much easier to prise yourself off the sofa to get the beers. You’ll know what I mean when they get ’em back home.

But the strangest drive-through has to be the one I saw in northern Perth. There it was, bold as brass, a sign proclaiming:

24-HOURS A DAY

SEVEN DAYS A WEEK

DRIVE-THROUGH CHEMIST

One presumes this is to help out those who went down the drive-through bottle shop the night before. Genius!

Nambung (Pinnacles Desert)

Written: 20 June 1996

My first destination after Perth was Cervantes, some 200km north up the coast and home to the incomparable Nambung National Park. It was also home to serious amounts of wind and torrential rain – it was obviously payback time for all the good weather I’ve been having, as it was all I could do to get the tent pegged down in time for the downpour. The rain out here comes in very short, very sharp bursts; it may only rain for one minute, but you’ll be soaked to the skin by the time the rain stops, and there’s absolutely no warning that it’s about to rain. It’s like there’s someone up there with a tap, and this is the time of year he gets to play with it. Then again, this is a desert, so you can’t really complain when it does rain; the poor place really needs the water.

After spending the first night huddled inside my tent, I got up early and headed out to the park’s main attraction: the Pinnacles Desert. There are mountains in Australia, but everyone’s seen mountains. There are rivers, deserts, gorges, forests and lakes, and everyone’s seen this sort of thing somewhere, though possibly not on the scale of those in Australia. But unless you’ve been to the Pinnacles Desert, you won’t have seen anything quite like it. Imagine a gently rolling, sandy desert, with the odd bit of green scrub around; it’s actually a dune system, but one that’s now a few kilometres inland, with the sea just visible in the distance. Now imagine over 4000 limestone stacks, ranging from tiny to about four metres high, dotted around for as far as the eye can see. These stacks are all sorts of shapes, from long and thin, to stubby, to something out of the caterpillar’s hookah smoke in Alice in Wonderland. There’s a suspension-challenging dirt road to the desert, and you can then take a short loop road through the desert. I drove it once, and decided it was so impressive I’d do it again, but this time on foot.

This turned out to be a good decision. I walked it in the morning while the sun was still quite low, so the shadows were quite surreal and much more interesting close up, rather than from the car. There was also quite a lot to see off the beaten track, something that driving visitors would miss in their hasty day trips from Perth. The rain managed to hold off for most of my wander, though I got caught in the odd shower, prompting the offer of a lift from the park ranger who rolled up in his truck. I politely declined, but we got chatting, and he ended up inviting me on a five-day bushwalk in July up in the Pilbara, a very dry, barren area that I’m visiting in the next few weeks. Who knows, I may take him up on his offer; I’ve not been on a week-long hike yet, and who better to do it with than a team led by a park ranger?

On my return I got talking to my neighbour in the caravan park, a friendly German called Andreas who was taking time off from a conference in Perth to head up the coast. He was an interesting guy; he was studying Astronomy at Sydney University, and had chosen that subject because he’d wanted to study his PhD in the southern hemisphere, and by choosing a research subject of ‘southern skies’ he knew they’d have to send him to Australia to study – crafty fellow! We had a conversation-filled walk along the beach, followed by a trip to the pub, which set us up perfectly to travel together to Kalbarri.

Top-up, Sir?

Written: 20 June 1996

Ah, the local pub in Cervantes. Funny things happen in the country, not least of which are some of the methods publicans use to entice people to drink in the pub, a slightly unnecessary thing to do seeing as there’s hardly any choice anyway. Andreas and I were sitting at the bar minding our own business, and he nudged me and said, ‘Hey, check it out! There’s a girl getting changed in the room behind the bar, but I don’t think she knows we can all see her. How embarrassing!’

And sure enough, there was this blonde getting changed in the bar office, stripped down to her underwear, completely oblivious to those of us at the bar who could see everything – though, of course, being gentlemen we didn’t look. Much.

We were more than a little surprised, then, when she sauntered out into the bar wearing nothing but a two-piece. Andreas was as speechless as me, not that we were complaining; it’s just that you don’t expect the bar staff to strip off halfway through the afternoon. The attitude of our fellow drinkers was perhaps the most surprising; they didn’t bat an eyelid between them. She could have jumped up on the bar, smothered herself in whipped cream and done strange things with a banana, and the old gits sitting and staring at the results of the 4.15 handicap from Fremantle would have probably just asked her to move out of the way. Country folk, I don’t know...

So, obviously ignored by all and sundry, she started to make polite conversation with Andreas and me. She was from Tasmania, she said, but I can’t remember what else she talked about. We found it rather hard to have a conversation with twin zeppelins homing into view behind the beer taps, so after another swift beer we beat a hasty retreat back to the camp.

Back at camp we met some other campers, a young couple who were heading south back to Perth, and it wasn’t long before we all went back to the pub for a drink. The Tasmanian barmaid was still there, and still in her summer gear, but the plan had obviously worked. The pub was packed with leery old men, sex-starved young bucks and tarty girls, obviously the sort of clientele a scantily clad barmaid attracts. It’s funny how sex sells the one thing that makes it droop...

Kalbarri

Written: 23 June 1996

After teaming up in Cervantes, I happily offered Andreas a lift to Kalbarri, 400km to the north, as we were both planning to visit the National Park there. Little did we expect such terrible driving conditions; at times, I couldn’t see a thing through the driving rain, and had to use the Force to see the road. However, we got there in one piece, and managed to fit in a visit to the coast to see Red Bluff before sunset. Red Bluff is a large, jutting cliff that gives you a good view of Kalbarri town and the Indian Ocean; it was extremely pleasant, and followed by a mean, lean spaghetti bolognese à la tent.

The next morning the rain held off, so we drove out to the ranger station to see which roads were open. Unfortunately the road to the most spectacular area of the park was closed, but the ranger suggested a walk from Ross Graham Lookout to Hawks Head along a gorge, so off we went.

As you drive through Kalbarri National Park, whose boundaries encompass most of the Murchison River as it meanders towards the sea, it looks pretty boring and flat. However, the parts of the park that are worth exploring – apart from the coastal features – are the stunning gorges that the Murchison has cut into the bedrock. The ground in Kalbarri was, until recently (in geological terms), under water, and much like the cliffs along the Great Australian Bight, it rose up to create a flat, barren plain. It’s made out of sedimentary sandstone, so the mighty river found it reasonably easy to erode an erratic and deep gorge system, which obviously isn’t visible as you drive through the park. But take the roads to the lookouts and there, laid at your feet, are these amazingly deep cuts into the red earth, with huge cliffs made up of all sorts of strange, red-coloured bands.

The first walk we did followed the river through a couple of u-bends, and after climbing down into the gorge at Ross Graham, we followed the river-bed along. There’s a knack to gorge-hopping, which involves trying to keep to the inside of any bend, as the river will cut a sheer face on the outside of any bends, and will deposit all its sand and shingle on the inside of the bend, which is easier to walk on than a vertical cliff face. This meant we had to cross the river a total of four times, a slightly hairy prospect after such heavy rains. One crossing involved carefully climbing through dead and dying gum trees while the river flowed beneath, hoping that you didn’t pick a brittle branch that would give way and mean a rather soggy trek along the bank; most of the other crossings were of the stepping-stone variety. We eventually got to Hawks Head, after about four hours, and the view was quite magnificent, the gorge being much deeper at that end of the walk.

We followed that walk with a trek along the coastline, just down from our campsite. Despite names like Mushroom Rock, Rainbow Alley and Pot Alley, it wasn’t that thrilling, reminding me of the volcanic coast of Gran Canaria, which just brought back memories of bad holidays. The wind was also getting into its stride, so we soon retired to cook a mean chilli con carne, with a six pack of very welcome Victoria Bitters, made all the more enjoyable by the interesting conversation.

The Z-Bend and Loop

By Saturday all the park’s roads were open, so we were able to visit the park’s highlights, the Z-Bend and the Loop. We drove to the Z-Bend early in the morning, and if we thought the earlier gorges were stunning, this was just incredible. I have no idea how deep the gorge is at this point, but I’ve read it reaches down 80m (240 ft), and I can well believe it. It’s hard to describe looking at a bend in the river, as it cuts a Grand Canyon-esque furrow through deep red, stripy rock, the cliffs speckled with stumpy green bushes, and a deep blue sky above to accentuate the colours. It was quite incredible.

The Loop, some 10km north of the Z-Bend, is a walk around a loop in the river, about 8km in length. We set off in mid-morning, and it has to rate as one of the best bushwalks I’ve done yet. It starts off by following the cliffs into the bend, then goes down into the gorge to river level, where the sand and silt create these little grassy meadows, with kangaroos hopping all around and the river flowing alongside huge, red cliffs. We had to climb along the cliff when the silt ran out, walking along ledges jutting out of the red walls, just above water level. As the rock is so sedimentary, erosion has created this amazing layering of rock, so it’s quite easy to make your way along the cliff faces. After turning the bend, we started to climb back up, before reaching Nature’s Window, a hole in the rock from which we’d started.

The dirt roads in Kalbarri are also worth a mention. If you’ve got a car you don’t mind throwing around, like a hire car, or maybe a 1977 Toyota Corona, give them a go. It’s the biggest driving thrill, speeding 26km along a road that’s effectively a long, thin sandpit. I didn’t have proper road grip for the whole skidding drive, and the potholes made it just like a video game: go right, jump the hole in the road, slam a left, steer into the skid, accelerate out... great fun, and absolutely not safe at all. Especially when these bloody great emus keep running out in front of you just as you’re getting some serious speed up. It’s a hoot.

After we got back and Andreas bought me a couple of beers for doing the driving – it didn’t take him long to figure out where my weak spot was! – I took him to the bus after getting his address. He was great company and I was sorry to see him go, even though I knew it was better to be travelling on my own. There’s a well-known theory of parting: it’s easier for the person going away than the poor soul staying behind, because there are fewer reminders and more distractions if you’re the traveller. So I waved him off and headed back to plan my journey north, and further into the unknown.

Shark Bay

Written: 25 June 1996

I set off nice and early for Denham, on Shark Bay, further up the west coast. Denham is on the northern tip of a long peninsula that juts west and north from the mainland, creating this sheltered bay, Hamelin Pool. The result is an idyllic blue ocean with a large number of unique natural phenomena, hence the area’s World Heritage status. It’s a very famous area – at least, it’s famous to readers of National Geographic – and as I turned off the highway onto the peninsula the clouds cleared, and that good old blue sky appeared for the first time in a few weeks.

My first stop was Hamelin, a tiny place up a dirt track on the southern end of the bay. Normally this place wouldn’t be that interesting – a nice beach, a couple of buildings – but there are two completely freaky aspects to Hamelin. The first is the collection of stromatolites on the beach, and the second is the shell mine.

Stromatolites are the oldest living things on earth; they look like little stumpy coral reefs just under the surface of the sea, right on the beach, but the patterns they form are quite surreal. They’re made up of microbes that exude sticky chemicals, forming these strange underwater towers that slowly grow over thousands of years. Because of the geography of Hamelin Pool and the huge sea-grass meadow up the coast (itself pretty special), the water in the south of the bay is really salty, the perfect spot for stromatolites. Apparently stromatolites were once very common, and were responsible for releasing huge amounts of oxygen into the atmosphere, thus creating the right conditions for life, so without those stumpy bits of splodge, we wouldn’t be here today. I was unwittingly looking at our ancestors, there in the shallows of Hamelin.

Shells Galore

The shell mine is another odd thing. The Great Australian Bight, the huge bay that sits to the south of the Nullarbor, is full of millions of tiny shellfish, and when they die, their shells get caught up in the sea currents. Quite why these shells end up in Shark Bay is anyone’s guess, but they do, by the bucketload. The beaches round Hamelin are packed with shells, and in some parts they are so densely packed they’ve reacted with water to stick together in a kind of prehistoric concrete, just right for cutting building blocks from. There’s a shell quarry in Hamelin where you can see blocks have been cut out from the dunes, and, indeed, the toilet block there is made out of shell blocks. This is definitely not normal.

Shell Beach was my next stop, further up the peninsula; there are no points for guessing what was there. Shell Beach is a 110km-long beach, totally made up of white shells about half an inch wide, packed to a depth of nearly ten metres. That’s an awful lot of shells...

My final stopping-off point before Denham was Eagle Bluff, a little hill with views out to the west of the peninsula, where there’s yet another peninsula and a collection of small islands. I fancied a bit of a walk, having been cooped up in the car for most of the day, so I grabbed my rucksack and headed off down the coast, just to get away from the crowds (not that there was anyone about, really). This turned out to be an excellent plan; after about half-an-hour I’d discovered this beautiful beach with really shallow water, just ripe for a swim. Unfortunately I’d forgotten my swimming trunks and towel, but it was so hot and isolated I just stripped off and ran in: back to nature, and why the hell not. The water was a gorgeous temperature and crystal clear, and I had to paddle miles out to get even waist deep. It’s times like this that you remember for a long time...

Monkey Mia

Denham is Australia’s most westerly settlement, and it’s not a bad spot to camp. I settled in for the night, and got up the next day for a day trip to Monkey Mia, 26km east of Denham. Easily the most famous spot in Shark Bay, Monkey Mia isn’t famous for its beaches, even though they are beautiful and golden. It isn’t famous for its weather either, even though the sun shines for almost the entire year and rain is rare. It isn’t even famous for being a near-perfect paradise setting. No, it’s famous for its dolphins, for Monkey Mia is home to a collection of wild dolphins that just love to hang around with humans.

If you stand knee-deep in the rather chilly sea when the dolphins decide to visit – which they do a few times a day, though totally at their own whim – then they swim right past you, posing for photographs and taking fish from the rangers. The feeding is carefully monitored, so the dolphins don’t get too dependent on mankind, and if you catch feeding time you can get to drop a fish in one of the dolphin’s mouths. On their second visit I even stroked one as she went past; she felt kind of rubbery and incredibly smooth. There were even tame pelicans who hung around the beach like kids bunking off school; eventually they got around to going to hunt for food, which was hardly difficult as the beach was packed with tiny fish that would collect around your feet while the dolphins played. It must be some life, being a lazy pelican at Monkey Mia.

I was so impressed with the place, with its gorgeous beach and beautiful weather, not to mention the dolphins, that I spent all day sunbaking, lazing around and writing letters. I also stayed around for the sunset: big, red, round, incredibly slow and lazy, and quite breathtaking – it was paradise, and apart from the sandflies, everything was perfect.

Which – rather obtusely – reminds me of an odd thing that happened at the local Foodland in Denham that day. I parked my car outside the supermarket (a word I use with caution, as it was anything but ‘super’), and a woman who was getting out of her car called over as I locked my car. ‘You don’t need to do that,’ she said, ‘this is Shark Bay, you know. No one’s going to break into your car here.’ I mumbled something about it being a habit and that I was from the city, but by this time she’d disappeared.

I couldn’t help the feeling that if I was a car thief, not only would I hang around Shark Bay a little longer on hearing that, but – hey! – she’d just left her car and wandered off, and she wouldn’t have locked it, would she? Sometimes the most trusting of souls leave themselves wide open; when crime hits Shark Bay, as it no doubt will one day, the locals will all probably sit there on their seaside benches, chewing baccy and spitting out, ‘I remember the days when you didn’t have to lock your car. I don’t know, the youth of today.’

But if you’re going to wave a carrot on a stick, don’t be surprised if the donkeys come a-runnin’, that’s what I say. I sincerely hope Shark Bay’s trusting mentality doesn’t backfire on it. It’s a wonderful place.

Carnarvon

Written: 26 June 1996

Although there was a little bit of Shark Bay that I hadn’t seen – a homestead with hot artesian wells, apparently – I was in the mood to drive, so I set off down the peninsula, back past Hamelin, and onto the highway again. I took a left turn to head north, and after watching the kilometres slip by I soon arrived in Carnarvon, a very pretty little town on the coast.

My traveller’s conditioning can sniff out the tourist bureau anywhere, and it wasn’t long before I had an armful of goodies and leaflets, all telling me how easy it would be to spend all my money on so-and-so’s wonderful glass-bottomed boat tour, before dining at the most wonderful seafood restaurant ‘in the southern hemisphere’. Nothing’s ever the biggest, best, fastest, loudest or whatever ‘in Australia’ – no, it’s always ‘in the southern hemisphere’. Sometimes I wonder if the Australians are aware of Southeast Asia, Africa and South America.

But what clinched my somewhat hurried departure from Carnarvon was the huge banana as you come into town. It’s massive, maybe 20 feet high, but they’ve thoughtfully planted trees round its base, so unless you’re right next to it, it just looks like a huge yellow phallus, which presumably isn’t what the designers intended. Carnarvon is the banana-growing capital of Australia, hence the phallus, but really, this Australian obsession with massive models and statues is quite bizarre. I’ve seen looming lobsters, massive miners, bulbous bananas, big beefburgers and a huge Ned Kelly... will it never end? I suppose if you have a big country, you feel obliged to build massive statues, but sometimes it’s hard not to laugh.

Beyond the Suburbs

One of the most impressive sights in Carnarvon is the tracking station just outside town, even though it was closed to visitors when I visited. The tracking station consists of a big radio dish on a hill, pointing straight up at the sky, and the local tourist office’s literature proudly claims that this dish was used to track the Apollo and Gemini spacecraft, as well as being the dish that beamed Australia’s first ever live satellite TV programme. Irritatingly, the first claim turns out to be untrue, as the NASA antenna that was used to track manned spacecraft is no longer with us; that antenna was part of the NASA Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN) Tracking Station, which has now been bulldozed. Instead, the dish that the tourist office falsely claims to be the MSFN antenna is actually one of two antennae from the OTC Earth Station, which was used to talk to a communications satellite in geo-stationary orbit over the Indian Ocean[1].

Despite this disappointment, the tracking station is still an atmospheric spot, but it wasn’t enough to stop me from leaving town and heading up the coast to the famous Carnarvon blowholes. I’ve seen blowholes before, and I’ve always been disappointed, but these were supposed to be really good, and bloody hell, were they ever! Imagine serious sea, a great big hole, and water being whooshed 20m (60 ft) into the air; you can hear the water coming before it hits, and steam shoots out (well, it’s just spray, but it looks like steam) before this massive jet spurts up into the sky. All around, smaller holes spray sea water like some supernatural reticulation[2] system, while the ground shakes under your feet. It makes you feel incredibly humble, like all the best natural wonders.

I spent the night 500m down the coast from the blowholes in a campsite, over 70km from the nearest civilisation. Well, perhaps ‘campsite’ is being kind; I camped on a sand dune with no amenities, but that’s exactly what I wanted. No water; no phones; no screaming kids; nowhere to spend money – perfect. The dunny was a hole in the ground with a tin shed tacked round it, à la Glastonbury, and the campsite itself was on a gorgeous little beach, though with a wicked undertow that would make swimming suicidal. But the best thing of all was the price: at just A$1 per night, it was much appreciated by my slowly dissolving funds.

[1] Many thanks to Terence Kierans, who contacted me with the real story behind the antenna at Carnarvon. Terence was an Operations Supervisor during some of the Apollo missions, and he worked at the NASA MSFN Tracking Station from 1965 to 1970, so he should know!

[2] Reticulation is the name given to automatic watering systems normally found in gardens and greenhouses; everyone’s garden in Australia has a reticulation system, so the word has passed into normal usage here.

Coral Bay

Written: 27 June 1996

Today I drove north again, to a place called Coral Bay, a lovely little tourist spot with an idyllic beach and tourist prices to match. My current project is to plan a route that will cost me just A$5 per day (plus petrol), which is perfectly possible with a bit of camping in the scrub and staying in National Parks as much as possible, using creeks and the sea instead of expensive amenities. I’m going through a minor financial crisis, but if everything was free, there’d be no challenge, would there? I can’t rely on finding a job when I reach Sydney, but I can hope...

I’d been led to believe by some backpackers I’d met that Coral Bay was a paradise, and indeed it has a cute little bay with a pleasant enough sandy beach, and the Ningaloo Reef passes quite close to the shore so you can snorkel the reef from the beach. But it is a bit of a tourist spot, and it didn’t take me long to figure out why it had been recommended: there’s a hostel, a big – and very expensive – caravan park, and it’s not too far from the northwest coastal highway. It’s perfect if you’re a coach traveller or a city dweller in search of a family holiday on the coast. But it was far from perfect for me.

For a start, the whole area seemed to be full of building sites, which made it particularly noisy, with power generators churning all night, and the relaxing sounds of builders building wafted across the beach during the day; the caravan park, which cost as much as the one in Adelaide for goodness sake, didn’t even have taps for drinking water near the sites (I had to traipse across to the office for water); and the beach turned out to be right next to loads of moored boats, which was hardly a beautiful sight.

I wasn’t terribly impressed, to be honest, and wondered if the Northwest Cape was going to be worth exploring further. Luckily, it most definitely was, and Coral Bay proved to be the exception rather than the rule.

Cape Range

Written: 29 June 1996

The Northwest Cape juts out into the Indian Ocean like an extended middle finger on the top-left tip of the Australian mainland. There’s one town, Exmouth[1], which used to be an American naval base and looks like it, and not a lot else except for Cape Range National Park. If you’re going up the Cape you have to follow the road that goes up the east side, passing through Exmouth and curling round the end of the Cape before finally coming down the west side and stopping at the southern end of the Park. There’s nowhere else to go: to get back, you have to retrace your skid marks. Perhaps that’s why it’s so beautiful.

Cape Range has some of the most stunning beaches you’re likely to see, as well as a few interesting gorges such as Mundu Mundu and Yardie Creek, which aren’t on the same scale as the monsters of Kalbarri or Karijini, but are still great to explore on foot. After driving through the bizarre sight of hundreds of termite mounds surrounding the road – I thought I was back at the Pinnacles for a moment – the serious rain that I’d been dodging on the way up started to clear, and the sun eventually made an appearance as I approached the coastline. I set up camp just behind South Mundu Mundu Beach, a spot where the only amenity was one bin. There was absolutely nothing else – no toilets, no camping sites, no water: no nothing – and after the tourism of Coral Bay, it felt like I’d found paradise.

Just off the beaches of the Cape is the Ningaloo Reef, a barrier reef that comes very close to the shore, sometimes only a few metres away. This means that not only is the snorkelling and diving superb, but the beaches are amazingly sheltered too. When you look out to sea, you can see these huge waves breaking on the reef about 200m away, fierce and violent, but the reef takes all the oomph out of the might of the Indian Ocean, leaving gentle, lapping waves at the beach and beautiful stretches of sand. The slow sun setting over this distant cataclysm at night was really something else...

Stunning Sandy Bay

The next day, though, I found a real paradise. After exploring the two gorges in the morning, where I was lucky enough to see the rare black-footed wallaby in its native environment, I decided to cool off at Sandy Bay, just down the dirt track from my campsite. Wow! The name was appropriate, the weather was cloudless, the water was warm and turquoise, and the seabed was such a gentle, sandy slope that I could go a serious distance out and still only be waist deep, just right for me and my warped phobia of deep water. But the best bit was the splendid isolation; there were no more than four of us on this beach that stretched for miles in either direction, and I just lay there and soaked up the sun, thinking how it compared with all those soggy English beaches that I doubt I’ll visit again now that I’ve tasted the real thing.

But that night, a minor disaster struck. There I was, sitting under a moonlit sky, reading my book and feeling totally relaxed after my day on the beach, when the lights went out. My trusty petrol lamp just died, and nothing I could do would coax her to light up again. The petrol pipe was blocked, and I was going to have to get a lamp doctor from a camping shop to look at her. I felt like I’d lost an old friend; there’s something wonderfully cosy about fossil fuel lamp light, the same sort of warm glow you get from a real fire in an English pub. My electric torch just wasn’t quite the same...

I woke up on Saturday feeling sluggish, and a peek outside the tent showed why; it was overcast. For some reason, I wake up feeling (relatively) alive when the sun’s streaming down, and hung-over when the rain’s streaming down. I had originally planned to hang around on Sandy Bay for another day, but that wasn’t going to be much fun with no sun, so after striking camp I headed back towards Exmouth.

On the way back down the east side of the Cape, I stopped to do a walk (called the Badjirrajirra Walk) that the booklet said would take five hours, but which only took me one-and-a-half. Perhaps I was walking quite quickly, because I need to get fit for my forthcoming trek in the Pilbara, or because I was in mourning for my lamp and walking was a good way to work off my frustration; but even so, the guidelines were considerably different to my experience. Even so, it was still a nice little walk along a mountain ridge to Shothole Canyon, a huge gorge beaten into the mountain range by a since dried-up river. In the end it was lucky that I did only take one-and-a-half hours, because just as I shut the car door to set off south again, the heavens opened.

And they stayed open, all the way back down onto Highway One, the highway that goes round Australia and the backbone of my route. I took a dirt road shortcut to get to the highway, which took about an hour of bouncing around and skidding out of the way of oncoming tour buses, but it cut a serious corner off the journey, enabling me to reach the Nanutarra Roadhouse before dark.

[1] Pronounced as it’s spelt, so that’s ‘Ex-mowth’, rather than ‘Ex-muth’ as we Poms would say.

Nanutarra Roadhouse

Written: 30 June 1996

I reached the Nanutarra Roadhouse before dark. While the rain poured down I put up my sodden tent – with a little help from a neighbour in a campervan, who was from Geelong and had spotted my Victorian number plate, bless him – and cooked myself some pasta, before finding shelter outside the roadhouse café.

Roadhouses are strange places. Like airports, they’re transit stations; nobody stays at roadhouses longer than they have to, and they’re often totally isolated. Truckers make up the bulk of the roadhouse trade, and as such these places manage to take the most bizarre qualities of European truck stops, double the prices, add some serious isolation, and come up trumps. You meet some interesting people at roadhouses, that’s for sure.

Classic examples, and a common sight in these odd places, are the Japanese cyclists. In Australia, the distances of totally flat, featureless scrubland are so huge that cycling round Highway One is a bit like walking round the London orbital motorway; the interesting stuff is off the road, but the road itself can be a bit of a long haul. Enter the two Japanese cyclists I met at Nanutarra, soaked to the bone. It’s dark by this stage, but they don miner’s lights, making them look like a couple of modernist Daleks, set up their tents, and zip themselves up for what can only be a sweaty, cramped night. You’ve never seen such small shelters, and looking at the way their torch lights swing around on the insides of their tents, it’s as if two strange anthropoid chrysalises have landed in the camp area and are communicating using some mysterious light code. All these cyclists ever seem to eat is noodles, all the way round the whole continent. It sounds like one hell of a challenge, and I feel nothing but complete admiration for those who pedal their way round Australia. It sure takes determination...

They’re peaceful, though, these remote roadhouses. Or, they are normally; there I was, sitting by the café reading, and two coaches full of sixth-form schoolkids turned up, and for half an hour the place was chaos, with everyone bursting to the toilets, and rushing off to buy cans of Coke and packets of crisps. It was a school trip, I assume, taking a quick stop en route. The peace when they left was palpable – even the road trains seemed quiet after that invasion, as Nanutarra settled back into the tumbleweed vibe of the truly isolated.

Karijini (Hammersley Range)

Written: 7 July 1996

Luckily Sunday saw the rain hold off long enough for me to drive from Nanutarra to Karijini National Park, previously known as the Hammersley Range National Park. I went via Tom Price, a remote mining centre that’s actually quite an attractive spot, again taking the dirt roads to save time. But this time the rain had done its work, and it wasn’t so much like driving on a sandpit, more like driving through a mud bath. I took it very slowly, but one thing’s for sure: the front onside wheel arch on my car, which for some reason is missing the part that stops dirt getting inside the panel, is now rammed full of Western Australian dirt. When I open the passenger door, different coloured earth falls out every time, littering petrol stations and parking bays all over the state. I like to think of it as my sedimentary diary; perhaps I’ll be able to sell it to a geologist in Melbourne when I get back.

Karijini is where the real gorge action is: Kalbarri and Cape Range may have gorges, but Karijini is king. The reason? Karijini has loads of ’em, and they tend to meet up in the most spectacular displays of rock, water, height and sheer splendour, and that takes some beating. I spent Monday exploring the large clump of gorges in the centre of the park, and I must say it blew my mind.

I started early; the rain was still holding off, so I thought I’d beat the weather and get some exploring in before the clouds broke. Luckily they cleared and the day was beautiful, but there’s no point in tempting fate up here in the northwest, as apparently it’s wetter than normal at the moment; it looks like I’ve brought the weather with me again, so I’m not taking any chances.

After setting up the tent at Fortescue Camp, my first visit was to Joffre Falls, a waterfall in Joffre Gorge. The area I decided to explore consists of four gorges, which meet together to form a pattern like spokes in a wheel, the hub being a place called Oxer Lookout. After last night’s rain, each of the gorges was flowing (albeit slowly compared to the torrents in summer), so the falls were falling and the gorges gorging, which was one good thing about the unseasonable weather. Joffre Falls, apparently a three hour hike into and out of the gorge, took me all of 15 minutes to get into, and the same to get out; this is perhaps another example of the rangers over-estimating times to put off casual tourists, which is better than making them sound too easy, I suppose.

There’s a system in operation in Karijini, where walks are classified in four categories: walks (really easy), tracks (a little more challenging), Level One routes (you might break into a sweat) and Level Two routes (you have to get details from the ranger, because these are only for hardcore walkers and climbers). I’m beginning to discover that Level One routes are a breeze; I wonder what Level Two is like...

Oxer Lookout

Having explored Joffre and enjoyed the solitude of the gorge, where even sunlight doesn’t stir the utter stillness, I jumped in the car and slid my way along to Red Gorge, adding yet more layers to my sedimentary diary in the process. Here the gorges start to get really deep; you could fit quite a few houses on top of one another before they poked over the top. I walked a fair old pace round the Red Gorge lookout, which ended with a stunning view, at least as impressive as the Z-Bend in Kalbarri. All along the way were these termite mounds, and when I got to the lookout I came across a huge cloud of their occupants, who suddenly looked very interested in my sweaty T-shirt. I suppose that when you haven’t washed your hair for three weeks you just have to take the grief when it comes, so for a bit of sport I spent a while hanging round a spider’s web I’d spotted, watching him catch hundreds of the tiny insects in his web, tying each of them up before devouring them for his breakfast. That was one satisfying way to get rid of a cloud of pesky termites.

Another walk from the same car park led down Knox Gorge, which took me down into the heart of the gorge, through flood waters and alluvial forest, to the end of the Level One section, which changed into a Level Two when the creek disappeared down a very thin v-shaped gorge. I would have explored further, but the sign said that this was only for very experienced rock climbers with flotation devices and ranger backup, so I turned back. It was a shame really, but it’s pure stupidity to tackle things like this when you’re on your own and unequipped.

Handrail Pool was another story, though not immediately. Handrail Pool is in Weano Gorge, and when I’d climbed down into the depths of the fissure, I turned up the gorge instead of down it. After a few kilometres of easy creek-navigation, I decided I’d gone wrong, so I headed back to the car to drive to Oxer Lookout.

Wow. Oxer is positioned where the four creeks meet, and the sight is truly immense. It’s hard to describe how overpowering these gorges are, and Oxer Lookout is quite staggering. Photos just don’t do it justice; the impressive bit is the depth of the thing, and you have to be there to experience the vertigo first-hand. There I was, looking down into a gorge that nobody could get to without specialised equipment, a good 100 metres below. It was knockout stuff.

Welcome to Level Two

Just off from Oxer was the track down into Hancock Gorge, a challenging little number that took a little longer to navigate. For part of it I had to shuffle along ledges jutting out of the rock – as with Kalbarri the rock is sedimentary, but in Karijini the rock is much harder, and has been worn smooth by torrents of water, making the climbing both easier (because the rock is hard and will support your weight) and harder (because it’s devilishly slippery when wet). However it wasn’t long before I got to the delightfully named Kermit’s Pool, where there was another sign to say this was where the walk graduated to a Level Two.

