Vancouver is a fantastic city. The mountains rise up to the north as you approach from the airport or Vancouver Island ferry. The city is big enough to have a buzz but not so big that it’s congested or stifling. Despite still not having a car by this stage we made full use of the bikes lent to us by Sarah’s Uncle Clint and Aunt Margaret, whose lovely house we were also staying in.
One night we had a BBQ on the banks of false creek as we watched the sun sink over the mountains and sea. The next day we cycled around Stanley Park, a huge forest park on the peninsula of downtown before embarking on a ride to Grouse mountain. Grouse mountain is hard to miss. It’s one of the big ones to the north of Vancouver, the one that didn’t have enough snow at the start of the winter Olympics. We were being guided by Charles, a friend of Sarah’s from her stint at a logging camp a few years ago painting huts. I guess we should have realised that riding our bikes up a mountain on the outskirts of Vancouver wasn’t going to be all that easy but we just had to get to the start of the chair lift at the very least. Two hours later we were still grinding our way up the mountain. Sarah finally submitted after a brave effort and on shaky legs started walking up the mountain. We were all bathed in sweat but thankfully not bothered by insects which have been remarkably few in number during our visit, as remarkable as the long stretch of sunny clear days that we’ve enjoyed.
When we finally got to the start of the Grouse mountain park proper we had two options. We could take the chair lift straight up which takes about 6 minutes. Or we could do the Grouse grind, a famed hour-long slog climb up the mountain, mainly on stairs. We took the chair lift purely because we had a dinner to get to with a number of cousins and didn’t want to run late. Mm-hmm.
The top of Grouse mountain is far from wilderness. It has been sculpted to suit what it is thought tourists want and it isn’t too far from the mark. Apart from the monstrous cafe/gift shop and the slightly obscured views they serve up a slice of Canadian wilderness culture in spadefuls. There are two grizzly bears who I guess are teenagers now but were found and adopted as orphaned cubs. They had a bit of a wrestle in the pond for everyone before taking a wander around, showing off their stupendously scary looking claws. We helped ourselves to a delicious Canadian fried doughnut type thing with cinnamon sugar and lemon and then watched the cheesy outdoor lumberjack show with a pair of stereotypically lumberjack-looking lads as you could hope to see. Together with a painfully perky host they hammed their way through a script which did allow them to show off some choppin’ and sawin’ skills. One of the guys did have a pretty impressive scar on his cheek (he was the former tree climbing champion) so they obviously had some real life experience.
After a slightly hair-raising descent down Grouse mountain on a bike with suspect disc brakes we rode back through Stanley Park and I was deposited at the harbour-side pool for a quick swim while Sarah went to send an email about the cousin’s night out. The Canadian summer evenings fooled us again and we didn’t realise that we were pretty much running late for dinner before my swim. So while I was relaxing in the water and sunning myself in the chilly wind, Sarah was racing back to get me and resume our feeble attempts not to run late for everything.
Vancouver, like many North American cities, is laid out on a grid pattern. This makes it very difficult for tourists to become lost, but I’m betting most tourists don’t ride bikes 10km home in the dark on their second night in town after quite a few drinks. That’s our excuse anyway. I was enjoying riding west on West 4th street so much that I completely forgot that we needed to turn left at some point. We ended up on a totally pitch black highway in the forest riding down a hill before Sarah’s fear of bears made us reassess our direction. It took about an hour longer to get home than it should have but we saw a fair bit of the city as a result.
The stark difference between construction in Vancouver and Sydney is wood. Vancouver is very much a town made of wood. New houses are not made of the spindly timber frames covered in brick that you see in Sydney. The houses are assembled with more wood than you can poke a stick at. The bare frames look like huge slabs of wood with windows, just waiting for their copious insulation and a bit of a render. Wood fills the air.
Canada is not renowned as a hot place. Anything above 25 degrees is a getting too warm for the locals comfort. As a scientific experiment I put the power of the Canadian sun to the test by wandering around the pretty Vancouver Island capital of Victoria without a hat or sunscreen on a “hot” and sunny day. This is not typical behaviour from an Australian of fair-skinned parents. I burn quicker than the bush after a drought. In an equivalent Australian setting I would be horribly burned within 30 minutes. It took a good few hours of wandering around here to make my nose look like Rudolph, but even so I must congratulate the Canadian sun on having more oomph than I expected. It’s a lovely warm sun and I have the best chance in years of getting a tan rather than my usual burn/white skin cycle.
When travelling through the US with my friend Tim we drove a car for someone from Washington D.C. to Omaha, Nebraska. There would be very little reason to go to Omaha otherwise but it was an instructive journey in the middle American diet (think lots of meat, cheese and sugar). On this trip we stayed the night in Columbus, Ohio and met a couple with a whisky collection. For those that don’t know I am a big whisky fan. Meeting someone with a whisky collection was like stumbling across El Dorado. To my everlasting regret we couldn’t take up his invitation to sample a few the following night as we discovered the next day that we were not meeting the car delivery expectations of our client, so we had to hoof it out of town. This potentially life-long regret has been salved by my de facto cousin’s partner’s whisky collection. Bless you Brian for righting the wrongs of the past with a very fine assemblage of Scottish and Irish whiskies and pouring with a generous hand. We stayed with Steph and Brian in Victoria.
Vancouver Island is an idyllic place with a small population and great scenery. Covered in verdant forest it’s also home to great fresh produce and boutique beer and is a thoroughly enjoyable destination. Just don’t go for a beach holiday. The area around Victoria looks like it has lots of great sailing through all the small forested islands but it’s the use of that timber on the beach that betrays the nature of lying on a strip of towel by the ocean in this part of the world. Huge driftwood logs wash up on the beach and are used by sun-bakers to build elaborate shelters to act as wind-breaks and at least let the sun have its tanning effect without the wind chill. No-one was swimming in the ocean.
