Back out into the Outback

Click on any photo to enlarge it.

Our views along the Southern Ocean, from Western Australia to the peninsulas near Adelaide, have been breathtaking (there's Art on top), so we’re a little sad to bid the turquoise and deep cobalt waters farewell. Still, unexplored lands await us, and we want to reach the far, far north before it’s too hot and rainy.

Down here the early spring weather is very changeable, from gale force winds and chilly temperatures to balmy sunshine. Here’s a bathing beauty in a sweet, private cove. The island in the distance is covered with sea birds in constant motion and raucous conversation.

Although our bouncing friends are a common sight, it’s always a thrill to encounter a ’roo or wallaby. Here’s an itchy one with a curious baby in her pocket.

We see quite a few emus, too. This mob of 13 is the most we’ve seen at one time. When they run, their feathers bounce and sway like flouncy skirts.

We have left the coast, but the wind still knows how to sweep through with insane abandon. In the flat landscape there’s nothing to stop it, and the red dust is so fine it can move through solid walls. Everything we own, including our skin, is taking on a ruddy hue.

In the harsh, arid outback, plants and animals have evolved for survival. Striking spring flowers vie for the attention of pollinating insects. We take enough photos to create a botany book. Sturt’s desert pea is one of the most outrageous of these wild blooms.

Broken Hill, a city of over 20,000, thrives as an unpretentious oasis in the middle of the vast, dusty, red desert. Mining (silver, zinc, and lead) is its lifeblood, its colorful history stretching back to the discovery of a silver lode in 1885. Early mine conditions were appalling, resulting in many deaths. The rise of unions improved conditions and gave the townspeople a strong sense of unity. We meet a young man who tells us one has to be born here to be an A-Grader. If you marry an A-Grader, you become a B-Grader. Only A-Graders and B-Graders can obtain mine jobs. No scabs here!

Broken Hill is also a hub for a phenomenal Aussie institution: the Royal Flying Doctor Service. There are only 20 million people on this entire continent, and over half of them live in the handful of cities along the southeastern coast. For the people sprinkled here and there around the bush and outback, the RFDS was born in the 1920s. It originally provided emergency medical service and now includes regularly-scheduled clinic days. The planes are set up as flying ambulances.

Back to nature, here are a couple of guys we frequently dodge on the roads: the docile sleepy or stubby-tailed lizard and the warrior-like frilled lizard. Each is about a foot long.

And check out this bizarre creature. It’s a caterpillar that has glued together a kind of sleeping bag cocoon built of small sticks. It’s hauling its burden by its front feet as it searches for a safe place to attach itself while it changes its identity.

Having left ocean-side cliffs, we’re back to finding our jollies along Oz’s many unstable gorges. If you can pronounce Mutawintji National Park, you may go there. From the top of this rugged world we make our fearless descent with the aid of a rope.

For marching around on rocks, we should take lessons (or not!) from these agile, feral goats. Goats are actually an introduced species in Oz and are therefore undesirable in this fragile land where they wreak ecological havoc. Nevertheless we enjoy a good show. This mama cautiously risks coming close to us as we sit on the opposite side of a desert rock water hole. We soon discover why when her twins emerge from a hidden crevice and duck under her belly to nurse. Here these two seem to be looking at the second baby back under the rock.

Wherever we go the finest of humanity emerges to greet us. Don’t be shy; you know who you are. Aussies are excellent! Thank you.

Surviving the (shudder) Nullarbor!

We take a final hike up the tallest rock we can find at the edge of Albany, a huge block of granite overlooking the bay and town. It’s a glorious day, we’re sorry to leave the area, but that demon wanderlust drags us forward to parts unknown.


We head inland for a change. On our way to the Gold Rush city of Kalgoorlie, which is still actively blasting gold out of the earth in the colossal Super Pit, we stop outside Hyden so that Art can hang ten on the Wave. Don’t worry, no sharks here. Heading into the hinterlands on unsealed roads to visit more gigantic granite, one rough stretch of two-track takes us 175 kms through dense bush without meeting a single other vehicle.

Kalgoorlie is a big city, so right away after stocking up on groceries, etc. we say to each other, “Let’s get out of here.” On our way out we visit the Super Pit where a modern-day mining conglomerate has bought all the individual mines and dynamited them all into one huge hole in the ground. Enormous trucks and cranes and whatnot hum noisily around down inside, appearing as small and busy as ants. Our next stop is tiny Norseman, named for a horse who pawed up a chunk of gold with his hoof, setting off another gold frenzy in the late 1800s. In those days hardy afgan camels hauled gold and supplies. Here is a captivating sculpture in corrugated metal commemorating their heydey.


And outside Norseman another adulterated Aussie sign. This one’s for Aaron, who would have laughed. (Click on the photo for an enlarged view.)



And then it’s time to cross the … gulp … 1200 kms of the Nullarbor! Legends of the vast Nullarbor Plain (nullus arbor = no trees) hint at people and probably even entire vehicles drying swiftly to dust and blowing over the towering limestone cliffs, of nothing but scrubby plants surviving the harshness, of a road so straight and tedious that the inevitable hypnosis spells doom. Indeed there is a stretch of 145 kms without the least bend. Someone asks us if it’s true about the zigzag: that the road engineers grew so fed up with construction without deviation that they introduced a frivolous wiggle in the bitumen.

Gosh!


And wildlife. Here’s an alert for three feral animals. Furthermore, behold, we can now assure you that wombats are in fact not mere mythical creatures. Still, Barry and Jeanette, this does not let you off the hook for Live Wombat Patrol when we reach Nowra. This poor, road-killed fellow has been propped by the side of the road with a beer bottle… evidently dead drunk.





The Nullarbor does seem to be an appropriate final resting place for Art’s pants. Alas, duct tape patches only work for so long. When he can’t move without another spot disintegrating, we know it’s time to say farewell. (But Barb, I did save a couple of zippers!)





The base of the Nullarbor is in fact a ridiculously mammoth single limestone rock, formed more than a few years ago when the area used to be a seabed.

Since limestone is soft, water has carved countless caverns and tunnels. Blowholes such as this one breathe and sigh. Closer to the ocean there are blowholes that respond to big waves with terrifying, Jurassic-like ROARING along with expelling air and/or water.




All along the water’s edge, for hundreds of kms, are thrilling 300-foot limestone cliffs.


With wind and the thundering sea below, there can be significant eroding and undercutting of the edges. Periodically chunks crack off. You want to stay a respectful distance inland.





But that’s so hard to do when Southern Right whales pass below, frolicking with their calves.




Amazingly enough we survive our passage along the edge of the Southern Ocean and down the wild west coast of the Eyre Peninsula.

If you look at the handy map of Oz in the upper right corner of this blog, you’ll see us waving from just above the “ai” of “Adelaide.” It is on the bottom point, along the beach, that Mr. Limpet-eyes and I discover this piece of whalebone jaw standing at attention. What the camera doesn’t capture is what happens a few seconds later when a sneaker wave reminds me that you should never turn your back on the ocean (yeah, yeah, I can hear you, Adele and Mitcho).




If we have held your attention this long, you are rewarded with a glimpse of Kym, a Legend in His Own Bathtub and a Hero in Our Hearts. If ever ANYTHING electrical goes wrong with your vehicle, from wherever you are in the world, we suggest you go straight to Lincoln Auto Electrics in Port Lincoln. Not only does he know more than the average koala, he’s very funny, and if you’re really lucky he’ll give you some whiting fillets (caught from his boat “Poacher”).