Then along came this young couple from Melbourne, and we got chatting, as you do when you’re in a deep gorge far from the sun. They were about to turn back when this middle-aged couple came out of the gorge – from the Level Two area – and said it was really quite easy, as long as you kept your head. Emboldened by numbers, the three of us trekked some distance down the Level Two track, rock-climbing some bits and scrambling the rest, before eventually deciding enough was enough, and heading back to the car for lunch.

That short introduction to gorging was just what I needed. It brought back all sorts of tricks I’d learned at school in the rock-climbing society – like putting your hand into a fissure and clenching it into a fist, from which you can hang your body weight; and hugging the sheer face so smooth hand grips are as secure as possible – and all of a sudden the gorges didn’t seem so frightening. To cap it all, a tourist van arrived with loads of choking old smokers and beer-bellies who headed off down to Handrail Pool, so when I’d finished my lunch I tromped back down the track, turning the right way this time. Before long I’d arrived at this amazing circular pool in a deep gorge.

I have a phobia that involves dark water. I just hate it. I’ve managed to cope with it in the past, such as when I went water-skiing off the coast of Spain, but I still hate dark water. I even get scared if I’m in the bath and someone turns the light off; that’s irrational enough to be a phobia. Gorges are peppered with really deep rock pools, full of water fresh enough to drink and cold enough to shrink your manly pride to the size of a peanut, and if you’re going to really explore gorges, you’ve got to swim these pools. I took one look at the pool and thought, ‘Stuff that!’ and hung around the side, unable to go further.

And that’s where I thought my walk would end, but as the Beatles said, it’s getting better all the time, and I think my phobia might be slowly shrinking. There I was, minding my own business on the side of this circular pool which drained out of the gorge on the opposite side from the entrance, when these two cute little blondes came in and proceeded to strip down to swimwear and jump into the rock pool. I just watched and made polite small talk, offering to take their photos for them and commenting on how cold it looked. I’m clearly still a smooth operator even when I haven’t washed for a week; besides, there’s something attractively hypnotic about girls and rock pools, as the ancients knew when they concocted all those myths about nymphs...

And then this other couple arrived, and we got chatting. Meanwhile the two blondes had disappeared off down the gorge over on the other side, into Level Two territory, and after a few minutes they returned to say that it was quite beautiful down there, and go on, it wasn’t that cold or deep, you big wuss, go for it. The other couple – Graham and Sandy – looked interested, so we said, ‘What the hell?’ and stripped off down to our shorts.

The ensuing journey down the water-filled gorge was amazing. We scrambled over slippery rock faces, waded waist-deep in freezing water, avoided the evil-looking snake that dropped onto us from the lip of the gorge above and swam menacingly away, and eventually got to the end of the creek. By this time the two blondes had decided that they were cold and headed back – they had been in the water for some time, it has to be said, but I suspect the snake scared them off – but we three plodded on, arriving at a hole looking out down a sheer cliff face, where the creek cascaded out and into the gorge I’d seen from Oxer Lookout.

That, we thought, was the end of the trail, but a little exploring showed that we could climb round the hole – some 100 metres up – and edge our way down to the bottom of the main gorge. Sandy wisely decided to stay behind, but Graham and I climbed down the cliff and eventually stood at the bottom of the gorge that I had seen from Oxer Lookout earlier in the day. Little did I think I’d be standing there later... we must have been insane.

Strange things happen in gorges, too. While we were looking up at Sandy, this dog appeared at the top of the waterfall. We couldn’t believe it, but these guys following behind had brought their Jack Russell along, and he so nearly went over the edge. Now that would have been a sight.

It was a long way back up, but before long we’d made our way back to the pool, where even I went for a swim, something I’d never have managed even hours before. The entertainment wasn’t over, though, as this old guy turned up and started climbing the walls of the gorge, like Spiderman; we watched, amazed at his progress, before he eventually fell back into the pool to a round of applause. You meet all sorts in these gorges, you really do.

That night disaster struck my light sources for the second time, following the loss of my petrol lamp in Cape Range. My torch, the only source of light I had, died while I was just getting to the exciting part of my book. The bulb just blew, and as it was a Maglite, not a normal torch, I was going to have to try to resurrect it at – yes, you guessed it – a camping shop, Meanwhile the only light I have at night is the little light inside my car, and even that’s beginning to flicker. A portent of some kind, perhaps?

Mt Bruce

Tuesday was another lovely day, so I headed off to Mt Bruce, Western Australia’s second highest peak, in the south of the National Park (the highest peak, Mt Meharry, is in the southeastern part of the park, and is a fair drive off the highway through private land that you need permission to cross; as it’s only a few metres higher than Mt Bruce, I figured I’d stick to the runner-up). It was a pretty challenging climb, particularly in the heat of the morning sun, but after an hour and a quarter I was at the top of the world and the view was stunning. Unfortunately there’s a rather ugly iron ore mine to one side of the mountain, just outside the borders of the park, but the view over the park was like nothing else.

I’d managed the climb before lunch – not bad for a climb that was supposed to take six hours – so I decided to up sticks and head out east to the last clump of gorges left to explore. On the way I climbed down into Kalamina Gorge to see the waterfalls, and again, it was a totally different type of experience. It had a fern-lined waterfall cascading over black, layered rock into a shaded rock pool: very relaxing. I explored the gorge for as far as you could go, but after some precarious rock scrambling I found the gorge was totally flooded, and I didn’t fancy a swim on my own, so I tromped back to the car to drive to Fortescue Camp, just down the road.

This was where disaster struck – which you can read about it in the next tale – so it was a few days before I was able to return to Karijini to see the other gorges. My blown tyre had prevented me from exploring Dales Gorge, so I drove back into the park slowly, because I was in a pretty black mood and I knew that if I drove as aggressively as I felt, the dirt road would win.

Before long I passed Mt Bruce, for what seemed the umpteenth time. Then it struck me: what better way to get rid of all the negative energy I’d built up in the last couple of days than with a forced march up a mountain? So I set off in a huff and covered the 4.5km and goodness only knows how much vertical climbing in 55 minutes, which was a pretty good time. At the top I just collapsed, completely knackered, legs burning and sweat dripping off my face. And d’you know what? It worked. I felt great! There was that gorgeous view, and at once I knew I’d made the right decision. My worries seemed so irrelevant as the desert stretched out in front of me... and all of a sudden my burst tyre and collapsing plans didn’t seem quite so important after all.

Dales Gorge

Feeling better, I drove to the campsite at Dales Gorge and had a quick look round – though not enough to spoil the walk for the next day – and ended up in a beautiful waterfall, Fortescue Falls, reading a book and just relaxing. That night the stars were out with no moon, and I felt totally at ease again; my stress had evaporated and I felt complete happiness about my journey. It looks like I’ve found a cure for temper tantrums: climb a mountain. It’s not much use if it happens in the middle of a city, but perhaps I can find another cure for that culture.

So on Saturday I finally explored Dales Gorge. I took it nice and slow, and wandered up and down it a couple of times, exploring off the track and relaxing by the beautiful Circular Pool and Fortescue Falls, before eventually coming back to camp for a nice cup of afternoon tea, an enjoyable habit that I’ve picked up recently. That night was a stunner, with the Milky Way stretching right across the clear night sky, the clear skies dropping temperatures to just above freezing, quite a contrast after the mid-twenties of the midday sun.

Under this canopy I went for a wander round the circle of campsites I was in (Fortescue Camp consists of a collection of circular roads with sites jutting off them). As I walked round, by starlight rather than torchlight, I passed all these cosy pools of light, each with a different scene captured inside. The elderly couple reading; the young lovebirds nattering while huddling together to keep out the chill; the middle-aged couple arguing about something trivial; the family playing cards, trying to tone down the young kids’ competitive edge by telling them it’s only a game; the lone traveller, checking his maps; the foreign couple, speaking fluid French over a steaming pot... such variety. It made me think of mediaeval times, with the old storyteller gathering the people round the campfire, flames flickering on expectant children’s faces, more animated with each twist in the tale. Or perhaps a camp of travelling revellers celebrating the summer solstice, complete with druids, conjurers and roasting pigs. It reminded me of the Glastonbury Festival at night, too; happy memories of campfires, gentle sounds of merriment, and folk songs on the breeze. I felt a little sad that this sort of thing doesn’t happen much in England – going off into the wilderness for a weekend’s camping – possibly because there isn’t much wilderness to do it in. And camping in the English winter would be rather more uncomfortable than camping in the Australian winter, not that it’s particularly comfortable sleeping in a frost anywhere...

Start of the Breakdown

Written: 7 July 1996

Karijini was when disaster struck. On the way from Kalamina Gorge to Fortescue Camp I blew a rear tyre, but because of the way your back end slides over dirt roads, I didn’t realise until I’d reached the camp, when I saw this lacerated and melted tyre hanging limply round the wheel hub. Cursing, because I’d only got new tyres in Perth and they still had plenty of tread left, I hoisted out the jack and set to work, but however high I jacked the car, I couldn’t get the tyre to lift: it just stayed on the ground. Stumped, I assumed I’d smashed the rear axle or the suspension; this looked serious.

Just as I was trying to decide whether to panic, kick the car or make a cup of tea – all good reactions to a motoring problem when you’re a huge distance from anything remotely civilised – a car pulled up containing a couple of Swiss girls. After I explained my problem, they very kindly offered to drive me down to the ranger’s office, some 21km away, where I borrowed the ranger’s phone to ring the RAC; by this time it was about five o’clock in the evening.

Now I’ve been on the receiving end of the AA’s help in the UK, but considering the distances involved in this country, and the fact that I was about as stranded as it’s possible to get in non-desert Australia, the RAC’s service was pretty impressive. They took all my details and said they’d try to sort something out and would let the ranger know what was happening, and as she was visiting my campsite in the morning, she could tell me what was happening. Meanwhile the girls and I returned to camp, and I offered to cook for all of us as a thank you for helping me out.

Can you believe that these two – Eve and Sybil – only had an apple between them? To me this was bordering on the insane, so my offer of a rather tasty fettuccine with sour cream, mushrooms, broccoli, onions and mixed vegetables, plus some beef for the non-vegetarians among us, was pretty welcome, and yet again I discovered that things always work out; they needed food and I needed help, and everyone came out smiling. They were excellent company, and all of a sudden the prospect of having to resurrect poor old Oz in the morning lost its edge.

Off to Tom Price

The next day saw me waiting for the pick-up truck in the boiling sun, and eventually this old guy turned up with his winch and hooks. Imagine my embarrassment when he hoisted it up onto his truck, and took a look; the axle was fine, and he couldn’t see any problems with it. We put on the spare tyre and it seemed to drive perfectly. I simply hadn’t put the jack on the right spot; I’d put it under bodywork, rather than chassis, and this, of course, makes quite a difference, as I’d been jacking up the car body instead of the chassis. It would be an understatement to say that I felt like a total muppet.

Anyway, I still needed a new tyre – you don’t go driving through the bush without at least one spare tyre – so I followed the pick-up man back to Tom Price, some 130km away. All the way I was gearing up for the cost of this fiasco and silently kicking myself; the pick-up man was charging A$1.75 per kilometre for his 260km round trip, and I still needed a new tyre on top of that. This was going to cost me a lot of money.

Imagine my amazement when the RAC said they’d pay for the whole pick-up cost – my policy said they would only pay for 100km of towing, but who was I to argue? – so all I had to do was buy a new tyre for just over A$100, and that was me dealt with. I’d gone from a possible disaster to an escape with the minimum price possible; I couldn’t believe my luck, and while I was there I got the same garage to fix a loose plate under the car that was nearly coming off.

So I’ll be taking those dirt roads a little more slowly, I think. They play havoc with your tyres and suspension, and if I had a posh car, I’d keep it well clear. You’re not allowed to take hired cars onto dirt roads, and now I know why.

Plans Going Astray

I’m still in Tom Price, staying in a wonderful caravan park just by Mt Nameless, a huge, jutting, red mountain outside town. I’ve had a shower, washed my hair, and even washed my clothes, though the dreaded red dust is absolutely everywhere; even my black clothes are going red, though don’t ask me how. The car engine is red, and the paintwork is that yucky sort of brown you get when you mix red and green, but what the hell; it’s worth it.

But I’ve just been planning the next stage of my trip, and it’s hit me that it all had to be too good to be true. I’ve simply run out of time; looking at the calendar, there is no way I can complete a whole circuit of Australia without growing wings or extending my visa, both of which are pretty impossible. It’s a shame, because there’s something cool about having driven round an entire continent, but I have to draw the line somewhere between the quality of travel and the amount of travel.

The part of the journey I’ve decided to sacrifice is the east coast, so from Darwin I’ll drive down through the centre (which I was going to do as far as Uluru anyway), and I’ll keep on going to Adelaide. The only part of the journey I’ll be repeating is the Adelaide-Melbourne section, which can be driven in a day anyway, and if Dave and Karen are about, we could have a little reunion.

That way I still get to see the Red Centre, which is supposed to be really interesting, and I omit the most touristy area of the whole country, the Gold and Sunshine Coasts. Although the Great Barrier Reef, Cape Tribulation, Cairns and Brisbane are supposed to be great, I can always visit the area later on in life, but I don’t think I’ll be able to go bushwalking in the Pilbara again, at least, not so easily. I’m disappointed, but there’s nothing that I’d change if I had my time again – except, perhaps, not spending a month getting the car ready, but that was unavoidable – so I can hardly complain. I’ll still have done the country justice.

The reason for the change of plan? I’d entered one figure wrong in my spreadsheet – or, rather, I’d forgotten to change the dates once I’d decided to stay in the Pilbara for the bushwalk – and I only spotted the error when I settled in Tom Price to fix up the car and review my plans. It’s another valuable lesson: don’t trust computers, because they’re only as reliable as you are. There is a positive side to this, too: the shorter route is also considerably cheaper, as I’ll be saving a heap of petrol. My car costs about A$8 of petrol per 100km, which is very cheap by British standards, but when you consider that I’ll be omitting 4000km by leaving out the east coast, that’s a lot of money saved. Besides, I have an excuse to return to Australia in the future: to explore Queensland!

However, I didn’t arrive at this decision lightly. On my first night in Tom Price I sat and brooded, really annoyed at the prospect of having to drop Queensland from the itinerary. When I woke up the next day, I was in a foul mood, and decided to head up to the Millstream-Chichester National Park, between Tom Price and Karratha, to occupy my troubled mind

To get there, you need to get a (free) permit for the private mining road that heads north from Tom Price, which I duly did by visiting Hammersley Iron Pty Ltd[1]. I then set off in search of the mining road.

Could I find it? Could I hell, and before I knew it I was on the road back to Karijini. I backed up for a while and tried to find the turning, but I didn’t know where I’d gone wrong, and I just flipped. All the pent up anger over the blown tyre, the change of plans, the lack of money in my account... it all came to a head, and I sat in the car, punching the steering wheel and shouting ‘Aaargh’ until I was hoarse. I was angry with myself, and my complete inability to get anything right.

Luckily Karijini had a solution in the form of Mt Bruce, and after pounding my way to the top of the mountain and taking some time out to explore some more gorges, I was ready for my second attempt to reach Millstream-Chichester.

[1] If you’ve ever wondered what Pty Ltd stands for – it’s after every company name in Australia, like just Ltd in the UK – it’s ‘Proprietary Limited’, and much like limited companies back home, these are companies that have limited liability for shareholders, in return for certain restrictions.

Millstream-Chichester

Written: 10 July 1996

Warning; On the way to Millstream-Chichester, I passed through Wittenoom. While Millstream-Chichester itself is fine, Wittenoom is a lethal place to be, and you are very strongly advised to avoid it. In October 2007, the Department of Local Government and Regional Development contacted me with the following information. ‘The Government of Western Australia is proceeding with the closure of the area, and to date, Wittenoom’s status as a townsite has been removed, the electricity has been shut off, the postal service has ceased operation and water has been restricted to permanent residences. Any accommodation offered is unlicensed and is believed to be functioning without the appropriate environmental health permits. It is important that backpackers and visitors to the area are aware of the present risks associated with asbestos contamination in the Wittenoom area, and should be urged to find alternate travel destinations in the Pilbara region. Information, including the non-technical summary of a recent report into the nature and extent of asbestos contamination in the Wittenoom area, can be found at www.wa.gov.au/wittenoom.’ You have been warned...

On Sunday I upped sticks and headed off towards Millstream-Chichester National Park, this time actually getting there. On the way I passed through Yampire Gorge and Wittenoom, site of one of the worst industrial disasters in Australian history. The area is home to seams and seams of asbestos, and between 1947 and 1966 these areas were mined, well before asbestos was known to cause cancer. A lot of Aborigines were used as cheap labour – remember that Aborigines were only classed as citizens from 1967, and were only given the vote in 1972 – and a significant number of Wittenoom’s miners have since contracted asbestosis, giving rise to the mother of all court cases.

The area is now pretty deserted; Wittenoom is almost a ghost town, and Yampire Gorge, site of a lot of asbestos seams, is full of signs warning you to stay in the car and keep your windows closed, although the risk is relatively minimal. Still, there’s an added thrill to driving down a dirt road when you know that if you break down, not only will it be a long wait, but you might get asbestosis in the meantime; I made it through, but I wasn’t surprised to find that they’d built an alternative route to avoid further trouble.

I arrived at Millstream, the western half of Millstream-Chichester National Park, to beautiful weather and the school holidays. There were people everywhere, or that’s how it felt after being totally alone in Karijini. I pitched by the Fortescue River (the same river that flows through Karijini) at a spot called Deep Reach Pool, under the trees and right on the bank. I amazed myself by actually swimming in the river; not just dipping, but swimming right out into the brown, flowing water. It looks like I might be slowly getting over my phobia of dark water, but the weather was so hot and the water was so cool it didn’t take much persuading.

Later that evening a new crowd turned up to camp next to me, and before long we were all sitting round the barbie chatting. Robin and Barbara, with their kids Sam and Tara, were from Useless Loop, a tiny town of 35 families out beyond Denham, on the second peninsula in Shark Bay. And they were great company, so along with another family we whittled the night away with idle chat, sitting by the campfire and watching an amazing night sky unfold. I stayed up a little once they’d all gone to bed, and sitting there by the fire with just the stars for company was just idyllic.

Robin the Bushman

The next morning we all set out to do the only notable walk at Millstream, a trek from the homestead to Crossing Pool, and with four young kids and five adults it turned into quite a family outing. Robin – a bit of a bushman, it has to be said – surprised us all when he spotted a flock of emus, and got us all to crouch down. Meanwhile he’d grabbed the hat off little Natalie, one of the other couple’s kids, and was waving it around for about five seconds, then hiding it, and repeating the performance. After a couple of minutes the flock of emus walked over towards us and passed right by; apparently they’re incredibly curious birds, and if you wave anything brightly coloured but hide it, they can’t resist coming over to investigate. It was a neat trick, and the kids loved it.

When we got to Crossing Pool, we all went for a swim, but this time it was a real swim, right across the river to the other side. I managed it with flying colours, and even enjoyed the sensation; the water was murky but I managed to swim across without losing my cool. On our return to camp, Robin set up a rope by the river that we could all swing on to land in the water, which added quite a bit to the creek-dipping experience.

That night I entertained the crowd. They’d spotted my guitar in the back of the car, so I fished it out and performed a couple of songs for the ensemble, the first time I’ve ever played guitar and sung together in public. It wasn’t exactly high quality, but I stumbled through The Beatles’ ‘Rocky Racoon’ and The Senators’ ‘The Girl I Adore’ to a noisy response, and a reward of copious sherry to see the night through. Another roaring fire, another starry night... it made me think I was in some magical wood, with elves and goblins lurking in the shadows, and all manner of mysterious beastie moving through the undergrowth just beyond the circle of firelight.

The Camel Track

On Tuesday I drove north to the Chichester end of the park, stopping at a spot called Snake Creek. Just nearby is a wonderful rock pool called Python Pool, which marks the start of the Camel Track, a 16km round trip from Python Pool via McKenzie Spring to Mt Herbert and back, tracing the track used until 1892 to herd camels from the farms of the Pilbara to the ports on the northern coast. I tramped along the track for most of the day, getting hopelessly lost a lot of the time, but eventually getting to Mt Herbert after an hour and a half.

The problem with following the track was twofold: first, the markers were tiny yellow triangles which were very hard to spot, and second the spinifex growth made the entire landscape a labyrinth of possible tracks, only one of which was right. Spinifex is a bastard: it’s a very tough, very sharp grass that rips your legs to shreds, but the view was just amazing and well worth the raw calves. Imagine mountains with concave slopes – as if they’ve been scooped out – but with tops that look like they’ve been chopped off flat before the summit. ‘Tableland’ and ‘plateau country’ might be the words that describe it, but to me the views were quite fantastic, as in ‘like fantasy’. I could easily imagine huge armies and great citadels in this landscape, like something out of The Lord of the Rings.

When I got back after 16km of walking, Python Pool was perfect. I jumped straight in, swimming right across the dark, murky water, and it was bliss; swimming in rock pools can be habit forming. Snake Creek turned out to be a very friendly camping spot, though primitive and almost empty, and the two elderly couples there were excellent company, especially Ted and Rosemary, who had lived in Stafford for 14 years at one stage in their very varied life, not far from where I grew up. They plied me with tea and cake as the sun came down and the stars put on their display, which was all the more captivating because there was no moon. We all stood around for about an hour searching for satellites, which appear as twinkling lights that move slowly across the sky, getting brighter and dimmer as they rotate and catch the sun’s rays; I spotted one and the others saw a couple. It’s amazing to think that they were put there on a rocket and that you can see them from the ground; it adds a whole new dimension to the night sky.

Another thing you notice about the sun going down in the clear-skied bush are the silhouettes. The gum trees are especially weird, with their gnarled trunks and branches sticking up from barren earth, black against the sunset-red sky. The whole scene reminds me of books we had as children, which were illustrated with pictures made up of silhouettes against psychedelic painted backdrops – the books were by Joan Aiken, with illustrations by Jan Pienkowski. I loved those pictures, and for much the same reason I love desert sunsets. Sunrise is a similar event, but I don’t seem to experience that quite as much...

Cleaverville Beach

Written: 13 July 1996

On Wednesday I headed north from Millstream-Chichester, back to the highway and civilisation. I stopped in Karratha, home to the biggest shopping centre outside Perth (which only goes to show how empty the rest of Western Australia is), where I knuckled down to shop for my forthcoming Pilbara bushwalk. Unfortunately I couldn’t get my lamp fixed, but everything else fell into place, and after spending a small fortune on food, bush gear and various other bits and bobs, I drove east of Karratha to Cleaverville Beach.

Cleaverville Beach is a free camping area on the dunes between Roebourne and Karratha, and it’s a great spot (though the beach is rock, not sand, so it’s a bit sharp on the feet). I went searching for a site, but it wasn’t long before I’d got myself in a bit of a jam. The rear wheels had got themselves stuck in the sand, and as my Toyota is rear wheel drive, I just dug myself deeper and deeper, until the back end was sitting on the ground. This was not a good thing.

The first bloke I asked for help was just rude to me, so I ignored him – he’s the first really mean-spirited Aussie I’ve met – and wandered off to the next caravan, where a very kind man came and helped me out. He started off by getting out his ‘bull bag’, an inflatable bag that attaches to the exhaust pipe; you put the bag under the car, start the engine, and hey presto! The car gets jacked up. This, however, didn’t work, as no matter how much we shovelled sand under the rear wheels, they just dug straight down again when I tried to drive.

Thank goodness he had a four-wheel drive. We attached a rope to my rear axle, and he dragged me back onto hard ground: what a champion! To avoid a repeat performance, I headed back down the road to find a harder site just off the dirt. I set up camp just as a big black snake slithered right across the spot I’d picked for my tent, and settled in. Just as in Cape Range the sky was gorgeous, the flies were hungry, civilisation was miles away, and all this was completely free, so I lit a fire – isn’t it good, Australian wood? – and watched the stars twinkle as the ashes glowed in the hearth.

I stayed at Cleaverville for a few nights, collecting more wood from the hillocks behind the dunes for a nightly fire, more for the cosy feeling of a hearth than for the heat, as the nights had lost most of the bite they’d had in Karijini. Besides, it kept the damn flies and mozzies away, something worth appreciating after a whole day of flies crawling in your mouth, nose, ears and – worst of all – your cup of tea. I listened to the ABC’s Radio National – the only really national radio service, which is a bit like Radio Four but with shorter programmes and more news – and read plenty.

But all good things must come to an end, and on Saturday I drove back to Karratha, booked in to the local caravan park to get clean – the sea might be a handy bath, but my last shower proper was in Tom Price when the car broke down, well over a week ago – and started getting ready for my first real bushwalk.

Pilbara Bushwalk

Written: 21 July 1996

You know that feeling when you’ve always thought, ‘I’d love to do that, but it’s just too scary/expensive/difficult/oh, you know,’ and then you actually get to do it? I’m feeling like that right now. I felt the same after I’d done my first bungee jump in a pub car park in Essex. I felt pretty much the same after eventually getting round to having sex after all those years. I suppose I felt it when I landed in Sydney, having made the big decision to go travelling. And now I’ve done my first real week-long walk, and the feeling of accomplishment is immense.

When I was a kid – ignoring the debate on whether I still am one – I used to love the Moomin books. One of my favourite characters was Snufkin, Moomintroll’s best friend, who was a strange sort of creature who played the mouth organ and who knew everything there was to know about the Great Outdoors. For when the Moomins hibernated during the cold Finnish winter, Snufkin would head off and travel for six months, wandering through the forests and fjords of northern Europe. The stories of little Snufkin camping overnight in the forest and meeting all sorts of wondrous creatures really caught my imagination, and strangely enough, this walk fulfilled that old, forgotten dream. It’s funny how you remember little things from your early years when they strike a chord in later life.

Anyway, from Karratha I rang Scott, the ranger whom I’d met in Nambung and with whom I was walking, did some last minute shopping, and booked into a campsite to do some washing and freshen up after the roughing-it of Cleaverville Beach. To be honest, I don’t know why I bother, considering the clothes come out just as stained as when they go in, everything I own has a dusty red hue, and as soon as I’ve showered my hair blows all over the place and I look as dishevelled as before... but it feels good to try, and it’s almost worth paying the caravan park fee for luxuries like toilets, running water, grassy sites and all those other things you take for granted when you’re not out in the bush.

I even explored the area a bit, between hanging out my clothes and trying – in vain – to clean the piles of dirt from inside the wheel arches of my car. I drove west of Karratha to the Burrup Peninsula, a north-jutting finger of land that contains Dampier, the main port for shipping the iron ore mined at Tom Price, and some pretty little coast. One particularly intriguing spot was Hearson’s Cove, where the beach sloped so incredibly gently that it took me ten minutes to walk from the water’s edge to where it was deep enough to have waves; by that stage it had got about ankle high. Because of the overcast sky and the angle of the sun it looked like I was walking on water, and apart from the strange-looking spikes extruding from the sand – some kind of odd sea dweller, I presumed, so I kept my thongs on just in case – it was a lovely place to swim. Or it would have been if I’d bothered to wade out to deeper water, but it probably would have taken me ages to get to knee height, so I contented myself with ankle-deep wave-hopping.

I drove back via Dampier, a forgettable place with a huge jetty out to a massive container ship where the ore is loaded. By all accounts the tour of Hammersley Iron’s depot is interesting, but I didn’t have time to go on the tour, so I headed back to camp, cooked, and turned in for my last night in comfort for about a week...

So here’s a day-to-day account of my first genuine bushwalk, without a doubt the highlight of my journey so far, complete with snippets of the songs that were floating round my head as we explored the Pilbara.

Day 1, Sunday 14th, 4.5km

It rained so hard that morning

I could hardly see the road

The wind a-blowin’ and the rain a-fallin’

‘Highway 13’, John Lee Hooker

Having met up earlier in the day, Scott and I decided to get stuck into the walk straight away. He’d drawn up a route that covered a fair amount of the Chichester Ranges, with about 65km of walking, so after checking our equipment, we headed out towards Python Pool. It was about 4.30 in the afternoon by the time we got to Snake Creek, the campsite I’d stayed in a week or so before, and we decided that although we’d only have about two hours of walking that day, we might as well start and make Monday’s trip easier, so we drove past the campsite and ducked off the road down a dodgy four-wheel-drive track to a place called Narrina Pool. This was the last time I would see any trace of modern human beings for seven days...

We hadn’t checked the weather report as it was slightly cloudy but nothing to worry about, so we donned our rather heavy backpacks, full of everything we’d need for a week except water, and trudged up the start of Narrina Creek for 4.5km, by which stage it was getting dark, so we pitched camp.

A couple of points before going on. First, the route went vaguely like this: imagine a square map, with north at the top, and three parallel rivers, each running from south to north (that’s up and down the map); from west to east (that’s left to right on the map) they’re called Narrina Creek, George River and Pillinginni Creek. We started at the north end of Narrina Creek, headed south upstream, cut east from the south end of the creek to the south end of George River, then east again to the south end of Pillinginni, then northwards down Pillinginni, before turning west to cross the end of the George and head back to the end of Narinna, giving a vaguely square route.

Second, life on a walk like this isn’t luxurious. ‘Making camp’ means finding a vaguely flat piece of whatever is to hand, laying out your roll mat, chucking on the sleeping bag and sleeping out in the great wide open. We had no tents, but we both had waterproof sheets in case of dew, which can appear at about four in the morning, as it gets pretty cold at night. We drank water from the creeks, washed in the rock pools, and the only food we had was what we had brought with us.

So we set up camp by the side of Narrina Creek, on the bank, and decided to erect a bit of a shelter, just in case it rained; you never know in the outback, though the Pilbara is one of the driest areas of Australia. The shelter consisted of my flysheet pegged into the ground at one end and held up on sticks at the other, so we could slide under and put the packs in with us and keep some space above our heads.

We cooked up – a soon-to-be familiar meal of packet rice, the sort I’ve been eating for ages on the road – and settled in for the night, gazing at the stars in the clear sky. No wonder we didn’t think it was going to rain. Bad mistake.

The first drops appeared about ten o’clock – you retire early when you walk – so we nipped under cover and tried to sleep. But the rain wasn’t just a passing shower, it meant business, and it wasn’t long before my flysheet showed its true colours; waterproof, my arse, it leaked whenever you touched it and rain ran down the inside almost as much as is ran down the outside. At about two in the morning Scott made a brave attempt to prop up the sides with sticks to try to direct the flow of water down past our feet, but it took a lot of willpower not to get up and head back to the cars; we were extremely wet and water was dripping on our faces in a kind of self-inflicted Chinese water torture. It wasn’t terribly pleasant.

It wasn’t exactly an auspicious start to the trip. It didn’t feel much like the driest part of Australia, that’s for sure...

Day 2, Monday 15th, 10km

Oh, a storm is threat’ning

My very life today

If I don’t get some shelter

Oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away

‘Gimme Shelter’, The Rolling Stones

It stopped raining at about seven, when we got up. It wouldn’t have made a great deal of difference if it hadn’t, seeing as both our sleeping bags and our enthusiasm were totally dampened, but I cooked up some porridge for myself while Scott had his usual breakfast of muesli bars, and before long we’d decided that although the weather was lousy, we were already about as wet as it was possible to get, so we might as well press on and try to find a cave where we could shelter. It was pretty obvious we weren’t equipped for rain, so it was up to nature herself to provide shelter.

We walked for 10km through patchy but heavy rain, stopping for lunch halfway up the creek. That was when the powers that be smiled on us, because about five minutes after lunch – a sodden affair – we found the perfect spot for shelter. Imagine a vertical cliff with jutting overhangs about four feet from the bottom, with further outcrops above. We spotted the area because the ground was so dry near the cliff, the first dry ground we’d seen on the trip; the rocks we’d been clambering over had been dangerously slippery in the creek beds we’d been navigating.

