I’ve floated a good number of asphalt rivers in my day. Only fitting that I should take a trip down one of the most famous stretches in Australia: The Stuart Highway. Named for the explorer John McDonnell Stuart, first white man to reach Darwin from Adelaide over land. So the stretch I undertook was the 1,484 km between Darwin and Alice Springs. Give a great substantial yell.
My travelling vessel this time around was the Wayward Bus. As touring companies go, this one is the best I’ve found. It feels less like a guided tour and more like a road trip. the bus fits about 20, you are in tents and cooking over portable stoves, and the music is turned up as you hurtled down the straight and flat. My travelling companions this time, unfortunately, were lacking. There were eight of us plus tour guide: a middle-aged couple from Germany not quite down with the exploration program, two brothers from France more concerned with their three cameras and camcorder than what was in front of them, and a couple (he from Belguim, she from Indonesia) who spend most of the time tangled in the backseat. We were cordial and got along fine, but my time was spent up front with Matt from Britian and Jas the tour guide. Matt and Jas really made the trip for me-we got along great from the first minutes of the journey. Matt was taking the Wayward Bus back south instead of the greyhound because he had the time and it is somehow cheaper, and Jas was doing her first tour down the Stuart Highway. Good enough. Forward.
The camp counselor instincts in me once again bubbled to the surface and I ended up repacking the van several times and delegating cooking duties from time to time. Fine. The rest of them needed direction, and weren’t clued into the fact that this sort of trip was not one in which you were served everything on fine china. It was funny watching people set up their tents and negotiating the camp kitchen. I, the eternal gear dorque, opted for my own tent and utensils for the trip. I carried the damn thing halfway across the world; I’m gonna use it when I can.
We stopped at some excellent places. Litchfield NP was situated on an escarpment and featured some incredible waterfalls, swimming holes, and rivers with rock hopping. It, to me, was somewhere in between Goodman Park in northern WI and the Havasupai Indian reservation. We spent the day hopping in and out of the water, and there really is no greater pleasure than swimming in cool water on a hot, sunny day. Didn’t hurt that the morning was spent at the Barry Springs thermal pools right outside Darwin. A great way to wake up.
Nitmiluk NP was next; this is a gorge carved out by the Katherine River. It’s not as massive as some of the canyons out west in Utah, but because it is on that human scale it’s that much more impressive and beautiful. The canyon is sheer in some places, gently sloping with vegetation in others, and has freshwater crocs throughout. And in true explorer fashion, Matt and I paddled the river. We got up to some rock art sites, kicked around and explored for a while, and paddled back for lunch. It was a beautiful scene-my only complaint was that there was no whitewater with which to refresh my eddy turns.
That night was spent at the Mataranka thermal pools at Elsey NP, and I might not be exaggerating in saying that the place was perfect. After dinner we wandered down to the park entrance and walked a boardwalk through reeds and palms for about 5 minutes, which lead us to the pools. the water was comfortably under hot tub water, but warm enough that you could lie perfectly still and be completely relaxed and comfortable. palm trees surrounded, Jas had the foresight to bring some candles, and above, framed by palm fronds, was the crystalline night sky of the Northern Territory.
The next day was a long day of driving. It’s like that on the asphalt river sometimes. But this wasn’t too painful of a drive: 700 km or so (about 7 hours of highway time). We ended up at the Devil’s Marbles just before sunset. The pictures will tell the tale better, but this place was mind-boggling. The only rocks around for miles were these giant boulders, and they were all eroded to the point where they were round. You walk through them and honestly believe you are about two inches tall because these are the only rocks in an enormous landscape around you. Not even pebbles. Just these enormous round boulders. We watched the sun go down at Devil’s Marbles and made some dinner. Once again my mind was blown by the natural beauty of this place.
My only complaint about the trip down the Stuary Highway is that we didn’t camp at places like Litchfield or Devil’s Marbles when we could have easily done so. The Wayward Bus route took us to these roadhouses on the side of the highway, complete with bright floodlights, electrical hookups, bars, drunk aborigines, and trucks four times bigger than American semitrailers bowling past you on the nearby highway. I can only assume that Wayward chose these spots because they thought people would want showers, alcohol, and electricity during the trip. We did have a hot pot and an electric toaster with us, and they were used for breakfast every morning, which I thought was a little strange. But there are other ways to boil water and make toast, and there is something to be said for not showering and remaining sober for a day or two. Plus you’d not have to deal with the crowds, the noise the light that shined on your tent the entire night…call me crazy, but people might thank you for foregoing the roadhouses in favor of the National Park campsites.
So I’m now in Alice Springs, staring down the final expedition of my Australian holiday: Uluru. The big red rock in the middle. In many ways the reason I’ve chosen to come halfway around the world (I did a report on Ayers rock for folk fair in third grade and it somehow hasn’t left me). This final time I’m doing it on my own terms: I’ve rented a car for the next two days and am going to make the 5 hour trip to Uluru 2004-style, but without AJM in shotgun. Cost me far too much money but I don’t care at this point. I can’t not go see this big rock. I’ve posted for travelling companions in the hostel but I have a feeling most people here are down for the guided hand-holding tour.
So: to action. I have some food to buy and some logistics to take care of. Then Matt and I are meeting Jas in town for dinner and drinks. An early bedtime, and early waking, and yet another stretch of highway towards what will be my final destination down under.
