Melbourne and Southern Australia DOUBLE HEADER!!!

I am writing this from the front passenger seat of the Rav riding across the outback somewhere between Coober Pedy and Woomara. The reason for the delayed nature of the Melbourne blog is that we were having too much fun hanging out with our hosts Sarah and Kath on the final evening before restarting the most massive road trip possible in Australia. Now sit back and relax as I fill you in on the state of the streets of the Richmond of the Southern Hemisphere.

Before I say anything else let me give a massive shoutout to my boy Stuart. He let us stay at his house and helped us locate some tires as well as feeding us. He also allowed us to use his house as the OFFICIAL START POINT OF THE LONGEST ROAD TRIP EVER. For those of you who don't know Ellen and I are in the middle of a huge road trip from Hobart, Tasmania to either Broome, Western Australia or Darwin, Northern Territory. This last decision will be made by coin flip in Alice Springs. THANK YOU STUART! As for the rest of you, I'm sure you're all eagerly awaiting the decision.

Ellen and I jumped off the ferry in Melbourne at 7:00 PM coming from Devonport, Tasmania. I am here to tell you that having your first driving experience of Melbourne should not be in the dark. I may or may not have received a traffic violation from a red light camera. The jury is still out on that though seeing as I have not heard from Craig regarding any mail from the Melbourne Police. We made our way up to Thornbury where we met our friends Sarah and Kath. Ellen and I met our Melbournian friends in the Southwest National park of Tasmania while hiking up Mt. Eliza (you may remember them from a previous post). After some conversation we realized that they wanted us to stay for the weekend and cat sit for their roommate. We were all too happy to do this to take a break from traveling.

In his book In A Sunburned Country Bill Bryson suggests that Melbourne is a city generally in decline. At least socially I can attest that this trend has reversed. Many areas North of the city are being gentrified. Never was there a city more ripe for the hipster culture to take over. The houses look Victorian, the bars look grungy and the bike paths are abundant. Gentrification has caused some of the cool places to go out of the price range of your typical backpacker but there is still plenty of room for the budget conscious traveler to hang out. Lots of the bars run specials and the beer is fairly cheap. All together it's my kind of town.

The city of Melbourne boasts old school infrastructure with a tram system running on most major streets and historic low rise housing. These facts in conjunction with their newer infrastructure has led to a commuter paradise. I refer, of course, to the world class bike trail system the city has created in the last 20 years. Most major streets have bike lanes and some residential streets have been segmented by greenways. This makes them impassable for car traffic but renders them perfect for bikes. There is also a major trail system based on the Yarra river that snakes through the town.

To facilitate this biking culture there are cafes and shops that have sprung up along the bike paths offering certain exclusive services for people who choose to ride in. There are also truly interesting attractions located on the paths. One of these is the Collingwood Childrens Farm. Someone had the bright idea of putting a farm in the middle of the city so children could gain some access to farm animals even if their means wouldn't allow them to leave Melbourne. There are also some bouldering walls scattered along paths throughout the city. A person can have a delightfully eventful day just biking through Melbourne. That is the major reason I thought the city was great. Melbourne seems to have a very flowing feeling in it. Everything feels put in place for a reason and it all feels like a well oiled machine.

Federation Square also rates mention. Fed Square has a large wooded area and boasts the National Gallery of Victoria art museum,Deakin Edge concert hall, among other interesting points of interest. While we were there they had a bat exhibit on. Anyone who knows Ellen is aware that we couldn't possibly stay away from that. The exhibit, named bat mania by Kathy Holowoko, consisted of hundreds of sculptures of the large fruit bats found in Victoria. Ellen and I were impressed.

The famous Melbourne Cricket Ground is there along with the Olympic park are very nearby which adds to the feeling that you are in a very cultured place indeed. This is a city which can do it all does do it all.

Ellen and I took advantage of all the inner city mobility while we were there. Using the old mountain bikes that we've been carting around the entire time we've been here, we explored every little nook and cranny that the Yarra track had to offer. That was how we spent our Easter Sunday :)

The next day we decided to go check out something a little more high octane. The Lysterfield Mountain Bike Park is about an hour from where we were staying in Thornbury. The trails there are very flowy with some really good downhill bits. In true city fashion they have made the best downhill “One Way” so that there is no chance of your awesome downhill bomb being ruined by some noob who is ignorant to the rule of “you don't mess with a man's downhill.” As we weaved through the track I realized that it was not guilty of a sin so prevalent in Virginian mountain bike parks today. They hadn't put a bunch of stupid man-made features in the trail every couple hundred meters. Some people like this sort of behavior but I personally think it ruins the flow and natural feel of a track. It was all true Victorian flow, very cool.