We didn’t waste much time setting up camp, mainly because we needed to dry out our sodden sleeping bags and roll mats. Typically it stopped raining just as we found the shelter, so we thought it would be a good idea to head up to the top of the hill opposite to try out the radio that Scott had brought along in case of an emergency. The problem was that the handheld unit we had brought with us needed to trigger the main transmitter at Millstream, and it simply couldn’t do it when we were in the river gorges; then again, it didn’t have any luck on top of the hill either. We did manage to get totally soaked in the attempt, though, so it didn’t take much convincing for us to go in search of firewood to warm up proceedings.

The fire did the job; we managed to find enough dry wood to smoulder our way to dusk, and the beds were almost luxurious after the dripping of the night before. Quite why that night the heavens above decided to throw the worst rainstorm of the last few weeks at us, I’ll never know. Despite being protected from the elements on three sides out of four, the rain managed to blow into our dry areas enough to make it totally uncomfortable, and the only solution was the Clint Eastwood approach: zip up the sleeping bag, lie on your back, pull the drawstring around the head of the bag tight so it covers everything bar your face, with your dry clothes squeezed inside it as a pillow, and lie there, with your face covered by your hat. Comfortable it wasn’t, but after one wet night and a day’s walking through a creek bed, it’s amazing how tired you can be.

Unfortunately it’s at times like this that your mind casts around for something to occupy itself, in an attempt to keep itself thinking random thoughts long enough to drift into sleep: nostalgic thoughts of friends and family, the good bits of old relationships, important events in life, the warm feeling of eiderdown... little things that help sleep come quickly. The problem is that thoughts often stray to the day before, as it’s the most recent time for inspiration. For example, strained backs, aching feet, spinifex-slashed hands and all manner of muscular problems, they all haunt Clint’s dreams. The fire we’d lit to dry our clothes spattered into a grey, wet puddle, and eventually I woke up to a clear day, with a dry sleeping bag and limbs that protested from the solidity of the bedrock.

After the night under the cliff, which kept most of the rain off us, sleeping in a ditch in Glastonbury seems like a walk in the park. Except we were sober, an unlikely event at Glastonbury...

Day 3, Tuesday 16th, 13km

I need to laugh

And when the sun is out

I’ve got something I can laugh about

I feel good

In a special way

I’m in love and it’s a sunny day

‘Good Day Sunshine’, The Beatles

‘You only appreciate something when it’s gone,’ they say, and they’re right. Tuesday awoke to a blue sky and warmth, little things that those with roofs take for granted, but which can make a day feel really beautiful to those who’ve lived through the ravages of a storm. It didn’t take much effort to get brekkie, get those packs hoisted and get moving.

As we headed south up Narrina Creek, it gradually widened out into smaller tributaries, eventually drying out altogether, so we could walk right along the creek bed. Luckily there wasn’t too much growth along the way; because creek beds are often the best places to find water, white River Gums and all sorts of strange plant life spring up in the creek itself. This is useful for a couple of reasons: first, you can tell which way a creek flows even if there’s no water, as the trees lean with the current, and debris gets deposited on one side of the trunk only, the upstream side; and second, the vegetation in the creeks is greener than the surrounding scrub, so you can tell where creeks are by looking for lines of green, which is useful when there’s no water to try to spot.

Halfway up the creek we stopped for lunch by a little sloping waterfall, where these tiny fish were desperately trying to swim upstream, presumably to breed. It was quite entertaining watching the little buggers flipping around madly, trying to swim up this gush of water, made quite strong by the recent rains. And soon after lunch we disturbed a wild dog and her pups, and when she’d run off we got a good look at the litter; cute little things they were. We were obviously not alone...

After a while we reached the top of the creek, and struck east in search of the start of the George River. Unfortunately we’d gone a little too far south down Narrina Creek, so when we did reach the George, we were quite high up it and had to hack our way through serious undergrowth for a few hours to reach our destination. The George River has a much higher catchment area than its neighbouring creeks, and as a result it was huge, flowing fast and wide, leaving little room between the water and the surrounding forest, and making it impossible to cross. But our dedication was worth it, because when we’d battled through the worst of it, we got to the waterfalls.

Apparently I’m lucky to have seen the George in full flow, because even in the wet season it doesn’t flow constantly, and when it’s raining in the summer, you don’t tend to go walking for fear of being whisked away. But our downpour had raised the water level to make the waterfalls flow quite dramatically, and it wasn’t a hard decision to camp right by them. We found some reasonably flat rock, and spread sand around in the gaps to make a relatively flat bed, albeit pretty damn hard, and settled in for the duration.

The waterfalls consisted of lots of little falls, followed by a colossal one that fell into a huge, deep pool. The big one was too dangerous to fool around in, but the little ones were great, and before long we were washing away the grime of the journey in cool, flowing water; it was beautiful, and well worth the grief of the rains to have them flowing so much. We set up a makeshift shelter, because although the skies were clear, we didn’t want to take any chances. Indeed, the night started out as clear as a bell, but soon enough a cloud front had rolled in and was threatening to repeat the performance of the last couple of days. Luckily it held off and the sky cleared again, looking great as usual, but the excess moisture and cool temperature brought down some seriously heavy dew, so we woke up on Wednesday with soaking sleeping bags anyway. Was there no escape from the water?

And to cap it all, I cut my foot badly on the rock when walking round in the dark, a big gash on the underside of my left foot, just behind the middle toe. God, it hurt, and proved to be rather uncomfortable for the rest of the trip. But, hey! Nobody said it would be easy...

Day 4, Wednesday 17th, Rest Day

River, oh river, river running deep

Bring me something that will let me get to sleep

In the washing of the water will you take it all away

Bring me something to take this pain away

‘Washing of the Water’, Peter Gabriel

Rest days are important, especially when your body feels like it’s been put on the rack. Besides, discovering a beautiful waterfall system and failing to make the most of it is a capital offence, so we lounged around all day, swimming, exploring and sunbaking.

At least, I was sunbaking – Scott preferred the shade – and it turned out to be a mistake. Yes, I burnt my shoulders ever so slightly, but when you’re carrying a backpack, burnt shoulders aren’t all that comfortable. Still, I didn’t notice until the next day, so the rest day was just great. I went for a wander down the river after lunch, and discovered some Aboriginal rock carvings; in the Pilbara, the art tends to be scratches on rock rather than painting, and I found a rock covered with stick men with big phalluses, like a kind of Aboriginal Picasso exhibition.

Further down the river was a stepped waterfall, a gentle slope of running water with convenient steps all the way down, which had been created by the water wearing through the sedimentary rock. The afternoon sun was pretty hot, so I stripped off and sat in the middle of the falls, looking at the view as the river cut through a gorge with red cliffs lining the sides, huge rockfalls all over the place, and all manner of strange trees hanging over the rock pools. It was bliss.

But the best was yet to come. When I returned to camp, Scott had discovered that if you kept your socks on, then walking around the creeks and down the waterfalls was much easier than in bare feet, so we set off in socks and swimmers in search of the perfect massage. We found it, just before the big waterfall, where water was gushing down right onto perfectly formed seats in the rock; it was just what the doctor ordered. It’s amazing how the aches and pains of walking for days just melt away under a water massage.

That night we constructed dew covers for our sleeping areas, and lit a fire overlooking the river. The sky was dreamy, the smoke kept getting in our eyes, and life just couldn’t get any better. Scott kept me entertained with his stories of caring for the dunnies you get in National Parks; they’re called long-neck dunnies because they’re simply a bowl with a long neck that leads down into a rather unpleasant drum, which simply gets dragged out when full, and replaced by a new drum. Take the example of the huge goanna that got stuck down one of the long-necks for a few days, and managed to scare enough people to make action necessary. The rangers managed to hook it with a circle of wire attached to a pole, but of course, when the shit-covered goanna came out into the light, it did what all sensible animals would have done in its place; it shook itself. So it wasn’t just the goanna that was covered in shit by the end of the operation, but a whole bunch of suddenly much wiser rangers too...

Or how about the tool used to push the contents of the drum down when it’s getting full, but not quite full to the brim? It’s a metal disc welded to the end of a pole, and it’s delightfully called the ‘poo poker’. Or the Irish girl who asked the ranger what it was like inside bush dunny, so he took her video camera, attached it to a rope, turned it to record, and lowered it down inside one. Unique footage, you might say.

There’s something really special about sitting round a campfire, miles from civilisation, and talking into the wee hours...

Day 5, Thursday 18th, 14km

I’ve seen the needle

And the damage done

‘The Needle and the Damage Done’, Neil Young

Neil might have been talking about a different kind of needle, but I reckon if he’d gone walking through spinifex, he’d have written the same lyrics all over again. Spinifex is a bastard, and if I never see it again, I won’t complain. However, seeing as it’s as common as mud in the outback, I think I’m going to be spending plenty of time in its pleasurable company in the coming weeks.

Spinifex is a type of grass that grows in clumps. It looks nice enough, but closer inspection shows the clump to be made up of seriously sharp spikes, as thin and as dangerous as needles, and when you walk through the stuff it lacerates your legs. The points aren’t quite tough enough to puncture leg skin, but they scratch, and if you accidentally fall and use your hands to stop yourself hitting the ground by grabbing a nearby clump of spinifex, you too will have the delightful job of trying to get hundreds of little splinters out of your hand for the next few days. I’m still trying to find them all...

Spinifex is also the reason for controlled burning, as practised by the Aborigines for thousands of years, and more recently by park rangers. After about four or five years spinifex gets too tough for kangaroos to eat, so if you burn it in a bushfire, it starts growing again and the roos can eat it for the next few years. It’s called ‘firestick farming’, and it works; I found that the areas where there had been recent bushfires were much easier to walk through.

Still, we’d known this leg of the walk would be tough, as it took us over the hills of the Chichester Ranges, which roll around without any real distinguishing points for miles. We spent most of the day guessing where we were on the map, and we cut north too soon, heading for a creek that we though must lead to Pillinginni Creek, only to find it was flowing the wrong way and obviously led back to the George again. Damn!

Never mind, we did manage to get radio contact for the first time in the trip, being on the top of the range, so it wasn’t too worrying, but it took longer than anticipated to find the start of Pillinginni Creek. It also turned out to be a very overgrown creek bed, with loads of gums, bushes and nasty plants with sharp bits, so by the time we reached water and cliffs, we were knackered and pretty lacerated.

The problem was that Pillinginni Creek, in its beauty, is very rocky, and its vertical sides are very close together, reducing the number of campsites to, well, zero. We ended up sleeping on a silt bar on a corner of the creek – quite a comfortable spot, as it turned out – and after a refreshing dip in the creek, we turned in for the night. By this stage sleeping on the ground wasn’t much of a problem; it’s amazing how you adapt when you have to.

Day 6, Friday 19th, 18.5km

Do I love you, my oh my

River deep, mountain high

If I lost you would I cry

Oh how I love you baby, baby, baby, baby

‘River Deep, Mountain High’, Ike and Tina Turner

Pillinginni was a pretty little creek, but it was pretty nasty to walk down. One time we got to a dry waterfall, which we had to navigate by me climbing down, Scott then handing me the packs, and then him coming down. The only problem was that the climb down, a good few metres, required you to get a hand grip on a crack, and then effectively jump off and let yourself dangle, as there were no footholds; only then could you drop to the ground.

No problem, I thought, and in my reckless disregard for personal safety that a sure foot and a climbing background give you, I hopped down. Scott, however, was seriously scared of heights, and it took some persuasion to get him to swing out. He made it, all credit to him, but it just shows what a pain some of the terrain was. It took us some time to get to the wider parts of the creek, and then we started to pick up speed, heading for a waterhole at the bottom of the creek, where we’d meet a four-wheel-drive track, camp the night, and then have an easy but long trek back to the cars.

That was the idea, anyway. The only problem was that the waterhole we were going to camp by turned out to be completely dry, so we had to make a decision: walk back to the last one, or push on down the track to the bottom of the George River. We opted to push on, making very good time, and by nightfall we were camping 10km from the cars, on a silted area right below the foot of the Chichester Range. The river was still flowing, the swimming was excellent, and the hues on the red cliffs as the sun set were just amazing.

Day 7, Saturday 20th, 10km

Homeward bound, I wish I was homeward bound

Home, where my thought’s escaping

Home, where the music’s playing

Home, where my love lies waiting silently for me...

‘Homeward Bound’, Simon and Garfunkel

We covered the remaining distance in no time, at least compared to the hard going through the creeks and spinifex. Apart from a kilometre through the scrub it was all road, and according to some warped tradition of Scott’s, we ran the last 50m to the cars, which were a sight for sore eyes.

We packed up the cars while being devoured by a nest of meat ants – big, red ants with a particular craving for meat, dead or alive – and parted company after exchanging addresses and taking photos of us holding up the map in victory. He was a top man, was Scott, and I’m in his debt for providing me with an experience that people would pay serious money for. It would be worth every penny.

So, that was the walk. I then drove straight to Whim Creek, the nearest civilisation in my direction; it’s basically a pub in the middle of nowhere, and I couldn’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be. I feasted on beer and burgers, watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics, and wondered at the beauty of it all. A very happy drunk, I was.

Port Hedland

Written: 22 July 1996

The day after the bushwalk, I finally hit real civilisation. Port Hedland is on the north coast of the Pilbara, and is home to a huge, deep sea port that ships out all sorts of minerals dug from underneath Western Australia: iron ore, manganese, zinc and heaven knows what else. I stayed the night with Kath, mother of Ron from Perth, and the proprietor of Kath’s Kitchen, a top establishment in Port Hedland if burgers and fry-ups are your thing (which for me, they are).

Unfortunately Kath had a touch of the flu, but that didn’t stop us attacking the Bundi and Cokes (a very Australian drink, Bundi being Bundaberg Rum) and taking a Jacuzzi in the back garden as the sun went down over the docks. Kath and her husband, Bert, were top company, as were their friends Des and Theresa, who had parked their campervan in the back garden, not to mention Ron’s brother Chris and his family. There were grandchildren absolutely everywhere (or ‘grannies’ as they called ’em), and it was delightfully insane.

That night Bert, Des and I all went down the pub for a few drinks, and to watch the two-up. Two-up is a real Aussie institution, and you’ve never seen anything like it. It takes place in the back of the pub, where there’s a big area surrounded by a large rope on the ground, a little like a small bowling green. The idea of the game is that the spinner stands in the area, puts two pennies into the tosser (a bit of wood with two round indents for the coins) and tosses the coins high into the air. He’s bet a stake against the bank that he will get two heads (a ‘two-up’), and if he does, he doubles his money. He can keep throwing if he wins, and if he doesn’t reduce his bet, it doubles every time (though most people stick to the same amount every time and cream off any winnings). If he throws a head and a tail it’s a ‘one-up’, and he simply throws again, but if he gets two tails, he loses and it’s the next thrower’s turn. Simple enough.

The amazing part is that everyone around the throwing area is constantly betting with each other on whether it’ll be heads or tails. Each bet is between two people, and they bet the same amount; the person who wins simply keeps the money, so you either lose your stake, or double it. It’s incredible how much money changes hands – hundreds and hundreds of dollars all on one toss of the coins – and the atmosphere is insane. It’s great entertainment even if you don’t bet, and is quite addictive. That’s probably why I didn’t put anything on... as Bert said, you only win if you bet, but you only lose if you bet. Actually, he put it a little better; his exact words were, ‘If the dog hadn’t stopped for a shit, he wouldn’t have got run over.’ Good point that.

That night we pigged out on pies, roast beef, kebabs, spring rolls and anything else Kath had brought back from the café; life has its perks when you own a food joint. Brekkie the next day was a great bacon and egg combo, and before long I’d said my thank you’s and goodbyes, and was back on the road to Broome, glowing from the wonderful hospitality of Kath and her family.

Broome

Written: 25 July 1996

‘Slip into Broome time,’ they say, and figured I might as well do just that. I liked Broome so much that I stayed an extra day, which gave me two days of lazing around doing very little except soaking up the rays and lounging on the beach. Actually I got a bit of sunburn on my upper right thigh on the first day – I’d been writing a letter lying on my side, and of course you can’t just swap hands and turn over, so without realising it I’d burned my rump – so I spent the second day sitting in the shade of a palm tree, looking out over Cable Beach and wondering where all the promised bathing beauties had got to. I suppose with it not being the holidays the beauties were somewhere else, but there were plenty of wrinklies around, so at least it wasn’t dead (though it was a pretty close thing, looking at some of them).

Despite this lethargic vibe, I did manage to visit all the sights of Broome (well, the free ones anyway). Gantheaume Point, at the southern end of the 22km Cable Beach, was home to some weird and wonderful red rock formations carved over time by the coastal winds, but Broome Harbour was covered in fog when I visited it very early in the morning, though I was lucky enough to see it slowly roll back, revealing fishermen, a BP depot and deep, blue ocean. In fact, the only real event I missed out on in Broome was the fabled Roebuck Hotel (the ‘Roey’), the only place to be if you’re a backpacker or a bottle of beer. Actually, I missed it out intentionally, though large numbers of hostellers round Australia will tell you that the Roey is where they had their most unforgettable experiences in Oz. Then again, if you push those hostellers about what was so unforgettable about the Roey, it seems they’ve forgotten...

Talking of spending your time at the bottom of a beer glass, Broome must have the highest concentration of British this side of the Costa del Sol, and that comparison isn’t coincidental. Yes, there’s a lot of the Brits Abroad crowd here – either from the far north of England or the ubiquitous Landan Tahn – and it reminded me of something Robin had mentioned in Millstream-Chichester. He asked if I knew why the Aussies called the English ‘Poms’, and blow me, I had no idea why. He said there were two popular theories, both of which could be rubbish, but nobody I’ve asked seems to know which one’s right. Take your pick from the following:

- Pom comes from POME (pronounced ‘Pommy’), an acronym for Prisoner Of Mother England.

- Pomegranates have pale flesh with rosy-coloured skin, and this reminded the bronzed Aussies of pale Victorian English skin with rosy cheeks; hence, Pom is short for pomegranate.

I don’t know which one is right, if either, but I tend to favour the first one. Whatever, Broome was chocka with Pommies, so after a couple of days I decided not to add to the problem, and hit the road for the heart of the Kimberley.

The Kimberley

Written: 25 July 1996

Everything you’ve heard about the Kimberley area of northern Western Australia is true (unless you’re thinking, ‘The Kimberley, what the hell’s that?’, in which case bear with me). It’s generally very inaccessible, unless you have a four-wheel-drive, tons of spare fuel, spare tyres coming out of your ears and a lot of balls, and as the only one I have of that lot comes in a pair, I haven’t seen the half of it. However, what I have seen of the area has been spectacular; it’s another place I’d definitely visit again.

I had a choice of route from Broome: either head east along Highway One straight to Fitzroy Crossing and then on to Kununurra, or do a little detour up to Derby (pronounced to rhyme with Kirby), head east along the Gibb River Road, and visit two National Parks en route, namely Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek. Of course, I went for the adventurous route.

I say adventurous because the Gibb River Road is no joke. It goes from Derby right across to Kununurra, and I would have tried to follow it all the way if it wasn’t one of the nastiest roads in Australia, only to be attempted by four-wheel-drive, and then only in the dry season (it all but disappears in the wet). It’s the road that cuts through the heart of the Kimberley, and the first section is manageable with a conventional car, after which you can cut south to the National Parks and then on to the highway, hitting the bitumen just west of Fitzroy Crossing.

‘Manageable’ is, obviously, a relative term. The first 80km or so is bitumen, so there you go, speeding along, thinking to yourself, ‘This isn’t that bad, I wonder what all the fuss is about.’ Then you hit the dirt, and I mean hit it, but by that time you’re trapped, as it’s a hell of a long way to turn back. Never have I juddered so much, or had to take it so slow for fear not just of bursting tyres, but of shaking the nuts, bolts and rivets out of the whole car. I’ve driven on corrugated roads[1] before, but this was more like driving over millions of super-sharp sleeping policemen than a road.

It’s roads like this that make me realise I’ve bought the vehicular equivalent of the Starship Enterprise. When the road is terrible, and when most conventional cars would have given up and fallen apart, I end up thinking, ‘She cannae take it no more, Captain!’ But next episode she’s still there purring like a contented cat, the only difference being that the Starship Enterprise doesn’t have as good a stereo as my trusty Toyota.

Windjana Gorge

The drive along the Gibb River Road and down through the gorges is stunning, when the view stops shaking. To add to the surreal flavour of the Kimberley, this is the home of the boab tree (known as the baobab in Africa), and it’s a tree like no other. It has a huge, thick trunk, strange tentacle-like branches, and a totally unique aura of science fiction meets mind-bending drug about it. It’s a strangely apt inhabitant for this stranger-than-fiction part of the world.

The countryside along the road is reasonably flat, but then you come to Windjana Gorge. Back in the days of the dinosaurs the north of Australia was underwater, and there was a huge barrier reef, the Devonian Reef, that stretched east from Broome, up to what is now the coast, and round to Kununurra; as the land rose to form modern Australia, the reef left the sea behind and became a huge, long wall of limestone. So when you get to Windjana Gorge, there’s a huge, vertical cliff stretching out on either side – what used to be the reef – and the Lennard River has cut a gorge straight through it. The reef is only about 3.5km deep, and you can walk along the river straight through to the other side, where the reef again drops away to flat ground. The reef’s texture is truly weird, and as you walk the 8km return track along the gorge, you come to tropical rainforest, sandy spits, odd birds and loads of that creeper that Tarzan used to take instead of the bus. And there, wallowing in the river, I saw my first crocodiles.

There were lots of them, but they were freshwater crocs, the relatively harmless type. Freshies still look pretty mean though, and in the shade of the gorge they looked particularly menacing. They might not eat you without provocation like salties do, but they still have those huge teeth and menacing grins...

Tunnel Creek

After a quick lunch and the 8km hike down the gorge and back, I was raring to keep going. Some days it feels like someone’s sprinkled speed on my Coco Pops and the energy’s boundless – I’d got up at 6.30am, for goodness sake, and was totally hyper until I set up camp for the night – so I hopped back in the car and rattled down to Tunnel Creek National Park. Tunnel Creek used to be a normal creek that ran over the top of the Devonian Reef, but with water seepage and erosion it eventually started flowing into the range, and nowadays it flows through a big tunnel of caves underneath the mountains. In the wet season the creek is huge, but in the dry it effectively stops flowing, just leaving a bunch of permanent rock pools in its wake.

There’s a walk at Tunnel Creek through this tunnel, but it’s not conventional. For a start, in places you have to wade through stomach-deep, cold water. Then there’s a bit of scrambling over rocks and trees. But the most eerie thing is that all this happens in the dark. There aren’t any man-made lights, and because it’s a cave, there’s no natural light either, just you and your torch. They recommend you wear sneakers and swimmers to do the walk, so I kitted myself out, grabbed my camera and my torch – a tiny penlight-sized affair – and headed for the cave.

This must rate as one of the most incredibly scary things I’ve ever done. Although there were other people about outside, inside I was totally alone, in the pitch black, sloshing around through water that went from sand bank to stomach-high to ankle-high and back to sand, and there was me with a tiny pool of light to guide me. It’s totally silent, apart from the drip of the stalactites and the sploshing of your walking, and towards the end of the 750m tunnel (which felt more like 75km) there’s a colony of bats to scare the hell out of you. Halfway along the tunnel there’s a bit where the roof has collapsed, so there’s light and you can see the colours of the cave decorations which are hard to see in the light of a torch, but to be honest it just makes it harder, because you then have to plunge straight back into pitch darkness and icy water. The light at the end of the tunnel is a relief, but only momentarily because, you guessed it, the only way back is the way you came.

Add in the wildlife – the bats, the freshwater crayfish swimming around your toes and scurrying to get away from the light, and various other beasties that I could feel brushing past my submerged knees in the dark – and you have one of the most eerie experiences in the world. I recommend you do it alone; it’s easy to be brave when you’re in a group, but being alone in dark, waist-deep water you can’t see through, with a pathetic beam of light for company, is really challenging. I still can’t believe I made it; another phobia bites the dust. Besides, walking through freezing subterranean water is a great soother for a sunburnt rump...

After conquering Tunnel Creek, I drove straight back to the bitumen, which seemed to take ages, and I didn’t get there until after nightfall. On the way I had to drive through a creek that was still flowing, and the height of the water was rather scary; it came over the top of the wheels, and I was lucky I made it. I now know that there’s a hole in the floor of the passenger footrest, which could be responsible for the periodic Stilton cultivations... but luckily it wasn’t long before I was cooking up spaghetti bolognese in Fitzroy Crossing Caravan Park (a very nice spot), camped next to two whizz-bangs[2]. Boy, did I sleep well that night.

[1] I’d always assumed that corrugation on dirt roads was intentional, put there to provide added grip in the wet. However, it turns out it’s a totally natural phenomenon that occurs when cars drive along dirt roads, and nobody knows how to prevent it happening. I found myself wishing that they did.

[2] ‘Whizz-bang’ was how an old couple I met in Karijini referred to campervans. I’d assumed they called them whizz-bangs because their engines sounded like that, but there’s a better reason. Remember those sliding doors that campervans have down the side? And the noise it makes when you slide it shut? That’s right: whizz-bang. It’s a name that makes sense after you’ve camped next to a few of them.

Kununurra

Written: 29 July 1996

Friday was a long driving day, but before I set off on the seven-hour slog from Fitzroy Crossing to Kununurra, I popped 20km off the highway to Geikie Gorge, another of the Devonian Reef gorges. If anyone ever says to you, ‘When you’ve seen one gorge you’ve seen them all,’ you can tell they’ve never been to Australia, because however many gorges I’ve seen – and I can think of a dozen I’ve seen in WA off the top of my head – every one is unique. Geikie is picture-postcard pretty, not quite as rugged as most, and its green vegetation makes it quite an oasis. There’s a lovely little 1.5km walk up the gorge where I met a very interesting travelling group, comprising an Irishman, a Swiss guy and American girl, all trucking round in one van bought in Sydney. Now that’s what I call a tolerant bunch, and good fun they were too.

Then I set off on the long drive to Kununurra. I could have stopped at a number of tiny towns on the way, but I fancied a nice long drive and Kununurra was where I’d booked a tour of the Bungle Bungles, so getting there early would mean I wouldn’t have to pitch the tent somewhere different every morning. The journey, though long and pretty desolate, was amazing when it turned north to head through the Kimberley. The mountain ranges and odd shapes of the landscape are just stunning, especially when the sun is setting and casting red shadows everywhere. I drove solidly between 10.30am and 6.00pm, with a half hour stop for lunch, and I didn’t even feel tired at the end. Compare that with half-an-hour’s drive through rush-hour Birmingham...

My camping spot was odd, though. The first place I tried, the caravan park in the centre of Kununurra, was totally full, but just as the lady was about to explain directions to another park, her husband bounded up and said there was room for a small one, so I paid up for the weekend and set up camp. I was totally surrounded by lots of little dome tents, none with attending cars, and after I’d set mine up it looked a bit like an adult dome, surrounded by lots of little babies. It turned out that Kununurra is the spot in the north for getting work as a fruit picker – mainly to pick melons – and I’d picked a spot full of young fruit pickers, all out here on a working holiday visa.

Whoops: here I am, the other side of the globe, and I’m surrounded by teenage Londoners who seem to think the whole world’s like Ibiza. It’s nice to meet fellow travellers, but some people haven’t got a clue: they don’t visit National Parks, they visit pubs; they don’t get into the local culture, they get onto the beach; they don’t often crop up west of Broome, because they stick to the east coast. I even got offered two jobs picking melons, but I politely declined...

Still, I can’t be too critical of how parochial the Poms are. The Olympic coverage here in Australia – at least, the coverage on the radio, as I haven’t watched TV for ages – is incredible; there might as well be no other nationalities involved except Australia. This nation might be sporty, but it doesn’t appear to be terribly sporting; I’ve never come across such a bunch of bad losers in my life. It’s all medal tally, medal tally, medal tally, and when the swimming team had a shaky start to the games, everyone was saying how crap they were, and what a bunch of losers the team was. Luckily the swimming medals started rolling in, stemming the criticism, but it was all a bit sad; no wonder Greg Norman emigrated to the USA, complaining that all the press did was criticise him.

Never mind: Kununurra is a pretty little spot, just right for a lazy weekend. After an excellent start to the day – I downloaded my email to find £440-worth of writing commissions and an invitation to visit a fellow journalist in Auckland – I spent Saturday morning exploring on foot, as it’s far too easy to explore by car, and you miss all the sounds and smells. I started by climbing Kelly’s Knob for an excellent lookout over the town, and then walking into the very nearby Mirima (Hidden Valley) National Park. The latter is a sweet little park, with some really far out rock formations and vegetation. Its only real drawback is its close proximity to the town, which means it’s full of day trippers scrambling around and videoing it (I ask you, what’s the point in videoing a still valley?); it was a shame, as this sort of place is perfect for quiet contemplation perched atop a cliff, something made challenging, if not impossible, by noisy kids and day trippers complaining about the flies.

Which reminds me: I have found a name for my pain, and that name is ‘caravan’. I hate them! Never in my life have I seen so many caravans blocking up the roads; four out of five vehicles on the road here seem to be towing one, and after a while they drive you nuts. They drive so slowly, often because they’re being driven by retired couples who can’t see more than a couple of feet beyond their bumper, and over a seven-hour drive, the joke begins to wear thin. Very, very thin.

Clearly in need of a break from driving, I spent a lazy weekend just pootling around, soaking up the rays and the water in the public swimming pool (the only crocodile-free water I could find). I needed it, because on the Monday I had to meet the tour bus for the Bungle Bungles at 5.30am on the other side of town – yes, 5.30am. And it was still dark, a bit like my mood at that time in the morning... though that would soon change.

Purnululu (Bungle Bungles)

Written: 31 July 1996

The Bungle Bungles – or Purnululu National Park, to give the park its official title – is one of those places that is not only totally unique in the world, it’s also breathtakingly weird and completely inexplicable. Access to the park is off Highway One at Turkey Creek, south of Kununurra, but it’s not for the fainthearted: it’s definitely only for four-wheel drive vehicles, and even they find it tough. From the highway to the park is just 53km (33 miles) away, but it takes over two hours to do that stretch, so I took a tour as it was the only practical way to get there.

I’m glad I did, too, though at A$390 for a three-day tour it wasn’t cheap. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and taking a tour does make it rather luxurious. Luckily the group I went with – just ten of us, plus the guide – was full of interesting people, with me being the youngest by a serious gap (most of the group were retired), as well as the only non-Australian. Compared to the irritating people on the large backpacker tour bus that we bumped into out there, this was high culture indeed...

We stayed in little huts with comfortable beds – a novelty for me after all this camping – with all meals provided; this felt like real decadence after cooking up rice in my billy for the last few months. We drove into the park on Monday and spent the afternoon visiting Cathedral Gorge, a huge pool in the famous beehives of the Bungle Bungle mountain range. The whole area is made up of a raised range of sedimentary sandstone that has been worn into huge beehive-shaped mounds, with horizontal stripes alternating black and red across them all. It’s hard to explain, but walking through these superbly odd formations as the sun highlights the reds, greens and blacks and casts eerie shadows, is just... well, I’m lost for words. There’s a two-day 18km walk through the area up the Picaninny River, and one day I hope to do it. It might be only a two-day walk, but it’s hard going and there’s no water anywhere; because the area is all rock, when it rains in the wet season the creeks run hard and fast, but as soon as the rain stops, the water runs away and the area dries up very quickly, leaving very few permanent pools.

That night we had an excellent meal, with billy tea round the fire (a recipe for billy tea: boil up a billy on the fire, chuck in a handful of tea leaves, bring back to the boil and pour a cup of cold water in to make the leaves sink – beautiful!). I also had the immense pleasure of christening my first-ever stubby holder, which I’d bought a few days before. A stubby holder, an essential part of every Australian beer drinker’s life, is a hollow cylinder of foam with only one open end, into which you stuff your can to keep it cold as you drink it. Stubby holders have all sorts of things printed on them – they’re the beer drinker’s equivalent of car bumper stickers – and mine says ‘North West Australia: Best Bloody Place in the World’ on it, along with all the places you should visit there (most of which I’ve visited). My stubby holder and my hat: I’ll take them wherever I travel.

