Australia 12: Can You Say This Fast?!

My favourite photo of Australia: land, water, sky.

Australia has the best place names ever.
I always liked the Alaskan town called Tok. But Australia has one better: Bukbukluk!
Did you know that the town in Alaska called Chicken, was originally called Ptargiman. But no one knew how to spell it so they changed it to Chicken.
Australia has the following gems:
How would you like to live in Humpty Doo?
You heard of Kakado but how about Jimbalakudunj?
Then there is Tom Price,
Monkey Mia and
Wurrumenbumanja.
There’s a town called Wishbone and a place called Useless Loop.
Wouldn’t you love to see a place called The Bungle Bungles? It’s a area of unusual rock formations.
If you had enough pieces, and if you were allowed geographical names in Scrabble, wouldn’t you love to spell Koombooloomba?
Goondiwindi and Toowoomba are not far from each other.
The longest place name is a hill in the south called Mamungkukumpurangkuntjunya! Say that one fast.
Many names here are, of course, British. There is Wales, Victoria, and so on.
But there’s also a bit of Dutch history, especially on the west coast where Dutch sailors either came ashore on purpose or by accident. We are near a town called Zuytdorp. There’s also Dirck Hertog’s Island. and Arnhemland. Today we visited Vlamingh Lighthouse. And of course Tasmania was named for the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman.
We saw a great t-shirt. It had a sign post pointing to: DIDYABRINGYURGROGALONG. Have to say it out loud to get it...
For now, we are on our way to the Ningaloo Reef. I can’t wait to see it, no matter how it is spelled.

Exmouth, Western Australia is a pretty isolated town. I felt that we had left the Outback, being on the coast, but people here still calls this the Outback. Exmouth feels like a small, laid-back beach town which might become really popular in a few years. It has a small centre with dive shops, a bakery, a grocery store. I have been to towns that boasted being famous for their wine, their cheese, having a giant lobster, or something like that. Exmouth holds the record for strongest mainland wind gust, measuring 267 kph! While we are here, it’s been trying to break that record. Very windy but that’s actually nice when it’s so hot.
But Exmouth is also very different from what we expected. I imagined the west coast to have green hills, perhaps because I’m a North American west coaster. Here the west coast, at least so far, is simply desert. Red rocks, shrub, even termite mounds right up to the ocean. There literally is only a row of sand dunes in between desert and reef.

Camping in Ningaloo Reef National Park

Oh, that reef. I’ll let you in on a secret...
We’ve all heard of the Great Barrier Reef. The west coast, has a similar reef. A bit smaller but still some 300 KM long... and this one is RIGHT off the main land. You don’t need to take an expensive cruise to reach it. You don’t need to go way out at 50 knots an hour... You simply put on your mask and snorkel, wade out into the turquoise water and voila.... coral bommies all around: red fish, blue fish, yellow fish too. It’s awesome.
We camped in town first where a huge emu visited us. Then we found THE best spot in the entire Nigaloo Reef National Park - right off the beach with a view of the water and sand. The draw back is that national park campgrounds have no facilities. So we went unplugged and love it.

We enjoyed a glass of wine with fellow campers, listened to stories of kite surfing and sailing on the blue corral lagoon. Kangaroos lazed around us in the shade. Then we made dinner and watched the sun set.

Now, we’ve been telling you all about how wonderful our Australian travels are: warm temperatures, swimming, tropical beaches... So we figure it’s time to tell you about the other side of traveling. How it’s not at all what it’s cracked up to be. If you have to stay home, this may make you feel better:

:-( The distances we have to drive here to get anywhere are terrible... One day we did 930 KM.

:-(The temperatures can be murder. It’s been an average of 33 degree, sometimes up to 41 degrees C.

:-( The flies are awful... they insist on settling permanently up your nose.

:-( You always have to walk to a shower building, dragging all of your clothes, towel, toiletries, the key... Then you have to balance on one foot in a wet showerstall, trying to get dressed.

:-( The flies are terrible.

:-( There’s no Heineken to be found in the Outback! Talk about hardship…

:-( It’s hard to find good coffee here, especially in the supermarket. Almost only instant.

: -( You should see the flies here.

:-( We keep hearing about killer jellyfish, crocs, spiders, snakes.. That sort of stuff starts to take a toll on the mind. And don’t ever forget to lift up a toilet seat before sitting on it. You do have to check for tiny but deadly spiders…

:-( We have a sunburn. And sand in unmentionable places.

:-( There’s just two of us. If you want a new conversation it gets limited sometimes.

:-( When we run out of a book to read, all we can do is hope to find a book exchange in the next campground. New paperbacks are $20.- here.

