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| Australia |
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Alice Springs, 19 May 2004 The flight over to Brisbane was quite painless except I think Sir Les Patterson must've been sat in my seat on the previous flight because my safety card and in flight magazine were soaked in beer and still soggy! We arrived in Brisbane and thought: but where is everybody? Australian streets, even in cities, seem really empty after the madness of Asia hardly suprising considering only 20 million people live in a country the size of Europe! Everything in Oz seems very familiar and it's very strange not being a minority anymore, we're invisible again and don't even merit a second glance but it makes a welcome change to being stared at and observed all the time. The first few days in Brisbane were very relaxed we decompressed and didn't do much except plan our trip, work out the transport options and get used to real world prices! We even had time for some local bush-tucker (shark & chips!!) at the local chippy. The internet cafes here are stupidly expensive and the connection speeds often much worse than in some of the supposedly developing countries we've just come from. The cheapest internet we've found so far is about 2 GBP per hour which is outrageous. Having said this international telephone cards are dirt cheap which is why we haven't written emails for a while. Anyway grumble, whinge, whinge... After Brisbane, we flew to Cairns in the tropical north of Queensland to see the Great Barrier Reef. We took a boat trip about 25 mlies out the reef for some snorkelling. The sea was pretty choppy on the way out. When we arrived there was a strong current and we had to swim hard to get away from the boat and then drift back to the boat over the reef with current. The sea above the first reef we stopped at was so rough that after a few snorkelling sorties I got sick and pewked on my way back to the boat. Sarah was fine and managed to continue. I recovered quickly back on board and even managed 3 delicious Aussie steak sandwiches for lunch to make up for it! The second reef was much bigger and better, much calmer when we got there and loads more fish and coral. The reef itself above water is pretty impressive a continous horizon of breakers surrounded by ocean. Took a trip to see the Daintree Rain Forest and Cape Tribulation to see some nature: forest, crocodiles, kangaroos and tree snakes. It's not unusual for the roads and causeways to get flooded in the wet season (which is just ending ) and some people we met actually got stuck for 3 days in Townsville just down the coast! After Cairns we took the Greyhound bus down the coast to Townsville and Magnetic Island for a couple of days found a great little hostel to take it easy in before before heading east into the Outback. Then the overnight bus again to Mount Isa, a mining town which boasts the biggest lead copper and silver mine in the world, and not much else! We took a tour of the mine and scoured the town for something to do. We found a dry river, a small museum devoted to the Royal Flying Doctors, a couple a street signs with a symbol that said 'no fighting', a second hand bookstore full of Mills & Boone novels and books with titles like: 'Why my child is hyperactive' and 'Understanding Cystitis'. After trapsing around a bit more in the heat we caught up on some sleep before the next overnighter to Tennant Creek. If the bus journey's long enough there's ususally a meal break at a remote road house where we can have some tea, bacon & egg sandwiches and stretch our legs. Travelled overnight mostly so far, the buses are very clean and comfortable, there's usually a film and then it's lights out until the first stop around midnight before the longhaul bit to the destination. We arrived at Tennant Creek at 3 in the morning, a tiny Outback town of 2000 people halfway between Darwin and Alice Springs on the Stuart highway. The hostel we'd booked didn't open until 7:30. I asked the guy behind the counter at the Transit Centre if it was OK to hang around for a while and he said with glee: 'you could do but we close in 10 minutes'!! Most people don't bother stopping they just join the connecting services to Darwin or Alice. Luckily for us there was a roadhouse open at the other end of town where we could kill time until the hostel opened. The service station guy seemed underwhelmed to see us at first but he turned out to be Mr Hospitality and didn't charge us for 4 of the 6 teas we drank to keep warm! Put on some warm clothes and waited and waited. At 5am Karen of 'Karens Kitchen' turned up to cooked us and the rest of town a hearty breakfast! Tennant Creek is brilliant, everything you could want in an Outback town and more: there's nothing really there! There's a main street, a transit centre, a couple of newsagents, supermarket, laundromat, Chompin Charlies burger joint, bank and couple of typical outback pubs like Jacksons Bar and Margot Miles Lounge Bar, there's even a little airport just off main street! Jackons Bar was friendly enough, full of locals who'd just finished work. Most were wearing bush hats, suntans, big boots, long socks, and short trousers! They don't drink pints in Oz they drink sc(h)ooners which somewhere between half and a pint! On the way back to the hostel a 7ft Aboriginal guy (which is suprisingly common) looked down at me smiled and said: 'hey mate you're not from round here are you, where you from?...' The aboriginal thing in Australia is well... too long and complicated to go into now, but it's hard to imagine aboriginal people anywhere looking so ill at ease in their own county, it's bizarre. And all the stuff a prosperous Australian state tries to do to right the wrongs of the past, and all the amenities it provides in towns and cities, just seem so ill-suited to aboriginal needs....erm well what can I say... On a brighter note we've arrived in Alice Springs for a couple of days and have some downtime before we go to Uluru - Ayers Rock and Kings Canyon (500km away), we had to book the accomodation a while ago because the resorts nearby are pricey, small and get booked up quickly. |
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