The Northern Bungles

On the second day in the park we went on three walks in the northern end of the Bungles. The first was along Mini Palm Gorge, a scramble up a gorge to a sheltered, sandy area that was full of tiny, squat palm trees; it looks for all the world like a palm nursery. Climbing gorges in the Bungles is an experience, with a lot of scrambling over what looks like pebble-dash and concrete blocks; the area is made up of conglomerate rock, a strange mixture of sandstone and pebbles, washed there by prehistoric rivers. All along the gorges grow luscious palms, with some trees growing in the most amazingly unfriendly spots, like halfway up cliffs. Although they’re gorges, they’re not like the others I’ve seen, they’re more like river-beds that flow steeply down from the top of the range, and you climb up the fissure created by the flow. It’s like another world.

At the end of Mini Palm Gorge is a narrow crack in the rock, and John, our guide, took us all in there and got us to feel our way along the wall in the pitch black; we couldn’t see a thing, but he made us go on. After about five minutes our eyes started to adjust, and you wouldn’t believe how much we could see in this huge crack in the mountains. The hues cast by the very small amount of light coming from the entrance lit up the walls, and although we were totally in the dark when we went in, after a bit we could see really quite well. It was spooky, but well worth doing.

Froghole Gorge is another beautiful walk, with a permanent rock pool at the end. The view up from the pool is amazing; you can see where the water flows in during the wet season, and it’s quite obvious why the park is closed during the rains, as the amount of water rushing around must be tremendous. Finally, we walked up Echidna Chasm, a massive and very deep crack in the range, which you can walk down for a considerable distance before reaching the end. You can see the sky above you all the way, and the reflected light that comes down is truly strange.

When we got back to camp we immediately headed down the road to watch the sunset, or rather the view as the sun set behind us, shining onto the Bungles range in front of us. As the sun set and the red hues changed every few minutes, the full moon came up over the range, probably the most amazing sight of the lot. As I sat on the roof of the large Oka truck we’d been travelling in, beer in hand, I really thought I’d found heaven. The full moon was also the first blue moon I’ve knowingly seen, which just added to the magic (a blue moon being the second full moon in the same month, something that only happens up every two or three years). We rounded off the evening with a bloody good barbecue, and more yarns and idle chat round the fire.

The following morning those who wanted could go on a A$120 helicopter flight over the range, something I couldn’t afford – though I vowed to come back one day and fly over the Bungles before walking through Picaninny Gorge – and we spent the rest of the day driving back to Kununurra. I slept incredibly well that night; it was an excellent tour.

Northern Territory

Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge)

Written: 3 August 1996

Thursday was just another driving day, despite it being my birthday. Actually, it was the shortest birthday I’ve ever had, as I crossed the border from Western Australia to the Northern Territory, losing an hour-and-a-half in the process. I drove from Kununurra to Katherine through the most amazing scenery, and to break the journey I stopped for a couple of walks in the Gregory National Park, home to the Stokes Range and the Escarpment, the latter walk ending in a beautiful view over the Victoria River valley.

I turned up at Katherine in mid-afternoon, and after swimming in the hot springs – a little river that is really quite warm, and very refreshing after a long, dusty drive – and filling up with dried food at Woolworths, I headed north to Nitmiluk National Park.

The following day was quite a contrast; instead of spending all day behind the wheel, I spent it in the bush. Katherine Gorge is the main attraction of Nitmiluk National Park, and I set off at 8.10am to explore the area, initially heading for Smitt’s Rock, some 11.3km along the gorge. The gorge itself is always flowing, so you can’t walk down it (though you can take boat tours and hire canoes, a rather attractive idea in retrospect); there is, however, a long trail that goes parallel to the river, from which you can duck off down creek beds to the gorge proper.

The ranger suggested that a good day’s walk would be out to Smitt’s Rock and back, 22.6km in length, but I made such good time to the Rock – where I had the first of many welcome swims, a wise move in the mid-30°C heat – that I decided to visit the other walks on the way back. Undeterred by mountain tracks and searing heat I ended up visiting Smitt’s Rock (a huge fork in the river, complete with soaring heights and deep, dark water), the Lily Ponds (not a bad spot, but a little dry at this time of the year), Butterfly Gorge (a lovely, shady inlet where black and white butterflies flit around in the trees), the Windolf Walk (a very open part of the gorge, with spectacular views up and down the Katherine River) and the Southern Rockhole (a beautiful, tiny beach, just right for a final dip).

It was a lovely walk and I made it back by the allotted time, but I paid for it in the end. The total walk came to a whopping 35.7km (a shade over 22 miles), and my feet were totally shredded. I line my boots with Odor Eaters, to cushion my feet and keep the smell manageable, and I’d forgotten to get a new pair after wearing out the current ones on the Chichester walk; the result was a collection of big blisters where the holes in the Odor Eaters were. It served me right, but I had to soak them that night and take it easy over the next few days... feet aren’t like tyres, where you just bung on a spare. At least my leg muscles recovered quickly, so I could walk, at least.

That night I gorged on a burger ‘with the lot’ – that’s burger, cheese, bacon, egg, lettuce, grated carrot, pickles, beetroot, pineapple and anything else that will fit in the bun, plus chips... it’s easy to see why it’s an Aussie favourite. I also drank tons of high-energy fizzy drinks and cups of tea; I’d already drunk about six litres of water on the walk, but I was still thirsty, and I didn’t need to take a leak for the entire day. But, boy, did I sweat! This tropical heat is no joke; I’ve been putting up my tent without the flysheet, effectively using it as a glorified mosquito net, and it’s still boiling at night. I’d sleep in the open if it weren’t for the fact that the mozzies can carry the Ross River Virus, a nasty piece of work that can make you quite ill. I daren’t think what this place is like in the middle of summer...

Kakadu

Written: 8 August 1996

After wearing myself out in Nitmiluk, I drove northeast to Kakadu National Park, without a doubt the most famous National Park in Australia. It’s certainly one of the most popular, and people either love it or loathe it. I’ve heard some people call it Kaka-don’t, but it’s not the sort of attraction you miss out just because someone else didn’t like it. At A$15 the entry fee is three times the fee at any of the Western Australian parks, but you do get your money’s worth; you can stay for 14 days, and bush camping is free (though there are sites with amenities for a paltry A$5 per night). When I paid, I mentioned to the ranger that I was interested in walking, and he handed me a huge bundle of leaflets, detailing the marked tracks available, and apart from three sites, they were all accessible by two-wheel-drive. (The most notable 4WD sites are Jim Jim Falls and Twin Falls, to which day tours cost A$120; maybe next time.)

Some criticisms levelled at Kakadu are well founded. First, even in winter, it’s very hot and humid, to the point of being really uncomfortable. Second, because all the creeks and rivers are croc-infested, you can’t swim anywhere except the odd rock pool and the commercial swimming pools at the various resorts; camping next to a cool, flowing creek that you really want to jump into is a bit of a nightmare when all you can do is look at it. Third, because it’s so humid and you’re so sweaty, the flies and mozzies are not just a nuisance, they’re a serious inconvenience. Even after the flies of northern WA, Kakadu is really annoying; the Aussie salute (waving your hand in front of your face to brush away flies) is in serious evidence here. And finally, there aren’t many dirt roads, but when there are, they are terrible and of a much lower standard than you would expect from such a popular tourist spot (though, of course, this does help prevent huge numbers of vehicles travelling down them, which is possibly the point).

But hidden away in Kakadu are some truly world-class sights, so taken as a whole, it’s worth a visit. You just have to know what to look for...

Southern Kakadu

I spent my first day in Kakadu at Gunlom (also known as Waterfall Creek), a beautiful crocodile-free rock pool full of fish and cold, clear water; it was the perfect antidote to the long drive over the endless corrugation, so I set up camp there and planned my visit. The park looked so good from all the literature I’d been given and I was really enthusiastic, particularly after reading the glowing entries in my Lonely Planet guide. Little was I to know that Gunlom would be one of the most beautiful spots on the entire trip.

The next morning I got up early and went for a scramble round the top of Gunlom, where there are some very pretty rock pools, and took a quick dip in the falls to wake me up. I then drove back towards the highway, stopping to do a picturesque walk at Yurmikmik to Motor Car Falls, another croc-free swimming hole. After a relaxed lunch in the shade I walked back and drove to a bush camp next to Kambolgie Creek. As I sat there, boiling my billy on the fire after supper, and chatting to a couple of lads who had driven a 4WD all around Australia (who I’d meet at every campsite during my stay in the park), I reckoned Kakadu must be one of the finest spots in Oz. But the next day I headed north...

And as you head north, the real Kakadu begins to rear its ugly head. As I drove up the sealed Kakadu Highway – missing a lookout that was on the map but didn’t seem to exist in real life, however hard I looked – I noticed that most of the cars I was passing were very expensive, very clean, very new, very fast and very rude (not one of them returned my waves). I stopped off to do a couple of walks on the way – the dismal Gun-gardun walk and the pretty, but short Mardugal Billabong walk, where I took advantage of the campsite’s showers, something you have to do to keep sane in the humidity – and eventually got to Cooinda, home to Yellow Water Creek. Talk about beauty and the beast.

Yellow Water is wetland, which means it’s flooded for a lot of the year. Wetland is under serious threat from man, and Kakadu has some of the most important tropical wetlands in the world, a haven for migrating birds and water-happy plants. The walk round Yellow Water is beautifully tranquil, and I was so impressed I drove the three kilometres to Cooinda to buy a ticket for the Yellow Water boat cruise.

Slick Tourism

Cooinda is one of the hotel complexes in Kakadu, and I was culture-shocked; blubbery, whingeing tourists oozed out of their air-conditioned coaches to book into soulless units and ensure that their seats on the whizz-through tours of Kakadu’s highlights had been reserved, while cheery girls with American accents greeted potential tour-victims with cheesy smiles and ingratiating sales talk. I nearly upped and ran away, but I spotted a boat tour for 6.45am the next day and paid up; my theory was that the sort of tourists I wanted to avoid wouldn’t be up for a tour that early. After a quick lunch on the lawn – during which a huge black crow swooped down on the half-eaten sandwich in my hand, snatched it clean out of my fingers and flew up into a tree to eat it, the little swine – I got out as fast as I could.

But obviously not fast enough. I popped into the Warradjan Aboriginal Cultural Centre on the way, a fascinating museum to Aboriginal culture, Dreaming stories and how Kakadu is still an important part of their way of life, and discovered that sometimes there’s no escape from the masses. The lunchtime hordes were right on my tail, bursting through the whole thing at breakneck speeds. You could almost imagine them saying, ‘Right, that’s the Aborigines done, what’s on tomorrow? Driving through the whole of Europe and back home by six? Great!’

So I drove off to camp at Jim Jim Billabong, the nearest bush camp to Yellow Water. I drove back to see the sunset at Yellow Water, unfortunately coinciding with hundreds of video camera junkies and an astounding number of loud French and Germans, all with the same idea, and turned in to try to get some sleep in the closeness of Kakadu’s nights.

Up before the sun, I duly headed off for my A$25-worth of entertainment on Yellow Water, ‘the highlight of most people’s trip to Kakadu’ according to my increasingly inaccurate guidebook. Well, I suppose it was all right, but I like to leave a tour having found out something I hadn’t known, and I didn’t, except for the names of a few birds that I would have known if I were into ornithology (when it comes to birds, my favourites come with roast potatoes). True, if you are a devoted fan of eagles, jabirus, ducks, geese and all those other water-dwelling birds, Yellow Water is a dream come true (almost literally for the orgasmic feathered-friend freak I sat next to), but it’s not really my cuppa, so I was destined to be slightly mesmerized by the two-hour cruise. It was pleasant, but no highlight.

I spent the rest of the day doing a few more of the slightly disappointing walks of Kakadu. The Mirrai Lookout was interesting, though largely obscured by the smoke from the controlled burning being lit at this time of year (though the smoke does give the vista a unique charm, an air of mystery that’s rather pleasant). Only half of the Bubba Walk at Muirella Camp was open, and although it was pleasant, it was nothing I hadn’t seen at Yellow Water, and it was only meeting a very nice couple from Melbourne en route that raised it above the forgettable. I then headed out to Nourlangie Rock, home to my first batch of rock art; rock art isn’t, as I had previously thought, pop art with noisier guitars, it’s Aboriginal cave painting, and interesting though it is, it’s not the rather clumsy paintings that are fun, it’s the stories behind them. I’ve always enjoyed stories of the Dreaming, and Kakadu is chocka with ’em, from stories of Lightning Man to the Rainbow Serpent to how the crocodiles came about... lots of fun, but more entertaining from a book than a rock wall. I came, I saw, I Kodaked, and I preferred the explanations in the Aboriginal Cultural Centre.

Iligadjarr and Tea

The next walk was round the Anbangbang Billabong – more wetland, same story, but with a very pleasing backdrop of the awesome Nourlangie Rock – followed by a hop up Nawurlandja Lookout, a view that was again rather smoky, but good nonetheless. My next jaunt was to Gubara, a walk that started at the end of a god-awful 9km dirt boneshaker, and which ended up at some stagnant and rather smelly rock pools, rather than the luscious flowing river promised in the brochure. There was just enough flowing stream to have a quick dip, but only time will tell if I’ve caught something fatal in the process. It didn’t take much persuasion to head off to the Burdulba Camp to set up the tent and have a cuppa... or two, or three, or four...

Every cloud has a silver lining, and every day has its sunset, and for Tuesday’s I went on the Iligadjarr Wetlands walk, a fine example of what a wetland walk should be, helped by the guide leaflet I’d got from the ranger. The best part of the walk was the solitude, and the sounds and smells of the swampy sunset were divine, even if the mozzies had a field day. Iligadjarr and tea helped to revive my flagging interest in Kakadu, even if I did get gobbled up by a bunch of evil blood suckers; I have never encountered so many thirsty mozzies before. There are clouds of them, and they’re huge. It makes sitting outside at night impossible, as they seem able to ignore sprays, burning coils, the lot; they even managed to infiltrate my car one night, as I found out when trying to get away from the bites. Thank goodness I managed to kill all the ones that got into the tent, as I could hear their friends buzzing round outside all night...

Tuesday night ended on a slightly surreal note. Just as I was about to tuck in for the night, the ranger pulled up and went round every tent, handing out census forms. Yes, August 6th was census night in Oz, and everyone, including non-residents, had to fill out their details. So I’m in the Australian census statistics as an unemployed traveller who isn’t looking for work... who would have thought it? Me, an official bum. I thank you.

The Wonder of Ubir

The following day was the day of reckoning, Kakadu’s last chance to prove to me that it deserved its position as Australia’s Number One National Park. I suppose it tried its hardest, but by the end of the day all I could think of was driving to Darwin. I started the day early – before the sun rises is the only remotely cool time of day or night – and headed back to Nourlangie Rock to start the Barrk Sandstone Bush Walk, which I did at 8am (by which time the temperature had already reached 22°C, or 70°F). This bushwalk is the longest in the park at 12km, and it’s supposed to take 6-8 hours. By 11am I was back, having trudged through some interesting sandstone mountains with ornate erosion patters, and having visited the Naguluwur rock art site. It wasn’t the best walk I’ve ever done, but it wasn’t the worst; it was average, as much of Kakadu’s walks seem to be.

I then drove to the Bowali Visitor’s Centre, the administration centre for the park, and although it wasn’t a patch on the Aboriginal Cultural Centre, it was interesting enough. After a quick petrol stop at Jabiru – Kakadu’s only town and tourist haven, a nice spot for staying in luxurious hotels and swimming in the sun, but not really in keeping with my budget – I set off for Ubir.

Tucked away at the northern end of the park, right on the border with the Aboriginal territory of Arnhem Land, Ubir was the only site, apart from Gunlom, that I found really special. The rock art there is superb, and the view from the rock of the huge Arnhem Land escarpment is just amazing; it’s worth visiting Kakadu for this sight alone, to be honest. I went off to camp at Merl[1] thinking that although I was disappointed with Kakadu, I wouldn’t have missed Ubir for the world.

I rounded off the day with two more walks: the Mangarre walk, which was mostly closed, and therefore a bit of a waste of time; and the combined Bardedjilidji/Rock Holes walk, which was long (6.5km), monotonous, very sandy (a walker’s nightmare) and not worth the effort, despite the pleasant East Alligator River flowing along half the walk. You know a walk isn’t going well when, halfway round, you just want to be back at camp with the kettle on. It wasn’t long before I was doing just that, but only after I’d decided not to bother with the two short walks remaining for me to do on the way to Darwin – more wetlands and more rainforest I could live without. I left Kakadu the following morning – a day earlier than planned – smothered in bites, with a sackful of dirty, sweaty clothes, and – to be honest – relief that Darwin was so close.

So, that was Kakadu. I wasn’t so much disappointed as underwhelmed; after the most amazing sights and walks I’ve seen in Western Australia, Kakadu really wasn’t that special. It’s a cultural treasure, a haven for rare animals, and all that jazz, but there’s nothing that sticks in the mind like Nambung’s pinnacles, Kalbarri and Karijini’s gorges, Fitzgerald River and Cape Range’s beaches, Purnululu’s beehives, Wilpena Pound’s mountains, Tunnel Creek’s atmosphere... need I go on? The wetlands at Yellow Water are nice, and Gunlom and Ubir are delightful (which is probably why they filmed some of Crocodile Dundee at Gunlom), but they’re hidden among a lot of rather average walks and sights. I get the feeling that Kakadu is such a success because most people don’t know that there are better places out there. I’ve done Kakadu, and although it pains me to say so, I don’t think I’ll be coming back.

[1] A funny thing happened to me in Merl on my last night in Kakadu, as I torchlit my way through the night to make use of the A$5 ablutions. There I was, minding my own business, a sitting target for all the mozzies who’d discovered that the toilet was a perfect spot for target practice, when I spotted an odd shape sticking out of the top of the door. Closer inspection showed it to be a lizard that I’d accidentally trapped, so I opened the door, let him go and went back to the job in hand. The next thing I knew a huge beetle was wandering around my feet, trying to climb up to join me, so I finished off and headed off back into the night. The lizard and beetle weren’t a drama, but as I walked back, this huge bird – well, I couldn’t see it, but it sounded huge – swooped down from the trees, right past my head, squawking as it went. Now that did scare the shit out of me... good job I’d just done what I’d done, if you catch my drift.

Darwin

Written: 12 August 1996

Darwin’s a strange place. Back on Christmas Day in 1974 the entire town was flattened by Cyclone Tracy, so everything’s brand new, there are very few old buildings (and by ‘old’ I mean any dating from the town’s inception in 1869), and it’s a very cosmopolitan city, if you can call a place with only 70,000 inhabitants a city. I spent most of my four days in Darwin doing very little, enjoying the lack of mosquitoes after Kakadu, and doing things like picking up my post, finally tracking down the right part to fix my petrol lamp (hurrah!), and getting a haircut. The haircut was rather savage, and definitely the shortest hair I’ve ever had; I had it shaved all over to a no.4, which makes my ears stick out, but it’s wonderfully cool in this tropical heat, dries straight away without a towel, doesn’t need brushing, and doesn’t attract flies as much as long, greasy hair... if I didn’t look like such a squaddie, I’d probably stick to it all the time, but I don’t think the hippy in me could handle it.

On my first night in Darwin I met my neighbours in the Shady Glen Caravan Park (and extremely shady it was too, full of dossers and crusties... I should have known something would go wrong, but then it was the cheapest in town). On one side were Kevin and Louise from Cork, and on the other Adrienne (also from Cork) and Darren (from St Albans). They’d all been travelling round together for a while, having done the east coast/through the middle trip, and they were waiting to fly to Thailand before heading back home. I butted in on their conversation – something you get rather good at when you’re a lonely solo traveller – and we whiled away the night, swapping travel stories, with me sitting there entranced by their beautiful Irish accents. The company was just what I needed after quite a few weeks alone, and the wine they happened to be drinking helped cement our temporary connection.

Into Darwin

The next day I visited the city’s botanic gardens; Darwin city centre is tiny, and you can park right in the middle for free, something these small cities all seem to have in common. Darwin’s gardens are naturally very tropical in nature, and are packed with palm trees, shady walks and waterfalls, and there’s a beautiful grass amphitheatre where concerts are often held; the gardens would have been really attractive if I hadn’t caught them halfway through a renovation, but when they’re finished, they’ll be lovely. Of the botanic gardens I’ve seen so far, Perth still comes out tops with the magnificent Kings Park, followed by Adelaide’s huge and delightful parks; then I’d say it’s a close thing between Darwin and Melbourne, though they’re hard to compare, as Melbourne has a large expanse of picnic-friendly grass with the Yarra wending its way through, and Darwin is small and tropical; Sydney definitely comes last, as its gardens are just like a normal, city park with a vaguely botanical theme. I wonder what the ones in Brisbane are like: pretty, I would assume, but I’ll have to go to find out for myself one day.

That night my neighbours and I decided to get drunk. Sometimes it just has to be done, and who needs an excuse? We got in two slabs of VB stubbies (48 bottles in total), a four-litre cask of wine (the Aussie name for a wine box), and two bags of ice, the whole lot coming to a paltry A$16 each... and we got hideously slaughtered, sitting round my newly resurrected petrol lamp, talking nonsense for hours. It was quite wonderful, but it did mean Saturday proved to be a bit of a struggle.

I had decided to have a lazy day anyway and to write some letters, but that morning someone decided to nick my sleeping bag and towel from the washing line, so I spent most of the day trying to get a crime report from the police. To be honest I wasn’t too bothered about the theft, as it was too hot in Darwin to use a sleeping bag anyway, and the bag had been getting to the end of its useful life and kept leaking feathers everywhere; besides, I need a thicker one for more temperate New Zealand, so I was going to have to get a replacement anyway. Still, it’s never nice to have stuff stolen, and it made me quite paranoid to leave anything around, not a pleasant state of affairs. We commiserated my loss by drinking the cask of wine that we’d been too drunk to tackle the night before.

Sunday turned out to be the perfect antidote to missing towels and sleeping bags, as it was host to the annual Beer Can Regatta. The general idea is that there’s a carnival on Mindil Beach, just out of the centre of Darwin, where competitors bring their boats, entirely made out of empty beer cans, and race them in the sea (they have to row them; these aren’t little models, but full-sized boats). The sea was incredibly warm, the boats were impressive, and there were all sorts of odd competitions, from tugs-of-war to Ladies’ Thong[1] Throwing (or ‘tong trowing’ as my Irish friends liltingly called it). Junk food, cans of Coke, and another slab that night – because it was my last night, a tenuous but totally valid excuse – rounded off a pretty pleasant day. I vaguely recall talking to a Frenchman called Pierre, who joined us for our slab, but I can’t remember much except he was a juggler and wanted to travel Europe, juggling and unicycling to earn his keep. You meet all sorts, when you’ve had a few. I think...

[1] ‘Thongs’ being the Australian name for flip-flops, or sandals, in case you were getting all excited at the thought of ladies ripping off their thongs on the beach...

Litchfield

Written: 14 August 1996

After drinking Darwin dry, I struck west for Litchfield National Park, some 150km from the state capital. A lot of people rate Litchfield more highly than Kakadu, and I wasn’t disappointed; what a lovely place. It’s lusciously green, the rivers and waterfalls are fast-flowing and you can swim in them, the mozzies aren’t that bad, and, as with Kakadu, the main roads are all bitumen (there are dirt tracks, but they’re all 4WD-only).

My first stop was at the Magnetic Anthills that the area is famous for. These odd-looking things are termite mounds, but they’re shaped like really thin, flat fins – unlike most mounds, which are like towers – and they’re all aligned in exactly the same way along the north-south axis, making the area look like a cosmic graveyard. The theory is that termites like a constant temperature, and most dig down into the ground to attain it, but magnetic termites build on floodplains, so they can’t dig too deep or they’ll drown, so they have to have a constant temperature in the mound itself. As the faces of the ‘gravestone’ face east and west, it catches the early morning and late evening sun full on, but only a little of the burning midday sun, which helps to keep the temperature inside reasonably constant and bearable; the effect of hundreds of these mounds, all facing the same way, is completely bizarre.

After my introduction to the world of magnetic insects, I headed straight for Wangi Falls (pronounced ‘Wong-eye’) and pitched my tent, followed by a dip in the beautifully cold pool at the foot of the twin falls. The waterfalls in the Northern Territory – including those in Kakadu, to be fair – are spectacular, and generally the swimming is superb; Litchfield has a great collection of them, which is probably why so many people prefer the place to Kakadu.

Again that night I interrupted a conversation, and met Ted and Gill from the north of England, who had driven their van on the same route as me, but had started in Sydney and had seen the east coast, sacrificing Tasmania to do so. They were giving a lift to Ralph, a quiet but very well spoken German, and Lisa, a lively girl from Rickmansworth who had spent most of her life in Tenerife as a hairdresser, and most of her year in Australia on the beach on the east coast. We all got on famously, and spent the next day exploring the sights of Litchfield.

Our first stop was Florence Falls, the most beautiful falls you could possibly hope for. We dived, we swam, we marvelled at the huge water monitor lizard that swam in the pool and climbed the rocks around us, and we jumped off crazy rock walls into deep, cool water. Unfortunately we also scratched our heads at how my daypack had mysteriously become waterlogged while we were swimming, totally ruining my camera in the process; presumably someone knocked it in, noticed and fished it out again, as there were a lot of people clambering around taking photos, and we were swimming for a fair old time. Losing my camera and the photos on the ruined film distressed me no end, but Ted and Gill said they’d send me copies of their pictures from Litchfield (which they very kindly did), and there was no point in getting annoyed at something that couldn’t be undone, so I put it out of my mind and we set off for Buley Rockhole.

Buley Rockhole is another delight; it’s a series of really deep rock pools, connected by little waterfalls, and the water is clear, cold and just what you need in the tropical jungle that makes up a lot of Litchfield. We spent ages lounging around, diving and jumping, and boy, did I sleep well that night.

The next morning I was up early to head off out of the park, back towards Katherine. I decided to take the tourist route, which runs parallel to the main highway but passes through some lovely countryside, and on the way I stopped off at Robin Falls – a pretty little spot with a dribbling waterfall, miles from anywhere – and Douglas Hot Springs, a little river that’s heated by thermal activity. The springs are really relaxing; the hot spring mixes with a cold one, and you have to bathe at the mix, as the hot one is a bit too hot on its own. I bumped into Ted, Gill and their passengers again here, and we arranged to meet in Katherine at one of the caravan parks, seeing as we were enjoying each other’s company so much.

Elsey

Written: 17 August 1996

After a night in Katherine, I waved goodbye to Ted and Gill and hit the road south, but I didn’t get very far; just over 100km south of Katherine I turned off the highway to Elsey National Park, home to the Mataranka Homestead and some thermal springs, and I instantly fell in love with the place.

Elsey is the setting for the famous Australian novel We of the Never Never – well, when I say famous, it is in terms of Australian literature – and it’s now a pretty little National Park, covering a stretch of the Roper River. I visited the rather touristy Mataranka thermal pool – at only 7km off the relatively busy Stuart Highway it’s going to attract a fair number of people – and headed out further into the National Park to a campsite right on the Roper River, where the swimming was divine, the environment very pretty, and the number of tourists much smaller than at Mataranka. The remoteness and quiet atmosphere were so calming that I stayed for two days, visiting Mataranka Falls (a short 4km walk from camp), and finishing off the stack of letters I’d been meaning to write.

The local wildlife was intriguing: the strange birds sitting in a tree under which I was drinking tea, biting off the flowers and letting them fall in a blizzard of petals on my head; the endearing kookaburra, a large type of kingfisher that eats meat and breaks up its meal by smashing its beak against the nearest hard surface (its loud cry is one of the most notorious – and weird – in Australia’s extensive soundtrack); the bower bird, whose males build a beautiful ‘bower’ of sticks, shells and anything bright and shiny they can find, in order to attract females; buzzing bugs that simply wouldn’t take no for an answer; big fish, lurking in the reeds on the river bank... it’s amazing how many strange animals you get used to in the bush, from bandicoots to kangaroos to wombats to koalas. Wildlife in England all seems a bit normal after the platypus and the possum.

It’s also interesting how you keep meeting the same people in the Northern Territory, like the guys in Kakadu and the group from Litchfield. As I was sitting in Elsey, reading an excellent book about the life of Jiang Qing, the wife of Chairman Mao Zedong of China, this girl walked past who recognised me from Katherine Gorge some two weeks before, even though I now had no hair and was 26 rather than 25. It’s a very small road in a very big country, up here in the Top End.

Travelling Possessions

Written: 18 August 1996

One thing I’d hoped to lose by travelling on a tight budget was my possessiveness – from the man with a mobile phone to the man in a mobile home, that sort of thing – but I didn’t really want to end up losing my possessions themselves. Within the space of four days both my sleeping bag and my camera – the two most expensive things I own, after my little computer – were no more, one to theft and one to a swimming hole in Litchfield National Park. What a pain.

Losing the actual items wasn’t the problem, though I was particularly sad about my camera, as that was a present, and it didn’t so much disappear as die right there in my hands... sob! The problem was thinking afterwards, ‘If only I’d made sure my bag was safer,’ or ‘If only I’d taken it off the line when I last checked it: it was dry, after all.’ In the normal course of things you’d just shrug your shoulders, kick the nearest small furry animal and get on with it, but when you’re a long way from home and on your own, losing possessions is a bugger.

On the other hand, I met a girl in Litchfield whose entire backpack had been stolen from a hostel on the same weekend, which makes my little losses, both of them speedily replaced, seem trivial. My new sleeping bag cost less than half the price of my previous one, doesn’t leak feathers everywhere, is warmer, comes in a much better bag and weighs less; I’ve bought three disposable cameras to see me through to Melbourne, where I can easily get a new camera; and the very friendly people I met in Litchfield are going to send me copies of their photos of us all in Litchfield and Douglas Hot Springs, so I won’t miss out on the photos I’d already taken when the camera went swimming.

Money, Money, Money

Anyway, I’m over the distress and I’m setting my sights on Melbourne, where I can sell all my stuff and go back to the glorious situation of being able to pack everything I own into one little bag; this appeals to my sense of tidiness, and if you own very little, there’s very little to be stolen or dropped into the river. Having thought about it, though, I’ll probably end up getting another car in New Zealand and it’ll start all over again; my original idea of cycling round New Zealand was fine as an idea, but you end up spending most of your time cycling from A to B, rather than doing the wonderful bushwalk at A, marvelling at the views at B and visiting the sight-of-a-lifetime at C en route. I want be able to really explore New Zealand, and for this the only real option is to go by car, but this time I’ll try to get a station wagon, so I can kip in the back and camp absolutely anywhere, rather than in pricey caravan parks. I quite fancy going feral[1], as they say round these parts.