We also stayed with another of Sarah’s cousins in Victoria, Michael, his wife Laura and their kids. This must be a North American thing but we pulled the kids part of the way up a mountain near their house in a little wagon. All the adults took turns being beasts of burden, our only reward being fresh blackberries picked along the path and the amazing view from the top. Michael took us on a tour of the coastline around Victoria, ending in the harbour with the permanent houseboats, most of which seem to be for sale. They are a great location in the centre of town, but I don’t know that I would enjoy waking up to the sound of the sea plane landing in the morning.
Canadians are so nice it’s sickening, like eating too much maple syrup and walnut ice-cream. This makes it an excellent place to travel as everyone and everything is just…nice. There are exceptions to this. When we got a surly bus driver I wanted to tug his walrus moustache in gratitude. The car rental agencies are not nice either. At first we had an issue with our debit credit card not having enough money in it. We battled on without a car and returned triumphantly with money topped up only to discover that it was the type of card that wasn’t acceptable (and by the way we need to see your Australian drivers licence that you left at home because you stupidly thought the whole point of getting an international drivers licence was that you don’t need to carry your regular licence around with you, even though the international drivers licence explicitly states that you need your regular licence). So we arrived at an impasse once again. Thanks to globalization and the highly effecient modern delivery methods this isn’t a total disaster but we weren’t expecting Canada to be the place giving us the most trouble.
Being tough international travellers we battled on and scabbed a lift from our ever generous friend Mike whose in-laws we stayed with on Vancouver Island with his wife and our good friend Sarah.Vancouver Island is not just some little piece of land in the harbour off Vancouver. It’s a huge island in its own right, about 9 hours drive from tip to tip. It’s a 90 minute ferry ride to get to Victoria, the capital, and then roughly an hours drive to Lake Shawnigan where Sarah’s parents kindly put us up. The house at Lake Shawnigan is idyllic. When Mike mentioned baby deer grazing on the lawn in a Facebook post I thought it was hyperbole, but sure enough as we were starting dinner that night on the balcony overlooking the lake, a mother deer with her two fawn came trotting out for an evening graze. Dragonflys zagged through the late evening sunlight.
Before dinner we did something very Canadian, climbed a mountain behind the Lake Shawnigan house. Although not the biggest hill the views were spectacular. We backed this up the next day by climbimg Mount Finlayson, through Lord of the RIngs style forest before clambering over the rocky ground near the top. The air is beautiful here.
Once you’ve climbed the mountain, it’s time for the lake. I was braced for truly numbing glacial water based on stories of Harrison Lake, where the Lows have holiday cabins, but as I gingerly made my way into Lake Shawnigan under beautiful blue skies my manhood wasn’t as severely tested as I had expected. On the contrary, it was quite pleasant, with the hum of speedboats in the distance the only sound besides splashing. The Canadians at the beach that day didn’t build castles but rivers in the sand running down the the lake’s edge which they filled with water. Having eaten fresh sushi on the lake beach it was time to go to the local organic orchard for a cider sampling before taking our booty back to the hot tub. Pretty neat, uh-huh.
There are three things I like about writing during my travels:
It focuses your mind on the interesting little things that happen throughout the day as potential grist to be mentally ground up and written about.
You get a record of everything you’ve done and all those small moments you would otherwise forget. Writing captures different moments to photos, those travel moments you can’t record any other way.
If you have a shitty travel experience it ends up becoming a funny story (funny for other people at least).
It’s a pain every long distance travel and I don’t want to belittle the the victims of torture but modern air travel has all the hallmarks of todays favoured inhumane treatment. As I sat in the plane with eyemask on and earplugs in, my mind went to descriptions of rendition sufferers locked up in a plane and disoriented. Arriving at LA airport on very little sleep gives a glimpse of just how inhumane it can make you feel.
Of course when we got to Vancouver and had a 13-hour sleep we were disturbed by the hotel concierge asking whether we wanted a late checkout. “No, no, we replied. A midday checkout is still fine”. “Well it’s currently 12.30.” “Oh, I guess we’ll have a late checkout”. In record time we packed, dressed and got the free shuttle to the airport to pick up a rental car. The only hitch was not having enough credit or the right sort of card to give them a $730 deposit, despite pre-paying. So we hoofed it in a train, then a taxi, to catch the ferry to Vancouver Island.
Getting there took all the pain away (thank for the lift Mike!). Our friend Sarah’s parent’s house is in the most picturesque setting imaginable. This is the view from the deck, which is close enough to the view from the hot tub which is on the deck. Add some wine or local organic cider, and the trevails of travel start to look like they have a very big upside.
It doesn’t take long for the scars of international plane travel to be ripped asunder once again. The repressed memories resurface the moment you glimpse the economy seats you will be futilely attempting to sleep in overnight (or overday if you’re going back in time over the date line).
The Air Pacific flight was as good as any other, half the price, plus Qantas frequent flyer points and use of the Qantas lounge. There is a more relaxing mood on the plane as well, apart from when the stewardess snapped at a woman looking at photos on her camera during the safety demonstration.
Sarah had a cute little tyke old enough to know better kicking the back of her chair until she politely requested for him to desist, and of course the guy in front of me put his seat back as far as possible at the earliest opportunity, but up to LA airport everything was as smooth as could be.
Now I don’t know who runs LA airport but there are a few issues. It took us two hours to clear immigration and collect our bags on a transit flight. Yes, you have to clear immigration, pick up your bags, and carry them over to another guy where they are checked in again. It’s insanity, especially when it takes 90 minutes standing in line to get through. People in our line were 30 minutes away from missing connecting flights while one immigration official took literally 20 minutes to assess a family of four. Everyone gets their fingerprints scanned and a photo taken, but I assume this family’s home country didn’t have a visa waiver agreement with the US. The official used about ten different stamps on their passports as though he was beating their documents into submission. There were cheers when the family was let through. Other people were in tears at the thought of missing their flight due to communist-style bueracracy gone mad.
