Adelaide to Alice Springs

Wednesday 14th Dec
Adelaide depends on the Murray River for its water supply and the river is at risk due to too much human disruption of the delicate ecological balance (dredging, damming, fertilisers, introduction of foreign species). The people in Adelaide seem to be far more aware of the ecology of their environment compared to people in London, maybe they feel more exposed to the elements here than we do but I've had a discussion about the river with two guides and they both seem very knowledgeable. I'm told that there are too many carp in the river and that if you catch one and throw it back in, there is a 2,000 dollar fine. Also, our guide (Alby) tells me that for the past few years the flow of freshwater down the river has been supplemented to prevent the mouth of the river becoming silted up and to maintain the ecology and wildlife that exists where the freshwater river meets the ocean.
We pass the Elizabeth suburb just north of Adelaide this was a "newtown" created in the 1950s and populated by the ten pound passage from England to bring workers to the car factory nearby. People in Adelaide are very proud that it was founded by free settlers and not by convicts like Sydney.
There are approx 260 types of eucalyptus and approx 200 of them are in Australia. Koalas only eat one type of eucalyptus and they get everything they need from the leaves, they don't even drink water. Its fairly easy to see koalas in the wild if you go to a place with these trees, the koalas are just sitting up in the branches munching away.

Thursday 15th Dec
We stopped at Wilpena Pound in the Flinders Ranges overnight and this morning we climbed Mount Ohlssen Bagge and then stopped at Red Hill Lookout to view the mountain ranges we had just come from. The scenery is spectacular. We drive along Bunyeroo Gorge which is a dry river bed but our guide tells us that the river is still flowing underground. Driving off the road is the best part of the trip as its so much more interesting than driving along the road.

Friday 16th Dec
In the morning we cycle along the Angorachina gorge, we see Gulahs -really noisy birds that the guide calls Silly Gulahs because they are so stupid. We can smell the eucalyptus from the trees as we walkalong. We stop at Parachilna to see an open cast coal mine which is abit of a blot on the beautiful landscape and we touch on the delicate subject of how Aboriginal people are upset by the way white people damage the land. Our guide (Alby) tells us the the government pay a lot of money to the aboriginal people to be able to extract coal and other minerals from the land but Emma (also from England) and I are a bit romantic and we say to each other that no amount of money could compensate for destroying a way of life or damaging a sacred site. The railway from Leigh Creek to Port Augusta carries coal to the power station at Port Augusta in trains that are 2km long. Port Augusta provides one third of the power for Australia.
Alby tells us about the Artesian Bowl an underground reservoir which is one third the size of Australia and 100 metres underground. Sometimes wells are drilled into the ground to bring up water for cattle and sheep, they are the only things that survive in this area, the pumps are either solar powered or wind powered. The cattle stations are huge (approx the size of Belgium) with 150,000 head ofcattle and approx one head of cattle to one hectare being run by approx 15 people. In summer the temperature can reach 55C and most of the ground is covered in small rocks called gibber with saltbush which is what the cattle eat.
We visit a deserted town which was established by French people trying to grow wheat, they established the town after five years of good winter rains and they abandoned the town after ten years of drought. The old building and grave stones are still there with the graves of the Afghan people facing towards Mecca.

Friday / Saturday
We stop Friday night at William Creek, a campsite with Australia's first solar powered public phone. We sleep in swags - canvas covers with a thin mattress that go over your sleeping bag so that basically you are sleeping on the ground. Its surprisingly warm and comfortable until sunrise when the flies wake you up.
The flies.... there are a lot of them, more than you can ever imagine and they are insanely persistent. They really are determined to get into your eyes, ears, nose and mouth and they are not easily shooed away. This is why we used to see pictures of those silly hats with corks, now people (including me) wear a fly net which goes over your head and face like a veil.
The song Waltzing Matilda is about a swagman carrying his swag - they say waltzing matilda because the swag is a big bundle and difficult to carry. In the morning we walk along the road for a bit and we see a wedge-tailedeagle.
We drive along the Oodnadatta Track which is a dirt road that follows an old aboriginal trail. It was followed by the people who laid the telegraph line from Adelaide to Darwin and then it was followed by the Ghan railway but later the railway was moved west to avoid flooding (in Australia it doesn't seem unusual for towns and building and railways get moved like this). Its called the Ghan because it was built by people from Afghanistan who brought camels to the country to carry heavy loads in the hot climate. Camels can now be seen in the wild in Australia.
We pass the edge of the Kidman property (Nicole Kidman's family). This property is so huge you cannot drive from one end to the other in one day, you need to fly over it.
We stop at Lake Eyre a dry salty plain which is the last remnant of an inland sea, these days there will be water in the lake maybe once a century. There was rain in this area on the day before we pass and the bus gets stuck in thick mud - we get out and push.
We stop at Lake Cadibarrawirracanna which is a beautiful lake in the middle of this desert, we are astonished at the beauty and peacefulness around us. We visit springs of water coming up from theArtesian Bowl to the surface, they are mineral rich springs that just appear in the middle of an otherwise totally dry landscape, we stop in one which has been converted into a small pool (tub really) for a quick dip before moving on.
Our guide Alby stops the bus just to get out and show us plants,flowers, tracks of wildlife. We see a preying mantis. We stop at the Dog Fence, a fence which runs for 9,000 km and is designed to keep the dingos away from the cattle.
We stop on Saturday night at Coober Pedy, a town famous for Opal Mining, the people here live mostly underground away from the heat in cool caves that are designed just like houses with carpets and TV and kitchens.