My problem is money – not the lack of money, but the way in which I spend it. I’m trying to do things within sensible budgets – not too little that I spend my time doing nothing and eating instant noodles all the time, but not too much that I spend everything too quickly – but I’ve spent quite a bit in Australia. New Zealand is not a problem, and I can afford six months there from the earnings I’ve made as a writer in Oz, but it might drain the resources for any onwards travel. The problem is one of attitude; I have a credit card that I can start filling up if I need to, but if I let myself spend away, as I did in Sydney and Melbourne, I’ll soon end up broke and not necessarily better off in terms of travel experiences. It’s hard to define; on one hand I’m trying to be a shoestring traveller, not spending much on beer, eating well but cheaply, avoiding tours, public transport and expensive caravan parks in favour of cheap campsites and beautiful National Parks, but on the other hand I have money coming in from articles that could support me for a while, living like a king. I guess Jarvis Cocker hit the nail on the head when he wrote:

Still you’ll never get it right

’Cos when you’re sitting there at night

Watching roaches climb the wall

If you called your dad he could stop it all

This doesn’t sound like a problem as such, but there is a bad side: I’m becoming obsessed with the financial planning of this trip. I’ve always been interested in money matters, but here I’m constantly controlling my expenditure and planning the rest of the trip, almost to the point of distraction. I regularly tweak my budgets, which I keep in a spreadsheet, and it’s almost too much; I’m always drawing up new travel plans to fit changing budgets, when I could simply slap it on a credit card and just go and do what I wanted to do in the first place. I suppose I’m having to draw the line between doing everything I want to do and doing everything I can afford to, while knowing in the back of my mind that if I wanted to get into debt, I could afford to do almost everything, it’s just a matter of how long I want to spend travelling. I think what I need is a mate who says to me occasionally, ‘Sod it, let’s go out, have a ball, spend loads, and just forget about money for a while: she’ll be right[2].’ I guess that’s where my friends in Melbourne come in...

In fact, the only thing that worries me about getting to Melbourne is that it signals the end of my trip round Australia; sure, there’ll be plenty going on in the city, and there’ll be plenty of trips from the city to do, but it’s going to be the end of this type of travelling for a while. That little tent will have been my home for six months by the time I get back to the city, and then I’ll be selling it; it’ll definitely be the end of an era.

[1] What the English call ‘gypsies’ or ‘new age travellers’, the Aussies call ‘ferals’.

[2] ‘She’ll be right’ is another timeless Aussie saying, meaning that everything will be fine. Quite who she is, and why she’ll be right, is not something that is particularly relevant. A similar saying is ‘She’s apples’, which makes even less sense, but every language has its strange idioms, I guess. After all, Bob’s your uncle...

Daly Waters

Written: 20 August 1996

After a couple of days relaxing in the bush, I set off from Elsey to take a big chunk out of the journey south. The road stretches for an awfully long way with very little to see on the way – Darwin to Adelaide by road is 3019km, or about 30 hours of driving – and the only way to get it done is to devote entire days to driving. So to break up the first day back on the highway, I made two little stops, one at Daly Waters, and one at Tennant Creek.

Daly Waters is a little like Whim Creek in that it is basically a pub and precious little else, but the pub at Daly Waters is really special. I stopped off there on a recommendation from a couple whom I’d met on the Bungles tour, and ended up sitting in the beer garden, nursing a Coke. For some reason this pub really reminded me of pubs back in England, probably the first Aussie pub to do so; but what was it that made me think of pints and pies? It wasn’t the beer – that was standard Aussie fare. It wasn’t the weather, or the thatched sunshade covering the beer garden, of a type you so often see in the tropics. It certainly wasn’t the tour group who were on a long bus tour to the north, and who were obviously still in the early stages of their journey. Then it struck me: it was all the memorabilia stuck all over the walls, from bank notes to number plates to junk from the old homestead. Just like in English pubs, this place was a rag-and-bone repository, and it really worked. How odd to find such an unintentionally English oasis in the middle of nowhere, as far from civilisation as Australian beer is from real ale.

My other stop was Tennant Creek, a totally forgettable town on the way to somewhere else. The only reason I remember it is that my Visa card bounced when I filled up with Super (what the Aussies call leaded petrol). That wasn’t the odd thing – I’d been putting quite a bit on it recently – but what was odd was what the girl in the shop said when her machine rejected the card. ‘Is it stolen?’ she asked conversationally. I just smiled and asked if she would accept MasterCard; sometimes intuition tells you that intelligent conversation will be a struggle if you try to pursue it...

I had decided to try to save expensive caravan park fees by avoiding spending the night in towns, so I kept driving south until I got to the Devil’s Marbles, where the camping was a very acceptable A$1 per night. The marbles themselves are quite an interesting sight – huge red boulders, piled together in the most unlikely formations – but as I was setting up the tent, the weather turned very, very nasty, and the rain decided to come out to play. Although still in the tropics, it was really cold when the wind struck up, so after a quick instant noodle feast in the paltry shelter, where I met a South African who had been in Asia for a year and who had done the whole trip overland – and off whom I got some good advice – I turned in, glad of my new sleeping bag.

The next day I drove all the way to The Alice, as Alice Springs is affectionately known. The drive was pretty uneventful, though as with most desert drives, there was quite a bit of variety on offer as the kilometres drifted by. For example, as you head south, the termite mounds go from massive (twice the height of a man in places) to tiny, stubby affairs, but their numbers increase. They also change colour, going from grey to green to red to cream, and from cathedral shapes to thin spikes to round mounds. Considering termites only eat spinifex – and, in fact, they’re the biggest eaters of spinifex in the desert, believe it or not – they manage pretty well for such an inhospitable environment. The only drawback is that they come out at night, so if you happen to be sitting there with a pretty little petrol lamp, they just can’t help visiting you in droves...

I’m now in Alice Springs and out of the tropics, though I seem to have picked up a bit of a stomach bug somewhere along the line – it’s probably all the swimming in rivers in Elsey. Let’s just hope it passes, because I’m now in the Red Centre, and people really rave about this part of Australia.

Alice Springs

Written: 20 August 1996

Oh take me back up north, where you can wear shorts and thongs and the T-shirt is optional. The Red Centre is freezing – or, at least, it’s freezing when it’s not bloody hot. It’s funny how you dream of cold mornings when you’re stuck in the muggy sweat shop they call Darwin, but it’s a different matter when you wake up and, no, you can’t feel your feet, your fingers just can’t get the hang of fumbling the radio on, and your breath is frosting in the early morning air (it gets to 2°C at night at this time of year). This morning I kept dreaming of thick walls, cosy fireplaces and warm mugs of ale, but instead I got something even more delightful: the first cold milk on my Coco Pops since Perth. What a way to start the day!

Despite the temperature, Alice Springs is a delight. Considering how remote it is – there’s a rather tacky signpost in the centre of town showing just how remote it is from various famous cities of the world, but no, I didn’t waste a photo on it – it’s remarkably modern and enjoyable. True, the historic buildings in the town aren’t terribly historic, but that’s more than made up for by the fascinating Old Telegraph Station, some 2km north of town, to which there’s a scenic walk up the Todd River. This is interesting if only because it shows how utterly dry the area is; the Todd River doesn’t flow that much, and when it does it doesn’t flow for long, and when I walked along it, there wasn’t a drop to be seen. There’s an annual event in Alice Springs called Henley-on-Todd, and – you guessed it – it’s a rowing contest. The difference? The boats don’t have bottoms so the crews’ legs stick out the bottom, and they run along the river-bed; how ironic, then, that the river flooded in 1974, and the regatta had to be abandoned because there was too much water...

The Old Telegraph Station is great – it’s a wonderful balance of historic buildings, an interesting museum and a selection of walking tracks, all brought to life by the superb guide booklet that you get for your A$2.50 entry fee. This describes the story of the overland telegraph line, built in the 1870s from Adelaide to Darwin to connect the colony to London, and it fills out the buildings with considerable historic atmosphere. Overall Alice Springs does its tourism bits rather well, as ANZAC Hill, a lookout over the town, also had some excellent plaques explaining the view; they almost kept my mind off the freezing winds whistling through the three layers I had on.

If you don’t believe how cold it gets in The Alice, how about this. I’ve got two mugs that have made it all the way round Australia with me, holding more cups of tea than most mugs would hold in a lifetime. When I brewed up one teatime after a day’s sightseeing, the boiling water cracked one mug from top to bottom. Go on, tell me it wasn’t because of the cold...

MacDonnell Ranges (Western)

Written: 22 August 1996

The following morning I got up, thawed out under a hot shower, and set off for the Western Macdonnell Ranges National Park. Alice Springs is situated in the middle of a range of mountains – the Macdonnell Ranges – that extend to the east and west, and along this range are various gorges and waterholes that make for a pleasant day’s drive, especially as the tourist-conscious Territory government has sealed the roads to both sides of the range.

Heading west I visited Simpson’s Gap, a pretty schism in the rolling red ranges with a pool of extremely cold water in the bottom (far too cold to swim in); Ellery Creek Bighole, a permanent rock pool with a lovely climb onto the surrounding mountains for a great view of the surrounding area; the Ochre Pits, an Aboriginal source of ochre, used for painting, healing and all sorts of other stuff; Inarlanga Pass, a brisk walk from the Ochre Pits, and thankfully well away from the tourists; and Ormiston Gorge, my final stop and home to a picturesque camping ground.

Ormiston Gorge is a not just a gorge, it’s a pound too – a circle of mountains, like at Wilpena – and I’d fancied a good walk the next day; however, Wednesday didn’t quite turn out as planned. The stomach bug I’d had since the Devil’s Marbles, which I thought had subsided, flared up again on Tuesday night, and I had to spend Wednesday sitting in the shade, eating nothing but a little toast and Vegemite and drinking loads of water. To be honest, it’s not so bad being ill in the middle of a stunning mountain range, it’s just that I kept wanting to jump up and do the four-hour walk round the pound, but every time I stood up, the ground shook and the sky swam.

It would just have to wait: I was in no state to go walking, let alone continue the exploration along the road, which turned to gravel after Ormiston. I read a lot on Wednesday, mainly these terrible books that I’d exchanged for some of my terrible books with Ted and Gill. Still, when you’re feeling crook and there’s nothing else to do, you’ll read anything, even what the blurb on the back cover so amusingly calls ‘humour’. I didn’t even have the energy to be annoyed at the lousy writing: I must have been ill. On Thursday I felt much better, despite the annoying German to my left, who whistled to himself all night and pottered around in a makeshift world of his own, just like Peter Ustinov in Logan’s Run, and the loud-voiced French family to my right, who had managed to ensnare a couple of Aussies into a couple of glasses of wine and very, very small talk. I walked round the pound, a beautiful wander through Ormiston Gorge into a huge circle of mountains, and set off east, back to the Alice.

On the way I visited Glen Helen Gorge, with its surprisingly large amount of water, and Standley Chasm, which cost A$3 to visit, but which was worth it, with its very thin, towering crack in the rocks. I kept exploring past the chasm itself, despite the lack of a track and signs to keep off the rocks, and was rewarded by the most stunning ruggedness I’d yet seen in the Macdonnells; I think they stop you climbing the rocks because Elmer and Flo from Arkansas would probably slip and scuff an ankle, thus ensuring enough court action to close down the Parks and Wildlife Commission, but if you fly in the face of the bureaucracy, the views are well worth it.

MacDonnell Ranges (Eastern)

Written: 24 August 1996

Tourists just love the Western Macdonnells, with their hire cars and impractical white clothes. After all, you can drive there on bitumen, it’s easy to squash into a day trip, and if you’ve never seen the outback before, it’s pretty impressive stuff. But they don’t seem to have discovered the Eastern Macdonnells, which stretch to the east of Alice Springs. Again, the road is sealed, although it’s mainly single lane (so you have to pull over onto dirt if anyone comes the other way), and as I checked out the few gorges and hillocks on the way east, there were almost no people to be seen, which was rather pleasant after the busier western ranges.

At the end of the road I pulled into Trephina Gorge campsite and found a full house of Australians; this came as quite a relief after experiencing mainly European tourists in the west. I paid for two nights, and settled in to read about the area.

It didn’t take me long to realise what a real gem Trephina is. I remembered one guy I’d met en route who’d told me to visit the Western Macdonnells but not to bother with the east side, and he was totally and utterly wrong. The Eastern Macdonnell Range is everything the west range isn’t: peaceful, tourist-free, primitive (in terms of camping) and isolated (it’s a dirt road from the single-track bitumen into the park)... in short, I loved it.

And what a wonderful collection of people I met during a campfire talk that the ranger held at the campsite, where he made us billy tea, and chatted about being a ranger, the role of the Parks and Wildlife Commission, and a whole variety of stuff from local wildlife to the night sky. How atmospheric it was, with only about 20 of us in the entire National Park.

Exploring by Foot

By Friday I was feeling 100 per cent again, a great relief after the awful exhaustion and total lack of energy I’d been feeling; when I woke up I felt fantastic, much better than I had in Ormiston, so I decided to do some real walking. The walking tracks at Trephina are some of the best laid out I’ve seen, with markers everywhere and some stunning scenery, and I couldn’t wait to get started.

My first walk was the 10km Ridgetop Walk, which took me from the gorge over a ridge of mountains where the views alone made all the effort worthwhile. One bluff overlooked a pound that had lots of little hills inside it; as I climbed the hills in the early morning sun they were lit up from behind, and looked quite bizarre. The view reminded me of those depth-contour pictures you see on album covers and computer screens, where lines are drawn from left to right, wiggling with the lie of some virtual terrain (Joy Division’s wonderful Unknown Pleasures is the best example). I hadn’t expected to find 1980s album art in the middle of the desert, but if there’s one thing I’m learning, it’s that deserts are full of surprises.

The walk continued to John Hayes Rock Hole, which was home to a chain of ponds. This string of rock pools in an ever-deepening gorge was surprising, not just because of the beauty of it all, but also because of the large amount of water; when I visited there was even a waterfall flowing (well, trickling) between two of the larger pools, which I wasn’t expecting from an area where the average annual rainfall is just ten inches.

The only problem with the walk is that at the end of a wonderful 10km across the wilderness, you have to walk 8km back to camp along a road, but as luck would have it Dave the ranger came along and kindly offered me a lift, so I was back at camp by lunch, much to the surprise of those having a lazy day in the sun who had seen me set off first thing. I spent the afternoon doing two walks in the gorge itself, meeting various people on the way, including one very friendly retired couple who were full of conversation about their travels and experiences of emigrating from England 32 years ago.

As if that weren’t enough, when I got back to camp, everyone in our little area got together for a cuppa, and we continued the conversation round a campfire, into the starry night. There were Bruce and Lorna, kings of acerbic Aussie wit; Diane and her young daughter Ashleigh, who together had travelled to more places than most of us can place on the map (I picked up some good tips about travelling in Russia, Italy and Africa from them... maybe someday!); Annette, an elderly painter who spent every winter in Trephina, and knew lots of stories about the people and places around Alice Springs; and Geoff and Betty, who had been caravanning for years, and could remember when places like Ayers Rock and King’s Canyon were deserted. And there was me, the only non-Aussie, loving every minute of it...

The icing on the cake was my first ever bush shower. A bush shower is exactly what it sounds like: a shower in the bush. You can buy these black bags that you fill with water and leave in the sun, and by the end of the day the water’s amazingly hot; there’s a little tap and shower head on the bottom of the bag, so you can hang it off a tree and have a shower right there in the middle of nature. Diane and Ashleigh, bless ’em, had brought one with them, and had left enough water for me to try it out, as I’d never had one before. There’s only one catch: don’t drop the soap in the sand unless you want a truly exfoliating experience. I discovered that handy tip the hard way, though apart from that, the shower was a real luxury.

Ah, the bush... you’ve got to love it!

Watarrka (King’s Canyon)

Written: 26 August 1996

I was loath to leave Trephina Gorge, but I had to if I wanted to see any of the rest of the Red Centre, so I said goodbye to the crowd, who all assembled to wave me off, and bumped back to Alice Springs, where I shopped, checked over the car, filled it up, and struck south.

My first target was the Henbury Meteorite Craters, some 15km off the highway down the Ernest Giles Road, a dirt track that goes to King’s Canyon – my destination for the day – but which is a bit more strenuous than the bitumen route (which is some 160km longer, but is sealed all the way). The craters are now just dents in the desert, mainly due to erosion, but it’s quite a thought that something huge and fast shot down from space and rammed into the ground 40,000 years ago in this very spot. They’re pretty unique and most people don’t bother to visit them, as they’re down such a juddering road, but I thought they were well worth the detour.

The road was juddering, yes, but quite driveable, so I decided to go against my original plan to stick to the bitumen, and instead take the shortcut across the desert to Watarrka National Park, home to King’s Canyon. The road was a quintessential dirt road: it had corrugated parts, bull dust, bedrock outcrops, gravel stretches, mud holes where everyone drives round a flooded part of the road, creating corrugation on one side and dried ravines of mud on the other... it had the lot, and hardly any other cars to boot. After the hell of the Gibb River Road and the tyre-shredding roads of Karijini I felt quite at home for the 100km drive to the bitumen, and it was with a note of sadness that I realised this would be my last dirt road drive in Australia; the route from King’s Canyon to Melbourne is sealed all the way.

I didn’t camp in the National Park when I arrived, as the only place you can camp that is actually inside the park is an extortionate tourist hole. Instead I stayed at the much cheaper and utterly delightful King’s Creek, 35km from the canyon and a world away from the commercial tourism to the north. This is a bone of contention for many travellers and caravan users; there isn’t any cheap accommodation or real bush camping to be had in the park any more, which is not only a shame, it seems to go against the concept of a National Park. I’d been forewarned, though, so I was quite happy to stay away from the main attraction, and King’s Creek was very pretty, well within my budget, and reasonably quiet.

I did notice one thing that disturbed the silence when I parked the car, though: a fizzing noise from under the bonnet. On closer inspection I found that The Last Dirt Road had cruelly wounded my trusty travelling companion by shaking the battery loose and making it leak acid all over the bodywork, where it was having a great time feeding on the metalwork. Poor old Oz! I secured the battery and poured lots of water over the acidified areas, and then I noticed that one of the six battery cells was shattered and wouldn’t hold any liquid; never mind, I thought, my first Golf had one buggered cell in its battery, and it never had a problem. Besides, ignoring problems hadn’t done too much harm this far – if you discount the red light on Andy’s dashboard on the way north to Gunnedah – and five-sixths of a battery is better than no battery...

Exploring King’s Canyon

Sunday, far from being a day of rest, was my chance to explore King’s Canyon. I got up before the sun, showered, breakfasted, and hopped in the car, only to find that Oz had decided it was going definitely to be a day of rest for him: the engine wouldn’t even turn over. Mechanical failure never bothered me before, though, so I got a jump start from the two lads camped over the lawn from me, thinking that the 35km run to the canyon would charge up the battery, or at worst would prove it was totally dead. Whatever, I got there in one piece, and on time.

King’s Canyon is pretty spectacular. It’s a large gorge carved out by a river that only flows in the wet, with towering 200m walls and overhangs to make even the most hardened cliff-edge-peekers think twice. There are two walks – round the rim for 6km, or down the gorge and back for 1.3km – and both are well worth doing. The rim walk takes you through sandstone domes, like smaller Bungles formations, and into the Garden of Eden, a permanent waterhole that’s surrounded by plush and rare vegetation (though it’s far too cold to swim in at this time of year, unless your dip is very quick). You can see why the area is a tourist haven, with its easily accessible parks that are beautiful and so rugged.

I met two lovely couples on the walk and we chatted away for ages. One couple, Graham and Helen, were from the Gove Peninsula, right up on the northeast tip of Arnhem Land – now that’s what I call remote – and I joined another couple, Dennis and Marion from Adelaide, who were walking in the same direction as me all the way round the rim. That’s something about being a lone traveller: you pick up conversations very easily, whereas if you’re in a couple or group it’s not so easy. (People ask me if I’m lonely, being on my own; ‘I’m alone, but not lonely,’ I reply.) Interestingly, I tend to meet a lot of older people, whether retired or middle-aged; a lot of those who are still working take advantage of ‘long service leave’, which every Australian job provides by law. With this system you build up leave, year by year, until after ten years with a company you can take loads of time off as paid holiday. That’s cool, but with certain jobs you can even transfer long leave with you between jobs, so you’re guaranteed a holiday opportunity whatever you do. Actually, middle-aged is the wrong term, too; lots of people in their 30s take off on long trips too, without ruining their careers. How enlightened a society this is...

Repairs

After exploring the canyon, I decided to head out to the only other walk in the park, at Kathleen Springs. Oz, though, had other ideas: his battery was truly dead, so after a push start – thank you Dennis and Marion! – I trucked into King’s Canyon Resort and tracked down the service station. King’s Canyon Resort is the cause of most budget travellers’ complaints, but I was very glad it existed, with its stock of new car batteries. A$87 lighter – twice the price of a battery in Melbourne, but worth every cent – and after a bit of hacking around under the bonnet, Oz was back in business, but not after both the couples I’d met in the canyon had come over to check I was OK, and to admire the cheapest and best-travelled car in the whole resort. I’d just broken through the 20,000 kilometre mark on my trip, and it saddened me to see a battery that I’d bought new on my departure reduced to an acid-charred lump of plastic, but at least it’ll be a selling point: ‘New battery for sale, comes with free Toyota Corona.’ Actually, I shouldn’t say things like that... cars have feelings too, and it’s still a long way to Melbourne.

Repaired and refreshed, I headed off to Kathleen Springs for lunch. I couldn’t believe it; by this point in the weekend, bus after coach after car after truckload of tourists were pouring into the area, making me quite glad I had tackled the canyon early on a Sunday morning, but at Kathleen Springs there was just one other car in the car park. My lunch was totally undisturbed as the occupants of said car were out on the walk, and after a ham and cheese sandwich feast, I set off to explore it myself, passing the other drivers on the way, so I had the whole walkway to myself. And what a lovely walk it was; nice and short at just 1.3km into the little gorge, it passed through some interesting relics from pastoral days complete with explanatory signs, and at the end of the walk I found a peaceful, dark water hole, surrounded by thick vegetation and sheer, red walls. I sat there for quite a while, listening to the wind whistle through the treetops; it was easy to see why this water hole is extremely sacred to the local Aborigines.

I couldn’t understand how this little haven could be so quiet and unvisited when the next-door canyon was being systematically ground down by mass tourism. Perhaps it’s because the road to the springs is dirt, though at only 500m of very smooth gravel it hardly counts as dangerous. Perhaps I just caught it at lunchtime, and people prefer eating in the human melee of the famous King’s Canyon. Who knows, but I was sure glad to get away from the bustle for a while.

But despite the crowds and the increased prices, Watarrka National Park was well worth the effort, even if it was the straw that nearly broke the camel’s back and forced the camel rider to fork out for a new feeding bag. I’ve really enjoyed exploring the central outback so far, and I can’t wait to get stuck into the most famous place in the whole of the Red Centre: Uluru (or, as it’s known by the tourist hordes, Ayers Rock).

Uluru-Kata Tjuta (Ayers Rock)

Written: 29 August 1996

On Monday my itchy feet got me rolling to the Rock. Ayers Rock, or Uluru to give it its proper title, is part of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, so called because it contains Uluru and Kata Tjuta, the latter being more commonly called the Olgas. I’d approached this final blast on my journey with some trepidation, mainly because of what I’d heard from fellow travellers. Comments such as ‘It’s incredibly expensive’ and ‘It’s just a big rock’ didn’t paint the prettiest picture, and after Kakadu, I wasn’t going to let myself get all excited only to come away disappointed.

Fear not. Uluru-Kata Tjuta is a complete delight, and I really can’t understand people’s complaints. The only accommodation is outside the park at Yulara, about 20km from Uluru, and although I’ve met loads of people who’ve complained that it’s prohibitively expensive and aimed at rich tourists, I found A$9 per night at the beautifully manicured camp ground to be a good deal cheaper than a lot of other places I’ve stayed, and the showers were the most powerful I’ve seen for a long time (an important point in the dusty heat of the desert). I think some people moan because they charge A$9 per person rather than per site, so if there’s four of you crammed into one car, it’s A$36 per night, a fairly high charge; then again, I’ve often had to pay site rates for two, regardless of the fact that I’m alone, so what comes around goes around, and I can sympathise with charging per head when resources like water are so expensive.

When I arrived after the morning drive from Watarrka, I booked in, set up camp in a lovely shady bay on the most luscious grass you’ve ever seen (particularly given that this is the middle of a desert), and headed out to explore Uluru. As I’d booked in for three nights I wasn’t in a rush – back in Trephina Gorge, Annette had recommended that I really soak up the atmosphere if I wanted to get into the spirit of the place – so I popped into the Cultural Centre on the way to the Rock. As with the one in Kakadu it was excellent, with plenty of information about the dreaming stories of the area, and displays about everything from bush tucker to religious ceremonies to Aboriginal history, and it began to make me realise that Uluru isn’t just a rock sticking out of the scrub, it’s something culturally significant and utterly unique. This was a view shared by Graham and Helen, the couple from Gove whom I’d met at King’s Canyon and whom I bumped into again at the Cultural Centre, reminding me just how small the tourist trail is in the Red Centre. I was starting to get excited.

Exploring Uluru

Champing at the bit, I drove off to Uluru itself. It’s pretty difficult to explain just how impressive it is – you have to see it yourself to understand – but everyone has seen pictures of it, so try to imagine a towering monolith that’s 348m above the ground at its highest point, and you start to get the picture. Although it’s against Aboriginal wishes – the park is owned by the Aborigines now, after some serious legal wrangling in the 1970s and 1980s – you can climb the Rock, so climb it I did.

Wow, it was scary. It’s a hell of a long climb, with a very steep start where you haul yourself up on a chain for what seems like miles, and then the chain stops and the fun really starts. When I climbed it, the wind was howling and I was seriously scared to go beyond the end of the chain for fear of being blown off (and I’m being serious – it really was petrifying!). But I persevered and eventually reached the top, after following a dotted line that wound around through the desolate moonscape on the summit. The views were good, but not spectacular – there’s not a lot to see in a flat desert, really – so after a quick scout around the top I climbed back down, where I was really relieved to be on the ground, with chapped lips, aching ears and – ahhh! – no wind. I could understand how a number of people have died on the climb from heart attacks or falling off, and there are five in memoriam plaques attached to the rock at the bottom of the climb. The climb is worth doing, but certainly only once.

However the walk round the base of Uluru is quite stunning, and is well worth repeating. Happily most tourists are too rushed to do this 9km wander round the Rock – they want to climb it, photograph it, watch the sunset change its colours, and then go back to their air-conditioned coaches and hotel rooms – but it’s so awesome that I’d rate it much higher than the climb. The pictures one sees of Uluru are all from the same angle, because commercial photography is banned from the other angles, and walking round it really gives you an appreciation of Uluru’s weird and wonderful shapes and textures. There are numerous points of interest along the track, from sacred rock pools to rock art to amazing wind erosion patterns, and you come across certain areas that are very significant to the Aborigines which you can’t enter or photograph. Aborigines believe that photography steals part of the spirit from people, which is why you won’t find any pictures of indigenous people in my collection, unless they’re there by accident; with sacred sites they also believe that these areas are too important to have their relationship with the surrounding area ignored by isolating the site in a photograph, which is one of the reasons for the constraints on commercial photography.

I was really moved by the walk. It’s such a powerful place, and I totally fell in love. One incident summed up the big difference between my experience and that of others; as I was walking up to one of the rock art sites, this middle-aged woman turned to her husband and said, ‘Well, it does nothing for me. A child could do better. This isn’t art, it’s a mess.’ And she turned on her heel, flicked her overdone hair and waltzed off. What a fool she was: if she’d bothered to read anything about rock art, she would have known it isn’t aesthetic, it’s functional; it’s not beautiful, it’s ceremonial. The Aborigines painted pictures because they never wrote anything down; Aboriginal language has only just started to be written down in an attempt to preserve cultural stories. It isn’t supposed to look good, in the same way that a book isn’t supposed to taste great and music isn’t supposed to smell terrific. How can people spend thousands of dollars on luxury tours and trips to such important sites without even spending a couple of minutes reading up about the place? They came, they climbed, they photographed and they left empty Coke cans behind. What a shame...

That night I went to see the sunset over Uluru, though the cloud covering made it less spectacular than it can be, and on my way back to the tent I bumped into two wonderful old ladies whom I’d met at Ormiston Gorge. They echoed my sentiments; they’d arrived with niggling doubts about whether it would be worth it, but they were as impressed as I was. I felt quite elated that my last real tourist spot in Australia was turning out to be one of the best.

Exploring Kata Tjuta

The next day I set off to explore Kata Tjuta (or the Olgas as Europeans call them). This collection of beautifully shaped mounds and hills is like a very eroded Uluru, with winding gorges and a couple of lovely walking tracks that pick their way through the same red rock as Uluru, all twisted into these amazing shapes. Kata Tjuta means ‘many heads’ in the local Aboriginal dialect, and it’s a good name; it’s easy to see why a lot of people prefer it to Uluru itself.

I’d driven off to see the sunrise on Uluru early in the morning, but the clouds put pay to that idea, so I drove straight on to the Kata Tjuta lookout, arriving there before the tourist masses (though I did bump into a couple whom I’d chatted to in Trephina Gorge – meeting people from the tourist trail is obviously becoming something of a habit).

The walks at Kata Tjuta are delightful; I set off on the longer of the two, which passes in a loop through the Valley of the Winds, and I figured it was a good thing I was on disposable cameras, as otherwise I would have taken far too many pictures – this place is truly amazing. I bumped into Graham and Helen again, and we joined up for the (supposedly) three-hour hike through the range, nattering away through the scenery; sometimes it’s great to walk with people, and sometimes it’s not, but for this walk it was very welcome, and to cap it all, we bumped into the couple from Trephina at the end of the walk, and all five of us started yarning away; whoever thought you’re lonely when you’re alone has obviously never visited the Red Centre.

Watching Kata Tjuta

By now I’d explored all the walks and thoroughly enjoyed them, so it was time to take the advice of Annette, the painter I’d met in the Eastern Macdonnell Ranges, and just sit around watching for the next day and a half. So the following morning I drove off to the sunset-viewing site for Kata Tjuta, had lunch, settled down in the shade and started to write, all in full view of the spectacular curves of Mt Olga. And Annette was right: if you settle down, relax and just take in the atmosphere, that’s when you really begin to understand. If I’d been living here before the white man came, I’d have made up stories about the place too.

I spent the whole afternoon at Kata Tjuta, reading about and getting all excited about visiting New Zealand, and at about tea time, who should walk into my secluded little picnic area but yet another couple I’d met briefly at Trephina Gorge (they had been about to leave the gorge as I’d arrived). We got talking, and Craig and Sue, as they introduced themselves, brewed up cups of coffee that we supped while waiting for the sunset. They’d been travelling for seven months on long-service leave, and when they got back home to Tassie they were planning to sell up, buy a bigger caravan and travel for good, picking up work en route. I envied them something rotten; I hope I get to do something similar when I’m their age.

So imagine my amazement when, on this day of bumping into people by coincidence, they revealed that they’d camped next to Ted, Gill and their passengers (whom I’d met in Litchfield) at the Devil’s Marbles; unfortunately Ted and Gill had been having a bit of a traumatic day, with a blown tyre and a problem with their cooker’s gas bottle. The reason we discovered this further connection? Because I’d mentioned that I’d had my sleeping bag stolen from Shady Glen, and Craig and Sue said they’d heard about the theft from quite a few people and that the story was doing the rounds of the travelling community, and that one of the couples who had warned them about Shady Glen was Ted and Gill. Craig and Sue even knew who I meant when I said I had camped next to a mad German in Ormiston, who kept muttering to himself and packing and unpacking his red 4WD. It really is a terribly small world in the huge expanse of the outback...

Sunset Storm

The sunset over Kata Tjuta was beautiful, though cut short by low clouds on the horizon, and before long I’d started the 50km drive back to Yulara. On the far eastern horizon there were some serious clouds lurking, and as I drove towards them they started to flash with electrical activity, even though the skies above me were as clear as a bell. As I continued driving, the sight took on a strangely mystical air; on my right-hand side a nearly full moon was lighting up Uluru, while on my left was the reddish-purple glow of the sunset, and straight ahead the sky flashed with tremendous force. It must rate as one of the most incredible sights I’ve ever seen; I’m not ashamed to say I was nearly moved to tears.