While waiting in line you are played tourist propaganda about how great America is. It seems to work on the yanks as when we landed and it was announced we were back in the US there were cheers and fist pumps all round.
In LA airport it really does feel like the bar staff are waiting for their big acting break. Flying in to the smog-hole you see the stereotypical twisted spaghetti of freeways and beautiful mountains in the distance frosted with smog clouds.
The three hour layover in Nadi, Fiji was much more pleasant. Getting off the plane you are serenaded by a ukulele band. I think this would do wonders for the riots in London. It would be much more difficult to be involved in a riot to the sound of a ukelele drifting across the charred landscape. By the time we boarded the next flight three hours later I had started to change my mind and was contemplating visions of a riotous mob smashing tiny burning guitars.
LA does win the cool factor though with an electronics vending machine where you can pick up a camera, iPhone, sd cards – all your little geeky heart could desire.
Now we’re in an airport lounge with the backdrop of a TV political program. If the host was an Autralian we would say that he was shouting but I think it’s just his normal voice. It can’t have been fox because he made some very sensible points about the futility of the war in Afghanistan.
The contrast with Vancouver couldn’t be greater. It took us 25 minutes to get from the plane to the free shuttle to the hotel. It was around 30 seconds to get through immigration, must of that being taken up with chatting to the immigration official about Sarah’s family.
When boarding the Spirit of Tasmania, the ferry taking myself and my car across Bass Strait, there is a security check, which would be strange in its absence these days. They confiscated my gas cylinder so that they could store them with everyone else’s gas cylinder, making a much more exciting explosion should they go up. The security guard then asked me whether I had and firearms. If he had said ‘please’ I was willing to show him my secret stash of AK47s hidden behind the door panels, but he accepted my slightly startled ‘No’ as an answer, which I thought displayed admirable trust in a paranoid age. It is an experience to drive a car into the mouth of an enormous ship. The car is stored in the bowels before exiting. I perched myself on the aft deck. There was a soon a deep rumbling coming from the belly. For once the source was not my own. This shaking continued for a few minutes, and when next I raised my head I noticed that we were moving, in reverse initially, rather like reversing out of a car park, before the ship smelled the ocean and trundled towards it like a reliable old horse. As I looked towards the city of Melbourne a trail of translucent brown smoke drifted from the engine and the green-white wash from the propellers headed straight back to Station Pier.
Sydney harbour shits all over Port Phillip bay. Perhaps a harbour is naturally more spectacular than a bay, but leaving Melbourne by water is as inspiring as floating on a large duck pond in a dinghy. It is a large bay, so it feels as if you have reached open water immediately, but the flat insipid land in the distance on either side detracts from the thrill until the heads have been passed, and at last the rolling plunge of the broken surface of the ocean turns landlubbers into salty sea captains. I will freely admit to being a landlubber (a lubber is a clumsy person). A feeling of solidity under my feet is such a simple certainty that I miss it terribly when it’s not there. Possibly contributing to this distaste for instability is the embarrassing fact that I can get dizzy on hammocks and any spinning form of carnival ride. For the duration of my trip I never felt sick, thanks in no small part to Bass Strait being as calm as it ever gets, but there was a lingering unease that threatened to turn into an ill feeling and prevented me from relaxing and enjoying my surroundings. Perhaps it is difficult to enjoy constantly shaking scenery. Whatever the reason, while I was impressed by the ship and wished it no harm, I was not sorry to drive off it and into the streets of Devonport. I parked overlooking the muddy banks of the river and contemplated why it takes such a long time for the sun to go down in summer. The Galah coloured sunset gently led me into the land of sleep.
The next day I drove to Cradle Mountain with the intention of climbing it. The countryside is pleasant farmland until giant rock-covered craggy mountains announce themselves boldly. As I walked through the Cradle foothills I couldn’t help comparing this scenery to what I’ve seen in Wales, Scotland, The Rockies, The Snowies. My bushwalking book even made comparisons with Norway which I have to take for granted. If one place can claim to be a mixture of so many it is unique in my eyes. The Cradle Mountain region is lovely. Not a simpering cutesy lovely, but a bright, bold and fresh lovely. I charged up the hills at brisk walking speed leaving old people and backpackers in my wake. I smiled at the glacial lakes and steep peaks. And then I stood before Cradle Mountain. It looks like it should be Australia’s highest mountain instead of the underwhelming Kosciusko. It has the air of an evil lord’s castle, all jagged black rock rising from the grassy plateau. A cloud hung over the peak, obscuring it from view, but I assumed that the top did exist, so I clambered upwards. When I’m at the beach I enjoy clambering over the rocks that sometimes jut out at the far ends. As a kid I took pride in leaping from one to the other. Climbing Cradle mountain is very much like that experience, but instead of going sideways you go up, and it lasts a lot longer than is fun. Fun is left at the base. Halfway up is a cold wind blowing clouds past your head and cold hands scrabbling at rocks. As with most mountains I have climbed, there are several moments when you think that you have reached the top, only to find the peak stretching upwards just a little bit further. At the top I had a view of cloud, which is a much more pleasing thing to look at from the outside, and the warm afterglow of physical exertion. Then I felt a shimmer of warmth and brightness on my face. I looked up and could definitely sense that a sun did exist. By some miracle the clouds cleared and the just reward for my toil, a superb panorama, was laid out before me. It was a strange trick to play on my senses. Just as I had become used to my confined white world the dizzying reality was presented to me. That night I camped off the highway leading west from Cradle Mountain. Just before I went to sleep I peeped out the car window and saw a wombat busily trundling off on his nights activities.