After all those hours spent bent into strange positions at the back of a Greyhound bus two and a half hours on a plane seemed like a snap. Especially because two German girls nearly hysterical with excitement about something were sitting next to me. They had just spent a month working with “the show,” which I gather is the travelling circus, and had just made enough money to get themselves through the rest of their year’s travels. And so I left the backpacker belt of the East and landed in a balmy Darwin.
There’s not much to this city. It’s got a nice waterfront but other than the YHA (and its pool) I won’t have the luxury of spending time here. I’m off on the Wayward Bus down the Stuart Highway tomorrow morning (as per Brad’s recommendation) and I just returned from two full days at Kakadu.
There are only 20 places on the globe that qualify for both natural and cultural significance according to the UNESCO World Heritage committee, and Kakadu is one of them. (Uluru is as well, and if I play my cards right I’ll be there by the week’s end.) The park is massive, and me without a car meant I only could explore a corner of it. Doc the bus driver proved to be the most valuable resource in determining where I should go. I had a ticket to Jabiru (pronounced “jab-a-roo,” whoops!) but that was a township and jumping off point. Doc got me in touch with the right people there to take me up to Ubirr, site of 23,000 year old rock art, hiking trails through sandstone formations, and a river full of crocodiles.
This one was done all on my own. No tour group, no throngs of camera-clicking tourists, and no maps. Really, no maps. The National Park Service of Australia doesn’t seem to be into them. I found an information board at the campsite and snapped a picture of the map on it, which served as my map for the trip. It worked surprisingly well.
Doc recommended the first day to check out the river and then do the monsoon forest walk, but to leave enough time for sunset at Ubirr itself. I set up my tent and started out for the walk. It wasn’t long before a migraine budded and blew me into pain unfathomable. It was the first headache I got since I started, but it came at the most inopportune time. And it came despite me doing everything I could to take care of myself. I ate enough, drank about 7 Nalgenes of water, and had enough sleep. The only factor I could attribute it to was the heat-the NT is equivalent to America’s Southestern deserts: hot and dry every single day. It was a shock to the system after all that rainy and cold weather on the East. I also think this suntan lotion I’ve been using is so sweatproof that it doesn’t allow me to sweat at all and I can’t cool myself down. Regardless, after spotting two enormous crocs in the river and doing the monsoon forest walk, I took two hours and crashed out on a picnic table bench with thumbs jabbed into either eye socket.
I eventually made my way to the border store to resupply on water and watched some of the white locals interact with the aborigines who stumbled in. It was hardly encouraging. I suppose any time you get an oppressor people interacting with indiginous people at an area of geographical significance there’s bad feelings. And disadvantaged (and drunk) indiginous people. It was probably something akin to the American push west and the demise of the Native Americans in the 1800’s. I left with the terrible thought that I’d live to see the demise of the oldest continuing culture on the planet. I also was in a lot of pain. So back to the tent for horse-sized doses of Advil, a quick nap, and possibly sunset at Ubirr.
I woke up after a 30 minute power nap feeling slightly better. I choked down some fruit and cashews and felt better still. so I set out for Ubirr. People were barrelling past me on the road in their cars, but walking the 4km only took me about 35 minutes. Just in time to catch some of the rock art (arguably older than even the cave paintings in France) and watch the sun slip over the western horizon. The pictures didn’t turn out from this, of course, but it was spectacular. Behind the art galleries is a climb up one of the rocks about 150 feet high to a lookout facing west. behind and around you is wooded savannah and scrubland with strange layered rock stacks. It looks a little like the Needles section at Canyonlands in Utah, but with gum trees and rocks that looked like a series of stacked slats. But upon reaching the overlook and facing west, the park opens up into a brilliant green floodplain with little billabongs, and behind it the sea. Kakadu is a dynamic place, encompassing four distinct biomes in one area. From the drive in and my limited exposure to the place, I only saw one until the sunset at Ubirr. The sky faded through every color of the spectrum and settled on purple. I would have stayed to watch the stars come out but the ranger was pushing everyone out of the site. I hitched a ride back to camp, made dinner, took the rainfly off my tent, and fell asleep under a brilliant NT night sky very glad that I made the effort.
This morning I woke up early with much less pain in my head and packed up only to realize I lost my sandals somewhere in the past two days. I’ve been carrying my Tevas on the back of my backpack this whole trip and have only worn them once so the bigger loss was the fairly nice carabiner that secured them to my pack. To be honest I was thinking of ditching the sandals anyway; the warm-weather footwear contest has clearly been won by crocs. I pushed on and hiked through more stone formations following the river upstream a while. I picked up with Doc and the Greyhound at the border store earlier this afternoon and we chatted about national parks over crocodile burgers, then headed back to Darwin. It was a short trip but a good one besides the migraine. Kakadu is an astounding place and I’m only beginning to understand it. I’ll have to go back. As I’ve been saying: next time with a car. I couldn’t imagine trying to do Yosemite without a car; Kakadu is somewhat the same.
So here’s a night in Darwin. This is a backpacker mecca still, full of people looking to catch their next buzz. Aboriginal alcoholics included. Tomorrow starts a four day trip through the NT to several parks on the Stuart Highway: Litchfield, Katherine, Devil’s Marbles. Alice Springs by Sunday, and then hopefully as a grand finale a trip out to the Rock before I leave for Hawaii. Hawaii? I haven’t begun to think about that leg of the trip. Such is the month of July. Such is life on the other side of the world.