When I got back to camp I got my washing in and shot up to the lookout, where I sat and watched the heavens rip themselves apart, while not a drop fell on Yulara. At the lookout I struck up a conversation with a very pleasant couple from Geelong who were really enjoying the park and were gutted they had to leave in the morning, but before long I had to eat, so I wandered down to the kitchen and cooked my usual rice-type dish on the free barbies there. It was there that I started chatting with a couple of Poms who had driven down from Darwin, and then it hit me: throughout the day I’d been meeting older Aussie travellers who were all full of life, thrilled by the area, and really interesting to talk to. But these two seemed so unhappy, even though they said they were enjoying themselves; they looked dour, never smiled or laughed, and conversation was a serious effort on my part (so eventually I just gave up). This is happening more and more with my fellow countrymen; I try and try but so often they’re just so bloody miserable. Combine this with the English character trait of an inferiority complex mixed, paradoxically, with a superiority complex, and you have the quintessential whinging Pom; I often find myself thinking not so much ‘Will I cope when I return?’ as much as ‘Will I bother to cope when I return?’ I just hope my continued disillusionment with the place I still regard as home is simply a symptom of the stunning journey I am having; I’d hate to fall out of love with my home country, as so many ex-pats do.

Oh, and just for the record, when I settled down with my lamp and a book, I noticed that the guy camped next to me had also camped next to me in Alice Springs. By this stage, I wasn’t even surprised, and just went back to reading about my next destination.

Watching Uluru

The following day I decided to give Uluru the same treatment as I’d afforded Mt Olga; Annette’s advice was so good that I couldn’t just save it for Kata Tjuta. The night before, the storm I’d been watching had passed overhead, bringing serious lightning and massive thunderclaps but mercifully little rain, so I got up really early on Wednesday morning to catch the sunrise over Uluru. The skies had totally cleared, and I parked and walked some distance from the crowded sunrise-viewing area, to avoid all the amateur Spielbergs who were clogging up the view[1]. Sunrise over Uluru is an amazing sight, and it’s pretty pointless trying to capture its immensity on film, so I just settled back and watched the rock change from black to purple to deep red to lighter and lighter shades as the sun broke the horizon. It was a cold but beautiful experience.

I spent the rest of the day in peace at Uluru. I popped into the Cultural Centre to buy a leaflet that explains the base walk round Uluru, telling all the Aboriginal Dreaming stories relating to interesting spots; the two old ladies had showed me their copy, and for A$1 it makes a lovely memento of the area. It explains how the Anangu (the Aboriginal tribe that lives in the area) live their lives by the religious heritage of Tjukurpa (the generic term for which is Dreaming), and how Uluru is a living reminder of Anangu Tjukurpa. The leaflet went on to say that when you see Uluru, you might begin to understand just how powerful this place is; I completely concur.

On the way I passed the climbing chain, and I couldn’t believe how packed it was; I just had to take a photo of the line of silhouettes going all the way up the Rock. It made me realise how lucky I was, because when I did the climb, I only saw three other people between the end of the chain and the cairn – the wind had probably put the others off. It must be impossible to appreciate the barren and surreal nature of the top of the Rock when it’s full of babbling tourists, and you can bet none of them had bothered to buy a booklet on the Anangu Tjukurpa. It’s easy to see why the Anangu call the tourists minga (‘ants’) when they climb.

Luckily even the busloads of tourists can’t destroy the powerful atmosphere of Uluru. It’s really something else.

[1] You have never seen so many video cameras in your life. It seems that people film entire sunrises and sunsets, but do they actually watch them at home? A good point was made by a fellow traveller I met in WA, who said, ‘I’m sure some of these people have to go home and watch their videos to know what they’ve seen.’ I can see his point; it’s a shame to think that lots of people’s view of the Uluru sunrise is as a small black-and-white TV image in the eyepiece of a video camera.

Indeed, I sometimes wish I didn’t have a camera (though, of course, the desire to record what I see outweighs the inconvenience). If you have no camera, then you don’t get obsessed with getting the right shot, capturing the moment or having enough film, and you don’t get annoyed if you miss that amazing shot of a croc or a sunrise. You just look, and I sometimes really wish I could be like that, though I know I’d regret it later if I had no photos on my return. Perhaps people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, though I’m still not convinced by videos of sunsets...

South Australia & Victoria

Coober Pedy

Written: 1 September 1996

The drive from Uluru to Melbourne was huge – about 2400km all told – so I did it in three stages, with breaks at Coober Pedy and Adelaide. The landscape between Uluru and Coober Pedy is flat and desolate desert scrub, but on approaching Coober Pedy the road is surrounded by hundreds of mounds of earth, varying from a few feet high to the size of a caravan. Coober Pedy is home to serious numbers of opal mines, and the mounds are the dirt from the vertical shafts built in the search for gems; the miners don’t fill the holes in because when you’re following a seam of opal rich dirt and you dig underneath a filled-in hole, the loose earth will collapse down on top of you. It’s a sensible reason, but it makes Coober Pedy look like it’s home to a colony of huge desert moles.

The town itself is pretty apocalyptic, which is probably why a lot of Mad Max 3 was filmed here, back in the days when Mel Gibson still pretended to be Australian. The summer heat is so searing and the winter nights are so cold that a large number of houses and hotels are underground, where the temperature is comfortably stable; it’s a novel sight and a good excuse for a local tourist industry (along with the opal mines, of course), but overall Coober Pedy is a pretty rugged place, and I didn’t waste a great deal of time exploring. I simply booked into a caravan park, pitched, cooked, and settled in with a book. I got talking to this middle-aged guy who was driving his motorbike round the eastern route, and who should hear my voice and wander over but Dennis and Marion (of King’s Canyon push-starting fame), who happened to be staying in the same park. It was yet another coincidence in the small world of the Red Centre.

The following day I drove from Coober Pedy to Two Wells, the little town that’s north of Adelaide and home to Dave and Karen. The drive was desert until Port Augusta, and then the most amazing thing happened: greenery. I’d forgotten what green fields and forests looked like, not having seen any since Perth, and it quite spun me out as I drove past Mt Remarkable (something I’d missed on the way up as I’d gone via the Flinders Ranges before). There were loads of cows and sheep, all kept off the road by fences, each looking well-fed and healthy; I just wasn’t used to this environment at all. Luckily Dave and Karen had the antidote in the form of a slab of ice-cold beer, and it didn’t take long for everything to start making sense, of a sort.

On Saturday we went for a drive round the Barossa, with Karen very kindly driving while Dave and I ploughed our way through an Esky of beers. I still hadn’t got used to greenery, let alone beer (between Darwin and Adelaide I’d had just one stubby), and the whole experience was beautiful. The Barossa is a stunning area, but after months of desert and stark landscapes, it’s even more wonderful; more than once I found myself wondering whether I was back in England, which goes to show that either I’m beginning to forget what England really looks like, or West End Bitter is powerful stuff.

Sunday turned out to be a struggle, not surprisingly; the drive to Adelaide and then on to Melbourne is a long one, and it’s even longer with a hangover. It passed without incident, however, and it was pleasant to be driving down Adelaide streets that I’d walked around some five-and-a-half months before; the nostalgia really kicked in as I got lost in the middle of South Australia’s capital city. The same would have happened with Melbourne, except when I arrived it was dark, the traffic was a huge shock after months of not even seeing a traffic light, and – surprise, surprise – it was raining. Good old Andy; he’d stocked the fridge with a selection of international bottled beers, and we made a brave attempt to drink ’em all while catching up on all the gossip. It was quite a homecoming...

Selling a Car

Written: 15 September 1996

After the initial culture shock of returning to traffic, people, pollution, noise and rain – all of which totally threw me after such a long time in the desert – I set about selling my trusty travelling companion Oz, a rather sad moment after all we’d been through together.

It turned out to be easier than expected. After obtaining a roadworthy certificate, which required about A$500-worth of mechanical work, I advertised in The Trading Post and settled back for the flood of calls. They never came. Five days after the advert appeared I’d received precisely no calls, so I rang up The Trading Post and changed the price for the next ad from the rather optimistic A$2000 I’d started with to a slightly more palatable A$1700. Five minutes later I had a call from an interested party, and that night I’d sold it, for the original asking price of A$2000; I cancelled the second ad straight away, before it even got published.

And how was this miracle possible? My buyer was a classic: she had just passed her test and her Dad had said he would buy her a car. His budget was A$2000, and he was happy to pay anything up to that amount as long as his daughter liked the car. Two things worked in my favour: they’d seen one other car that day and it had been terrible, and my stereo blew the young girl’s mind. Ker-ching! It had been a while since I’d seen a roll of cash that big...

Melbourne

Written: 30 September 1996

Here are some more memories from Melbourne, after I returned from my year driving round Australia:

- High up on my list of brilliantly fun experiences was the canoeing trip I took with Steve, a good mate of Andy’s. While I was away driving round Oz, Steve had somehow managed to get hold of a knackered old canoe – goodness knows where from – and one fine day the two of us set off to explore a canal in Frankston, on the east coast of the bay. What a trip! There’s something incredibly surreal about paddling past houses that back onto the canal, looking into people’s back gardens as you crack open another stubby, a feeling that you simply don’t get from any other kind of journey through a city. And as for the tranquillity... it was Melbourne from the inside, you might say.

- Our weekend in Sorrento was also great fun, mostly because of the hosting talents of Sheridan’s brother Nigel, who is a ranger down at Point Nepean National Park, on the southern end of Philip Bay. Melbourne is on the northern part of this circular bay that has a very small entrance to the ocean at the south; the western tip of this gap is Queenscliff, my first point of call after leaving Melbourne some six months before, and the eastern tip is the National Park. We all packed off to Nigel’s house in nearby Sorrento, armed with far too much beer, champagne and brandy, and on the Saturday evening we drove out to the point, which was at that time closed to the public; here we explored all the gun emplacements and tunnels in the hill, dating from the defences built for World War II (not that they were needed as Australia was never invaded). Nigel, in true explorer mode, took us through the tunnels with all the lights switched off, and it was incredibly dark; the whole thing reminded me of a dry Tunnel Creek, although with five of us it wasn’t quite as scary, and as the tunnels were man-made, at least there weren’t any tree stumps or crayfish tripping us up. We repeated the tour with the lights on, which only goes to prove that when you can’t see a thing, your imagination really kicks in. Finishing off the rest of the weekend with champagne cocktails and drinking games seemed only fair after that bit of culture...

- I spent my last week in Australia working for a company called Oriental Merchants at the Royal Melbourne Show; Sheridan had got me the job, as she worked for the company at the time. The Royal Melbourne Show is an annual event, and it’s huge; the Showgrounds, where I had gone to see the Big Day Out months before, were packed with exhibitors and punters, all of them spending heaps of dough. The original idea of the show when it first started was that it would ‘bring the country to the city’, so farmers would bring their animals and produce to show the city dwellers; now it’s a huge event in its own right, and although the cows, pigs and chickens still come, there are stalls selling everything from Barbie dolls to milkshakes to two-minute noodles. And I was selling the two-minute noodles.

Actually, it was a hoot. I had to man a stand, wearing a natty red apron, where people would turn up clutching a piece of paper that I would stamp before handing them some two-minute noodles and a smile. This all formed part of the do-it-yourself show bag; show bags are a peculiarly Australian concept where you get a bag full of goodies with a theme, so the Barbie show bag has loads of bits for Barbie, and the Cadbury’s show bag is full of chocolate. Our show bag was one where you bought an empty bag for A$7 and then followed a map round the show, collecting the items to put in your bag, including some yummy two-minute noodles from Oriental Merchants. Well, it was for the kids really, and four days of stamping and smiling was pretty soul-sapping, but hey, it was cultural, I guess.

And so, after a life-changing year in Australia, my working holiday visa started making pinging noises and I had to leave the country, so I booked a flight to New Zealand, contacted the head of Acorn New Zealand who kindly offered me a bed for my first couple of nights, and waved goodbye to my friends from Melbourne. What a place, and what wonderful people. I will be back...

Interlude

At this point in my journey I left Australia to travel through New Zealand and French Polynesia, which you can read about in two of my other books, God’s Own Country: Travels in New Zealand and Paradise Has Teeth: Travels in French Polynesia (both available for free from www.moxon.net/ebooks). From French Polynesia I returned to Australia, which is where the next chapter picks up the story...

Queensland

Brisbane

Written: 30 July 1997

Brisbane is a fairly typical Australian city. It’s a pleasant place that doesn’t quite have the sophistication of Melbourne or the physical beauty of Sydney, but it does have better weather, and that makes a huge difference. I found Brisbane to be incredible and quite engrossing, but for different reasons; having just arrived back from Tahiti, I hadn’t seen a shopping mall for so long that simply walking round the Myer Centre off Queen Street in the city centre sent me into spasms. Large Big Mac meals for just A$4.95! Endless clothes shops! Camping stores that stretched for miles! Rows and rows of current CDs in the record shops! Concert tickets! Supermarkets! Coffee-flavoured milk! People! People! People! It’s no understatement to say that I spent a few days wandering around Brisbane with my mouth open, just window shopping and easing myself back into western civilisation; little things like businessmen with mobile phones, roads with three lanes and cheap, copious Coca Cola were, after four months on Zeke, mind-bogglingly amazing. I felt like Dick Whittington on his first visit to London, and it was a hoot.

As with other Australian cities, Brisbane is relatively young: it was founded in 1824 as a penal colony. It tends to be regarded as a bit backward by the larger cities to the south, which might have something to do with a 1965 photograph I saw of the city; there wasn’t one skyscraper on the skyline, which says a lot when you compare it to the blue and gold glass of the ultra-modern, ultra-shiny phallic symbols that define the centre of modern Brisbane. Beneath the heights of the office blocks lives a city that’s as modern and prosperous as any city in Australia, a fact that I really noticed after places like Papeete and Amanu. By the time I came to leave Brisbane, the novelty of western luxuries had worn off, but as far as I was concerned, Brisbane wasn’t backward at all – quite the opposite, in fact.

Stradbroke Island

When they heard that I was flying back to Australia, Dave and Dorothy, our neighbours on the Papeete quay, had kindly given me the contact details of their son and daughter, Gavin and Jenine, who lived in Brisbane. So as soon as I landed, I negotiated the public transport system to arrive at Gavin and Jenine’s house just in time for tea. Jenine shot through a couple of days after I arrived – she flew out to Papeete to join her parents on Kabloona for the rest of the year – which left Gavin and his two Japanese flat mates, Kumiko and Tumomi, to explore the area with. Gavin spoke fluent Japanese and was off to Japan for a year at university in September, so they were all fascinating company, but because Tumomi’s English was on a par with my French, a lot of the conversations lapsed back into Japanese, a language in which I have yet to learn ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘two beers please’ (these three phrases forming the basis for the Englishman Abroad’s Fluency Certificate). However, their hospitality was second to none, and the amazing Japanese cooking they produced – noodles, stir-fries, chicken dishes, the works – were up to restaurant standard, and I don’t exaggerate. Gavin was the first to admit that although he had spent his first two years at the University of Queensland living off macaroni cheese and Big Macs, he was quite a convert to the healthy and absorbing range of Japanese dishes the three of them managed to rustle up. It all made pie and chips look rather primitive (although pie and chips is still a favourite... I don’t see that ever changing).

My only expedition out of Brisbane during my week-long stay was with Gavin, Kumiko, and Gavin’s previous landlord John, an elderly Aussie bloke who treated driving with the casual disdain of someone who learned to drive when the roads were still empty. John turned out to be a really pleasant bloke, and the four of us took the ferry over to North Stradbroke Island for a day’s exploration, combining some sightseeing with a delivery John had to make to a friend of his.

Stradbroke Island, or Straddie as it’s affectionately known[1], is a long sand island to the east of Brisbane, just one of the many sand islands off the coast of Queensland (the most famous of which is Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world[2]). We met Donald, John’s friend, who struck me as an interesting type. He had lived in Dunwich, Straddie’s main town, for as long as you’d care to remember, and the slow, pleasant lifestyle fitted in with his slightly ponderous nature. Nursing a shock of white hair and a beer belly to make you proud, he was obviously light years away from city life, despite the presence of Brisbane only a few kilometres away on the mainland (which he kept referring to as ‘out west’). When John asked him which number his house was on Flinders Avenue – we’d driven past his house a couple of times before spotting Donald on his veranda – he replied, ‘I dunno, didn’t know I was supposed to have a number,’ which didn’t surprise me one bit.

Straddie was very pleasant. We lunched in a pub with stunning sea views, walked on the beaches, and explored the Brown Lake and the Blue Lake, the latter involving a short 2.6km walk to the lake itself. This little jaunt only served to whet my appetite; it’s been so long since I’ve done a decent bushwalk that it left me chomping at the bit. Apart from a short walk on Tahiti to Sandfly Falls, and a little bit of exploring in the Gambiers, the last bushwalk I did was the Tongariro Northern Circuit, and that was an awfully long time ago. Innocent little Blue Lake gave me the impetus to explore Queensland by foot, which would turn out to be a great decision.

Exploring Brisbane

Other highlights of Brisbane included a night on the town with Gavin, where I rediscovered the delights of drinking in pubs; a visit to Indooroopilly Shoppingtown, the biggest shopping mall in Brisbane, which was a freaky experience after so long away from the worlds of affordable fashion, massive K-Marts and bargains, bargains, bargains; the purchase of a replacement for my poor old bush hat, whose shape and texture was battered so badly by the passage to Polynesia that I had to bury it at sea; a 13-cannon salute on the South Bank in the city, which I happened to be passing at the right time, receiving a free pair of ear plugs as part of the bargain; the Brisbane museum, which was being refurbished when I visited it, something that seems to happen to most museums I wander into, as if they know I’m coming; and a visit to the doctor[3] to get some cream for a bout of body-wide eczema that I’d developed on the Pacific, where I discovered that the doctor was himself a yachtie, and wanted to talk about it at length while patients waited outside for their turn.

Brisbane’s botanic gardens are also worth a mention. My first attempt at a visit got rained off – I cowered in the covered shopping mall in the city centre instead of braving the astonishingly fierce downpour that suddenly arrived out of the blue – but when it cleared I finally got to see the famed Brisbane gardens. They’re tucked into a corner of the Brisbane River[4], and manage to squeeze some pleasant parkland and mangrove swamps into a compact and skyscraper-lined little spot. However, when put alongside Perth’s Kings Park, or even Adelaide’s more botanical collection, Brisbane’s garden comes out as just another park, albeit pleasant. I’ve seen a lot of gardens now, and in order of preference with my favourite first, here’s my summary of Botanic Gardens I Have Known (I didn’t have time to visit Canberra’s gardens, and Hobart don’t have a botanic garden as such, just a park – though it is lovely):

1. Perth

2. Christchurch

3. Adelaide

4. Darwin

5. Auckland

6. Melbourne

7. Brisbane

8. Wellington

9. Sydney

Actually, there was one more thing I did in Brisbane: I discovered an HMV store and spent hours browsing. I’m totally out of touch with the music scene, as demonstrated by the number of new albums and band splits that occurred while I was pitching and rolling in Zeke. As I discovered new albums from the likes of Radiohead, Ride, Madder Rose, Erasure, U2 and countless others, I was caught in a quandary. I couldn’t buy anything, due not only to budgetary restraints but also to the fact that I don’t have a CD player or Walkman, but I wanted to; the temptation to jack in this travelling lark and go back to England – to my music collection, to Melody Maker and the NME, to the London music scene – came back and, although I never seriously entertain a return for just one reason, it happens every time I hit a record store. Reading some of the issues of Melody Maker that Gavin had bought over the past few weeks, I made the sad discovery that Jeff Buckley had died by walking into a river, especially sad because his album Grace was one of the soundtracks to my exploration of New Zealand. The splits of Belly and Soundgarden were equally distressing, but some things just aren’t meant to last, I guess.

Despite the temptation of the music scene, I decided that if I didn’t get out of Brisbane soon, I never would, so I booked a coach ticket to Cairns, some 1930km north of Brisbane, and home to some of the most famous diving spots on the Great Barrier Reef (after all, diving the reef is the main object of my visit to Queensland). So after a week of city life I said my goodbyes to my kind hosts and boarded a bus for Cairns, a 28-hour journey to the north along the coast that would take me back into the tropics.

[1] Here’s a tip for visitors who want to learn how to speak Australian (or ‘Strine’ as the language is called). All you have to do is shorten words to one syllable, and add ‘ie’ to the end. Hence Straddie, Brizzie, barbie, stubbie, footie, cozzie (for swimming costume), and lots of other timeless favourites. There are exceptions, such as bottle-o for bottle shop (as in, ‘I’m off dahn the bottle-o for a slab of VB’) and ‘snags’ for ‘sausages’, but as a general guide, the ‘ie’ rule is invaluable for those wanting to blend in.

[2] Of course it’s the largest sand island in the world – this is Australia, after all, where everything’s the biggest and best in the world. I’ve mentioned the Australian obsession with large-scale models before – all those big bananas, large lobsters and so on – and Queensland has, as one of its landmark tourists spots, a huge pineapple which you can climb for a view of the surrounding countryside. It’s all a bit weird, really, though it’s probably nothing more than good old penis envy. Bless ’em.

[3] Actually, the doctor was very good, and prescribed me lots of antibiotic and dodgy-stomach pills for when I go to Asia. He also said that for stays of ten months in malaria areas, they don’t recommend that you take malaria pills, because the pills are so toxic that they’ll do you more harm than good over such a long time (pills are only recommended for shorter visits). His advice: avoid getting bitten by wrapping up at dawn and dusk, carrying a mosquito net, and using insect repellent.

[4] Interestingly, Brisbane is the only city in Australia whose river has the same name as the city. Perth is on the Swan River, Adelaide on the Torrens River, Canberra on Lake Burley Griffin (formed by the Molonglo River), Melbourne on the Yarra River, Sydney on the Parramatta River, Hobart on the Derwent River, and Darwin is on the coast and doesn’t have a river. How unusual it seems to have Brisbane on the Brisbane River, after all that variety.

Cairns

Written: 13 August 1997

I shan’t dwell on the bus journey from Brisbane to Cairns; it was pretty long and tedious, but at least I managed to get some sleep. Coaches are designed to stop light sleepers like me from getting any shut-eye, with their hissing pneumatic brakes, stops every three hours or so that jolt you wide awake, seats that recline only as far as is uncomfortable for both yourself and the person behind you, movies that don’t even tax the mentality of test-tube babies, leg room that makes a coffin look like a two-up two-down... love ’em or hate ’em, they’re cheaper than flying, and for good reason. Still, I got there without terminal cramp, and at least you can look out of the window and really appreciate what it is that those crazy cyclists see as they pedal their way round the continent.

Cairns turned out to be just another Australian town, but this time it had one big difference: unashamed and excessive tourism. I haven’t seen so many hostels, tour operators or touts since the Costa del Sol, and a worryingly large percentage of them seem to be run by the English, another reason not to spend too long in Cairns itself. If I had a car I’d have been camping up in the bush in Cape Tribulation, but I don’t, so I decided to stay in a hostel.

In truth, it wasn’t so bad. I had visions of drunk teenage backpackers stumbling off the Oz Experience bus and lolling about in the hostel, telling everyone what a wonderful place Fraser Island is if you’re into driving fast and getting pissed, but I got lucky. The U2 Hostel – terrible name, pretty terrible rooms, bloody good price – wasn’t right in the centre of town, and its short distance from the main drag meant it didn’t get such a throughput of backpackers, but instead provided a roof over the heads of a more interesting clientele of dole bludgers, broke hitchers looking for work and ex-drug addicts searching for lost family. Salubrious it wasn’t, but it was far more fun than the normal Youth Hostel scene, and at least the rooms had locks on the doors to prevent too many wandering possessions.

My first night in Cairns went the way of most people’s: I got drunk. It wasn’t intentional, but the U2 provided a free meal down the Woolshed pub as part of the deal, and the next thing I knew I was too drunk to stand and having a ball. After having the boat sway for four months it was novel to see land pitch and yaw.

This fortunate start to Cairns life did have one bad repercussion; when I woke up on my 27th birthday I felt pretty awful, so I just spent the day wandering around town, nursing my hangover. As a place to relax, Cairns isn’t too bad; the foreshore is mud, not sand, which isn’t the most delightful central feature for a town, but there are plenty of parks and pubs to break the monotony.

I did buy myself a birthday present, though. By an amazing piece of luck I arrived in Cairns just in time to catch Powderfinger on the last night of their Australian tour; Powderfinger are, in my humble opinion, the best band in Australia today, and their second album Double Allergic was another soundtrack to my Kiwi tour. The ticket was the best birthday present I could have hoped for and the concert turned out to be as good as I had hoped it to be; I certainly lost a few pounds dancing myself stupid in the mosh pit. Some things never change...

Feeling Old in Cairns

Written: 2 August 1997

The gulf opened up in front of me on the evening of my 27th birthday. I’d gone to the Woolshed for my evening meal with Chris and Alan from the U2 Hostel, but unfortunately Chris was feeling too rough from the night before to touch any alcohol, and Alan had to get up early the next day to catch the bus down south, so before long I was left alone, sitting in the pub, enjoying the beer, the music and all those other things that I’ve learned to appreciate since the enforced abstinence of Zeke.

Luckily, sitting alone in pubs is a skill that travelling has taught me. Sometimes it’s not terribly pleasant, and can simply make you feel lonelier than ever, but most of the time it’s kind of fun, and pubs are great places to watch people. I’m finding my own company more and more enjoyable as time goes on... after all, I always shout the drinks, I laugh at all my jokes, and I never leave before I want to, so I sat there and soaked up the Woolshed’s atmosphere, along with the beer.

And that was when I realised that I’m getting older; I was going to write ‘getting old’ there, but 27 isn’t old by any stretch of the imagination, and I don’t want this article to annoy when I read it in ten years. The Woolshed is a backpackers’ haunt, with cheap beer, large meals and music straight from MTV. I loved the music, I guzzled the cheap beer, I ate the food, but the people... God, they were just so painful to listen to. Most of them were English, and the average age was less than my own: university student age, mainly. And I felt so old... their conversations were so empty, and I couldn’t believe how out of touch I was with student culture, not because I didn’t understand it, but because I just didn’t want to be like that.

Was I like this, a vacuous piss head, before I started turning into my parents? I’d rather walk for 20km into the bush and settle into an early night ready for an early start, than hang around places like the Woolshed with people born after punk rock had been and gone. I suddenly realised I had to leave Cairns as soon as I’d done some diving; Cairns is the Charybdis of the backpacker scene, sucking in the unwary with its free evening meals, cheap beer and tropical weather. The number of people I’ve met who came for a couple of days and stayed for months is extraordinary, especially as Cairns itself isn’t even worth a week; the surrounding area is worth exploring, but the backpackers who stay for months don’t tend to get out of Cairns much at all.

If I’d had a car, you wouldn’t have seen me for bull dust.

Great Barrier Reef

Written: 8 August 1997

The Great Barrier Reef is like another world. I don’t think anything can replace the feeling of your first scuba dive or reef exploration, but they say that the Barrier Reef has some of the best diving in the world, and I wanted to find out what the buzz was all about.

So I booked myself passage on Taka II, which would be home to about 25 people for a three-and-a-half day trip to the reef. We left Cairns late one afternoon and spent the night steaming north, ending up at the world-famous Cod Hole the following morning, just off Lizard Island; we then then spent the next three days making our way south down the reef, stopping at various spots to dive (we did ten dives in all). Perhaps the best way to describe the diving is to quote from my dive log, which every diver is supposed to keep, though please note that I filled in my log on a pitching boat, using a pen, so forgive me if the prose is a little stilted. Suffice to say the trip was quite extraordinary, and this one event alone ensured that my brief trip to Queensland was well worth the effort and expenditure.

[Some quick terminology for non-divers: the regulator is the thing that goes in your mouth and provides air; the deeper you go, the faster you get through your air, because air is always provided through the regulator at the same pressure as the surrounding water; your first dive of the day should always be your deepest, with the rest getting progressively shallower; you always dive with a buddy, and my buddy was a delightful American called Molly; and coral stacks are called ‘bommies’.]

Dive One, 6 August 1997, Ribbon Reef 10 (Cod Hole)

The first dive of a three-day trip to the Great Barrier Reef, and those of us who hadn’t done umpteen zillion dives already had to do a quick ‘check out’ dive. Memories of New Zealand came flooding back, quite literally, as I had to clear a partially filled mask, recover my regulator and so on. This was followed by a hop down to 30.5m, the deepest I’ve been yet (allowed under Queensland law as I had a dive computer; for those on tables the deepest allowed is 18m), and by the time I got back to a reasonable depth, my air was running low. A short dive.

So the chats afterwards about ‘Did you see the grey whaler shark?’ made me realise just how much you miss if your scuba is more mask-clearing than shark-stroking. One day I might manage the scuba equivalent of changing gear and steering at the same time. One day...

Dive Two, 6 August 1997, Ribbon Reef 10 (Cod Hole)

More time to explore the reef, the ‘first dive’ jitters being consigned to the bin. Buddy Molly – har-dee-har – and I queued up (after all, this is a tour) to kiss a bloody great cod. These fish are a wonder to behold: before scuba, the only cod I knew came with chips. Behind the doleful eyes and low slung, thick-lipped mouth lives a curious, graceful creature. For some reason fish feel more alien to me than land animals, and the cod makes you feel like a temporary guest rather than a distant relation. Kissing the bugger didn’t change a thing.

The reef was pleasant, but no more special than the Gambiers. I have high hopes for the coral as we head down the reef, though. I just wish there was more sun[1]...

Dive Three, 6 August 1997, Pixie’s Pinnacle

Circling a tall bommie, spiralling upwards, is a good thing if everyone is going in the same direction. We – Molly and I, and another couple called Caroline and Amanda – headed off clockwise, seemingly the opposite way to everyone else. Still, it added a challenge to the proceedings.

Pixie’s Pinnacle, obviously named by a fantasy-reading hippy with hair down to his hips and red-tinted Lennon specs, was beautiful. Hundreds of types of coral, which I can’t name because I haven’t done any homework, flutter in the current while fish of all shapes, sizes and colours mind their own business among the formations. They said it was more an aquarium than a reef, and they were right.

Good old They. You can always rely on him.

Dive Four, 6 August 1997, Challenger Bay

The progression: swimming in clear, cool rock pools in Karijini; swimming across a muddy and wide river in Millstream-Chichester; walking through a waist-deep, freezing, mountain-boring river in Tunnel Creek; snorkelling off a yacht in the Coromandel; learning to scuba dive in the Poor Knights Islands; exploring coral reefs in the Gambier Islands... and the final piece in this phobia-shattering sequence, a night dive on the Great Barrier Reef.

Defining memories of the dive: seeing groups of divers with lights, self-contained units in a sea of black; a stillness not unlike the peace of loneliness on the central desert; swarms of fish, bright flecks of light in our torch beams...

And no, I don’t remember what I saw. I was too amazed to find myself diving in the dark.

Dive Five, 7 August 1997, Clam Gardens

The first dive of the day – and therefore the deepest – and, I am glad to report, no longer the air-guzzling experience it was before. Molly and I had to stop for a breather or two while heading back from 30m up to the reef, but the blood, sweat and tears were all well worth it: clams the size of sumo wrestlers were littered around the site like boulders on Mars.

Wildlife was impressive, with plenty of young fish around to bring out the paternal instinct. I also found the toilet-brush-shaped animal[2] that sticks out of the coral and shoots back inside its hole when you go to touch it.

One final point: we were woken at 7am and were in the water by 7.30am, so some of the above may be the result of me still dreaming. Certainly felt like it...

Dive Six, 7 August 1997, Steve’s Bommie

Mask clearing, probably the most annoying part of scuba, became a real burden round Steve’s Bommie. For some reason known only to him upstairs, only my right eye had a problem with flooding, and clearing a mask by blowing through just one nostril makes the sort of thing you see in American ‘Frat Pack’ movies look positively innocuous. I still don’t get it: the two sides of a mask are connected, aren’t they?

Steve’s Bommie – named after a late scuba diver, who has his own plaque at the base of the bommie – is a haven of marine life. As the dives progress on the Great Barrier Reef, I am beginning to recognise fish, coral and so on. No, I don’t know their Latin names, let alone their English ones, and that doesn’t detract from them at all. After all, the sights are indescribable, so what use nomenclature?