The next day I drove on winding roads through lovely countryside. All the countryside in Tasmania is lovely, so let’s just assume that from now on. The west coast of Tasmania has a reputation for being windy. The Roaring Forties seem not only to have pushed the sand back into 30 foot high dunes, and bent the foliage in an easterly direction, but to have driven most of the people east as well. Up until this point all of Tasmania struck me as being blowy, but to give credit to the west coast it is a particularly windy place, and that would be a feather in their cap if it didn’t keep getting blown away. As well as the countryside being lovely, you should also assume a great windiness during my travels through Tasmania. The town of Strahan is described in my generous guidebook as a quaint fishing village and popular holiday spot. In my mind this conjured up a Cornish village with brightly coloured houses and sleepy dogs with matching sleepy old man. The reality was less so, with the exception of an old man sitting on the corner of main street with a hankerchief tied over his mouth. This was either a tribute to Michael Jackson or to prevent the dust, being blown in waves across the street, from entering his mouth. Strahan has made an unfortunate decision, in my eyes, of turning the town tourist friendly. That is, they have big signs above their shops, large maps of their town on billboards, and lots of informative signs. This may make some people feel more comfortable but it has the opposite effect on me.
Queenstown, on the other hand, while only a dawdle down the road, has an air of authenticity. There is the odd sign pointing out some impressive sight, usually to do with mining, but the town is presented with a ramshackle honesty that no marketing expert could deliver. Queenstown was the first place where I felt I was mingling with real Tasmanians, not eco-tourists. There are numerous jokes about Tasmanians being the hillbillies of Australia – inbred, backward, unintelligent, ugly. I would like to dispel these rumours but it seems there is a kernel of truth to these jokes. The typical Tasmanian male has a small head, high forehead and a recessed jaw, but they are a friendly bunch, and personality goes a long way. The natural beauty of their surroundings does not seem to have rubbed off on them. Perhaps this is because they seem intent on conquering nature rather than living with it. In Queenstown they have done their best to tear down a mountain with ugly open cut mining. Also, all through the state there is a bizarre pride taken in power stations. Rather than hiding them away they display them proudly on main roads. There is even a picnic spot situated in the shadows of enormous electrical power generators enabling you to nibble food while contemplating the glories of man. On my way to view another man made marvel, the Gordon dam, I drove through the Franklin-Gordon wilderness region (lovely) and stopped at Lake St. Clair, which it at the southern end of the Cradle Mountain National Park. My intention the whole way there was to bathe in the lake and clean my stinking body. The lake had other ideas. Apart from the icy waters, which you would expect in a deep glacial lake, and the rocky shoreline, the gathering dark clouds overhead were matched by 2-foot waves. Suddenly I didn’t smell too bad and a simple ablution of my face did a power of good.
I am not a dam groupie. My visit to the Gordon dam was not so much about the dam itself, but where it is located. The southwest quadrant of Tasmania is not readily accessible. There are three towns in the region and two of them are on the road to the dam. The road to the dam is the only road in this quarter of the state. This kind of remoteness appeals to me, so off to the dam went I, and I was not disappointed. Forget lovely, the mountains in this part of the world are magnificent. They are my cathedrals. The area around the dams, however, has an eerie, sad feeling. The original lake, before the dams were built, was small and only became an attraction when seaplanes began making journeys there. The lakes in the region are now ten times larger, although an informative notice pointed at that the original lake is still under there somewhere, sort of like a skinny person trappe’ in a fat person’s body. You can see grey, dead trees where the dam water level has fallen. A voyage in a submarine would reveal a ghost forest beneath the waters. I think a lot of Tasmanians are pleased about having large lakes to muck about on in boats on and go fishing in.
The other main attraction on that road is the Creepy Crawly nature walk. Here Forestry Tasmania have placed display signs along a 15-minute ramble informing anyone interested about all the carnivorous insects in the area. It takes the form of a murder investigation in which you must deduce what type of insect has murdered the beautiful butterfly. Is it the nasty millipede or the horrible false scorpion? No, i’ turns out that it’s you with your enormous clodhoppers that went and crushed the butterfly, so get out of the forest and let us get on with cutting down these nasty insect harbouring trees. Thank you, Forestry Tasmania, for scarring impressionable children.
I left the southwest with an hirsute face and a smelly body, as is appropriate in a wilderness area. My next port of call was a town on the Derwent river called New Norfolk. The story goes that in the early 19th century the British Government decided that Norfolk Island, located in the middle of nowhere off the Australian east coast, was not a winning proposition. It was costing ‘hem money and didn’t look like becoming sustainable. So they sa’d ‘Oi you lot. We’re moving you to Tassie.’ The settlers said ‘Not bloody likely,’ to which the Government didn’t reply, they just moved them anyway. Not having been t’ Norfolk Island it’s hard for me to make a comparison with the original, but I suspect that New Norfolk is not an exact replica. Not being an island is one small difference for a start. I had a bath in the Derwent river followed by a shave and luxuriated in the relaxed weariness that only the embrace of clean water can bring.
I arrived in Hobart early in the day and after a walk around Battery Point (nice old houses), a drive up Mt Wellington, and completing one or two tasks that a city is useful for, I left. I have nothing against Hobart. It seems fine, but offers nothing different to Sydney apart from that small city ‘tmosphere, which I’m familiar with from my time in Canberra. So off to Richmond, home to the real reason I came to ‘asmania, Australia’s oldest bridge. England boasts older supermarkets than this bridge, but it is a fine bridge spanning a small river, more of a creek really, but the bridge is well made, in good shape considering its build date of 1828, and still being used. I spent the night in the parking lot next to the bridge overlooking a lawn dominated by ducks. I regretted my choice later that night when the Young Motorcar Enthusiast Society of Richmond held their regular Friday night meeting not far from my head. There was a lot of engine rumbling before a silence broken only by the cooing of adolescent voices. They departed displaying poor rear wheel control and thankfully left me in peace.