Best way to beat the rain? Jump in the water and stay there for a while. Lucky for me the best scuba diving on the planet is a mere 3 hour boat ride away from Cairns. Cairns itself is an interesting place. It’s a small port city now blown up from ecotourism and college-aged backpackers. It’s more racially diverse than any other city I’ve been to yet with a sizable asian and aboriginal community. It’s located right in the notch where the Great Dividing Range meets with the ocean so it’s surrounded by hills covered in misty rainforest, something I’d imagine Equatorial Africa to look like. And it’s teeming with travel agencies, hostels, cheap eats, and those horrible bars geared directly towards backpackers.
It was raining when I got here and didn’t really stop for the entire afternoon and evening. After spending the day wandering around this tourist trap of a town I decided I needed to get out of it. And with two World Heratige sites so close the choosing was pretty easy. I dropped another sizable chunk of money on a two day trip out to the Great Barrier Reef.
What is there to say? Diving the Reef was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. Ever. It is everything everyone says it is, and the beautiful stock postcard pictures and videos of the reef generally downplay how it actually looks I can hear my students asking me now: “like Finding Nemo?” (which I still haven’t seen). But yes. Like Finding Nemo. The colors are brilliant and the diversity of animal life is astounding. And it’s all right there in front of you-nothing is hiding or sleeping or tucked into some inaccessible corner like on land. You are down there swimming right next to corals and anemone, right through schools of fish, right past turtles and jellyfish.
The weather was still a mess when I got out there and the boat ride was pretty messy with half of a French school group tossing their escargot into little paper bags, but once we transferred off the daytrip boat and onto the boat stationed out on the reef things improved greatly. For one we were pampered and catered to like I haven’t been in a very long time. I guess when you fork over that much money for a trip you get treated nicely. It was awkward after liffing like a hobo for the past couple weeks but very nice. I was told that since I wasn’t certified to dive in open water I’d go down with Mikey the divemaster for each of my 5 dives. It worked out perfectly. And from the moment I went under the rain and the rocking stopped, things became calm and peaceful, and I found that I could breathe underwater. It’s quite cool-I think all these adventure sports to some degree come about because people try to figure out how they can do things that human’s aren’t designed to do: breathing underwater (scuba diving), walking on water (surfing), sticking to walls (rock climbing), flying (skydiving), and so on. Of all the ones I’ve tried, I think scuba is my favorite.
All those years of teaching skills on the waterfront at camp came back to me. I was spitting in my mask before they could show me how, clearing my mask underwater, clearing my snorkel, equalizing ear pressure, the whole bit. The instructors really liked the bit about calling them fins and not flippers. (anyone? anyone?) I kept swimming with my hand out in front of me and they thought that was pretty funny. But fine. Scuba was easier than I thought it would be, and with all the issues about pressure and temperature and so on a great lesson in physics as well.
Visibility was only 5 meters (only! Have these people seen Boston Harbor??) but I couldn’t complain. I could see plenty, and all in vibrant color. Mikey let go of my arm about 5 minutes into it and I got to dip around some of the most fantastic natural scenery in the world. The trip included 5 dives so I spent about 3 hours underwater total. And as exhilirating as the diving was, being under water was equally as cool. Scuba is an activity that demands focus and centering, making sure you’ve got it all together and above all that you are calm. The slower and more evenly you breathe the better the experience is. Likewise, the slower and more methodically you move the better the experience is. It puts a strain on your body but it’s very much a relaxing thing. I came out of the water each time centered and calm. It’s something to note that I’ve forgottenn about: water calms and centers me. I used to spend three hours every summer morning in the water and was probably much happier because of it. This trip after surfing and diving I’ve come away from the water more calm, relaxed, and centered than I have been in quite some time. I missed the Daintree Rainforest and Cape Tribulation because of the extended reef trip, but that’s OK. I’ve seen trees. I will see trees. This was completely unique and special.
The boat experience itself was a good one, and I’m glad I spent so much time out on the waters of the Pacific before I leave the coast for the deserts of the NT this evening. It was extravagant-nicer than any place I’ve stayed so far. We were fed on real dishes and were cooked meals by a sour-faced ex-Navy cook. We had a hot tub in the bow where I soaked and hung out with Amy, Vivian, and Ena, the first Americans I’ve met out here, after each dive. There were comfortable couches, a sun deck, and a top level with a 360 degree view of everything around you. It was cloudy so my hopes of catching the night sky out at sea were stymied. But the best part of the boat experience, to me, was the rocking. It was gentle and lulling, and made me sleepy more than anything else. After a day of diving the Barrier Reef there really was no greater joy than being rocked to bed by the Pacific. I haven’t been rocked to sleep since I was so young that I wouldn’t remember anyway. But out there in the middle of nowhere it was the best night’s sleep I’ve had on this trip so far. That, above all else, made me appreciate the water in a way I haven’t before: the Pacific, the mother of all life, eternally lulling one of its far-distant offspring into a world of dreams not so different than the reef below.