After a couple hours of bombing around the gumtree forest Ellen and I decided to head home and eat some chicken Tikka Masala. Half way through our meal Sarah and Kath showed up from their camping holiday which was a most welcome surprise because it meant we got an extra evening of hang out time.

The next day was spent getting ready to drive across Australia and working in the garden. Sarah and Kath have an awesome little veggie garden behind their house and I figured that, since I would be sitting in a car for the next few days, I should go out and put in some work. It was nice to get a little taste of the old landscaping.

That evening we went over to High St. for some Indian food. Perhaps Sarah or Kath will grace us with the name of the establishment. I just remember that a platter and a beer was $16 which is a steal in Australian money. This truly was the height of living considering the next week we would be on the road living out of the car and off the fat of the land.

The next morning we said our good byes and hit the road. Our next stop on the epic road trip was the southern Victoria coast. This is a well known tourist destination called the Great Ocean Road, then up to the burning heart.

DOUBLE HEADER!

Well now I'm sitting at a hostel in Alice springs on the porch of a very nice little flat Ellen and I rented for the night. Let me tell you right now, the shower I just took was the best I think I've ever had. We've been driving through the desert for 5 days now and at no point have we had a chance to bathe. I think last night was about the longest I could have gone given these conditions but we shall see I'm sure.

After leaving Sarah and Kath's we headed down to the Great Ocean road. This is the highway from Melbourne to Adelaide on the southern coast of Australia. The road starts in the legendary surf town of Torquay and heads west twisting and rolling over the rocky landscape along the Bass Strait. There are a scattering of little towns and hamlets along the way with a charming collection of lighthouses and other reminders that you are by the sea.

Since the Great Ocean Road runs along the South edge of Victoria into South Australia the ocean we were bordering was the Great Southern Ocean. This is the ocean that sweeps right round the world only touching New Zealand, Tierra Del Fuego, and Tasmania. This ocean is notorious for its huge rollers and extremely blue water. As we drove along we saw the waves breaking on the coast and some of them were of epic proportions. The first people to come this way certainly had their work cut out for them!

Leaving the Ocean Road we came across a place called Cheese World. Ellen and I exchanged glances and I immediately whipped off the road and we were out of the car before it was fully stopped. This was your true road side attraction. A giant cheese factory right on the road with a road house outlet. Being backpackers we were in heaven. Free samples of all the gourmet cheeses you could ask for. It was like being at Kroger right when they put out the free cheese plate. Grey nomads and dirt bags like ourselves were having a feeding frenzy in there. We tried all the cheeses and perused the selection of consumables before hurriedly slinking out. There is something I find abhorrent about stopping and using someone's restroom, eating their amazing cheese, then bolting before I get the irresistible urge to actually buy something, and yet, I do it all the time.

Back on the road it was time to start thinking about where to camp for the evening. Ellen, being a prime navigator, realized that if we got off the A1 and started running up B tracks that we would not only get there faster, but run into a wonderful campsite as well. You see why I love this girl? Thanks to this brilliant stroke of logic we ended up staying our first night out of Melbourne in a place called the Annya Road Picnic Area off the C195. This proved to be an amazing decision.

We rocked up just as the sun set and pitched our rooftop tent. We quickly cooked a little dinner and then went looking for some company for the evening. The way Australia camps work, there is usually a little road side stop set about 100 meters off the road with a few weekend warriors, grey nomads and backpackers scattered around it. We went up to some people with horses and a fire but were flatly rejected hanging out with them. They did, however, suggest that we hang out with a more boisterous group on the other side of the area. This turned out to be a wonderful idea. We found a group of backpackers who had “made it” as we say, and had just received residency from a job they had taken in Western Australia. They were on holiday having just gotten their residency and bolted from the job. Excellent company on the whole and Ellen and I have been kicking ourselves that we haven't gotten their details.

The next morning we got up and had a little walk through the forest to look for Koalas. For those of you who know Ellen, she's pretty hard to get stirred up under normal circumstances, but put a fuzzy, or for that matter, a disgusting creature in front of her and she lights up like a Christmas Tree. I seriously don't know what was more adorable, the Koalas or Ellen looking at the Koalas.

After getting our fill of these adorable little creatures we packed up the car and headed out. It was to be our most daunting day of driving yet. We were en route from South Western Victoria to Port Augusta in South Australia. I didn't realize how slow moving Australian roads were at the time and we got to our camp site just after dark again. I would relate the drive across Southern SA for you but, truly, there was nothing of note. We skirted Adelaide and really didn't see much.