The next day, still excited by my viewing of Australia’s oldest bridge, I headed towards the Tasman Peninsular, home to an old penal settlement and made famous by crime once again in 1996 by Martin Bryant who shot 35 people in a murderous rampage. The Tasman Peninsular is also famous for being where I set my only short story to be published so far, in the town’of Nubeena. I can’t remember now how my imagination portrayed the place, so firmly has reality intruded, but the story matches the place well enough. I drove around the coastline heading in a circle back to where I had come, Port Arthur lying between myself and escape. Port Arthur was a convict settlement where they sent those prisoners who had broken the law in Australia, the naughtiest of the naughty. They chose it because it is virtually an island. There is a thin strip of land called Eaglehawk Neck which connects the mainland to the peninsular, and it was thought that this would make the penal settlement easier to guard, although a few people did escape. The area around Port Arthur must be one of the most pleasant settings for a prison in the world. I camped near ‘he site of the Boy’s Reformatory where they sent 9-15 year olds, no doubt a nasty shock compared to where they had come from. The beaches are a pure white, which gives the water a tropical blue hue, and it sparkles with clarity. I sat next to the shore at low tide as the night grew. It was quiet apart from the rabbits running away from me, their white tails bobbing against the yellow grass. The light reflecting off the water shimmered like a time lapse film. When the sun slipped behind clouds on the horizon the soupy sea started to move. Seaweed slapped against rocks, the sea hissed against the sand and gurgled through rock pools. The only screams in this place now come from the birds, and people who see the asking price for entry into the Port Arthur historic site. You can see the prison across the water from the r’formatory. I didn’t visit the Port Arthur prison in the end. I will save my money for five movies at the Electric Shadows cheap night. Luckily I have an imagination which was fed by my day spent in the region, a feeling which a building would not enhance. I can only wonder at the thoughts of those people stuck at what then was the end of the world, with no hope of home or salvation, and probably no idea what was contained in the land we now call Australia.
I still had the reputedly mild, calm and white beach goodness of the east coast to explore. I feel the need to pause here briefly to discuss road kill – a lovely descriptive word with caveman simplicity. I have seen more road kill on Tasmanian roads than in any other place in my life. This strikes me as being a good thing, for unless Tasmanian animals are particularly suicidal, or drivers on Tasmanian roads particularly’cruel (which I don’t rule out), an abundance of road kill suggests an abundance of wildlife. I have also seen three live echidnas, which for me beat the’koala as Australia’s cutest animal. Koalas seem g’umpy to me. I don’t blame them with that diet. I do defy you not to find a waddling echidna which freezes in mid-stride before curling into a ball not poetry in motion. Three Thumbs look out, overlooking Maria Island on the east coast, was hopping with wallabies which crashed off into the bush as I walked by.
The east coast of Tasmania is dazzling in its beauty. They Freycinet Peninsular juts out about halfway up the coast and could be mistaken for a tropical island. The water is calm, only gently lapping at the beach, the sand is bright white and the water is an alluring blue. You are only reminded of Tasmania when you swim in the water, which is definitely not a tropical temperature. It is not as cold as the seas around England but that is hardly a recommendation. The Freycinet Peninsular is home to Wineglass Bay, one of the most beautiful beach’s in the world. I’m not sure who judges such things – an elite panel of beach bums? The track to Wineglass Bay is busier than Bondi. Its beauty is not matched by its seclusion.
There is a natural phenomenon where one side of a mountain range is wet and the other side is dry. For example, the Great Dividing Range and the Pyrenees. The same phenomenon occurs in Tassie, where the west coast is very wet and the mountains in the middle of the island suck most of the moisture out of the clouds before they reach the east. This makes for a nicer beach holiday but makes the region susceptible to the type of drought that we have had in Australia recently. The parched yellow grass and hot dry wind are all to familiar to me. Just inland are more mountains and forests with huge tree ferns. This quickly turns into farmland which stretches along the north of the state. I spent the night on a hill in Moorina, nearly a ghost town, in front of the cemetery. This contained an oven used by Chinese immigrants to burn paper used in their funeral service. This paper is usually burned over the coffin but the Government of the day banned this or fear of starting bush fires. Discrimination is not new.
Launceston seems like a tough little city, working class and proud, capital of the farm and forestry region. Cataract Gorge is just west of the city, within walking distance of the town. The name of the place gives adequate description. There are some cataracts running through a fair-sized gorge, across which runs a chairlift and an old suspension bridge. There is a fresh water basin and a swimming pool on one side, and a native garden inhabited by peacocks on the other. The feathers from these birds are snatched up by little girls almost before they have hit the ground.
My search for a place to spend the night took me to Notley Fern Gorge, reputed to be the hideout of a bushranger in the 19th century. He used a large hollowed out tree to shelter with three of his closest friends. On my first attempt to view the tree I was assailed by two Jack Russell terriers that appeared suddenly on the path in front of me and, in a very coordinated way, marched up the path with teeth bared. I stood my ground for a moment but I could not see a way past without doing them some harm. As much as dogs, especially little yappy ones, are not my favouri’e animal, I couldn’t begrudge them following their natural instincts. But when I turned to go the little bastards rushed towards the muscular yet delicate flesh of my calves with mouths open, sharp little fangs intent on causing pain. I aimed a kick at them, just a warning shot, but my thong flew off into a bush. When I went to retrieve it one of the little bastards rushed past me so that they could attack me from the front and behind. I swished my thong back and forth whilst I beat a retreat and the little bastards waddled back to where they had come from, happy with a job well done. It is a little known fact that Tasmanian bushrangers used packs of Jack Russell terriers, numbering anywhere from two to a dozen, as an initial attack force. They would leap from the undergrowth ‘o worry the horses’ legs, thus stopping the carriage and allowing the robbery to commence. On reflection, I think that these two dogs are the most dangerous animals that I have ever encountered in the Australian bush. Despite all the hoopla about spiders and snakes, in reality these little creatures are rarely spotted, let alone the cause of any fatalities. Little dogs could do some nasty damage to an ankle.