Sunday 18th Dec
Alby wakes us early and drives us to see sunrise over the Breakaways, the landscape here is dramatic and is often used to film science fiction movies. In Coober Pedy the last film crew left behind the alien spaceship as a memento ! Mad Max III was filmed in this area.
We stop at a place called Erldunda, it looks like a service station on the M25 but it supports the people living in stations (farms) around it.
We visit an Aboriginal village and we hear stories of alcohol abuse, petrol sniffing, child abuse, unemployment and suicide. It seems that life as an Aboriginal is not too pleasant. The more we heard about the Aboriginal people, the more we realise how difficult a problem this is. The culture of these people is so different to western culture, they don't place any value on material possessions, they don't plant grain or herd cattle, they live totally off what they find on the land. Their culture is based on relationships within the community as opposed to the western concepts of individuality and competition. In the 1950s a whole generation of children were removed from their communities and placed in orphanages in an attempt to bring them up in a western lifestyle, this is referred to as the lost generation. The result is that the chain of aural traditions has been broken and a whole generation have no knowledge of their own culture. Aboriginal history is not written down it is passed on to each generation as the children grow and reach stages of maturity and assume certain responsibilities. Aboriginal people use song and dance to pass on their history and their knowledge of the land, they describe the world as being created by mythical ancestral animal creatures like giant snakes or emus. They call the creation of the world Dreamtime and they feel that the ancestral beings are still present in the land and that the Aboriginal people have been given a sacred duty to protect the land and use it wisely.
About and hour away from our campsite at Ayres Rock (Uluru), the bus breaks down and we stop at a campsite / motel to wait for a replacement bus to be sent to us from Alice Springs, three hours away.There is an old man sitting at the table having a drink and telling jokes, Alby joins in and the jokes start to become a bit racist.There are deep feelings of resentment among white people because the Aboriginal people don't appear to want to work but want everything given to them. At any time, you could be farming some land and the Aboriginal people could claim they are the original owners and you would need to pay taxes. There are signs posted up in the bar saying that at the request of the local Aboriginal community, alcohol may be refused to Aboriginal people.
At midnight, in a new and very clean bus, we arrive at the campsite near Ayres Rock. The campsite is called Yulara and it is an oasis of luxury in a desert - there is a bank, post office, fountains and air-conditioning. There is a five star hotel (Sails in the Desert) which has Molten Brown hand wash in the toilet and reminds me of 60VE. We are in the campsite sleeping in the tents, some people choose to sleep in swags. On the way to the campsite, Alby sees dingos by the road and does a u-turn with bus and trailer so that the dingos are caught in the headlights for a split second and stare at us before running off.