Bad weather is following me I think. I try to stay a step or two ahead of the rain but it seems to catch up to me by the second night I stay in any given place on the coast. Today I got dropped off in Airlie Beach after a painful 13 hours on the greyhound bus from Hervey Bay. Sleeping in an airplane, which never really happens for me, is easy compared to those buses. My back is still hurting from the contortionist act needed to bend myself into those seats comfortably enough to shut my eyes for a couple minutes at a time. One halfway good thing to come of it is that I’ve discovered two very, very good reasons for anyone to come to Australia at those miserable roadhouses (known to us as truck stops): Australian bacon and Bunderberg Ginger Beer. Both are not to be missed. Consuming them at 4:30 AM in the middle of Gin Gin or Matilda or Barramundi with tattooed truckers is optional.
In my quest to end myself of the bus I’ve decided to get on another one at 2:30 this morning which should take me to Cairns, northern terminus of the bus line and jumping-off point for adventures in the Daintree National Park, the Great Barrier Reef, and Points North. But not yet. I’m in Airlie Beach, jumping off point for some of the most incredible sailing in the world-around cays and islands termed the Whitsundays. But it’s raining and I’m now under a bit of a time crunch and I’m not going sailing this time around.
let me back up for a minute:
Fraser Island. UNESCO World Heritage site and deservedly so. I signed on for a self-tour of the place. They give you and nine other people a bunch of camping gear, a 4×4 jeep, and three days to run yourselves all around the biggest sand island in the world, which also happens to have lakes more clear than Crater Lake in Oregon and Karri trees almost akin in height to the Redwoods of California. Plus a 75 mile stretch of beach on the Pacific Ocean, home to a migrating pod of humpback whales and breeding ground for tiger sharks. The biggest hurdle to all this, though, would be convincing 9 other strangers that it all was worth checking out.
Upon meeting the group I was set at ease. We ten were myself, two swedes studying in Melbourne (and skipping their first day of class to come to Fraser), two British girls taking a break from med school, an Irish couple, a motocross master from Germany, and another couple studying in Sydney-she from Germany, he from Botswana. I was the oldest by about 3 years. After our briefing about how to make sure to leave no trace and not get our 4×4s stuck, we were given maps, packing lists, and shopping lists and told to do some planning and packing. Virtual autopilot. THe difference this time was the gear: we were hauling around an enormous cast-iron grill along with an even heavier double-burner full sized stove with 2 gallon propane tank. Our tents were of the Wal-Mart backyard picnic variety. We were encouraged to purchase vast quantities of meat from a butcher. For a camping trip?
But things work different when you are tied to a vehicle. You can, storage space allowing, get away with carrying all this heavy stuff. So we bought obscene amounts of meat and used these tents which almost blew apart in the pacific winds and managed to have a great time of it. I, of course, spent a lot of time at camp re-staking tents and nudging people into action (this meat isn’t going to cook itself…) and found that as the trip wrapped up people were pretty much on autopilot. Necessity breeds productivity, I suppose. My style of camping comes from a very structured place; it has to be when 13 year olds are involved. But a group of people in their early 20’s can get away with a little chaos and still get it all done. I had to let myself allow it. Which was really hard.
As for the island itself: positive. I would have liked to spend much less time in the 4×4 and much more time walking through the less-explored corners of the place but the group was content to zip around to the more advertised spots, snap a photo or two, and pack themselves back into the 4×4 for more bumpy rides up the beach. I was the last one back to the truck every single time. As a result I missed some sweet hikes, one through the Pile Valley called “Valley of the Giants” which would have been pretty amazing, but there was more than me to consider. After travelling solo it was hard to adapt to the compromise game, especially with people I was thrown together with by chance, but it turned out well. It was above all fun to travel with people for a little bit. We chased after and shouted at dingoes to keep them away from our vast stores of meat and I learned about the ancient Swedish tradition of poking (“oh-lah,” ask a Swede about it). The group was great and I was very glad to share the time with them, but I will have to go back and hike the place properly.
The excursion out scratched my camping itch to some extent, but not enough. I decided out there that if I were to miss the Northern Territory on this trip it would be an absolute travesty, so upon returning I dropped a good chunk of cash on a flight to Darwin, a flight from Alice Springs back to Sydney, and a bus/camping trip to connect Darwin to Alice. As a bonus, there’s enough time before the bus trip to go walkabout in Kakadu for three days and just enough time before my flight out of Alice to go see the rock in the middle of the desert. After doing a report on it for folk fair in third grade, I couldn’t not go. It’ll be expensive, and a whirlwind of a week, but it is exactly what needs to happen.
So after a day here in Airlie taking care of some necessities (booking stuff, laundry, and a nap) and not going sailing like the other tourists, I push on to Cairns. Not bad for a rainy day in the tropics of Australia. Then somehow I’ll get on the reef and to a rainforest far away. Then 9 days in the Red Centre. I just wish it didn’t get dark so early here. No matter. No Sleep ‘Till Darwin.
I’m getting frustrated by a couple things out here in the throes of travel, and they have everything to do with constraints on my mobility.
The first is the way Aussies respond to my inquiries about backcountry travel. I ask about camping, overnights, where can I sleep in a tent and go for a multi-day hike, that sort of thing. I get, more often than not, an incredulous look. As in, why on earth would anyone do that? Are you mad? Maybe so, but I’d like some input into my excursions into the wild nonetheless. It seems Australians don’t enjoy strapping 45 pounds on their back and walking inordinate distances through the wilderness. Go figure. I’d like to blame the fact that Australians still have a frontier in their country. There are still possibly millions of unmapped and unexplored acres in the country such that its inhabitants are much like white Americans of the 1840’s: explore, but be careful! It’s dangerous out there! We Americans of the 21st century live in a country that is completely explored and mapped and like to play explorer for fun by going to our well-mapped National parks and following the red dotted line for a while.
