Now, allow me to digress just a tiny bit, back to a few weeks ago. I was still living at the nunnery, I was job hunting, kindof, and unsuccessfully at that. It was a big saturday nite out on the town, and my irish friend Richie says to me: "Well. Me and Barry and driving to Uluru on monday, you should come." Slipping back into my old ways, i was dismissive of the idea; after all, wasn't I supposed to be job hunting? Plus, I had JUST moved into my new apartment that day. and wasn't i excited about that! My own bed, room, siiiiiggggh. And, for gods sake, it's a hard 3 day drive in one direction, a week would clearly not be enough time. Right?
Sunday morning I decided to go with them. Sunday evening we planned. Monday morning, nice and early, we were on the road, on our way out of melbourne, hurtling towards adelaide, with nothing but the thought of flat red landscapes and near-unbearable heat seducing our minds and exciting our bodies.
Thank god the traveler in me won out that one! I'd realized that it was my last and only chance to see the outback, to see SOMETHING of the rest of australia before returning to canada when my visa runs out at the end of july. I had no money to spend on this kind of thing, but as my 4 friends were in the same boat as me, I was sure to spend as little a possible. The plan was to camp all along, to spend one or two days up there, to eat only supermarket-picnic lunches and dinners. And with 5 people; it could never ever be any cheaper than this.
Our vessel was a big old 80s boat of a Volvo, complete with sheepskin seat covers, which Barry was renting off some random Aussie guy for nearly-nothing-a-week. It alternated between being spacious and cramped, depending on how tired we were, how well we'd slept the nite before, etc. Day one was a westward drive thru Victoria's farmland and forests towards Adelaide, our first stop. The temperature had noticeably changed upon our arrival. We explored the little city a bit and bought camping gear for the week to come, including a tent that was an exact replica of the one I had lived in back in Byron. We visited a music shop and unabashedly played like children with every different kind of instrument. Adelaide felt reassuringly small and yet urban, reminding me of Ottawa. I found myself really enjoying this scale of urbanity.
Day 2 was the REAL beginning of this adventure. We headed due north from Adelaide, and within a few hours were stripping off layers of clothing as our volvo transformed into a sauna. I was spellbound by the horizon as it opened into something impossibly expansive. That night as the sun set: the sky, the sky!! It filled my senses. My eyes couldn't drink it up fast enough. Though living things were scarce, i felt enveloped by nature. We were passengers in a shiny steel boat that was hurtling at top speed across an ancient sea of sand and soil, a terrain peppered with ancient, crumbling rocks that seemed to laugh at my gall. Sorry if i'm waxing poetic, but nothing about 3 days of driving across notoriously unchanging terrain was uninteresting to me!
I'd heard so much about outback driving; how important it was to bring along water and spare fuel, how flat and straight the road was, the risk of kangaroos as dusk. In practice, however, the road was well signed and well travelled (but dusk was in fact terrifying...) Coober Pedy was a ghost town straight out of an old western, and surprisingly dead considering it was pretty much smackdab halfway up to Uluru. Coober Pedy: where the main attraction is an underground Church and the famous opal mines look like piles of dirt alongside the highway. Where the weekly delivery of fresh fruits, veg, and bread happens on wednesdays, and didn't it just happen to be tuesday?! I was determined to buy a piece of rough opal, and found myself entering a dusty, big shop with faded, handpainted signs. The lights were off, and I had to give a little shout to rouse the shop owner. He bustled in turning on lights, urging me in his thick greek accent that he would make me a good deal. He excitedly told me that he had been to canada, and with fondness recalled a 'great love' in Montreal. Walking out 15 minutes later turning a lovely shimmery blue rock over in my hand, I had the feeling I'd been shafted, but didn't care.
After DAYS of driving, of making and discussing ipod playlists, of hundreds of silly-face photos taken inside the car, of drastically increasing food/alcohol/petrol prices, our bodies stiff and sore from sleeping on the ground, our nerves frayed from the incessant buzzing of water-hungry-flies; after 62 hours of crossing the outback, we finally arrived at "The Rock."
In the wake of flatness that defies imagination, Uluru rose out of the ground like some mystical red beast. It was captivating, invigorating, and easy to see why so many sacred aboriginal sites could be found here. We hiked the Olgas, and then explored the base of Uluru at sunset, marveling as it transformed from golden beige to burning orange to brown to darkness... No pics of the sacred sites however, as this is extremely disrespectful of the aboriginal tradition which reveres these sites through secrecy. In fact, I think you're not even supposed to write about them..... hmm.....
And then we drove back.
This adventure was so much more than just seeing Uluru, you see. Once at dusk we almost hit a wild camel. We veered off the highway at one point to explore what had been a lake 30 years earlier; thanks to drastically changing australian conditions nothing remained now but a thick layer of salt crystals.
The day we left Uluru, we finally had our first car troubles! Seeing that our fuel level was low, we had wisely pulled over to top up the gas tank from our petrol can, but then the darned thing JUST WOULDN'T START. Within 30 seconds of popping our hood, someone stopped to offer help, so barry left with them, headed for the next petrol station. A very VERY hot, dry hour later, an hour of us guzzling water as fast as we were sweating it out, and playing music while holed up in the car to escape the flies, Barry (our saviour!) returned with a mechanic who... started the car. Air in the gas line perhaps... Achem. I guess you'd say we were lucky?
Also on the way back, we stopped in the Barrossa valley to do a winery tour. We arrived at 3pm sunday afternoon, with only an hour and a half left before everything closed, and managed to hit up a few wineries. The last, "Torbreck Winery" was by far the best experience. Our sommelier was a sarcastic young guy at the end of a degree studying wine. There was a 5$ fee for tastings, which seemed reasonable considering that some of the wines we were tasting were upwards of 120$ a bottle, but even that was forgone at the end. I guess he liked us?? The picture says it all........
We arrived back to the cold wind of Melbourne late sunday night, after an hour spent on the shoulder of the highway, about 10 minutes outside the city when our volvo finally broke down (for real this time.) Our AAA paid for cab brought us home to the warmth of our beds, their hostel, my new home, still shaking the sand out of our pockets and washing the dirt off our faces.
The city suddenly seemed a thin veneer of concrete, steel, millions of people on top of what I knew was underneath: the red soil that is and always has been the core of Australia. I went to (my very own) bed that night warmed by the image of vast landscapes of brilliant orange sand against azure skies, and the thought that I had seen and know another face of Australia. I could go home a happy girl now.
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