We camped at a place called Horrocks Pass. This was my dream campsite. It was on a mountain overlooking a large expanse of desert with the lights of trucks and cars down on the road plying between Adelaide and Port Augusta. I'm not sure why but ever since I was a little kid I've had an image in my head of sitting on a hill in the desert watching the headlights on cars as far as the eye can see moving like ants down in the valley. Well I had found this place, and as a bonus feature, there was an ocean there too! That meant that not only could we watch the stars and the headlights but there was also the possibility of lighthouses. I was in heaven.

Well, as you can imagine, this dream turned into a nightmare. As we got in bed and snuggled down for the night we were reminded what happens on desert mountain passes in the night. The wind begins to howl. We laid in bed wondering if our little car top camper would survive the blasts and generally cursing our misfortune and stupidity for camping in such a place. We figured it was time to call it quits when the wind started picking up the deck of the camper. We hustled out and folded the thing up. Quietly we sat in the car drinking our final beer and contemplating the abject wretchedness that comes with spending the night in the front seat of a smallish car.

At about that moment another trick of the wind revealed its self. The people camped next to us had built a fire earlier that evening. It being perfectly still at sunset they retired to their camper and, due to the snugness of their den, were not stirring due to what was actually quite a lot of wind. From our unique vantage point we started to see sparks and flames build up next to their camper. Ellen and I cursing these fools for their obvious ignorance of the basic rules of fire dutifully got out of our uncomfortable perch and hurriedly doused the fire with a liberal amount of our drinking water. This was a foolish idea. The search to replace our lost water would become a constant source of annoyance for us for days to come.

The next morning we woke (footnote: to actually wake would suggest that we had been asleep which was not the case) bright and early and hit the road. This was to be a landmark day and our tired grumpiness was soon replaced with giddy anticipation. We cruised into Port Augusta at 7:30 AM where we ate breakfast at McDonalds before hitting the famous Stewart Highway.

For those of you who don't know, the Stewart Highway is the road that bisects Australia longitudinally. It runs through over 3000 kilometers from Port Augusta to Darwin through some of the harshest desert in the world. In the 1800s this is where many explorers met a grizzly fate, some of them dragging boats for the inland river systems that they were sure they would find. Oddly enough that trend has continued today. We were astonished at the number of cars towing boats we encountered. We were a bit surprised by this there not being a drop of water within, sometimes, 1500km of where they were. Why would someone who owns a ranch in the heart of Australia buy a boat just to drive with it for two full days whenever he/she wanted to use it. The Australians are nothing if not hearty.

The other thing about long distance desert driving is the stark beauty of everything around contrasted with the amazing mind numbing effect of it. God forbid you start thinking about something vexing like finances, or fuel economy or Miley Cyrus because there your brain shall sit until something like a road train or a road house pulls you out of it. After a couple of days of driving and nights camping in the desert we came across the first major side road we had seen. This sign said Uluru 265km. Uluru is the name of Ayres Rock since it has been placed back in the hands of the Aborigines. In fact Uluru was always the name of the rock, it just had a little stint like Prince did around the year 2000 where it was called Ayres Rock.

Uluru

The cultural center was very interesting before going in to see Uluru. The description of the various legends and aboriginal beliefs surrounding the rock. One of the things that struck me is that the Aboriginal beliefs prohibit them from climbing the rock. It struck me as odd that even though they request that you don't climb Uluru people do it anyway. There are hundreds of people a day that climb up despite the repeated requests that they do not. Personally I would have liked to climb Uluru but I couldn't bring myself to insult Aboriginal culture in such a way. The obvious counter argument to this is that if they really don't want people climbing it they should just close it to climbers. Indeed this did occur to us as strikingly odd. Chalking this up to one of the little eccentricities of life we stayed a respectful distance away and basked in the glory of a giant rock in the middle of the desert.

The next day we got up and did something that I had been looking forward to for some time. There is a 99km stretch of “road” that runs parallel to the Lassiter Highway 67 km to the north. This unlikely piece of thoroughfare is called the Earnest Giles track. It runs out through the sandy desert between the Kings Canyon road and the Stewart Highway. Ever since I had seen it on the map I had wanted to drive it. The Giles track just seemed like the perfect amount and placement of desert driving. It didn't take us out of our way but it did place us in a fairly remote location.

Not Gloating about our Rav4 or anything. Taken on Earnest Giles Highway

The road it's self was marked at it's beginning by a sign stating that four wheel drive would be required to pass and that in the wet season the road was not recommended to anyone. Excited, Ellen turned the car down the track and started in on it.