I’ve also noticed that many of the “tracks” in Australia’s National Parks are paved by cement, have handrails, and are well-lit.
A second factor here could be the locals’ stereotype of tourists: the lazy, picture-snappers who hop off the tour bus just long enough to miss the air conditioning. But I swear on Abbey’s Desert Solitaire I am not one of these people. Give me dust and rocky paths and a little-known swimming hole and I’m happy. Stick me in the party-party hostels of the East Coast and I’m ready to go walkabout.
The second gripe feeds right into this: I have come to hate the bus. It’s an effective and cheap way to get around, yes, and I have a pretty sweet ticket North to Cairns, yes, but the experience of riding those steel helltubes is getting to me. The drivers are either playing the radio, filled of techno remixes of songs popular five years ago, or throwing in teenager sleepover movies. Plus the bus stops every two and a half hours for a 30 minute rest stop break. If they only knew the miles and miles AJM and I put in on the great asphalt rivers of the American West last year…
A car. It would allow so much more flexibility and freedom of movement and I would get places about twice as quickly. And I could get off this well-tread backpacker route up the coast. Were I to do this sort of thing again (and I will), it would be done in a car. With someone who will go hiking for many days at a time. And who doesn’t stop every two and a half hours.
I’ve been looking at flights into and out of Darwin, and a trip to the NT from Cairns and then back to Sydney in time for my flight out would run me upwards of AUS $685. about $540 US, I’d estimate. For a week in the outback, and in all likelihood I still wouldn’t get to see the Big Rock. I’m turning it over and praying those fares will still hold in a day or two should I decide to go. If not there’s the audible to work my way all the way up Cape York and then fly directly back to Sydney from Cairns. Still expensive, and in the final analysis I might be spending the same amount either way.
I just came from Noosa, a way upscale coastal town full of expensive restaurants and a small National Park. Did some lounging on the beach and some hiking to hidden coves full of old naked people, and tried surfing again. This time on a board much shorter and narrower than my first and in weaker surf. It was decidedly harder, but even the one or two time where I did get up the effort didn’t quite justify the payoff.
On the bright side, I’m about to take off for three days on Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world and an ecological treasure. I’ve signed on with a group of people and we spent the afternoon planning logistics. We’re going to be given a big 4×4 Jeep and camping gear and three days to tear around the island. I’d rather walk it, but when I asked about that the Aussie replied that I wouldn’t get to see everything if I did walked. I didn’t bother pointing out that I won’t get to see everything anyway…but after a couple of days bouncing from incidental and curtailed social interaction in Byron Bay and most recently Noosa, it will be good to get three solid days in with a group of people, all of whom look pretty cool. It’s the old model that’s more than comfortable to me: a group of strangers go camping. Some of my most deeply rooted instincts have already started cropping up. If there is one thing I know how to do, it’s take a bunch of greenhorns into the wilderness and make sure everyone has a good time. Rest assured none of these people can set up a tent properly or poop in a hole but that’s secondary. Even though this is a fairly standard tour, and one of the only ways to see Fraser Island, I’m excited to get out of these coastal cities for a couple days. And halfway around the world, with a buttpack full of stuff I’ll need for three days of camping (nalgene, headlamp, compass, some p-cord, raingear, warm layer) I’m a camp counselor once again. It’s inescapable. No better way to spend the summer, really.
I’ve finally pushed far enough North for the clouds to drift away and the weather to turn. I’m currently in Byron Bay, Easternmost point on the continent. There’s a big lighthouse to mark the geographical achievement. And beaches. And beaches. And lots of heady tourists. And beaches.
Unlike the previous couple of places I’ve visited this place was ultra touristy. As in I get off the bus and there’s a lineup of seven or eight people with sandwich boards, each from a different hostel. I’d already done some forward work with one and found their van. We cruised about 3 minutes outside of the main drag and were all of a sudden winding down a backcountry lane. I thought it might be a little too far out of town for convienent beach access, but then I began to see what was in store. I heard it before I saw it.
Enter the Arts Factory, backpacker hostel, restaurant and bar, art gallery, recording studio, and neo-hippie compound. The DJ was spinning old funk breaks a la tmo’s playlists (Herbie/P-Funk-The Meters all in the first 30 minutes), every surface of everything was painted with something funky, there was a pool, a deck with tables and lounge chairs, hiking trails, hostels, campgrounds, and people lounging everywhere. I glanced at the list of things the place offered during the days: nature walks, didgeridoo making, yoga, massage classes, twirling…this was nothing short of Camp Hedonism.
Sleeping options ranged from the more standard hostel room to platform tent accessed by boardwalk to a renovated double decker bus to specialty theme bunks. I slept in a giant teepee with 15 beds arranged in a circle around a potbelly stove before switching to the campground. I spent the first night playing guitar and drinking wine with a French guy named Arnold. “Ve had zome good jams,” he kept saying. And he was right. It wasn’t the burgandy; we sounded good-the people around us actually stopped to listen and we got a smattering of applause by the end.