Dive Seven, 7 August 1997, Temple of Doom

Seven dives into this marathon three-day trip, and they’re all beginning to meld into one. A hectic ‘three before lunch’ schedule ensured a rush of experiences without much time for reflection, a bit of a shame – but more than made up for by the opportunity after this dive to snorkel with a minkie whale (but that’s another story).

Temple of Doom, named because it’s full of fish whose main diet is, er, other fish, is a long, oval bommie with plenty of plate coral, and schools and schools of seemingly unfazed fish. Molly and I managed a circuit in the time it took for me to guzzle my air, during which we managed to make sufficiently touristy gestures into the videographer’s camera, just for that perfect memento. Thank goodness fish don’t pull gormless faces when a camera gets pointed at them, or Cousteau would have died a poor man.

Dive Eight, 7 August 1997, Beer Gardens

Another night dive, and this time no qualms about jumping into a pitch-black ocean – it’s amazing how quickly your phobias become your friends. In fact the only thoughts were of the water temperature rather than scary things lurking in the murky depths.

The highlight was a loggerhead turtle, who was asleep on our first pass, but who woke up and swam right past us in a graceful motion that made Nureyev look like a klutz. The size of the turtle was hard to gauge with the magnifying effect of underwater viewing, but it looked bloody huge: certainly the biggest turtle I’ve ever seen!

Molly has a problem now, though: she has achieved two of her life’s ambitions, to swim with whales and to swim with turtles. What now?

Dive Nine, 8 August 1997, Hog’s Breath

Up at 6am, in the water at 6.30am, and I do sometimes wonder if this is for pain or pleasure, this trip. Immersion in cold sea water while the sun makes its feeble attempt to make the already-wet suit less freezing isn’t my idea of larf-a-minute.

The bommies were pretty surreal, with arches and sixties-acid-influenced towers, but to be honest we were both so spaced out from the rude hour of our awakening that our wide-eyed stares were more a sympathetic pleading for matchsticks than amazement at the sights.

After an already hectic schedule, this early bird couldn’t care about the worm. Not this time.

Dive Ten, 8 August 1997, No Name Bommie

Ten dives in two-and-a-half days, two early mornings, and I’m out for the count. The best fun was finding big blobs of Christmas worms with their ‘trees’ out, and waving a hand to make them disappear like some corny magician.

A perfect illustration of how familiarity breeds apathy: another bommie, another day. It seems that diving is going to be another of those activities that are better if they’re rare, like good port, walks in the rainforest, and nights on the town. However, I guarantee that next time, it will still be well worth it: I’m not jaded, just faded.

And there is one good thing. By the end of Hop 17[3] I am proficient enough that the mask doesn’t flood, the buoyancy control is good, and the air lasts longer. I might even become a novice one of these days.

Minkie Whale

So, those were my dive log entries for the trip. One thing they didn’t mention (well, only briefly) was the minkie whale who turned up on the penultimate day and who let us snorkel right above him. These whales are simply huge, and they move around with a lack of effort that has to be seen to be believed. We also came across a number of humpback whales on the last day, while we were heading back to Cairns, and they put on quite a display of tail slapping and fin smacking. Not a bad bonus...

[1] A wish that came true the next day, as the clouds cleared and the sun came out in all its skin-bubbling glory.

[2] I found out later this was called the Christmas worm, because the brush it sticks out is shaped like a Christmas tree.

[3] This was my 17th dive overall.

Hinchinbrook Island

Written: 19 August 1997

Quite why I got drunk on the Tuesday night, I don’t know; the excuse was something about it being my last night in Cairns, and the next thing you know... but whatever the justification, Wednesday morning was a struggle, boarding the 8.45am coach while still quite drunk. I slowly surfaced throughout the day, but there was one good thing: I was out of Cairns, camping again, and looking forward to some good walking.

Cardwell was the little town I stopped in, which is famous for neighbouring Hinchinbrook Island... and the reason that Hinchinbrook Island is famous? It’s the biggest island National Park in the world, and it’s got a wonderful four-day walking track down the east coast, the Thorsborne Trail. Like a horse to a carrot, I was drawn to the walking track as if my life depended on it, and I managed to book onto the number-limited track by the skin of my teeth, getting the last camping permit and avoiding a wait of four days for the next available slot. Lucky old me; you’d almost think it was fate.

As I walked, I span between two different and quite opposing opinions of Hinchinbrook Island and the Thorsborne Trail:

- On one hand, the rainforests in Fiordland are more majestic than in Hinchinbrook; the swimming holes in Karijini are more surreal than in Hinchinbrook; the beaches in northern Western Australia are more beautiful than in Hinchinbrook; the mountains of the Southern Alps are more striking than in Hinchinbrook; the sandflies and mosquitoes of Fiordland and Kakadu are bigger than in Hinchinbrook[1]; the views over Mt Cook are more stunning than in Hinchinbrook; the weather of the western desert is more reliable than in Hinchinbrook; the walking of the Pyke Valley is more challenging than in Hinchinbrook; the waterfalls of Litchfield National Park are more awesome than in Hinchinbrook; and the transport to and from the track is cheaper almost everywhere else than in Hinchinbrook.

- However, walking under the rainforest canopy, trundling along beaches, climbing hills, swimming in clear pools at the bottoms of waterfalls, camping by crocodile-infested lagoons, experiencing rain and shine within minutes of one another... these experiences, all rolled into one walk, are the reason that Hinchinbrook Island is just wonderful for bushwalking. Sure, I’ve seen ‘better’ somewhere along the line, but they’re just memories now; Hinchinbrook Island was reality while I was walking the trail, and it was just great, which only goes to show that presence in the present is all you need to experience the here and now. Yes, there were drawbacks, such as my A$30 tent I’d bought in Brisbane, which leaked like a sieve[2] and made my first night on the trail more like Taka than Thorsborne; but my kit worked well, nonetheless, and I’ve proved that I can go out, spend very few dollars, and still come up with a survival kit for the bush. (For the record, my tent was A$30, roll mat A$10, stove A$7.50, food A$20, and the rest of the stuff I already had, making the equipment cost roughly the same as the ferries to and from the walk.)

The Rainforests of Hinchinbrook

Suffice to say that while walking through the lovely tree-clad bays of Hinchinbrook, I felt I was well at home, and as the track was easy – just 32km in four days – I found I could spend plenty of time soaking in the atmosphere (literally, on the first day) and revelling in the contrast with Cairns. I’m finding a big benefit of the first opinion voiced above; because of my extensive experience walking through Australia and New Zealand, I can compare and contrast with lot of other walks, and I’ve grown to appreciate certain areas for what they are. Just as I can look at the sunset and it brings back memories of sunsets all over Australasia, when I walked through Hinchinbrook I thought of Freycinet, Wilson’s Prom, Litchfield, Hollyford and others. It adds a whole new dimension to the experience, which is already pretty immense.

And the fact that I developed a stinking cold on the first day (undoubtedly caught in Cairns when my defences were down) which stayed with me beyond the end of the trail, didn’t detract from the walk one bit, even if one handkerchief for four days with a streaming nose is pretty gross. In fact, what better place to suffer: a cold, a smog-laden city, or a fresh-air island? Indeed.

One particularly interesting thing about Hinchinbrook is the large number of rats on the island. If you aren’t careful, the rats will gnaw through your tent and pack to get to your food – even toothpaste smells like food to them – so the rangers have thoughtfully provided steel boxes at each campsite for you to put your food in. I could see the rats hanging around at night, looking for a feed; big buggers they are, too. And on the subject of food, for the first time in a long tramping career I met not one but two couples who had brought along filter coffee systems. Now, I’ve seen people with all sorts of teas, but filter coffee? That’s something altogether different. I tend to buy coffee in a tube – Nestlé do a tube of coffee, condensed milk and sugar, all mixed together in a tube to which you just add boiling water, which is perfect for tramping – and when I brought it out of my pack and proceeded to make a cup, you should have seen the look of pure horror on the filter coffee drinkers’ faces. I’d have probably got the same reaction if I’d proceeded to make a nice, fresh rat sandwich.

After finishing the Thorsborne and returning to Cardwell for the traditional ritual of showering, clothes-washing and reacquainting oneself with life’s little luxuries one by one (in this case Vegemite, Coke and cold remedies), I booked into the caravan park for another couple of nights, and settled in to do some writing. It was only then that I thought I might as well take my temperature, more on a whim than anything else; it was 100.4°F, and it’s funny how you suddenly feel worse when there’s physical proof that you’re ill. My cold instantly changed from serious sniffles to full on flu, and I realised that taking it easy was not only a good idea, it was vital, and the first step had to be to get out of that leaky old tent and into a bed.

[1] A handy hint, picked up in Shark Bay, that’s worth repeating. Take 70 per cent baby oil and 30 per cent Dettol, mix, and smear on your body for the ultimate insect repellent. The sandflies stick to the baby oil and die, and the mozzies simply hate the smell of disinfectant. It worked a treat for me on Hinchinbrook – it beats paying a fortune for normal sprays, and it works better, too.

[2] Just to point out how leaky my A$30 tent is, consider this. Dew, which is sometimes quite heavy in the tropics in winter, started to drip through the lining onto my head one morning. I thought it must have been raining, but no: my tent can’t even handle dew, for goodness sake. It looks like I’ll be saving the 2.5kg it takes up when I head off to Asia, and I probably won’t shed a tear, even if I discover the perfect free campsite in some beautiful National Park in Indonesia and don’t have a tent. Still, for A$30 it was a wonderful investment to enable me to walk the Thorsborne and, later, Fraser Island, so no harm done.

Townsville

Written: 20 August 1997

My next stop after two days’ recuperating in Cardwell was Townsville. Townsville’s main claim to fame on the travelling circuit is its ferry port, which serves nearby Magnetic Island, and most visitors head straight through with little more than a stop to stock up on sun tan lotion and books for the beach. Having just walked across another island, I thought I’d stay in town for a while before heading for the ferry.

This turned out to be a bad move, not because there’s anything terribly wrong with Townsville, but because it’s not a particularly great place to be when you’re still feeling under the weather. Townsville, as its rather exciting name manages to convey, has a rather industrial air to it, and even though I spent a whole day hunting down its attractions, I spectacularly failed to warm to the place. My subdued feelings are probably best summed up by the strange beast that greets visitors in the centre of town; most cities have some kind of central point, denoted by a flashy skyscraper, a large square or even a huge shopping mall, but Townsville has a blue cylindrical apartment block that looks like it’s been rescued from a failed experiment in urban disaster during the concrete 1960s, and to cap it all there’s a strange funnel sitting atop the monstrosity that’s shaped like a huge lipstick. It’s pointless, ugly and summed up how I felt as I stomped around Townsville, under a dark cloud of my own making.

The people in the hostel didn’t help matters much. Some places attract itinerant weirdoes, and Townsville seems one of the most magnetic[1]; the hostel I stayed in was uncanny in its resemblance to a human zoo, packed as it was with dole bludgers, vacant stares and people who looked like they might fly off the hook at any moment, ripping the wall fittings out with them. I got talking to the only three sane people I could find in the hostel – two Poms and a Dutchman – who said they’d stayed in three other hostels in Townsville, and they were all the same. Before arriving I’d heard that Townsville’s hostels were a bit dubious, but proof is always more effective than print, so after one night, I figured I’d take my chances on Magnetic Island instead.

But before jumping on the ferry out to the island, I went shopping for a pair of swimming shorts, and that’s when I realised that perhaps the problem wasn’t with Townsville, but with the event that it was hosting that weekend. Banners proclaimed that I’d just wandered into the 1997 Vietnam Veterans reunion, and the central mall was full of war stalls, sitting in the shadow of the lipstick monument. Veterans of all ages sat around chatting, exchanging pleasantries and not-so-pleasant anecdotes; some were old war heroes, some were hippies, some were coherent, and some were not, but collectively they managed to bring back memories of that terrible conflict, which rather dampened the atmosphere. Clearly it’s important to have reunions like this, so please don’t think I’m complaining, but as I walked into the sports shop to shell out for a nice new set of swimming shorts, the mall’s canned music system kicked in with the familiar refrain of ‘If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair’, and I thought that perhaps I was better off leaving Townsville to its quiet contemplation of the ruined hippy dream, and headed off to pack.

[1] Though it’s important to note that some visitors love Townsville, and never leave. For example, the slightly cheesy tourist brochure for the town contains the usual political waffle from the mayor, the usual content-free sales talk from the tourist bureau, and the usual exhortations that whatever anyone else says about the rest of Queensland, Townsville does it better. But most telling were the words of wisdom from a local DJ who had come to Townsville for a temporary assignment, and had stayed because he had fallen in love with the place. ‘Home is not where you were born,’ he wrote beneath a bizarre photograph of him in a dinner jacket emblazoned with ‘Townsville, Queensland’ and pictures of tropical paradise, none of which bore any resemblance to the town centre I’d been exploring. ‘Home is not where you were born, home is where you want to die,’ he said. I couldn’t help thinking that, perhaps, this wasn’t quite what he’d meant to say...

Magnetic Island

Written: 25 August 1997

Magnetic Island is just 20 minutes away from Townsville on the ferry, and it’s a holiday spot par excellence. It’s a smallish island, roughly triangular with each side about 10km long, and about 75 per cent of it is National Park. The easiest aspect of it, though – as far as recuperating flu victims are concerned – is that it’s set up perfectly for tourists, and the packages to get you over to the island and staying in one of the many hostels are very cheap, readily available, and hassle-free. So, for A$59 I got a return ticket to the island and five nights in Centaur House, a quiet and friendly place halfway up the east coast in a village called Arcadia. It was spot on.

Most people spend their time on Magnetic Island hanging around on the beach, and this is exactly what I did for the first couple of days; I would normally have kicked straight into the walking tracks, but until I’d got my temperature down and stopped coughing and spluttering, I wasn’t going to do anything strenuous. Casting my mind back as the surf broke, the sun burned and the sand blew into my sandwiches, I tried to remember the last time I’d put a whole day aside to sit on the beach; it’s not something I normally get much of a kick out of, as I tend to be the sort of person who needs to be occupied. I don’t think I’ve dedicated a whole day to the beach since Broome back in July 1996, and it was only the light-headed, ears-blocked feeling of fading flu that made the whole dreamy experience enjoyable. I don’t need a tan – after this long in the sun, a tan is automatic, even if you keep out of the sun like I tend to – but relaxing in the sun is a great way to get better.

Toad Racing

A great way not to get better is to drink beer, but a strange thing happened on my first night on the island. The local pub was having a toad racing night (as you do), and a group of us from the hostel went along to participate, after putting together a kitty to bet on the toads (I ended up putting in the princely sum of A$1). The ringmaster, for want of a better name, had a personality that was larger than life, not to mention a belly that in most civilisations would be classed as gross, but which in Australia would be classed as an investment; watching him introduce the toads was fun in itself. The Centaur House syndicate bet on the yellow toad in the second race – yellow being the colour of the ribbon round the toad’s neck – which we had to secure by bidding the highest amount for that toad, and we sat down and waited for the race to start.

Toad racing is simple. All the toads are placed in a plastic container in the centre of a circle, and then the container is removed; the first toad to go outside the circle is the winner. The yellow toad made a dash for it, easily leading the pack, and then he froze. He stopped, and just sat there and croaked, while the blue toad shot past him and claimed the prize. Undeterred, we bid the rest of the kitty, some A$27, on the purple toad in the third race, in which the winner would get A$130.

As the purple toad cruised over the line, miles ahead of the competition, our corner erupted. A$130 buys a lot of beer, crisps and pool, and as I ploughed through the very welcome jugs of VB with all the other lucky winners, I figured that, yet again, my beginner’s luck with placing bets was getting me drunk, a little like it did back in Perth all those months ago, and a little like it did in Christchurch at the casino. One dollar for a whole night down the pub... life began well on Magnetic Island, I can tell you.

Kicking Back

It continued well, too. Magnetic Island lives up to its name in that people come to stay and never want to leave, but the reasons are less hedonistic than in places like Cairns; if you pick the right hostel, as I managed to in Centaur House, the pace of life becomes procrastinatingly attractive, with the most difficult decision of the day being whether to have toast or cereal for breakfast. Walking round the island with the other hostellers was relaxing, stopping at different bays every day and soaking up rays in the likes of Arthur Bay, Florence Bay, Radical Bay, Horseshoe Bay and Alma Bay. There were highlights, like the Forts – where we spotted 13 koalas, one of them with a baby – and the sounds of chuckling kookaburras and screaming curlews serenading us to sleep, all of which made Magnetic Island one of the most relaxed spots I have yet found.

It was so relaxing that on my last night, as we all sat around in the hostel’s spacious and TV-free outdoor lounge – a setting whose bright green couches would normally be classed as a flagrant flouting of the laws of aesthetics but which seemed so right at Centaur House – the assembly demanded that they be allowed to read some of the travelogue that I’d been hammering out for the last few days. Not since Melbourne has anyone giggled their way through my jottings, but as I fired up my Pocket Book and handed it round, I actually found people laughing at my prose. It was a pleasant sensation...

I eventually left Magnetic Island after five days, visiting Townsville on the way to buy some food, and that night I leapt on the southbound bus, heading on the overnight blinder to Hervey Bay. In fact, leaving the island was quite sad, a real empty-house-after-the-party-the-night-before feeling, as everyone seemed to leave at the same time. It’s rare that I get too involved in any one place, because it’s the people that make the place and the people often disappear, but sometimes it’s worth letting one place become home for a few days, and Centaur House fitted the bill. There was talk of a reunion when we all get back to Europe, but like so many things that are talked about when on the road, I’ll believe it when I see it. It would be nice, though; perhaps I’ll need such therapy when I return.

All I know is that I elected to spend the afternoon waiting for the bus in the ferry terminal, as the thought of returning to the mainland reality of Townsville made me feel rather depressed. Magnetic Island nine out of ten, Townsville nil points.

Fraser Island

Written: 4 September 1997

Please note that you can no longer light your own campfires on Fraser Island; they were banned in 2005, eight years after I visited, to help protect the island’s fragile ecology. Instead, pack a camping stove, and make sure you check out all the other regulations on the Queensland Government website.

The bus trip south from Magnetic Island to Hervey Bay was interminable, the excitement broken only by a visit to Gin Gin, where a two-tyre wheel came off a truck as it pulled into the roadhouse, shooting past the picnic table I was occupying and miraculously bouncing through the neighbouring caravan park without hitting anything. As I helped the relieved trucker to roll his unexpected deposit back to his semi-trailer, I realised that even expensive monsters like that have mechanical problems, and for once I was glad not to have the stress associated with car ownership. Sure, they’re well worth the money in terms of travel quality, but a lightweight backpack needs precious little maintenance, and there’s a lot to be said for that.

Hervey Bay is famous for two things: the humpback whales that hang around in the bay during the migration season, and Fraser Island. Unfortunately it isn’t whale season, and the reputation of Fraser Island is slightly dubious; I’d been told by more than one backpacker that Fraser Island was ‘well wicked’ and that the only way to see it was to rent a four-wheel-drive in which to burn along the sandy beaches – some 20,000 vehicles visit the island every year, and doing doughnuts on the beach in a 4WD while necking slabs of XXXX seems to be the norm. Still, it’s a big island – the biggest sand island in the world, no less – and getting lost by foot is a real possibility, so ignoring the island’s reputation, I decided to spend a day in Hervey Bay doing some research.

Fraser Island has a lot of very under-publicised walking tracks, and I spent the day hunting round to find out about them, eventually discovering the maps and leaflets I needed in the City Council offices. For such a gateway to a popular National Park, Hervey Bay is seriously lacking in not having an office for the QNP&WS (Queensland National Parks and Wildlife Service, the unpronounceable acronym that equates to New Zealand’s DOC and Western Australia’s CALM); all the tour operators are geared up for 4WD tours, and foot passengers are pretty well ignored, because they don’t make anyone a fast buck. On the other hand, this attitude means the tracks and hiker’s campsites are wonderfully empty, as long as I could get myself onto the island, things were looking up.

Getting to the Island

Fraser Island is a long – actually, a very long island that is about 120km from north to south, and only about 15-20km wide, on average. The west coast, facing the mainland, is a sandfly-infested mangrove swamp, but the east coast, which is swept by north-flowing currents and trade winds, is one big, beautiful beach; they call it Seventy-Five Mile Beach, rather imaginatively. Having studied the maps and trails, I decided to attempt a long walk, taking in the central area of the island, as well as a fair stretch of beach. If you imagine the trail being a lower-case ‘d’, then I started on the left-hand edge of the d’s circle, headed south and round to the beach, then north up the beach (the d’s stalk) for some distance, eventually turning round and walking back down the beach, to cut back into the centre via the top of the d’s circle, and back to square one. This meant I could tailor the walk to be as long or short as I liked by altering the distance walked up the beach (i.e. the height of the d’s stalk). It turned out to be a brilliant route.

I set off from Hervey Bay with a dangerously heavy pack – intending to stay for eight days, I had a lot of food stashed away, some 25 meals in total, plus spare emergency rations – and hitched down to the ferry from River Heads. This is another example of the lack of attention paid to non-driving and non-touring visitors to Fraser Island; the ferry leaves from River Heads, some 17km south of Hervey Bay, but there are no buses there, so if you have no car you either have to hitch, take a taxi, or pay three times the price to leave from Hervey Bay itself. I hitched, and within ten minutes I was on my way to the ferry, a little poodle sitting in my lap, licking my legs with worrying intensity and dedication, while I entertained the driver with idle banter about the outback.

Day 1: Central Station

The first day on the island, I took it easy. The secret of a long tramp is not to rush it; as you get further into the expedition, the pack gets lighter, you get fitter, you get used to sleeping on the ground and it generally gets easier to walk all day. However, the first days are always tough, and this was no exception. From the ferry, the only track leading into the island is the road, and with Fraser Island being entirely made out of sand (with only three small outcrops of bedrock on the whole island), the road walking is very hard, as you’re basically traipsing through dune systems. The 8km walk to Central Station – a grand-sounding name for nothing more than a ranger station, toilet block and campground – took me a good couple of hours, and I just collapsed into my tent on arrival. I have to admit I was a little worried; if all the walking was going to be this tough, this was going to be a very long visit.

The area I walked through, though, was indicative of interesting times to come. Starting from the mangrove mudflats, the road winds its way through eucalyptus, banksia and cypress pine forests, without a doubt my favourite tramping environment after spinifex outback. There’s banksia with its odd, brushy seed cones (hence its nickname ‘the loo brush tree’) and strange, serrated leaves; the gum trees with their distinctive and refreshing smell, striking white trunks and, at this time of year, peeling bark; the pine needles strewn across the ground, creating a fertile mulch from which wattles and bushes of all sorts of shapes and sizes grow... and all this in an environment that looks parched, nutrient-free and downright oppressive. It’s a great example of nature reclaiming the land in a far more effective way than man ever could.

By the time I arrived at Central Station, the gum forests had given way to closed-canopy sub-tropical rainforest, something that I hadn’t explored a great deal before visiting Fraser Island. I saw plenty of tropical rainforest in northern Queensland and the islands of the South Pacific, and an awful lot of temperate rainforest in New Zealand, but the sub-tropical variety is different again, being a real mixture of tropical and temperate; the canopy isn’t as closed and outrageously full as in the tropics, where vegetation hangs from just about everywhere, but sub-tropical rainforest still has all the huge fern palms and lush greenery that isn’t so common in temperate zones. The area around Central Station is beautiful, with the wonderfully cool and clear Wanggoolba Creek flowing over its sandy bed, past rare ferns (found only in this one spot in the world) and through a canopy where the sun only manages to penetrate as shards, picking out trees and vines with the accuracy of a stage spotlight. After setting up camp, I wandered off on a 4km track to Pile Valley, noting with some relief that the walking tracks in the forest are firm and easy to walk on; it’s hard to imagine that everything’s sand, because the forest has laid down such a thick layer of what we would call soil (albeit sandy soil) that it feels no different to walk on than normal earth.

Pile Valley is home to a strand of satinay trees, kings of the forest with their perfectly straight, 70m (210 ft) trunks soaring up above the canopy. Back in the bad old days when Fraser Island was a logging site, satinay trees were cut down for use in marine building, because they have such a high sap content that they’re resistant to rotting from sea water, a bit like teak. Fraser’s satinay was used to line the Suez Canal in the 1920s, and luckily there are quite a few trees left for tourists like me to stare at.

That night was bloody freezing, my first taste of the somewhat unpredictable nature of Fraser’s weather. Clear skies mean cold weather, and I had to wear everything I owned to stop my teeth from chattering. Luckily the family next to me in the campground had built up a fire, so I warmed myself by that, chatting away to the kids and parents and gladly accepting a couple of beers to while away the night. The first night in the bush is always fairly strenuous – roll mats aren’t mattresses, and inflatable pillows are, literally, a pain in the neck – but the next day I was up with the worms, and ready to take off south through the bush.

Day 2: Lake Benaroon

Day 2 was when I saw my first dingo. Every silver lining has its cloud and every politician his perversion, and it seems that every Queensland island has its problem child: on Hinchinbrook it’s the rat, and on Fraser it’s the dingo. Dingoes are wild dogs, and the ones on Fraser Island are thought to be the purest breed left, due to isolation from interbreeding with other dogs.

Your average dingo is sleek, naturally thin, and has all the usual mannerisms of canine kind, including the sad, sideways tilt of the head that makes hearts melt and grown adults speak in goo-goo language. Yes, the dingo has a genetic ability to charm the food out of a tourist’s hands, and this has caused huge problems on Fraser Island, because the dingoes have cottoned on. Whenever humans feed wild animals the whole eco-structure gets upset; more food breeds more dingoes, and when the number of humans on the island drops in the off-season, there are too many dingoes for natural food sources, so dingoes die off and, worse, they start to get aggressive if humans don’t hand over the food when they sit up and beg. Fraser Island is now home to over 200 dingo delinquents, whose daily routine involves ripping into tents if they can smell food, and terrorising little children who don’t know how to react to wildlife (in fact, a dingo had been shot the week before I arrived for biting a child, a child who had apparently been baiting the poor thing for three hours).

The guidelines, then, are strict but sensible. Don’t feed or interact with the dingoes. Don’t leave any food or rubbish inside your tent; lock it in your car. Leave your tent flaps open, so the dingo can enter your tent, sniff around and leave when it finds no food (as the ranger told me, the worst it can do then is leave a deposit on your sleeping bag, a prospect that, to me, sounded just as bad as having all your food stolen). So, every time I camped, I hoisted my backpack up a tree, well out of the range of the dingoes.

And was I glad I took the precaution. On my second day on the island, I was about to set off from Central Station when I saw a dingo trotting off into the forest, a plastic bag of goodies in its mouth. Following the culprit’s tracks backwards, I saw a large tent, its flaps pinned open as suggested. The only problem was that the owners hadn’t read the small print, and they’d left everything inside the tent, to which the dingo was slowly helping itself. As I watched, it came back, trotted straight into the tent, and after a bit of investigation, obviously decided that a litre carton of milk constituted food, so, jaws clamped round the prize, it started walking off to the forest, leaving a trail of milk behind it. I fully assumed that by the time the owners got back from their day’s walk, all they would find would be an empty tent with a puddle of milk in one corner. It served them right, unfortunately.

Into the Bush

I decided to take the walking as it came, and headed south from Central Station and through the centre of the island to the first of the many freshwater lakes that dominate the geography of Fraser Island. The walk took me through more gum forest, with patches of rainforest, and I discovered a tree that was new to me, the scribbly gum. Like most gum trees the trunk is pure white, but the scribbly gum gets its names from the zigzag shapes all over its trunk, which are formed by burrowing insects. On first inspection it looks like some artistic vandal has come along with a sharp knife and scribbled on the trunks, in much the same pattern as you make when trying to get a stubborn biro to work, but after a while you notice the variety in the work, and it’s quite hypnotic. Combined with the hiker’s high – a condition that combines the exhaustion of hiking with the meditative hypnotic effect of regular plod-plod-plod, and which sends you off into a whole new plane of thought as you trudge through the bush – it proved quite a pleasant experience.

I arrived at Lake Benaroon after a fairly quick and stress-free 7km walk, passing pretty Lake Birrabeen on the way, and decided to stay the night in the hiker’s campsite next to the lake. I collected a sizable pile of wood for a fire, relaxed on the beach – by definition, every shoreline in Fraser is a beach, with beautiful white sandy foreshores and dune systems to die for – and lit the fire at about 4pm, ready to reduce the flames to glowing coals in time to cook my tea. It was lining up to be the perfect night.

My companions in the campsite, a Swiss couple, turned up just before dark, and we nattered away as darkness fell and I munched my way through my billy of rice. And that’s when the rain started. I’d spent so much time collecting wood and creating the perfect campfire that there was no way I was going to retreat to my tent – which wasn’t any drier than standing in the rain anyway, as I’d found out in Hinchinbrook – so I fished out my umbrella and sat by the fire, staying perfectly dry and quite warm, thank you very much.

It was at that time, in the perfect darkness, that another couple stumbled into the campsite. They couldn’t quite believe it; after a long struggle through the rainforest they had arrived at the southern end of the lake, only to find it was chucking it down (you tend not to notice things like that when the forest canopy is protecting you) and that they still had to find the campsite. But lo and behold, that glow over there was someone sitting and tending a good-looking fire and sheltering under an umbrella, so they found the campsite and a welcoming fire to boot. In all their days of tramping, Jenni and George from Melbourne had never seen anything quite like it, and we got on like a house on fire, as they thought I was a real bush character with my billy, fire and unconventional means of staying dry.

The umbrella didn’t just prove useful round the fire. By the time I got into my tent, the rain had just settled in for a long stay, and before long it was the same old story of sleeping in a puddle and getting dripped on all night. On Hinchinbrook I had simply ducked into my sleeping bag and put up with it, but I now had umbrella on the brain, and I realised there was a solution to my problem: put the umbrella up inside the tent. It worked a treat, with the umbrella protecting my head, and my waterproof jacket draped over my legs. It was almost comfortable. Almost.

Day 3: Perched Lakes

Day 3 awoke by turning over, splashing into the puddle pooled on either side of my roll mat, and realising that the rain had stopped and the sun had come out. Like every challenging bush experience, there’s the sunny spell after the storm, and I swear I was high on life as I draped my belongings out on the tea trees strung along the shores of Lake Benaroon. You get wet, but you dry out, and packing everything into plastic bags had saved most of my belongings from a fate worse than drowning; the Swiss couple, however, hadn’t been so lucky, as a dingo had come along at four in the morning and ripped a hole in their tent while looking for food, and I counted myself lucky that he hadn’t decided to rip a hole in mine. Not that it would have made any difference to the general effectiveness of the bloody thing...

The sun, coupled with the clear breeze you get after a stormy night, made the day ripe for walking. The first two days had warmed up my muscles a bit, and on day 3 I took off with a spring in my step, still heading south. As trees crashed to the ground around me, losing branches that the storm had broken off the night before, I walked through more forest to Lake Boomanjin, the world’s largest perched lake.

According to the blurb, a perched lake is formed when a saucer-shaped ‘hard pad’ of bonded mud, sand, rock and peat forms in a depression between sand dunes, and water collects there; at 200 hectares, Boomanjin is the biggest in the world. There’s no doubt that it’s a wonderful sight, which is why this was the site for the filming of the 1970s flick Eliza Fraser. A quick history lesson might be in order; in 1836 the brig Stirling Castle, commanded by Captain James Fraser, went down 300km north of Fraser Island, and the survivors made their way to Fraser Island. Among them was Eliza Fraser, the captain’s wife, who managed to stay alive on the island until help came (unlike her husband, who died). In an entrepreneurial spirit not so common then but ubiquitous now, she wrote a book about her experiences, which became a best seller and ensured that the name Fraser Island stuck. Anyway, the film of the book was made at Lake Boomanjin, so now you know.