:-( Our stove has 3 burners but you can only fit two small pans on it at once.

:-( Did I mention the flies?

:-( Our fridge is about a quarter of a normal one. And it’s full of beer. “Baby beer,” Kees says, referring to the alcohol content of 2.5%.

:-( Almost no internet, and if we can get it it’s expensive.

:-( You should see the flies. They like beer.

:-( Our bathroom is about half the size of a small broom closet. Try pulling up your pants in that.

:-( We see more roadkill than houses.

There. I hope this makes you feel better.
Now I have to run. To the gorgeous white sand beach with the blue water and palm trees. Sorry.

Australia 11: Heading West & Meeting The Cucumber Police.

Baobab in the Outback

We are heading west across the continent of Australia. Australia is paranoid about anyone bringing in invasive species: animals, flowers, trees... anything non-native (except people). And understandably so. In the past anything that was brought in, flourished and took off with a vengeance. Cats. Rabbits. Blackberries. They’re all out to conquer a world of native plants and animals. I was utterly amazed when, upon landing at Sydney Airport, we were told to remain seated with our seat belts securely fastened. Then the flight attendants opened all overhead compartments and proceeded to spray the entire inside of the plane with pesticide. My mouth had dropped open in disbelief but I quickly closed it and actually huddled under my scarf and tried not to breathe. The smell reminded me of the long banned Flit sprays my parents used in mosquito season. I come from Salt Spring Island where, if you so much as whisper the words “Round Up” people gasp and stare at you. I wanted to ask what I was being sprayed with but did not get a chance.
Having now been in Australia for a while, I am slightly more sympathetic. Think of it the other way. What if we, inadvertently, brought back Australian flies? Heaven help us. The buggers could easily come aboard airplanes inside our nostrils or riding inside our ears. Whereas Canadian flies are polite, almost apologetic if they land on your arm, Australians flies insist on a close personal relationship. They like your mouth. The closer the better. Your eyeballs are fine too. So if there is a chance of importing Australian flies to other parts of the world, perhaps we should spray all airplanes...

Kookaburra

Last night we crossed the border between Northern Territories and Western Australia. And there we met the Cucumber Police! They have a real border station and uniformed guards who are out to get your veggies. I’m not sure what exactly they are looking for, but they seem to live in fear of your potatoes. I surrendered two wrinkled oranges and some limp lettuce. But that wasn’t enough. The guard boarded our camper and proceeded to go through all cupboards. Two blushing tomatoes were caught in the act and arrested. An innocent zucchini was hauled off as a common criminal. A cold, baked potato was handcuffed and contained. Even the banana peels from the garbage got a life sentence.
Those guards do a good job protecting their state, I’m sure. But I’d hate to spend my life confiscating carrots.
Come to think of it, perhaps they should train all those rabbits that were introduced to the continent. I’m sure they’d sniff out every last carrot from every passing camper van.

We finally crossed the entire continent and arrived in Broome, WA. I had read about a touristy, crowded town but on Saturday afternoon most things were closed and the streets were half empty. Strolled through a tiny Chinatown at 37º. Finally found something I wasn’t able to buy anywhere in the Outback: knitting needles. I had made due with a pair of chopsticks but now I can make more proper sleeves for the sweater I’m knitting. Campground is very close to the white sands of Cable Beach, supposedly one of the top 5 best beaches in the world.
“Can I swim here?” I ask in the campground office. “Sure,” says the lady at the counter. “Is it safe?” I want to make sure because I’m starting to learn that these Aussies are sometimes just too laid back.
“Sure,” she repeats.. Then adds, “Just the odd hammerhead shark and a croc last week.”
I decide not to swim.

Aussies are such wonderful, lacksadaisy characters! Most men in the Outback are rugged cowboys. Stopping at a roadhouse, hundreds of miles from anywhere, you see families buying an ice cream, roadtrain drivers going for a meal and everyone else just getting petrol. One guy get out of his car. Must have been 65, 70 years old. Standard bush clothing: rugged hiking boots with wool socks. Sleeveless vest showing heavy biceps. Suntanned face in the shade of a leather cowboy hat (called a bush hat). This one had a long thin, white ponytail and instead of the standard dusty shorts he was wearing a long purple sari wrapped around his waist.