Were the Arts Factory not enough, it is situated in what could be the headiest city in the known universe: Byron Bay. This is most definitely not a fishing town. It’s completely over the top with surf shops, crystal shops, native and modern art galleries, and just about everything a backpacker could want in terms of comfort and ease. It is the land of the lotus eaters. A couple people I talked to at the hostel lost track of how long they were there after three weeks. Right on, dood. It was a place you could get easily lost in if you weren’t careful or didn’t have the motivation to see the rest of this country. And Byron Bay apparently looks like a convention of the Daughters of the American Revolution when compared to Nimbin, a small town 1 hour’s drive from here.
Yesterday I was eating breakfast when some guy came up to me and asked if I was the one who signed up for surfing lessons. No, but…I told him I’d jump on that train right after I set my tent up. I came back 10 minutes later and he was gone, but there was a second guy packing up surfboards into his VW. He was leatherfaced and ruddy and had definitely seen his way around a few beaches. He would be back at 1pm to pick me up for four hours of surfing. And just like that, I was out on a surfboard.
I think the allure of surfing is that it’s as close as humans will get to walking on water. It’s an incredible feeling, but the downside is that the effort expended to getting out and in position to do the wave walking is extraordinary. We went to a beach with pretty easy, steady waves yesterday and it was still exhausting getting out to where I needed to be to catch a wave. Once I was up the ride would last about 10 seconds, and then the process would start over again. surfing: file under sledding.
Getting up was much easier than I thought it would be. They walked us through this four step process of standing up but when it came time to spring up I just jumped to my feet without noticing that I completely skipped their steps. It uses pretty much the same leg muscles as you use when you are hiking or riding your bike so I was primed for it. Balance on these waves wasn’t that hard either-it was sort of like riding the subway without holding on to anything. You also didn’t need to be super low-you could actually stand up a little bit. The hardest part, I found, was getting into position and picking the right wave and the consequent right moment to jump up. The first couple of times were easier as the instructor was out there holding you steady until the wave came, but by the end when I was trying to get there on my own I only caught one or two waves. The rest passed right by me before I could stand up. Not enough speed, I think. I also am not able to read the waves well enough. But I could see how, with practice, the activity could become a lifestyle for some. At your best, you’re not thinking out there. You’re not on top or in front of the wave, you’re “with the wave,” as Matt the instructor said dreamily. Right on, dood.
I came back to the hostel to clean up and after the workout and shower. I felt really, really good. More relaxed and clear than I had been in a long while, possibly years. I skipped Camp Hedonism and wandered back up to the beach to catch the sun going down over the hills to the west, did some writing, banged out a couple of postcards, and chatted with a few lingering beach bums and tourists. Made it back in time for the late night fire show though.
Today is more of the same: time on the beach and a hike up to the lighthouse. My thoughts are turning away from Byron Bay and towards some quieter environs at points North. I’m going to skip Brisbane and the Gold Coast entirely; no sense in spending time in big cities or AusVegas. It’s a tension balancing time between touristy spots like Byron Bay and more quiet natural scenes like the National Parks as each has their own benefit. NP access is a little tough without a car and I’ve been getting pangs of regret as the Greyhound has been blowing past countless brown NP road signs. I guess I’ll have to come back and do this in a car properly. Tourist towns or expanses of pristine wilderness? It’s a tough choice. Surfing the beaches of Australia seems to be a nice compromise for the time being.
I’m under the gun again-only seven more minutes on this contraption and then I’m off.
It’s colder here than I would have expected; like Cape Cod in October. And still drizzling. I haven’t seen the sun in days. Bums me out, but these things are far from my control. Because of the crummy weather I decided to take a travel day and push North, ever closer to those fabled beaches and rainforests. I’m currently in Port MacQuarie but have an afternoon bus for Byron Bay. It’s touristy, I’m told, but I’ve come to realize that there is a reason why some places are touristy. Yosemite and the Grand Canyon are touristy as all getout but for very good reason: they are jaw-dropping. So might be the case with the sleepy town of Byron Bay. They do have surfing there so my mandate will still be filled (I understand the Reef breaks the waves to the point where you can only swim in the Queensland waters, barring jellyfish) and there are some daytrips to national parks from there that might be better. I’m sad to be pushing through NSW so quickly but this will mean more time up in the tropics, and the Red Centre in turn.
I’ve noticed a smell in virtually every hostel room I’ve been in, sort of like a compost bin, and through my brilliant powers of deduction it dawned on me that the smell is coming from my wet socks.
Sydney is a big city with McDonald’s and Starbucks. I’m not on the other side of the world to walk past fast food joints. Off to the Blue Mountains.
The Blue Mountains are a mere 2 hour commuter rail ride outside of Sydney but are far enough away to be otherworldly. They are protected World Heratige sites and encompass a sizable area bordered by a dozen or so small towns. Each has positioned itself near a certain attraction there: the Jenolan Caves, the Grand Canyon (not THAT one…), the Blue Gum Forest, and arguably the most famous of them all, the Three Sisters. There you find the sleepy mountain town of Katoomba.
Katoomba was my kind of city: gear shops everywhere, pubs with live music nightly, a food co-op, a music store, and a world-renound national park 5 minutes walk south of the city. The YHA hostel there is amazing, probably one of the best hostels I’ve been to. There was a ballroom-sized common area with couches and beanbag pillows and a gas fireplace, a reading room, and an enormous kitchen that bustles with activity from around 5:30-8:00pm. It’s great to cook in the hostels. People are scurrying around asking for extra pinches of sugar or borrowing spatulas or something, and everyone makes enough food to go around. Everyone also has the foresight to bring in a bottle of wine which inevitably gets passed around during and after cooking. The kitchen stays impossibly orderly and clean as well; I’m not quite sure how it happens. Part of the joy of staying in Katoomba was bumbling around after dinner trading stories with the other travellers.