The area around the lake was eerie. Odd tannin-stained water trickled into the lake across the sand-flats, and the wind whistled spookily across the plains. As the sun scorched the sand and made the air shimmer gently in the distance, it reminded me of the opening and closing scenes of High Plains Drifter, when Clint Eastwood appears riding on horseback, ready to play his game of revenge on the town that stood idly by while he was murdered in the main street. The only things missing were tumbleweed and an Ennio Morricone soundtrack.

After a brief lunch stop, I changed direction and followed the track out towards the beach, walking through more scribbly gum forests towards the east. Every hill I crested I’d get a tantalising glimpse of the sea in the distance, but water being water, it’s impossible to tell how far away it is unless you have a reference point like surf or a ship... but I was in no hurry. The wind was playing tricks, too; forest walking is anything but quiet, and when the wind gets up in the canopy, it sounds like the sea, a motorway and a freshwater stream all piled into one. But when you finally hear the sea, it’s unmistakable, and bursting out onto Seventy-Five Mile Beach down at Dilli Village (a fancy name for one of the commercial campgrounds) was an experience, believe me.

Seventy-Five Mile Beach

Going from closed canopy to a beach that stretches as far as the eye can see is a shock. The beach is very flat – when the tide goes out, it goes out a long way – and the sea is violent, to say the least (you don’t swim off the east coast of Fraser Island, because if the rip tide doesn’t get you, the sharks will). My walk had changed from beautiful bush to breathtaking beach, and it’s this sort of contrast that makes Fraser Island such a great place for walking.

That night I camped 3km south of the village of Eurong, out on the eastern beach. My feet were in serious pain – 21.5km in a day with a still very heavy pack is a hard slog in anyone’s book – but worst of all I had an area of raw skin on my left heel. Blisters I can handle, but when the sand gets down your socks and rubs the skin raw, you’re in trouble. The problem is that the combination of hiker’s high and a higher exertion rate kills the feeling of pain while you’re exercising; we’ve all experienced the pain of stopping during a long walk and having the feeling seep back into your feet, and when I finally stopped to camp, I felt my feet for the first time that day. God, they hurt.

Camping on the beach, though, was something special. You can camp almost anywhere in the dunes along Seventy-Five Mile Beach, and pitching the tent between the small front dune and the larger secondary one meant I was protected from both sea breezes (easterlies) and land winds (westerlies), but there was enough breeze getting through to prevent dewfall. The sound of the surf and the total lack of people (if you ignore the 4WDs ploughing up and down the beach, which tend to stop at nightfall anyway) made for perfect bush camping.

Day 4: Beer on the Beach

Walking on the beach was easier than I had anticipated. Luckily, when the tide’s out, there’s plenty of firm sand near the surf where you can walk at a regular, easy pace, something that isn’t possible in dune walking (in comparison, dune walking is a complete nightmare). I’d made good time on the beach on the previous day, but as day 4 broke, my feet were still in a bad way.

Despite this, I resolved to head north some 27.5km to Eli Creek, the point I’d decided would be the furthest north I’d reach on the beach. Walking was pure agony, and after 14.5km I was still plodding along, thoroughly enjoying the scenery and the environment, but concerned that I was going to do some permanent damage to my feet by pushing on too far. Every stop made them hurt more, but not stopping did more damage, so what to do? And that’s when I heard a voice from a bunch of flatbed trucks parked on the beach shouting, ‘Hey mate! Fancy a beer?’ God moves in mysterious ways, and that day he came down to earth as a group of fishermen.

Fraser Island is full of fishermen, all going for the big catch by surf casting off the beach. I was pleased to note that their idea of surf casting was much the same as mine had been back in Whatipu, except my introduction had been via vodka and coke, and theirs was via XXXX. That stubby was probably the most enjoyable drink I’ve ever quaffed, and as they forced another can[1] on me, the conversation flowed between me and the ten-or-so full-on Aussie blokes like there was no tomorrow, which was quite a possibility given the way the two beers went straight to my head. Not surprisingly, when they offered me a lift to Eli Creek, I jumped at the bait like a suicidal whiting, and twenty minutes later my walking was over for the day. As I left the fishermen behind, them chugging into another round of stubbies before heading north for ten days’ fishing, they called after me, ‘When you write an article about us, tell ’em we love Poms, but don’t tell ’em about Fraser Island. We want it all to ourselves, eh!’ As another convoy of 4WDs ploughed past us, I couldn’t help feeling that for Fraser Island, it was perhaps already too late.

Eli Creek, the biggest freshwater creek on the east coast of Fraser, is just amazing. Every hour of every day it pours over four million litres of water into the sea, and the water’s been so filtered by sand that it’s about as pure as any mineral water you’ll find in a bottle. Jumping into the creek and coasting down it to the beach is a pretty fine way to round off a day of beach slogging, and camping just down from the creek proved another delightful experience.

Day 5: Waves, Wrecks and Dunes

I designated day 5 as a rest day, both because I had planned for an extra day somewhere along the line, and because my feet were quite, quite buggered. Despite it being a rest day, I wandered north up the beach for some 6.5km, but this time without a pack or shoes; it was then that I realised the best way to walk on the beach is with what the Aussies call ‘beach shoes’: bare feet.

As I walked along the beach, burden-free, I really began to appreciate the beach for what it is. The sights are strange to behold: fishermen down at the low tidemark, dragging a rotting fish head round and round on the sand, enticing worms to the surface which they then grab round the back of the neck and drop in a bucket for bait; couples digging holes in the sand for pipis, little triangular shellfish who dig into the sand, leaving a tell-tale and fatal little mound on the surface that enables fishermen to dig them up for bait; and, of course, there’s the sea itself.

It has character, the sea. Since time immemorial authors have waxed lyrical about it (myself included), but they always talk about the ocean, the realm of Poseidon, the storms and the swells. But what I discovered on the beach on day 5 was the spectator sport that is Wave Watching, and it’s right up there with synchronised swimming for raw emotion and power. After wandering the beach for days, I discovered six types of wave, each with its own crowd-pleasing characteristics and judge-tickling merits. The idea of Wave Watching is to try to guess the type of wave before it breaks, with extra points if they go a long way up the beach.

First up is the Normal Wave, the one that everyone is familiar with. Its approach to the beach is good, its speed constant, and it breaks harmlessly and gracefully on the waterline to a polite ripple of applause from the crowd. Not one of life’s achievers, the Normal Wave is the mainstay of the Wave Watching scene.

Next up is the Leaping Wave. As a Normal Wave breaks on the beach, the Leaping Wave rolls in from behind, leaping over the stranded Normal Wave and making it all the way to the waterline and sometimes beyond, filling up any new 4WD tracks and breaking all previous records. The crowd loves it, the TV companies thrill to the escalating viewing figures, and if you’re not careful you’ll get soaked.

Type three is the Big Wave, one of the all-time favourites, but it’s a rare sight. Breaking with foam flecking and sand booming, the Big Wave doesn’t necessarily make it a long way up the beach – in fact, he quite often performs quite poorly in this respect – but he’s impressive, and the crowd is on its feet.

More common is the Stationary Wave. He’s coming up the beach, preparing to break that waterline, and he meets another wave sliding back down the beach, taking the track out from underneath him. The result? He just sits there, not going forwards, and not going backwards. It’s a disappointment, but it’s all in the timing, and some waves have it, and some don’t. Actually, the Stationary Wave is my favourite, because you can walk along it and get a free foot spa without the groin-soaking experience of a Leaping Wave.

The Backwards Wave is a real let-down; like the Stationary Wave, he meets another wave coming backwards, but this time the sliding wave is a big one, and the new wave ends up being swept out to sea, often breaking backwards. Still, every sport has its losers, otherwise you wouldn’t have winners.

The final category, the Head-on Wave, is one of life’s bittersweet stories. After weeks, months, maybe even years of being built up by offshore winds, this wave is full of confidence and energy as he bounds up to the beach. Will he be a Big Wave? Or maybe he’ll be lucky enough to be a Leaping Wave? But fate deals him a cruel hand; instead of finding a nice, smooth beach to break on, he meets head-on the freshwater Canute that is Eli Creek, and he’s got no chance. Four million litres an hour smash him back, and after all that preparation, all the Head-on Wave can do is foam at the mouth. Eli wins every time, but the crowd loves a trier, and that’s what counts.

The Maheno

About 3.5km north of Eli Creek lies the wreck of the Maheno. The Maheno was a luxury passenger ship that was sold off to the Japanese for scrap in 1935, but as it was being towed north towards its new home, a cyclone blew it onto the beach on Fraser Island where it still rests and rusts today. It’s a weird sight that you can see for a good hour’s walk to the north and south, and at low tide you can get right up to the wreck and, if you ignore the warning signs, walk round inside it.

The fishermen who had plied me with beer had their own unique take on events. They reckoned that the Japs beached the wreck intentionally so that they could then send people over to try to salvage it, who could make maps of the area in preparation for an invasion in the war that they knew was going to happen. This wonderful conspiracy theory was apparently backed up by the fact that ‘the Japs had better maps of the east coast of Fraser Island than the Aussies during the war’, a titbit that would be interesting to confirm or disprove. Still, one of the boys made a good point. ‘It’s not fuckin’ hard to make a fuckin’ map of this fuckin’ beach,’ he said so eloquently. ‘It’s just a big fuckin’ straight line with a couple of fuckin’ curves at each end.’

‘Bloody oath,’ I muttered in agreement, as I raised my wide-mouthed can to the sky. Sometimes you can’t beat the Aussie bloke for perception and articulation, so why try?

The Pinnacles

A couple of kilometres north of the Maheno are the Pinnacles, the northernmost point that I reached on the island. As a destination, if a tramp such as this can be said to have a destination, the Pinnacles were a marvel. Fraser Island is famous not only for its fairly unique environment – rainforest thriving on nothing but sand – but also for its actual sand, which has built up over such a long time that it gives geologists the same feelings that Pirelli calendars give car mechanics. For these reasons Fraser Island is a World Heritage area[2] and the layered coloured sands of the Pinnacles are a vivid reminder of its deserved standing among natural phenomena. Imagine a combination of Purnululu and Nambung, and you’re not far off the rainbow-coloured spires of the Pinnacles; stick in a blue sky peppered with surreal cloud formations, and it’s a postcard photographer’s delight. It certainly made a worthy and fitting destination for my rest day’s walk.

The Pinnacles have a lovely Dreaming story associated with them, too. The Butchulla people, the Aboriginal inhabitants of Fraser Island, who call Fraser Island k’gari (pronounced ‘gurri’), tell of a girl who left her man to go off with the rainbow man. Now the man she jilted was a bit of a hero when it came to using the boomerang and spear, so he decided to hunt down his ex and kill her for shaming him. He eventually found her on k’gari and threw his boomerang at her. The rainbow man, however, threw himself in front of her in an act of selfless love, and the boomerang hit him and shattered him into a million pieces that fell onto the dunes of k’gari. And that’s why the sands of Fraser Island are coloured, whatever the geologists say.

Day 6: Back Down the Beach

After spending the remainder of my rest day watching tourists at Eli Creek and planes landing and taking off on the beach – it’s not lonely on the beach at Fraser, I can tell you – I turned in early in preparation for a long old walk back down the beach. Day 6 started with a 7.30am dip in Eli Creek – a refreshing experience with no tourists around and morning birdsong erupting round me – and before long I’d struck camp and started wandering south, this time wearing only my beach shoes. My feet had benefited hugely from a day without hiking boots, and the walking was tiring but easy enough, and to my surprise I got to Rainbow Gorge, the halfway point, by mid-morning.

Rainbow Gorge, which I’d bypassed by getting a lift with the fishermen, also contained examples of coloured sand, but after the Pinnacles it visibly paled. However the 2.5km walking track round the area passed through the Kirral sandblow, and yet again Fraser Island surprised me with its natural beauty. Not since the moonscape of Tongariro have I seen such desolate landscape, with miles of sand blown into Sahara-esque dunes and mountains. Kirral lived up to its name – the wind howled down the valley, filling my eyes, ears and various other crevices with sand – but it added a real atmosphere to the place as it whistled through the cypress pines. Not since Wave Rock has the wind felt so aboriginal and primeval...

That night, after a fairly uneventful but thoroughly enjoyable wander down the beach for 25km, I camped just south of where the track ducked back into the middle of the island. The stars on the beach that night were quite stunning, with not a cloud in the sky.

Day 7: Inland Lakes and Diana

Day 7, my last full day on the island, arrived after I’d slept the sleep of the dead. Heading inland towards the west, I arrived at Lake Wabby at 8am, a time well before the arrival of any tourists. Lake Wabby is an interesting place; it’s the deepest lake on the island, and it’s slowly being encroached by a massive sandblow that’s moving about three metres a year into the lake. It’s a serene place, with its green water and surrounding forest, and after a refreshing stop, I struck into the forest in the direction of Lake McKenzie, which I reached without further ado after some 14km.

Lake McKenzie is idyllic, with crystal clear blue water, white sandy banks and a lovely camping ground nearby, and after setting up camp and securing my pack out of reach of the dingoes, I made my way down for a swim and some people-watching at the lake’s edge. McKenzie is one of the most popular tourist spots on the island, and watching the day trippers get towels and thongs stolen by the prowling dingoes was fun in itself, especially as the rangers had made every effort to warn people not to leave anything around by putting up big signs plastered on all the pathways. Then there was the Irish couple; the man dived straight into the icy water, but the girl got up to her waist and refused to budge any further, despite about half an hour of good natured cajoling by her boyfriend. I even heard the Aussies sitting next to me taking bets on whether she’d go in (she didn’t) and whether she’d put her head under (she didn’t). Humans are a wonderful species, but I wouldn’t want to own one.

That night I had one other camper in the hiker’s area with me, dreadlocked Vince from Malvern, who turned out to be great company. As he unfurled the story of his travels, I had déjà vu after déjà vu as he described exactly the same experiences as had befallen me. Nice job (computer graphic designer), nice life, got bored, spent a few months saving, sold everything and bought a one-way ticket to Sydney, bought a cheap car and set off round Australia to explore, would have a year in Oz and six months in New Zealand and then who knows... sound familiar? We lit a fire and boiled up the billy – my first attempt saw a charred log collapse, tipping the billy of water all in the fire, creating clouds of ash and a desperately sullen fire, which is not a recommended course of action – and yarned the night away.

And as you do, we got onto the subject of our respective jobs and how we liked or disliked them. I told him how I preferred magazine work to newspaper work because there’s more time to do a good job and, besides, on a no-news day, newspapers will publish any old crap just to fill the columns. ‘Well,’ said Vince, ‘they’ve got plenty to write about now, eh!’

‘Whaddya mean?’ I said.

‘Shit, you won’t have heard,’ he said. ‘Princess Di’s dead.’

‘Yeah, nice one Vince!’ I replied.

‘No, I’m serious,’ he said. ‘Car crash in Paris. Happened a few days ago...’

‘Shit...’

Amazing. It happened on Saturday and I only found out on Wednesday night. After the news saturation it got in Australia, I must have been the only person in the whole country who didn’t know. As they say, ‘unless you’ve been on another planet, you’ll know that...’, but another version is ‘unless you’ve been bush, you’ll know that...’ It quite blew my mind to be reminded so vividly just how cut off I’ve been for the last week.

Day 8: Back to Hervey Bay

The next day, day 8 and the last day of my trip to k’gari, I donated my crappy cooker and crusty billy to Vince, who needed it more than me and promised to give them a good home; and after a dip in Lake McKenzie, I wound my way through the bush to Basin Lake, and from there out to the ferry terminal. There I sweet-talked a Sydney couple into giving me a lift from the ferry to Hervey Bay, which they gladly did, and as I nursed my feet after their 110km of walking, I showered, washed my clothes and sunk back into the luxuries of the western world.

Fraser Island was one of the most beautiful walking experiences I’ve ever had, and I’m glad I didn’t let the 4WD tourist façade put me off. It’s almost always possible to get off the beaten track and see a lot more of a place than the tourists will see, and although it’s fun to take three days zooming around the island in a grunting Land Cruiser, it’s much more satisfying to do it properly and by foot. Shades of Uluru here, I think...

[1] Only in Australia could this happen. Castlemaine, brewers of XXXX, the main beer in Queensland, have just come up with the next marketing coup in beer consumerism. Aware that Australians plough through cans of beer like a steroid-fuelled bull in a Wedgwood store, they’ve come up with the ultimate drink-delivery system, the wide-mouthed can. Research obviously showed that conventional can technology didn’t allow beer to be poured down the throat as quickly as desired, so XXXX cans now come with a double-sized hole in the top, so a can can be downed in half the time it used to take. Sceptical, I tried my first wide-mouthed can on Seventy-Five Mile Beach, and it worked; surely the fact that the beer disappeared quicker than ever before had nothing to do with the fact that I’d just walked 14.5km down a burning beach. It’s another great Aussie invention, and I’m sure it will soon be everywhere.

[2] World Heritage areas, like the Grand Canyon, the Taj Mahal and the Egyptian pyramids, are protected for future generations to enjoy by the United Nations World Heritage Committee; they are deemed to be places that, if altered, would be an irreplaceable loss to the planet. Australia is particularly rich in World Heritage sites; there’s the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu, Uluru, Tasmania’s western wilderness, the wet tropics of northern Queensland, Shark Bay, Fraser Island, Lord Howe Island and the Willandra Lakes, and the list is growing all the time.

Noosa

Written: 8 September 1997

Noosa is simply lovely. It’s an upmarket and fairly yuppie holiday spot, just over 100km north of Brisbane at the northern tip of the Sunshine Coast. I hadn’t been expecting anything much – it has a particularly small National Park covering various picturesque spots, but not a lot else – but the atmosphere was spot on. I don’t know what it was that made Noosa feel so different from the comparatively tacky Hervey Bay or the overly touristy Cairns, but it felt more like a holiday version of Cardwell than a Sunshine Coast package trap. Perhaps it was down to all the enticing restaurants, which I couldn’t afford to visit, but which looked very pleasant. Or perhaps it was the incredible weather; after the unpredictable rains of Fraser Island (which is only just north of Noosa) the cloudless blue skies were paradise.

Or perhaps it was the National Park. Noosa might be small, but it’s perfectly formed, and it has lots of lovely Magnetic Island-esque beaches. Most of them seem to be nude beaches, which is an interesting twist; never have I seen so many beached whales hiding up in the dunes, or nude males jogging along the waterline with a bangers-and-chips bounce that you really wouldn’t want to see in slow motion. ‘Noody Noosa’ should be its nickname; perhaps it already is.

Noosa also has good walking tracks and wondrous headlands, though I noticed my proximity to Brisbane pretty early on. Nobody smiled or said hello on the walking tracks, so I adopted a permanent and slightly unnerving smile, and turned it on the townies. There’s something disconcerting about people who smile all the time, especially when you’re used to city sullenness, but I do love baiting the wilfully miserable. It was similar on Fraser Island; some 4WDs burning down the beach would react to my wave with a whole mob of hands and, on one memorable occasion, a howling of hellos and wha-heys as the whole car seemed to threw themselves out of the windows to say g’day; some would amble slowly past, waving with a peacefulness that meant they knew how I was feeling, because they were feeling the same; and then there were those who still appeared to be commuting, despite the sand, sea, surf and sun, with their dead-ahead stares, polished 4WDs and thin, unsmiling lips. I like to think that even they would eventually be charmed by their island holiday...

But whatever the reason, Noosa recharged my batteries after the exertions of k’gari, ready for the final push back to Brisbane.

Funeral for a Friend

My visit to Noosa also coincided with the media event of the decade; bigger news than the Challenger explosion, more headline-intensive than the Falklands War, more important to the masses than tragedy in Yugoslavia/East Timor/Tibet/Northern Ireland/Taiwan (delete as applicable)... yes, it was the weekend of Princess Di’s funeral. Having been so cut off during the first six or so days of the whole event, I’d been lucky enough to miss a fair amount of the hysterical media saturation that ensued, but Australia’s journos – with their fascinating love-hate obsession with both the royals and republicanism – managed to lose themselves in the kind of feeding frenzy that gives journalism a bad name; indeed, they almost didn’t notice that Mother Theresa had died a few days later, surely an equally important event.

This made me sad. I’ve always worried how the Australian media emulates the British tabloid mentality, but where Britain can claim to have at least four good, quality newspapers – The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and The Times spring to mind – the best Australian broadsheet, The Australian, is relatively trashy. As well as the papers, the magazines like New Idea, Woman’s Day and That’s Life are as you might expect from their names, with an obsession with royalty that borders on the criminally intrusive (so they’re not unlike publications like Take a Break in the UK).

Given this approach to journalism, I couldn’t face watching the funeral and (more to the point) listening to the commentary. So I shut myself off from the television; the funeral was being shown live (6pm to midnight on Saturday night, Australian time) on four out of five channels, and instead I spent the night chatting to Richard, a fascinating Australian who had led a life of travel, getting out of a rat race that had threatened to pull him under, and avoiding the trappings of suburbia, something I found much easier to relate to than the coverage of a sad event by the very people who’d helped to fuel the tragedy in the first place.

The Noosa National Park Information Booth

It was funny, then, that as I headed off to explore the National Park on Sunday morning, the lady in the information booth, from whom I tried to get a map of the park, automatically assumed that because I was English, I would have watched the funeral from start to finish. When I tried to tell her that I’d seen plenty of pomp and circumstance before, and that watching her funeral didn’t interest me half as much as watching the effect of the whole affair on the media, she couldn’t understand what I was talking about. I told her that not everyone in England is obsessed by the royal family, but I think she was a little dismayed that I hadn’t cried softly into my silk hankie as the procession wound its way to Westminster Abbey. (In fact, if you wanted to sign the official books to say ‘goodbye’ to Diana, which were set up in all the major Australian cities, then in Brisbane you had to queue for 11 hours – yes, 11 – which says a lot about how much people here liked Diana.)

All I know is that, post-Diana, when I tell people I’m a journalist, I have to tag on something like ‘but I’m not a nasty one’ if I’m to avoid jokes about journos and ethics. At least in Asia I will become a ‘computer programmer’ on all application forms. They know how to treat unannounced journalists there; they simply refuse them entry.

And, as an afterthought, it seems incredible to me that none of the papers I’ve read have caught onto the incredible irony in Elton John singing a modified version of ‘Candle in the Wind’ at the funeral. OK, so it was Diana’s favourite song, but apart from the fact that it’s a classic, why do you think it appealed to her? The original is a lament over the premature death of Marilyn Munroe, and the way that she was portrayed by an unsympathetic press. Check out this snippet from the original lyrics:

Loneliness is tough

The toughest role you ever played

Hollywood created a superstar

And fame was the price you paid

But even when you died

Well, the press still hounded you

All the papers had to say

Was that Marilyn was found in the nude

Now how much more relevant is that version than the rather soppy one that Elton came up with for the funeral? Perhaps it was a bit too close for comfort...

Familiarity Breeds

Written: 13 September 1997

I’m developing a theory. Perhaps it’s an after-effect of the pre-flight Vic Bitter, but more and more I’m beginning to think I know people. Looking around the transit lounge at Darwin airport – my flight out of Australia isn’t direct from Brisbane to Bali, but has stopped in Darwin for about an hour – I keep thinking, ‘Now where do I know that face from? And she’s hauntingly familiar too...’ I’ve had this experience before, and it’s rather unnerving.

Now I know that coincidences do happen, and that travellers continually bump into each other – witness Ben and Mira in New Zealand turning up in the remotest places, or all the people I kept meeting in the Red Centre – but it’s becoming pretty commonplace that I see a face, and try to remember where I’ve seen it before. Unsurprisingly, I fail to connect nine times out of ten.

Perhaps travel simply increases the number of faces you see – it certainly increases it over a normal, regular, nine-to-five suburban existence – and perhaps the faces I see aren’t actually those I remember, they’re just close. Or perhaps there are only a few hundred of us travelling each well-worn trail, and seeing the same faces is an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability. Whatever the reason, I could have sworn that I’d seen the girl sitting two rows in front of me on the plane somewhere before... but I couldn’t for the life of me work it out, and after a while perhaps I wasn’t so sure after all.

And should I ask them if we’ve met before? Not on your nelly; that’s the corniest chat up line in the book. In fact, that’s probably the answer; disillusioned by my stunning lack of relationships since going travelling, my brain has probably decided to con me into thinking I already know all these single women in a desperate attempt to get me to pull. Well, I’m not going to fall for it. So there.

Thoughts on Leaving

Written: 13 September 1997

I’ll miss Australia. Yet again it’s proved to be a fascinating and friendly place, full of surprises, beauty, beer and, of course, the biggest and best of everything in the world[1].

On my penultimate day in Brisbane I visited the botanic gardens at Mt Coot-tha (not the botanic gardens in the city centre, but a bigger and better version on the outskirts of the city). Wandering through the lush undergrowth, I came across a sign containing a poem by the one and only Bill Neidjie, the famous Aboriginal poet; I read a lot about him when I was hanging around Kakadu and Uluru. The poem sums up the relationship between me and the natural beauty of Australia quite well. It’s called ‘Story About Feeling’, and here it is in all its glory:

Tree same thing. E watching you.

You look tree you say... ‘Oh’

That tree e listen to you, what you!

E got no finger, e can’t speak

But that leaf, e pumping his.

Way e grow in the night while you sleeping...

You dream something, that tree and grass same thing...

E grow with your body, your feeling...

When you feeling tree, e work with you tree.

You cut im little bit, you got water coming out.

That’s his blood, same as your blood. So e alive...

Well that tree same as you. If you feel sore...

‘Oh, I’m my body sore!’

Well that means somebody killing tree

Because your body on that tree or earth.

I love this poem. It probably sounds better if you know what the Aboriginal accent sounds like – it sure isn’t the same as straight Australian – but the imagery is simple and powerful, whatever the accent.

Perhaps I like it because one of the most delightful pleasures in life is sitting under a tree, shaded from the boiling sun by protective branches while you watch the world float past. Or perhaps I like it because it sums up Australia to me; it’s a deeply spiritual place, behind the tourist façade, and that’s probably why I like it so much. Australia is like Bill Neidjie’s tree: you cut him a little bit, and you got water coming out, because beneath the surface, this country’s alive...

Yes, I’ll miss Australia, no doubt about it.

[1] To tell the truth, I rather enjoy the Australian obsession with size: out here it’s all about the biggest, the smallest, the furthest, the best. Aussie law doesn’t prevent advertisers from saying things like ‘the best pizza in Australia’ or ‘the funniest show on earth’ – I swear I’ve never seen so many places claiming to be the ‘best eating place in the world’, and this in a country where a test on doner kebabs showed that one in four are likely to make you ill. Still, the hospitals are probably the best in the world, so I guess it all fits together...

Further Reading

This story is continued in another of my books, Hello Paul, What’s Your Name? Travels in Indonesia (also available for free from www.moxon.net/ebooks). If you enjoyed this book, you might like to know that there’s a whole series of free books like this available from the same source, covering 25 countries and six continents:

- The Back of Beyond: Travels in Australia

- Into the Deep Blue Sea: Travels in Belize

- A Town Full of Nothing to Do: Travels in Burkina Faso

- In Search of the Lost City: Travels in Colombia

- Tainted by Tourism: Travels in Costa Rica

- A Funny Sort of Socialism: Travels in Cuba

- Snow on the Sun Loungers: Travels in Cyprus

- Love at First Sight: Travels in El Salvador

- Paradise Has Teeth: Travels in French Polynesia

- A Million Mosquitoes Can’t Be Wrong: Travels in the Gambia

- The Road to Jesus: Travels in Ghana

- Stuck on the Gringo Trail: Travels in Guatemala

- Many Ways to Change Your Mind: Travels in India

- Hello Paul, What’s Your Name? Travels in Indonesia

- The Muddy Confluence: Travels in Malaysia

- The Lapping of the Dunes: Travels in Mali

- A World-Class Dive: Travels in Mexico

- Snaking Patterns of Sand: Travels in Morocco

- Roof of the World: Travels in Nepal

- God’s Own Country: Travels in New Zealand

- Poverty and Paradise: Travels in Nicaragua

- Alone on Two-Palm Island: Travels in Panama

- The Head and the Heart: Travels in Senegal

- Serious Fun: Travels in Singapore

- Melted Meccano: Travels in Thailand

If you know someone who might like any of my books, please pass them on; I make no money from this, but I do enjoy the thought of people reading my books and recommending them to their friends. If you’ve enjoyed reading my writing (or even if you haven’t) I’d be delighted if you could sign my Guestbook at www.moxon.net/guestbook – after all, it’s the feedback that makes it all worthwhile. Happy travels!

THE END

Table of Contents

Preface

Sydney

Sydney to Melbourne

Melbourne

An English View of Australia

The Pig Hunt

Lawbreaker

Dock of the Bay

Hobart

Cygnet

Bicheno

Launceston

George Town

Launceston to Port Arthur

Session Musicians

Buying a Car

Australian Greetings

Great Ocean Road

The Grampians

Mt Gambier

The Coorong

Adelaide

World’s End

Flinders Ranges

Nullarbor Desert

Esperance

Albany

Pemberton

Cape Leeuwin

Drop Bears

Kalgoorlie

Rottnest Island

Perth

The Baby Ward

Drive-through Heaven

Nambung (Pinnacles Desert)

Top-up, Sir?

Kalbarri

Shark Bay

Carnarvon

Coral Bay

Cape Range

Nanutarra Roadhouse

Karijini (Hammersley Range)

Start of the Breakdown

Millstream-Chichester

Cleaverville Beach

Pilbara Bushwalk

Port Hedland

Broome

The Kimberley

Kununurra

Purnululu (Bungle Bungles)

Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge)

Kakadu

Darwin

Litchfield

Elsey

Travelling Possessions

Daly Waters

Alice Springs

MacDonnell Ranges (Western)

MacDonnell Ranges (Eastern)

Watarrka (King’s Canyon)

Uluru-Kata Tjuta (Ayers Rock)

Coober Pedy

Selling a Car

Melbourne

Interlude

Brisbane

Cairns

Feeling Old in Cairns

Great Barrier Reef

Hinchinbrook Island

Townsville

Magnetic Island

Fraser Island

Noosa

Familiarity Breeds

Thoughts on Leaving

Further Reading

Table of Contents

Preface

Sydney

Sydney to Melbourne

Melbourne

An English View of Australia

The Pig Hunt

Lawbreaker

Dock of the Bay

Hobart

Cygnet

Bicheno

Launceston

George Town

Launceston to Port Arthur

Session Musicians

Buying a Car

Australian Greetings

Great Ocean Road

The Grampians

Mt Gambier

The Coorong

Adelaide

World’s End

Flinders Ranges

Nullarbor Desert

Esperance

Albany

Pemberton

Cape Leeuwin

Drop Bears

Kalgoorlie

Rottnest Island

Perth

The Baby Ward

Drive-through Heaven

Nambung (Pinnacles Desert)

Top-up, Sir?

Kalbarri

Shark Bay

Carnarvon

Coral Bay

Cape Range

Nanutarra Roadhouse

Karijini (Hammersley Range)

Start of the Breakdown

Millstream-Chichester

Cleaverville Beach

Pilbara Bushwalk

Port Hedland

Broome

The Kimberley

Kununurra

Purnululu (Bungle Bungles)

Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge)

Kakadu

Darwin

Litchfield

Elsey

Travelling Possessions

Daly Waters

Alice Springs

MacDonnell Ranges (Western)

MacDonnell Ranges (Eastern)

Watarrka (King’s Canyon)

Uluru-Kata Tjuta (Ayers Rock)

Coober Pedy

Selling a Car

Melbourne

Interlude

Brisbane

Cairns

Feeling Old in Cairns

Great Barrier Reef

Hinchinbrook Island

Townsville

Magnetic Island

Fraser Island

Noosa

Familiarity Breeds

Thoughts on Leaving

Further Reading