On our second day in Broome we got up at 5 AM for a long, 8 KM, walk on the beach before it got too hot.
Spent the rest of the day doing laundry and cleaning the camper. Beat lots of red dust from the pillows and even mopped the floor.
But soon it’s time to continue our drive south. Kind of a bummer - no sooner have you made it to the gorgeous beaches of the coast or you need to go back into the desert. More than 500 KM from Broome to the next town. Same long straight roads through shrub and red earth. Even knowing that the coast is about 15 KM on your right, doesn’t help much if you can’t see it. The distances here are amazing. It kind of reminds me of Nunavut, Canada’s Arctic region. If those remote, isolated villages had roads connecting them, it would be similar to here. Hundreds of kms to the next town. And it’s easy to miss the one roadhouse in between where you can get gas. Often it literally is one building. But some places on the map turn out to be one shed with the name spray painted on it. Have even seen several places that show on the map and are one big truck tire on the side of the road with the name spray painted on it. Perhaps there’s a cattle station somewhere off in the bush. But you can’t see it from the road.

We follow the bright red track into the bush. It leads to brilliant blue sky and a pure white beach: Eighty Mile Beach. They sure could use more surveyors in Australia. Not once have the distances on the maps and on the signs and on our odometer been the same.

Eighty Mile Beach. Life doesn’t get much better than this. White sand and an amazing array of shells. Turquoise waters. Little white waves to play in. Not really swim because of sharks, but still nice. We took a long walk, searched for and found gorgeous sea shells. Watched the sun set with a glass of wine in the sand.

West coast sunset

Australia 8: Alien Invaders en route to Uluru

 I wonder if someone should tell Australians that their country has been invaded. I don’t think city people will sleep if they knew the extent to which the entire country has been taken over by aliens!
Cities, networks of roads, amazing dwellings have sprouted up all over the Outback and beyond. Millions, no billions of the invaders have taken over the country. Termites that is.
All over Australia we have seen termite mounds, thousands along the roads, into the bush. In the harshest areas where humans couldn’t hope to live, these creatures thrive.
At first we wondered what the red stone peaks were. Ant hills? But they were too point, too stony. Later we learned that these termite mounds only occur in Australia. I guess when the Dutch and Spanish explorers first spotted the continent, and turned up their noses at it, the termites grinned and said “We’ll take it!” Now they own the lot of it.
From small red mounds along the curb, to yellow towers of over 2 meters tall - termite mounds are everywhere. I even saw postcards of termite mounts. Really.

They are impressive. Like ants and bees, termites have a queen, nymphs, workers, soldiers and alates (swarmers). Each has its own job to do. The termite is only slightly larger than an ant, sometimes called ‘white ant’ because their skin is so thin it is nearly transparent. Such a vulnerable insect couldn’t live in this climate if it wasn’t for their amazing architectural skills. The mounts protect the queen, who lives near the bottom surrounded by soldiers. Near the top is the food storage. The mounts are completely water proof (important in monsoon season), fire resistant, and insulated. They have aligned their homes north-south so that it receives the least amount of heat and one side is always in the shade. Scientists have figured out that these ‘magnetic’ termites sense north-south. They are blind so they can’t see where the sun is. The mounds are ventilated to prevent fungi and bacteria from spoiling their food. The colors of the mounds change, of course, as the soil changes. They range from gray to yellow to fiery red.
Even the style of architecture seems to change per region. I wonder if what the termites teach each other, changes subtly until a whole new style is achieved. In some areas the mounds are skinny and pointy, while lately we have seen much rounder, wider mounds that almost resemble upside-down strawberry pots.  
We can probably learn much from these amazing insects. For now, it’s the most abundant species we have seen. Australians have a wicked sense of humor. They have taken to dressing up the mounds. There’s no other form of entertainment when driving roads that are thousands of kilometers long with not much else in sight but termite mounds. So we see termite mounds along the road wearing t-shirts, aprons, hardhats, sunglasses, even frilly underwear. I don’t know how the termites feel about this, but it sure gives us something to look forward to as we continue to drive towards Uluru, the red heart of the continent.

Uluru, or Ayres Rock as it was formerly known, is a huge stone formation in the very centre of Australia, a sacred site for aboriginal people and the iconic image of the continent. We stayed in the National Park’s campground. The campground is part of a village of hotels, store, restaurants and visitors centre that, more or less, blends into the surroundings. At sunset we drove 25 KM into the park to a viewing spot where we parked, along with many others and had a perfect, unobstructed view of the big rock as it changed colors in the setting sun.
Was it worth driving thousands of miles for?
It certainly stirred my heart, both as the icon it is and for its stark, natural beauty.

One morning we got up early to beat the daytime’s heat and walked the circumference. The shadows and lights played on the rock that changed from brown to fiery red. The visitor’s centre gave a good impression of the importance of the rock as well as the geology of the area.