But the Blue Mountains. It was at elevation, maybe 2500 feet, but significantly colder than Sydney. It felt like November in New England up there, and most Australian families on school vacation just hung around the hostel. I made for the mountains after I got settled and had a nice hike down into the valley. Katoomba is situated up on a ridge, and as you walk into the park the ridge drops off abruptly into a gum forest below. There are several lookout points throughout, one being Echo Point with a view of the fabled Three Sisters.
Three Sisters? More like the Three Disappointments. No offense to the Aussies, of course. But geez. I’ve been spoiled on Utah, you see. The most famous rock formation in this World Heritage site consisted of three blunt spires of rock. I kept thinking: Bryce Canyon- The 20,000 Sisters.
Were it any concilation the steep descent into the rainforest was amazing. It was steep, possibly the steepest trail I’ve ever hiked, and immediately after disappearing under the rim the wind and cold subsided and things became damp and green. It was an excellent transition. The rainforest itself looked like some of the shady valleys you’d find in the White Mountains with gum trees in the place of the standard maples or oaks. It wasn’t the exotic wild that I was hoping for but still a welcome break from Sydney.
I stopped off at the visitor’s center to talk with a ranger about doing some backcountry overnights and all I found were two nice old ladies hellbent on talking me out of the idea. They tsk tsk’ed me and pushed dayhikes on me to the point that I backed out of the overnight idea. It was cold, probably 30’s at night, but I felt the need to justify that extra 15 or so pounds of camping gear that I brought. I settled on an extensive dayhike: Mt. Solitary. It is the entirely visible mesa-like mountian directly ahead of you if you’re standing at Echo Point.
I posted my intent to hike the mountain at the hostel and found Mathieu, a Frenchman who’s been travelling the world working at wine vineyards. We set out the next morning and dropped into the rainforest for our attempt on the mountain. We got to the ridge and started scrambling up huge boulders but Mathieu got cold feet and backed out. I pushed on a couple hundred feet more, but turned to see a storm moving in quickly. We slid down the ridge and took cover in the rainforest. We managed to avert the storm.
I’m happy to say that I never made it up Mt. Solitary. Nor did I spend the night out in the forest. Instead I had great night at the hostel talking sports and politics with some Brits and Scots. Mathieu and I even intercepted a guy from India on the way back up. He took a photo of the three of us with Katoomba Falls in the background, and I couldn’t help but think what he’d do with the picture and how utterly improbable it was to have those three people in the same photo in some rainforest in Australia.
The intersection of human narrative is mind-boggling when you’re travelling. You brush ever-so-slightly against another human life but only for a moment, then you are gone. You share something of some level of significance but then you pack your bag and leave before they wake up. You climb Mt. Solitary, but together briefly.
I left Katoomba this morning and have been travelling. I’ve started my push up the coast with the help of an unlimited bus ticket that will eventually take me to Cairns. In this prelminary stage of things I think I should have resigned myself to the interior; New South Wales in July is a rainy, cold place not unlike coastal New England in the autumn. I’ve been on a rickety bus with a broken transmission for the past six hours and now am in Forester, a sleepy beach town that apparently has dolphins in its small harbor. The town is completely dead at 7pm on a Sunday night; I’ve ventured out with a girl from Austria in search of food and drink and have only come up with a sandwich shop about to close. It’s rainig and windy and fairly cold, but on the plus side the Pacific is blocks away and the hostel has surfboards for us to use for free. I’m under mandate to try surfing, and I will, but it might not be here, now, in the cold and rain.
The hostel in Forester is all but deserted. I’m sharing a dorm with an Aussie visiting his dad and a Japanese guy biking from Brisbane to Melbourne (think Boston to Atlanta). A far cry from Katoomba. I spent a good deal of the bus ride reading up on the tropical wonders of Queensland and the starkness of the Red Centre, which helps me through this stopover in Foreseter. Some comfort, then: I boiled water and made tea. Short of climbing into your tent in a National Park, it’s really the best way to end a day on the road.
G’day from Sydney.
I’m still working off the annoyances of cross-pacific travel and working through some serious jetlag. But at the same time I’m enjoying the hostelling life a great deal and marvelling at just how much American culture has infiltrated places halfway around the globe.
I’m under the gun writing here. They’re charging me by the minute for this. Plus there’s errands to run and escapes to the Blue Mountains to plot.
The flight out was loooooong. Boston to LA was long enough but was made exciting by the coolest fireworks experience I’ve had to date-flying over Vegas and LA just after sundown revealed thousands upon thousands of brightly colored explosions everywhere below. The entirec city of angels was bursting and popping, and as we dropped lower and lower we were, to some extent, flying through it all. At some points it was almost apocalyptic with some of the explosions and fireworks being muted by the smog but it was very cool. Then the 14 hour leg across the pacific. Never, ever, ever take a window seat for this-you get trapped in there and it’s not worth having a wall to lean up against. It was eternal night for the trip west as we were travelling with the rotation of the earth, probably the longest night I’ve ever been through. Something like 19 hours of darkness total. I’d look out the window every now and then to a moonless sky of unfamiliar stars and think about just how far in the middle of absolutely nowhere this hunk of metal was. The deserts of the Southwest aren’t nowhere. Hell, the Red Center of Australia isn’t nowhere either. The middle of the Pacific…that’s nowhere. We landed in Sydney just as the Eastern horizon started to crack red.