What followed was less of a road and more a place where the trees and scrub had been replaced by corrugated (washboard) segments of passable terrain. An added bonus was discovered when we saw on the sign that 11km out from the Stewart Highway there were meteorite craters to be gawked at before returning to the monotonous open road.

The track led through some amazing desert landscapes. There were hills and groves of eucalypts that looked charmingly like palm trees. There were many groups of cattle along the road giving it that true outback feel. Once we even came across a herd of wild horses called brumbys in the colorful desert vernacular. We saw only one car out there, a Nissan Patrol that came suddenly out of our wake of dust and overtook us in a surprising shower of red dirt and small rocks. We slowed to let their dust settle and continued on our merry way swooning over what seemed like our private piece of desert road.

http://youtu.be/pmU-UJ9FBMc youtube video of the Earnest Giles road.

Near the end of the trip we came to the Henbury Meteorite Craters. This was, without a doubt, the most rewarding experience of our outback adventures thus far. At the end of a 5km side track there was a very well kept little conservation reserve. A self guided tour of the meteorite craters took us on a 1.2km walk through the desert. Someone had painstakingly put signs at high points around the craters explaining the explosive formation of craters and the biologic anomalies that they were. Each crater was a more or less round hole about 50m in diameter with a little ecosystem living in the bottom. One of them was fortunate enough to hit where a wet weather stream filled it from time to time and was actually quite green. We dutifully snapped pictures and admired the silence.

I was taken back to Bill Bryson's book and his experience at the Devil's Marbles. He concluded that if you took this site and placed it in America or Europe that in every family home there would be a picture of mom and the kids picnicking under the rocks. I could very much see what Bryson meant when he observed this. Here we were at a site of no astronomical insignificance and, aside from the lizard that I scared into dropping his tail upon opening the box to sign the register, we were the only ones there. In fact we neither saw any one driving in or out on our way back to the Stewart Highway. I will grant you that it was 16km on a rough dirt road off the Highway and one would have needed at least an all wheel drive to get there but still, this place was at least worth looking at!

We cruised the last 120km into Alice Springs ready for some respite from the drive. Upon getting back in the passenger seat I consulted our book Camps 8* as to the frequency of sites like the Henbury Craters and to my astonishment they were everywhere! All along the road from Port Augusta to Darwin there were sites of infinite interest. I resolved to check out at least one a day for the remainder of our trip.

Coming into Alice Springs was a bit of a surreal experience. We had been driving for two and a half solid days and had come upon nothing more than some road houses and a curious underground town called Coober Pedy where they mined opals. Now here was a town about the size of Blacksburg VA and apparently it was inhabited by permanent residents. Charmed by the existence of such a town we immediately checked ourselves into a hostel of a quality I have rarely seen. Anyone who has stayed in a hostel will agree with me that they are indeed, a dubious form of refuge. For those interested then name of the establishment is Alice Backpackers Lodge. There was chill music playing in the background, the people were friendly and the pool was clean. We quickly resolved to stay for a couple days and relax, restock and write blog posts.

It is from the front porch of the cottage we rented for an unfathomable $68 per night that I am writing this inordinately long blog post. Ellen is talking with her brother and her mom sitting next to me as I write. And it is from this deeply contented position that I will bid you my adieu. I plan on polishing off my third cup of coffee and then setting about the wreck that is our car/living space. We then plan to tackle the upper half of the Stewart Highway and lazily meander our way to Darwin looking for jobs all the time.

View from the porch of the hostel where I am writing this post.

As my usual sign off of keep on truckin Blacksburg seems to have been rendered obsolete by the reading of this blog by our Tasmanian and Melbournian friends I will now revise it to the more contrite Keep on Truckin World :)

<3 Joker and Ellen

*I don't think I've explained this yet. Jasmine and Craig McCarter told us about a book in Australia called Camps: Australia Wide 8^thed (hereafter referred to as camps 8). It is a comprehensive guide of free camps and points of interest along with road maps of the entirety of Australia. Clearly for people like us this is a necessary wealth of information and is where we get most of our information about places to stay and things to see. We have also been annotating it and will have it available for viewing when we return home.

Postlude: Any stylistic or references to places and experiences that seem to bear an eery relation to Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country are purely incidental. I do, however, recognize that we are using that most esteemed author as something of a guide where applicable. I do not imagine that Bryson will ever read this unprofessionally (if someone wishes to pay me for writing this I will gladly up my standards :) written travel blog of a dirt bag backpacker, but should he come across it, thanks for the help Bill.