Monday 19th Dec
Alby wakes us at 5am to see the sunrise over Uluru, there are literally hundreds of people here and this is the off season, in winter when it is cooler there are ten times more people. The sunrise is a breathtaking experience, the rock is so red, so serene and so beautiful, its easy to understand why it has a special significance to the Aboriginal people. People are discouraged but not prevented from walking up the rock, we visit the cultural centre to understand why it is important to the Aboriginal people and we all decide not to walk on their sacred site, most people are persuaded by this. If this fails, the walk is closed after 8am if the temperature is above 36C or if there are high winds or rain, these precautions are for safety reason but the combination of both the above manages to put most people off walking on the rock. Cultural centres are also called interpretive centres whichI think means an interpretation of Aboriginal mythology in a way that western people can understand.
This is what is says in the interpretive centre. Tjukurpa is the law which explains how the world was formed and how the people must live. Anangu are the Aboriginal people who live in the area of Uluru (there are other tribes of people in other regions and they have different dialects so they use different words for the law, people, etc) Tjukuritja are the ancestral beings. Kuniya is a python which came from the east (near Elrdunda), her nephew was attacked by Liru the snake people from the southwest and she in turn attacked one of them leaving deep gashes on the rock. The Mala (Rufus Hare Wallabies) people came from the north and were chased by Kurpany and evil monster who came from the west, he chased them south through Uluru to Ulkiya.
We do the base walk around Uluru which takes three hours, we start at 8am and finish at 11am by which time it is 39C, the ground is a red dust which gets everywhere. Its too hot to do anything else that day except go and sit in the pool which I do until the last minute when Alby comes by with the bus and honks the horn for me to run out and jump into the air conditioned bus, we are off to see the sunset over Uluru. This is an experience, we have nibbles, beer, wine and big coaches turn up from the swanky hotels with champagne. Some French people next to us are on a 33 day round the world tour, we feel sorryf or them because they are only seeing such a brief glimpse and missing out on the best bits.
We go back to our campsite and sit around the table, there are so many different languages in our group that we have fun trying to explain words to each other and I enjoy practising my French. When Alby explains something in English, sometimes, Ana who is Spanish will ask me or Emma to repeat it and then she will explain it to the lovelyFrench couple or sometimes the Swiss people will translate into French. We see another tour company called the Groovy Grape and Emma tries to explain the meaning of Groovy. The beautiful Japanese girl asks Alby to tell her some slang words and he gets her to say BloodyRipper, she asks if she can say this to her boyfriend's mother. Everyone here says No Worries when you say thank you and we have fun translating that into English, French, Spanish and trying to remember the correct phrase to each other as we wash up after dinner.

Tuesday 20th Dec
Alby wakes us again for another sunrise, this time over Kata Tjuta, this is much less touristy and there are a lot less people here. There are no issues with walking here or taking photos and we do the valley of the winds walk with wonderful echos and fantastic views. The schedule is : 4:30am - wake, dress and get on the bus 5:45 - viewing point for sunrise 6:15 -drive to picnic area for breakfast (Alby forgets to bring the coffee and grumbles a lot. Last night I dropped the big coffee jar and smashed it on the floor so today we are using my emergency coffee supply until Alby gets more) 8:00 to 9:00 valley of the winds
As we walk along, Alby picks up two rocks so show us the difference between to types of rock - how one is heavier and denser than the other and how there is such variety around us. The rocks get passed along the line but not the explanation so by the time Hiroko passes the rocks to me, she smiles her beautiful smile and says in her perfect English " I'm sorry I don't know the explanation but here are two rocks"

Wednesday 21st Dec
At 7am its already 30C, we walk the Kings Canyon rim walk which takes 3 hours and on the way we stop in the Garden of Eden and swim in the pool high up within the range. Alby points out the wildflowers, plants and animal life as we walk along.
After the walk, we have a swim back at the campsite and then lunch and drive to Alice Springs. Alby gives our left over food to the bus next door, they have a young inexperienced driver and the bus company didn't give him enough food for the trip.
Alice has two main streets, a shopping centre and the world famous Bojangles nightclub (http://www.boslivesaloon.com/), it would take about 20minutes to walk from one end of town to the other, this is the biggest place for thousands of miles around here and it has the feel of somewhere that people are passing through. Alby says there are 29,000 inhabitants plus approx 10,000 tourists at any one time. Alice Springs is surrounded by the MacDonnell ranges and sits in a gap between the East MacDonnell range and the West MacDonnell range (they ran out of creativity when naming the ranges). On the way to Alice we saw a road sign that said AS 145km, Darwin 1640km. I have never seen a road sign say over 1,000km to anywhere before but I guess that once you pass Alice Springs there is not much of note between there and Darwin.
In Alice, I meet a man who moved here from Liverpool 20 years ago, he is employed by the government to put water supplies into Aboriginal communities, he has a fairly extreme view of the Aboriginal people and thinks the country would be better off without them. He says that approx 20% of the taxes are spent on 2% of the population. He said, he is forced to employ Aboriginal labour or to explain why he has not employed them but he says they do not want to work and will come up with any excuse not to. He says the sacred sites are only sacred so long as people are prepared to pay money to the Aboriginal people. He says groups of young men will sit around sacred sites drinking beer and leave the place littered with beer cans.