One day, at 6 AM, we drove to Uluru only to discover that we didn’t have enough gas in our tank to drive all the way to the sun rise viewpoint. So we didn’t join those crowds but got an early start on our hike around the base. A 10 KM loop skirts the big orange mountain. It was still nice and cool but we did have to cover our heads with fly nets. Kees looked like a walking raisin bread with all the flies who hitched a ride on his head and shoulders. They didn’t seem to like me as much.
Our hike was great and interesting. In my head I could hear the didgeridoos of native people.... I think we did hear dingos singing in the distance.
A visit to the aboriginal culture center taught us more about a very recent way of life. People not much older than us, who remember seeing the first white person. So much has changed in their life time. And not all for the better. Imagine living a peaceful life, living off the land, learning from your elders. And then having that entire rug pulled out from underneath you. Much like Canada’s First Nations people they could not practise their way of living, eating, dancing, celebrating, even speaking. It’s hard to understand that fair skinned children were taken from their families to  be raised by white families. Not ‘just’ put in boarding schools but stolen from their families. People our age remember their mothers hiding them when government officials came to their village. What possessed white people to act that way? Slavery, prohibiting other cultures from speaking their own language, taking everything.... The mind boggles at how some people acted. Hopefully in the past tense. There’s a movement on now called “Bring Them Home” trying to locate those ‘children’ to put them back in touch with their families.
Australia’s aboriginal people have beautiful faces, as if carved from mahogany. Broad noses, very curly hair. Women were painting their famous dot stories outside the visitors centre. Inside was information on how the National Park is jointly run by locals and white people. If an elder has passed away, their photo is covered up and their name cannot be mentioned anymore. We were struck by how many similarities there are to Canada’s Inuit people: the sounds of drumming and chanting, the way the words look.

One morning, at 5:45 AM, we drove to the Kata Tjuta range to see the sun rise. These mountains are 50 KM from Uluru, of the same stone but more broken into individual shapes. But I was disappointed by how many people are here. Whole bus loads show up and crowd onto the viewing platforms. We couldn’t even get close enough to see Uluru in the distance.  The other disappointment is that you are not allowed to take photos anywhere: around the mountains, in and near the visitor centre, etc. etc.
We started on the hike around Kata Tjuta but it was a clamber over boulders, and too many people. So, after a final farewell to the big rock, we headed back to Alice Springs. The park gave us a fond farewell by having a herd of feral camels roam in plain view!
37ø C in Alice Springs.

Australia 6: Birds, Bush Poets and The School of the Air:

The number and variety of birds in Australia is mind blowing. Living in the country, we are quite used to having lots of birds around. But multiply and amplify that many times to get what we hear here. None are the same as the European or North American birds. We are not particularly birdwatchers, but we see white parakeets with yellow combs, lots of black and white “magpies” types, some black “crow” like birds. Vultures. A cross of dove and pigeon.
Their songs, at the break of dawn around 5 AM, are hilarious. One is exactly like a whistling man who forget the tune, hesitates and tries again.

Another bird sounds exactly like he’s snoring: a loud rattle followed by a whistle.
There are flocks of very excited birds. At the first ray of light they all chant “HERE-we-go! HERE-we-go!”
There are alarm-clock-birds, a Volkswagen-bird (sounds like he can’t get started), a telephone-bird, and of course the kookaburra who laughs at them all.

One night, in a campground, we attend a bush poet evening. I love it. Two women perform a cross between stand-up comedy and poetry. Bush cowboys are well known for their long entertaining ballads, which relate all aspects of life, funny incidents and everything else.

We stayed 2 nights in Mt Isa at a quiet caravan park with a nice pool. Slept in, had tea in bed, did all our laundry, even mopped the floor of our camper. We visited a small aboriginal center where we chatted with a lovely lady. She told us that aboriginal people have only been recognized in Australia’s Constitution as of THIS MONTH. Unbelievable.

One of the most enjoyable visits was to the School of the Air. In several cities, this special school for Outback children has learning centers where you can get a tour. Many of the students live eight hours of more from the nearest town. Teachers talk with them each day, at a set time, over the phone. The ranches are often so remote that they don’t even have internet access.  The kids don’t see their teacher, just talk with them via the radio waves about their lessons. They even learn music, like playing the violin, via the telephone! The ‘school’ was full of art on the walls and large projects that students had mailed in. Children are schooled during elementary and middle school and sometimes also into high school but many high school students go to boarding schools in Queensland. Some boys return to work on the (company or family) ranges. When I asked about further education, I was given an example of a girl from a family of 7 children, who is now doing her PhD in math at Cambridge.