I’ve seen a large part of Tasmania, a state which does wilderness exceedingly well. I became smelly and hairy and went without conversation for days on end. I climbed mountains as my hands became numb, and swam at lovely beaches which almost numbed my entire body. I dined on pasta and vegemite sandwiches. I drank water. I feel cleansed and ready to corrupt myself again with city life.
I came down from the mountains smelling like a rutting goat, not having had a shower in over a week whilst engaging in sweat inducing exercise. One of the first towns that you come across when driving south is Port Augusta. When Matthew Flinders first came exploring this part of the world he decided to take a trip in a rowboat and see how far north he could get. He soon got stuck in the mud of Port Augusta, and they have a small monument where he was forced to spend the night. I don’t think that very many interesting towns have a similar creation story, and Port Augusta is no exception. The factories chuff away on the outskirts and trucks barge through the centre 24 hours a day. I have proof of this because I got a cheap hotel room for the night, mainly to clean my stinking skin, and it was the least restful night of my trip. It reminded me a little bit of the hostel in Rome, which was located next to a non-stop road. Going to sleep to traffic noise, and then being woken by it in the morning, is not very restful, and I continued my journey wearier but cleaner. The main reason that I stayed in Port Augusta was sentimental. It is the place of my Grandfather’s birth and I wanted to have something to talk to him about when I saw him.
Adelaide has never been on the list of places that I want to visit, and it’s not a particularly hard list to get on, but I thought that since I was in the area I might as well have a look. It reminded me of Melbourne, but smaller. It has a river, a hospital and a cricket oval, more than that I cannot say. The afternoon that I spent there didn’t distinguish itself in any way. I’m sure that if you know people there, or if you spent a couple of weeks there, Adelaide’s flavour would show itself, but I remain hazy about the character of the city and couldn’t even tell you whether I liked it or not.
I have firmer opinions about the Barossa valley, one of Australia’s main wine producing regions, not because I sampled any wine while I was there, for some reason my tastebuds rebelled at the very thought, but because any place that has wine producing vines as far as the eye can see holds a special place in my affections. I spent the night parked at the base of a small hill, the top of which supports the Seppeltsfield family mausoleum, a Roman looking structure which is unfortunately not open to the public, but which shows commendable dedication to be born and dying on the land. The next day I drove north a little way to the Clare valley, another notable wine producing region, where I once again did not imbibe the bacchic bounty, but it was a lovely drive, with the rolling green hills and the happy cows on them reminding me off England.
Despite the good scenery I felt a sudden desire to leave South Australia. These moods come on me now and then, quite often resulting in international travel, but unfortunately for my car and thankfully for my bank balance, I could simply drive for a while to get some different scenery. I’m probably going to sound like Mr Fussy Pants, but I didn’t see a lot in the south east coast of South Australia to get excited about. I can tell you where to get some good fish and chips in Kingston, but that experience was soiled by the huge amount of seaweed extending 50 metres from the shore. It looked like the sea had become sick and vomited everywhere. Mount Gambier is the largest city in the region, and is located inland. It would be extremely dull if not for the Blue lake, which is housed in the crater of an extinct volcano, and really is an attractive blue.
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but I like lighthouses. In fact, if I had been around before they became automated I would have thrown my hat in the ring for a light keeper position, despite the privation. I love the idea of sitting underneath a giant light that is keeping ships safe from peril while I peruse some absorbing reading material with a purring cat in my lap and some shag slow burning in my pipe. No distractions apart from the occasional foggy morning, or a busy time rescuing survivors, but that would just break up the routine. It’s with no small measure of curiosity that I look at lighthouses and the surrounding countryside and imagine that I’m the only person for miles around.
This is why I especially liked the area around Cape Nelson lighthouse, near Portland. I went for a walk through the dense scrub that grows around the cliff, keeping you hemmed in and enclosed until you burst into the open with the sky stretching overhead and the sea churning far below beneath sheer, smooth cliffs. You can walk along a path next to the cliff and imagine that you’re the first person ever to be here. The sea spray floated up from the sea and the wind blew it over the land, making it look like a fine fog.
I spent the night in a sheltered spot, protected from the winds but not from the roaming lighthouse light, which lit the sky like flashes of lightning at annoying intervals. I would have trouble getting to sleep in an isolation tank, so this spot was no good at all. I crawled out of my sleeping bag and drove, with bare feet and wearing nothing more than a pair of underpants and a grumpy expression, far enough away from the lighthouse for it not to be a distraction. I crawled back into my sleeping bag and lay there while the gale force winds rocked my car from side to side and the squalls hurled rain against the windows. I quite enjoyed it at first. Let the winds do their worst, I thought smugly to myself from the comfortable warmth of my sleeping bag, but I discovered that it’s not easy to get to sleep when it feels like you will soon be blown off a cliff. So I crawled out of my sleeping bag and with bare feet, and wearing nothing but a pair of underpants and a sleepy expression, I drove back along the narrow coastal road as the vegetation clung grimly to the soil, until I arrived back at my original parking spot, by which stage the flashing didn’t seem so bad and my eyes welded themselves shut against the tempestuous night.