Christmas Day on Manly Beach

Caroline & Tony Me with the lifeguards

I met Caroline, Tony, Gus (9) and Kyle (7) at 9:30am on the beach. Caroline brought some sparkling wine. It was already hot enough to want to get into the water to cool off and as we walked into the ocean, Caroline was wishing Merry Christmas to all the Mums and Dads from the surf club. After our swim, we went off to get changed into smart clothes for xmas lunch at the North Steyne hotel at 1pm. Then after lunch back to the beach till 6:30. The lifeguards go home at 6pm and then it starts to get shady and cooler and the volley ball players come out to play on the courts. Back at the hostel the lovely English girls were having a party and this morning there is a bit of clearing up to do. I am off to the zoo with the family.

The unthinkable has happened

Someone has taken my size 14s by mistake, hee hee, she will get a shock when she tries them on. I was really surprised but also very pleased that only my cheap M&S nicks were gone and my new t-shirt from Ken High Street was still there, could have been worse.

Today I was on a wine tasting tour of the Barossa Valley, it was wonderful. I have to say that the people in Aus are much less snobby about wine than the people in California (sorry Ken but its true). They are just lovely here, they don't care what sort of wine you like so long as you drink loads of it. They take you out and show you the vines and explain how these vines are 162 years old and that is older than the vines in France or California because here they have never suffered from the tiny aphid called Pheloxera. This tiny bug has devastated vineyards in France and California and they have had to be replanted. The vines in Barossa were brought here by the early settlers in 1836 when they came on the boat from England, they picked up the vines in South Africa and brought them here. The old vines are Shiraz and they probably originally came from Iran which has a similar climate to South Australia and is probably why they do so well here. The old vines have roots that go down 60 feet under the ground to find water, they don't water them, they only water and feed the younger vines till they are mature enough to fend for themselves. These old vines produce a small harvest each year of truly delicious wine which sells for $100 a bottle but it is the best wine that I have ever tasted.

Three more girls have moved into my dorm room. Two German and one Japanese. Anita and I move out tomorrow morning at 7:45 to join the 8 day outback tour to Ayres Rock and Alice Springs.

Leaving Melbourne

The weather in Melbourne was 26C but there was a chilly wind which made it feels much colder in the shade. I saw a wonderful exhibition of 60s Brit Pop Art at the Victoria National Gallery which I hadn't even realized had been on at the Tate in London earlier this year. Melbourne is full of Chinese people, even the Mayor is Chinese and you can get a wonderful Chinese meal really cheaply (8 Aussie dollars). I left Melbourne on Saturday night and traveled 10 hours on the overnight train to Adelaide to arrive at 8am Sunday morning. It was 36C and bright sunshine.

In Adelaide I am staying in a female dorm ie 8 bunk beds in one room. There is only me and a lovely Swiss girl called Anita in the room right now so its not as mad as it sounds which is good because most of the other backpackers are about 22 and I am old enough to be their mother. They are all really friendly but they walk around in tiny little skirts and tops and I am so envious of their young adolescent bodies, they have NO cellulite, no saggy bits, no wrinkles... There is no mistaking my size 14 knickers on the laundry line, I don't think there is any danger of my stuff being nicked. Most of the stuff they wear takes up less space in than a kleenex. The other thing that blows me away is the number of young women traveling on their own and for many of them English is not their first language, for example Anita spent two months in Perth learning English and now she is traveling around Aus on her own. (Her English is perfect by the way).

Adelaide has a population of approx 1m people but it was deserted on Sunday and when I took the 15 min tram ride down to the beach I saw why. The Southern Ocean was not really cold but the contrast between it and the hot sand was a shock to the system. Even at 4pm the sun was hot and people were sitting inside little nylon tents on the beach. I've almost finished a small tube of factor 30, they don't seem to sell anything less than factor 30 here. The beach is in an area called Gelnelg and just further down the coast there is an area called Brighton. Someone told me that the names of places here are either English, Aboriginal or Obvious like Grassy Creek or Big Hill. The first governor of Australia was the Marquis of Linlithgow and when I saw his statue in Melbourne I wondered if he had ever seen Linlithgow or if he was an English aristocrat sent out to do his bit for the Empire. Most of the European history ie statues and building and things dates back to about 1830ish when the English first began the big emigration program. Its a bit strange coming from London where history stretches back seemingly endlessly to visit places where they have this sort of defined starting point in time.

Its also strange to see xmas decorations and children queuing up to see Santa when its is so hot and sunny, I find it hard to believe that xmas is just around the corner. I haven't seen any of the pine xmas trees that we have in the UK, the ones I've seen have been artificial and also they don't go in for the American tradition where the Christmas ornaments and garlands take over the whole house. When I was in California, the local paper published places in the area where you could see the best outdoor display and these where just on peoples' front lawns.

