Rachel and Mike in Australia

No trip across Australia is complete without crossing the Nullarbor. The Nullarbor is a flat, almost treeless plain (name derived from Latin for ‘no trees’) that stretches for 1200 km from east to west and is the world’s largest piece of limestone.

Trees thinning as we approach the Nullarbor Plain

Crossing the Nullarbor remains a feat celebrated by tourist memorabilia (we’re proud owners of a magnet) as even with paved roads it is a bit daunting to see the signs signaling 100-200 km between towns…and towns out here are just roadhouses, which are gas stations, restaurants, mini-marts, and hotels/campervan parks all in one. The settlements historically consisted of one family and children attended school over the radio.

The day we were setting out for our Nullarbor crossing, the Ranger at Cape Arid National Park warned us that it was supposed to get hot the following day — up to 44C. We were a bit worried at how well our eastern european heritage and the 20 year-old van would handle such a high temperature.

46C is no fun!

Never ones to shy away from a challenge, we rose early the next morning and set out. The temperature never got above about 38C, so we thought we had survived the worst heat of the trip unscathed. Apparently the Ranger’s forecast was a few days off because the heat caught up with us. Two days later the thermometer in the shaded cab of the van peaked at 46C (115F)! We were using a 12L carboy for drinking and cooking water and it typically lasted 3 days or so. In 46C, it lasted only one. Between the two of us, we drank ~10L of water and 2.5 L of juice over the course of the day. Luckily, it was a dry heat so putting cold cooler-water soaked towels on our head and neck provided some relief.

Kangaroos remind us a lot of deer. They are most active dusk until dawn and have an unfortunate habit of getting hit by cars. Initially, all our kangaroo sightings were road kill. This was sobering enough for us to make every effort to be finished driving by sundown. On several hikes we managed to get pretty close to some roos. We started a hike in Kosciusko National Park around 3 pm, which I thought would be too early in the afternoon to see any roos (sundown was around 8:30 pm). Boy was I wrong! We had barely been on the trail for 5 minutes when we startled 3 or 4 nearby roos out of their sleep. We watched them hop away and started to continue on. We looked out across the valley and saw that our presence had apparently disturbed more roos than we thought. There was a whole mob of roos hopping across the valley. They just seemed to keep coming. We must have seen at least 100 roos. It was an amazing sight right out of National Geographic. It inspired me to try and capture some roo footage to share with all of you. There were several attempts, the best of which is below…but suffice it so say, I don’t anticipate to receive any job offers from National Geographic.

The last Australian phenomenon that we really enjoyed on our drive was that of ‘Big Things.’ We were first introduced to the concept of Big Things when we went to a screening of the film Big Dreamers at the Australian Embassy in DC. The film is a documentary on the building of the Giant Golden Gumboot in Tully, Australia.

The biggest Big Thing we saw.

Tully’s economy was mainly based on sugarcane farming and when less-expensive Brazilian sugar hit the Australian market, the town’s economy didn’t fair well. Some members of the local Rotary Club decided to give the town’s economy a boost by increasing tourism by erecting a giant Golden Gumboot (in honor of Tully being the wettest town in Australian–it received 7.9 m of rain in 1950). At the beginning of the movie we thought this was a novel, if not the most logical, idea. However over the course of the film, we learned that Big Things are all over Australia. The first one, the Big Banana in Coff’s Harbor, was built in 1964. Some towns embrace their Big things while in other towns the Big Things have fallen into disrepair. Big Dreamers made a special place in our hearts for Big Things, and we tried to stop at all those along the way. Some were better than others, but all provided a story, and what more can you really ask for?

The oddest Big Thing we saw.

We have the rest of our photos from the trip up on Google Maps now: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=100268592381595196808.000460d2637162a1f7cbd.

Driving across Australia, from Perth back to Sydney, reinforced the fact that Australia doesn’t do many things in a small way.  There are large distances between places (we logged ~4500 km total); ridiculously persistent insects; giant sweeping vistas of hills, plains, & beaches; and of course Aussie ‘Big Things.’

We flew out to Perth to pick up the campervan from “Team Westbound” and start our trip back east on January 3rd.  Luckily, we arrived in Perth around the same time as the dung beetle.  I am not enamored with insects in general and particularly not here, where so many are apt to kill you, but I quickly learned to love the dung beetle.  The dung beetle eats flies, and its arrival signals the end of fly season.  Australian flies look like American flies, and buzz like American flies, but they do not behave like American flies.

Flies on Mikey

They follow people and try again and again to land on your eyes and mouth, so you have to constantly wave your hand in your face to try and keep the dozen or so swarming flies off your face.  It can make you a bit crazy. We managed a truce with the flies during a hike in Cape Arid National Park—the flies rode our hats and backs for ~6 km, which was fine with us because they were leaving our faces alone…but why on earth flies would ride on us for a couple hours is a mystery to me.

Australian freight trucks also travel in sort of swarms.  Much of Australian freight is moved by what they call “road trains” which are multi-trailer tractor-trailers (something like 36-wheelers!).  They are particularly daunting because the highways are generally two-lane undivided highways without paved shoulders.  Depending on how strong and which direction the cross breeze is blowing, encountering a road train can mean a significant pull on your vehicle—scary!  We never saw more than two road trains in a row, but apparently, they stack up to 5 behind one another to improve fuel efficiency in some places.

The natural scenery in Australia is fantastic and we loved getting to experience so many beautiful landscapes on our trip.  The most striking was that of the Yeagarup sand dunes.  The sand dunes have blown inland from the ocean and are the largest landlocked dune system in the Southern Hemisphere.  The dunes are moving further inland at a rate of 4 meters per year and swallowing up the forest in the process.  On top of the dunes it looks like a desert scene straight out of the movies and at the edge there is this 100-foot tall wall of sand enveloping everything before it.  Truly an amazing sight.

Atop the sand dunes

Sitting on the edge of the wall of sand. The sand is taller than the tree tops!

I’ll write more about the trip in my next blog, and we’re working on getting photos from our trip up on this Google map of Australia: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=100268592381595196808.000460d2637162a1f7cbd

We made it back from spending Christmas in the States (where we enjoyed spending time with  family and friends and had a white Christmas in CT!) in time to celebrate New Year’s in Sydney.  We had a tasty dinner at a friends whose house has a view of the Harbor Bridge.  The fireworks definitely lived up to their reputation–they were phenomenal!

Sydney New Year's Eve fireworks

Watching the fireworks in Aimee's backyard

We’re starting 2009 with a truly Australian adventure.  Tomorrow morning we’re flying out to Perth (on the western coast of Australia).  We’re meeting up with a couple friends there who have driven their campervan from Sydney to Perth.  We’ll be driving the campervan back to Sydney.  Should be a beautiful trip, though parts of it will be pretty dull.  There will be 2-3 days of crossing the Nullarbor desert, which is mostly just flat, dry, and hot.  Mike’s a little nervous about how we’ll handle the heat after 2 weeks of freezing weather in the States and a couple days of the mild Sydney climate.  The temperature in Perth was supposed to be 41 C (you don’t have to do the conversion to know that’s freaking hot!).  We’ve rented a SPOT transmitter that should track our progress across the country at this website:

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0vyHzuXhXIJgPHbm5WvjM9aOA1DG1KGCq

Think cool thoughts for us!