Yesterday I walked around the city-did the loop through the public green space and down the main drags. Saw the Sydney Opera House, which was a big checkoff from third grade folk fair projects I suppose, although it looks just like the postcards. You are hardly floored by it precisely because it is so recognizable. You just think, “oh, there’s the opera house,” snap a picture (which will inevitably be worse than a postcard), and you’re on your way to the next thing. Sydney is a great city as cities go, reminds me a lot of San Francisco in that it is big but very laid back and uses green space very well. But dripping with all the worst of America. McDonald’s everywhere. I feel a little guilty.
Some things I picked up: change money in chinatown. I should have thought of this earlier. Also walk on the left side of the sidewalk (or footpath as I’m told they call it here). It befuddled and frustrated me until i figured out why I was running into everyone. I should like that being left handed and all but it’s still strange.
Hostel finally took off U2 and is playing Paul Simon’s Rhythm of the Saints. Word. This is a cool hostel-it is a converted train depot and some of the rooms are actually old train cars. Backpackers of all ages abound and everyone is very positive here. Hostels are the closest things we’ve got to the old-style inn where you have a big common gathering area to meet other travellers. It’s a great vibe. Even so, I’m planning my escape from the big city. Today is about investigating how to get up to the Blue Mountains and how to best get up the coast.
music: Michael Franti and Spearhead- 1/15/2005
Osprey Silhouette backpack with Daylite attachment, modified Mountainsmith Day pack, REI Duck’s Back 100 rain cover, 2 32 oz. Nalgene bottles, glasses with hard case, fully stocked first aid kit, toothbrush and toothpaste, liquid soap, 2-in-1 shampoo, passport, traveller’s checks, credit card, debit card, driver’s license, international teacher identification card, insurance information, knee-high gaiters, Airporter bag, cheap plastic sunglasses, Leatherman super tool, swiss army knife, Leatherman micra, waterproof, sunscreen, duct tape, 100’ p-cord, 50’ p-cord, 20’ p-cord, 2 bandanas, Petzl Tikka headlamp, blue LED keychain light, 3 mini carabiners, 2 Black Diamond 24 kN carabiners, 1 locking Black Diamond carabiner, North Face Windstorm 35 degree sleeping bag w/compression sack, Sierra Designs Lightning tent with footprint and compression sack, 10L MSR dromedary bag with hydration tube, 12 oz. mug, Master Lock, compass, Burt’s Bees lip balm, plastic magnifying glass, magnesium fire starter, MSR Whisperlite Internationaile stove w/ 22 oz. fuel can, MSR Blacklite cook set, two plastic bowls, spice kit including olive oil, sesame oil, salt, pepper, chili powder, garlic powder, and curry powder, 2 lexan spoons, chopsticks, titanium spork, butter knife, pot gripper, Polar Pure water treatment, Marmot Precip rain jacket and full-zip rain pants, Manzella knit hat, OR Magic Mitt gloves, +10 degree coolmax sleeping bag liner, camp towel, Canon Powershot A 70, mini-tripod, 3 256 MB CF cards, 16 AA batteries, USB cable, Flash drive with drivers for camera and iRiver, iRiver IHP-120 with charger, iRock mini-radio transmitter, outlet adapter, 75W car lighter power inverter, 2 garbage bags, ziploc bags of various sizes, hacky sack, 175g frisbee, 2 Mighty Kites, Crazy Creek chair, Thermarest expedition long sleeping pad, Kavu visor, REI sahara convertible pants, Ex-Officio convertible pants, synthetic hoodie, climbing shorts, 2 sleeveless cotton t-shirts, 1 button-down shortsleeve shirt, 1pr REI long underwear (top and bottom), Patagonia midweight capeliene longsleeve shirt, 3 pair hiking socks, 3 pair liner socks, 2 pair Ex-Officio underwear, Coolmax t-shirt, elastic waist hippie skirt, Patagonia ultralight windbreaker, 1 pr Teva wraptor guide sandals, 1 pr crocs, 1 pr Raichle Gore-tex hiking boots, Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, Lonely Planet: Australia guidebook, The Big Island Revealed guidebook, uniball roller pens, 2 sharpies, yellow highlighter, double sized moleskine blank book.
My pack still has some room in it which will probably go to food on some of the backcountry portions of the trip. The backpack is slightly heavier than I’d like but I’ll deal. Certain things didn’t make the cut, most notably the Martin Backpacker travel guitar. I feel bad about this but there was no way to pack it tightly enough for backcountry travel. The buttpack-as-top-of-hiking-pack modification seems to be working well; I’ll just have to be careful about putting too much weight in it. Things, of course, are bombproof.
Tomorrow I clean out my room for the subletter, do some laundry, and finalize my backpack situation; Monday I get on a plane for Australia while everyone is busy watching fireworksa and barbecueing. Four weeks Down Under, two weeks on the islands of Hawaii, back in Boston on August 20th. No real plans beyond that. Sounds like the makings for quite a summer. More from the other side of the world…