Tomorrow I am going on a winetasting tour of the Barossa valley, that is the place where Jacobs Creek comes from. A local person here told me that the actual Jacobs Creek is a tiny stream about a foot wide. On Wednesday I am doing a 8 day 4wd trip to Alice Springs, we will be camping in the outback and they say it is really hot during the day and really cold at night. After Alice, I go to Sydney for xmas and new year and then travel up the east cost as far as Cairns.

Great Ocean Road

Yesterday I went on a trip along the Great Ocean Road, west of Melbourne along the coast towards Adelaide. The highlight of the trip was watching the sunset at the Twelve Apostles a really spectacular part of the coast line which is being eroded away by the ocean leaving beautiful outcrops some of which look like they have faces. I was cold and windy and all these people were huddled around waiting for the sun to set. It was a bit cloudy and although it was beautiful, I think it is more spectacular on a clear day when the rays of the setting sun illuminate the limestone cliffs. There is a famous spot called Loch Ard Gorge where in 1878, a ship built in Glasgow was on its way to Australia full of immigrants, when they spotted the first sight of land in three months they celebrated only to be smashed against the cliffs that night killing all but two survivors.

Melbourne

I am in Melbourne and its Wednesday at 12:30pm. I have to keep saying this to myself because yesterday I left San Francisco at 7pm on Sunday and I arrived in Melbourne at 9:30am on Tuesday - I lost the whole of Monday 5th December !! It was a bit weird.

I had a wonderful time with Ken and Nora. On Saturday Ken and I drove up above Santa Cruz to the vineyards, we visited the David Bruce winery where they had a members event for Christmas with food and wines and carol singers. Its was beautiful, they allowed us in after Ken told them that I had come all the way from Scotland... We went onto another winery with a fantastic view all the way out over the hills to the ocean and then on the way back Ken spotted a Scottish pub just off the road in the middle off nowhere, we had a chat with the couple who own the place, the woman has a serious obsession with Mary Queen of Scots, it was really funny because neither of them have ever been to Scotland. In the evening Ken and Nora and I went to San Jose for some wonderful Chinese food and a visit to a comedy club, we saw Caroline Rhea - she was excellent, a very funny and talented comedian. As always with comedians the best part of the show was when she made fun of some people in the audience but when she was pretending to speak with a lisp, Nora and I were almost wetting ourselves.

On Sunday I packed and caught the plane, when I arrived in Melbourne it was raining and I was so totally jet lagged I had no idea what time of day it was. I went to the hotel that I had booked online and when I saw the clock above reception I asked the woman "is it really 10:30?" She looked at me as if I was insane. Anyway the room wasn't ready till 1pm so I went for a wander around and got some lunch, when I came back I slept right through to 6am this morning and feel a lot better for it. Today I moved into a backpackers hostel for 3 nights till I get my bearings and check out Melbourne, I've gone for the single room option and not the dorm, I need to work up to the dorm. As it is the single room is a shock, it is clean and tidy but the bathroom is down the hall !

The itinerary changed

Only two days after I bought the ticket, the travel agent called me in a panic. She told me that with this ticket, I have to go “round the world”. That means that if I want to visit New Zealand, I can’t skip over it on my way to Australia. I would need to touch down in Auckland for and hour and literally change planes. Also this change pushed me over the mileage limit again and I had to give up the plan to fly from Cairns to Auckland. Now I will make my way back to Sydney to for the connection to Auckland. On the plus side while we were discussing this change, I asked about stopping in San Francisco and there was no extra cost for that. So here I am in California…

I left London at 11am on 30 November and arrived in San Francisco at 13:00 on the same day. I am staying with my friend Ken and his lovely wife Nora and beautiful daughter Katie. I am here on a chilly but sunny morning at the kitchen table with a white cat on my lap which is shedding white hair all over my black top, Ken lives in a tiny place called Monte Serenos, the nearest small town is Los Gatos and the nearest biggish town is San Jose. This is slap bang in the middle of Silicon Valley and the local paper is full of the latest news on Intel and AMD and all the big IT companies as they are all right in this area. The father of Katie’s best friend is one of the engineers at Sun who worked on the Sparc processor.

Yesterday it rained all day and I was suffering from jetlag. Nora took me into Los Gatos for lunch and a wander round the shops. In the evening the family went off to see Gwen Stefani - she comes from the town they lived in 8 years ago and they knew her when she was just getting started. Today we are going to Santa Cruz and tomorrow to Napa to visit the wine country and sample some Chardonnay (yummy). On Sunday I leave San Francisco and fly to Melbourne via the stop over in Auckland.