The tourist coast starts once you get past Warnambool and start the Great Ocean Road drive. I had always wanted to tackle this road on a motorcycle, or failing that a fast car, failing that a decent car, failing that the car that I have. The Great Ocean Road rambles around the Victorian coastline and you soon come to one of the many cliffside attractions. The rock along this part is easily eroded by the constant barrage of the Southern Ocean, resulting in strange rock formations that have been given cute names such as London Bridge, The Arch, The Grotto, and most famously, the 12 Apostles. I quite liked them all but I was turned off the experience by the overwhelmingly touristy feeling I got from getting out of my car with my camera, thinking ‘Ooh, there’s an interesting rock’, taking a picture, then getting back in my car, driving two minutes down the road, and repeating the whole process. Maybe it was the helicopter taking people on scenic rides that pissed me off, or maybe I wanted to walk along the crumbling cliffs with the danger of falling into the frothing surf below, rather than walking along carefully manicured paths while being warned about the danger.
It wasn’t only the touristy nature of it all that put me off. I’ve been to plenty of places that have been crawling with tourists yet still maintained an impressive aura. I think that the 12 apostles simply failed to live up to the hype. A place like the Grand Canyon can still knock your socks off, despite you knowing exactly what’s coming. The 12 Apostles got no such reaction from me, they just looked like pillars of rock standing in the water, which is exactly what they are, so I wasn’t surprised or amazed, which is the reaction I was looking for. Besides all that, I only counted ten of them. Perhaps a couple of them sank into the sea under the weight of their own mediocrity. The way the whole experience had been carefully sanitised and controlled I was surprised that they hadn’t taken the next logical step and turned the apostles into a multimedia extravaganza, perhaps with rejected pop idols doing dance routines on them.
Thankfully, further down the road, around a couple of bends, the landscape changes dramatically. From barren hilly cliffs you enter lush forest with tree ferns and a steep winding road. It was on this road that I had a driving experience similar to a religious ecstatic moment. If you floated up to heaven and said ‘Hey God, let’s go for a drive’, he would put on a stretch of road like this for you, although I think God would have a better car than me. Shafts of sunlight pierced the foliage to my left, rain lightly fell towards me, my feet were being warmed, and my face cooled by the air rushing in the window. The moment only lasted a few minutes but it was the most fun I’ve had in a car.
After my underwhelming experience with the 12 apostles and other associated rock formations I was feeling a bit put off tourist attractions. I decided to go along to the treetop walk near Laver’s Hill anyway. I wouldn’t describe myself as a greenie or a hippy, mainly because I don’t like associating with any one ideology, but I have hugged trees before and I am an unashamed nature lover. The walk is through a temperate rainforest, and luckily it was raining on the day I visited, with a light mist moving through the trees like a ghost. The only sound was the quiet dripping, and all the kids running around. When I say a treetop walk you might be envisioning rope ladders and creaking wooden bridges, but this is eco-tourism at its finest with a gleaming metal walkway rising above the valley. It’s disconcerting to make a closer examination and note that the pylons are somehow anchored in mud, with support from some cables that don’t entirely manage to stop the structure shaking. There is a lookout, to get to the top of which you climb a spiral staircase. Being at the top must be what it feels like to be atop the mast of a ship on a totally calm day, for it only sways a little, much like the surrounding trees which compete with each other to reach the sunlight, smooth straight trunks heading for the sky.
I don’t know for sure that hippies come here to die, but it seems likely. There is greenery as far as the eye can see – forests, ferns, hills, fields, waterfalls, the ocean, and more rainbows per square metre than anywhere on earth.
The local aborigines have a tale for how the Flinders Ranges came to be. A dreamtime serpent slithered its way across the landscape, causing the massive ridges to jut out. I think a more plausible explanation is that the giant shark that lives in the centre of the earth mistook Australia for a seal and had a feeding frenzy on South Australia, the Flinders Ranges mountains being the teeth marks that jut out from the ground in a crescent shape. If you want to be scientific, the Flinders Ranges were caused when part of the earth sank, many years ago, pushing up mountains on each side, as if a giant had come along and smashed its fist into the earth. The soft soil eroded, leaving the red rock behind, and the clearly visible layers of rock, like the rings of a tree, going back in time.
The Flinders Ranges must be a geologists wet dream. They are 600 million to a billion years old, some of the earliest signs of life have been discovered here, and in addition, a giant meteorite struck the earth nearby, causing a shower of interesting rocks to fall in the area. For such an old set of mountains they are in good shape. Unlike the Himalayas, which are getting bigger year by year, the Fliders have been eroding for millenia. Australia was shoved down to the bottom of the planet relatively early, and it has become unique because of this, with species seen nowhere else in the world.
On my first excursion into the mountains I went to Arkaroo rock, which features some 6000 year old aboriginal rock paintings. I don’t want to seem culturally insensitive, nor can I claim to have been particularly impressed from an art critic perspective. It didn’t help that the rock was totally enclosed by a thick wire fence, more to keep people out than the paintings in. The Flinders Ranges national park service must have noted how the Romans went around carving their names into Egyptian temples, and didn’t want a similar spate of “Baz was ere ’99” all over Arkaroo rock. I understand that the Aborigines were more impressionists than relaists. After all, they were living in a gorgeous canvas, so what need was there to replicate it? My guess is that Arkaroo rock was used in initiation ceremonies, the daubs in the walls being adoloscent scribblings, while the good stuff was done on less permanent material, such as bark. And to be fair, the Mona Lisa would look a bit faded if you hung it outside for 600o years as well.
The next day I drove for miles on bad dirt roads, which my car bravely attempted. My car is a 4WD, but only in the sense that all four wheels move at the same time. It has a normal car shell, normal car tyres and normal car suspension. After crawling along corrugated roads and being bounced up and down for a couple of hours, I found my destination cut off by the only creek containing any water that I had seen for days. Being older than I once was, and as a result slightly more sensible, I didn’t charge through the water like Moses. I considered the possibility of the exhaust pipe becoming submerged, the engine stalling, and my becoming stuck, not in the middle of nowhere, but a long way from anywhere. Instead, I looked at the map and saw that I was only 6km from the ruined sheep farm that I was heading to, so I strapped on my pack and started walking.
I’m sure some of you are wondering why I was willing to walk so far to see a ruin. I’m not overly interested in ruins. I don’t mind having a poke around if I come across one, but I don’t generally go out of my way to visit them, let alone undertake a long walk for the pleasure of peering into long abandoned and weather worn rooms. I didn’t mind this walk because I was in a valley with beautiful mountains on each side, red, rocky and jagged, and the view promised to get better the further I went. I walked up a hill peppered with tiny wildflowers, either purple with white spots or white with purple spots. I came across a gorge, walked passed it and onward, and on, and on, on the alert for the Red Hill lookout. I never did find the lookout, but I got the views and a 25km round trip for my trouble. In the last 5km of my journey I began to wish that I had been adventurous enough to ford the creek, then I began to dream about fitting a bath to the top of my car, which would be heated by the engine. In the end I just kept putting one foot in front of the other until my car came into view, very nearly losing a shoe in the mud of that accursed creek.
The next day I drove even further away from people on even worse roads. They weren’t dirt roads, they were rock roads, and I was getting fed up with driving under the usual speed limit for a school zone. But Chambers Gorge made up for the difficult drive. In parts Chambers Gorge looks like the canyon in the last scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. What I liked the most about were the large number of caves, making it the ideal place to start a hermitage should I ever be that way inclined. As I strolled along the dry creek bed, my feet taking a pounding in order to give the car a break, I thought about how much safer I felt walking in Australia than in the United States. Sure, we have snakes here that can kill you within hours, but you would have to be an idiot to get bitten why one, whereas any fool can be stalked by a mountain lion or have the face gnawed by a bear. My main concern at the moment was that I didn’t lose my car keys, and I developed an obssessive compulsive habit of tapping my pocket every hundred metres to get that reassuring jingle.
Driving back from Chambers Gorge the road didn’t feel nearly so rough. Perhaps it was the afterglow of a majestic natural experience. When I finally got back on tarmac it felt like sleeping on slik sheets after a week lying on nettles, and the top speed felt so fast that it seemed like I had swapped my car for a ferrarri. My final assault on the Flinders Ranges was to climb St Mary’s peak. It’s the kind of mountain that gets steeper right at the end, and the top is always a little bit further off than you expect. The view was magnificent but the gale force winds nearly blew me off the edge.
The yellow-talied wallaby is not only not extinct, it is thriving, and it has plenty of company with rock wallabies, grey and red kangaroos teeming over the grasslands. There are almost as many marsupials in the Flinders Ranges as hop around Canberra at feeding time. I would like to extend a personal thanks to all the animals on my trip so far who have not leapt in front of my car, or added more dents to the side. I would also like to apologise to the bush pigeon for hitting it with my windscreen at very high speed. I’m sorry I hit you, but I can’t make my car duck.
Broken Hill reminds me of Edinburgh in one aspect only. Both are dominated by imperious hills. Edinburgh has its castle overlooking the town, and Broken Hill has a huge slag heap with a visitors centre on top. Here the similarity between the two places stumbles. A sculpture on top of the slag heap is a good analogy for my impressions of the town. It is a giant park bench, designed to make adults feel what it is to be the size of children. I like the idea, but it feels redundant in a town like Broken Hill, where obselete mining equipment lies scattered around the town like a giant’s playthings. The mentality of the miner’s is summed up by a Pro Hart sculpture of a giant metal ant, for that is what these people were, burrowing away underground.
I left you last time on the outskirts of an old town called Silverton. For a ghost town Silverton has a disturbing number of active shops, but I know it’s a ghost town because my neighbour in Canberra, Barry McGowan, has written a book called “Australian Ghost Towns”. He describes Sliverton as a boom and bust mining town. In 1884 it went from nothing to a town of 4000. A reporter at the time described the population: “Every second word among the drinking men was an oath, and, subtracting the oaths and obscenity, I really believe fifty English words would cover the entire vocabulary.” Judging by the amount of broken glass littering the ground at the nearby Daydream Mine settlement, the inhabitants here enjoyed a good party as well, but not the cleaning up. Little remains of the place now but a few crumbling buildings and the odd collection of rocks, which at one stage must have formed four walls and a bit of metal over the top for a roof. Men came here for money, but while they waited they lived in ramshackle houses that have either been reclaimed by the desert, or were put on a cart and taken to Broken Hill, which soon became the premier mining town in the region.
As I mentioned earlier, Broken Hill is renowned for its art, mainly thanks to Pro Hart. I only know Pro Hart from an old ad did for a carpet cleaning company in which he did a painting on the floor with various foodstuff. This seemed cool to me when I was 10, but I wonder whether artists of previous generations would have done something similar. I can see Van Gogh doing something for the plastic surgeons association – “My ear looks like new”, Jackson Pollock could do some beer ads, and of course, Andy Warhol would sell soup by the truckload. Part of me can’t begrudge Pro Hart for trying to make some money, but the cynical part says he’s a sellout. My cynical part also has the impression that Pro Hart is an artist that people who usually don’t like art can wax lyrical about at a family BBQ and not get funny looks, unlike Monet, Manet, or Cezanne.
I was in two minds about whether to go to the Pro Hart gallery before I left town. My sleeping bag became a tossing and turning bag, and when I awoke in the morning, with a bright sun filtered through the fogged windscreen, I still hadn’t made up my mind about the matter. I tried to clean the condensation of the window with some toilet paper with limited success. I couldn’t see where I was going very clearly but I decided that it was too early for art and headed for the main road, when a sign for Pro Hart’s gallery caused my hands to jerk the steering wheel to the left, which I took as a sign that I had changed my mind. I was driving directly into the rising sun and could not see a thing. I took this as a sign from God that Pro Hart is overrated.
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