Saturday, August 27, 2011

It's pronounced "cans"...........

Cairns was my starting point for diving the Great Barrier Reef and home base for seeing some of the state of Queensland Australia. Having been corrected several times, it’s pronounced ‘cans’, said with
Beautiful Beaches
Get close to nature
sort of a Bostonian accent. Cairns sits on the north east coast of Australia and from what I had heard was the place southern Aussie’s go to escape the cold (ha! Sorry couldn’t help that), so I was expecting a city with warm sunshine and beautiful beaches like the French Riviera. At least that is my expectation of the French Riviera since I’ve never been there either, so maybe it too is hot, humid and carved out of a giant mangrove swamp with no beach, just a giant mudflat at low tide. They do have a large lagoon i.e. giant swimming pool right on the waterfront that substitutes for the beach. As I later learned when they say they are going to Cairns, the mean through Cairns to get to the beautiful beaches farther up the northern coast. The easily accessible city center is mostly hotels, backpacker hostels, restaurants, bars, souvenir shops and travel agencies with tours to the Great Barrier Reef and anywhere else but
Rabies anyone?
 Cairns. At least that is the way it seemed to me, although I did find a few gems among the potch. The Esplanade, a long path along the waterfront, is great for a walk. There is a nice park running parallel to it for most of the way, with benches, picnic tables and even free gas powered BBQ’s for public use.  The Esplanade then continues on past the lagoon and  marina. The best time to stroll is when the tide is in so that you are looking at an ocean of blue water instead of a sea of black mud.  Since the Esplanade ends at a mangrove swamp there are signs warning you of crocodile in the area, so beware! This town also has bats living in the trees. At dusk, hundreds would leave their roosts for night time feeding. Mud, Crocodiles, and Bats; what a lovely town





This photo is for my dentist- BTW a root canal in Fiji is only
$17.50 and that's in Fiji dollars!
The Cairns Museum is wonderfully charming.  Although in the central business district, it is little hard to find and overlooked by most visitors. The museum has a lot of artifacts and dozens and dozens of photos chronicling the history of Cairns, with some good photos of a devastating typhoon that hit the city. It occupies part of the second floor of an old hotel. The exhibits are kind of crammed together and the volunteers are doing the best they can to present the items in a meaningful way, but I think the city is doing itself an injustice by not providing adequate room to display the materials in a space it deserves. I was commenting to the lady at the front desk about how much I enjoyed the museum and she said they have many more objects and ephemera but don’t have an area large enough to showcase it all. It’s really a shame.










Hiking trail
Rainforest turkey - I wonder how they taste with cranberries?



The botanic garden is another beautiful spot. Located adjacent to a large park with several lakes, it has a few nice paths through the lowland rainforest and one fairly rugged hike up into mountainous rainforest. Although it was mid-winter the day I climbed it was very hot and humid, as were all my days in Cairns. It was like Chicago in August, I’d hate to feel what Cairns is like in summer.  At times the trail up the mountain was steep and narrow, with tree roots reaching out to trip you at every step. Although you were high, there really were no good views as the trees blocked every angle. Occasionally I would see scrub turkeys scratching their way along the forest floor like big black chickens. At least they're not dangerous.

Daintree River
Mossman Gorge
Small Saltwater Crocodile
The Daintree Rainforest lies a few hours north of Cairns so I decided to take a day tour out to see it. The tour included a trip to Mossman’s Gorge and a short cruise on the Daintree River. I picked up the bus in Cairns, but we stopped at several other beach towns picking up passengers as we headed north. After seeing those towns I can understand why no one actually stays in Cairns.  The gorge was nothing grand, just some boulders in a river and the trail with suspension bridge was closed; maybe the trail would have been more impressive, but even if it was open we wouldn’t have had enough time to hike it. The river cruise wasn’t much better, just a short jaunt up the
Large Walking Stick
river with some good commentary from the guide. You get to see a few small salt water crocodiles









and a few birds, but that’s it. I think you can do longer trips or can go fishing on the river, so those might be the better way to go.










 The road up to the rainforest is just one lane in each direction as it hugs the coast. You get some really nice ocean views from the bus. There are backpacker hostels and beach campsites all along the way and many people take advantage of these and caravan. It is a very popular and practical way to travel in Australia. That is the way to do it if you really want to spend some time in this area.  Had I known better, I would have skipped the tour and just stayed a couple days less in Cairns and spent the time up in the Rainforest. The rainforest is a wild tropical jungle as you would imagine a jungle to be. Hot, humid with things growing up from the forest floor and down from the treetops. Vines creep over everything and strangle the life from trees. Every plant seems to want to climb to the top of the forest for precious, life-giving sunshine.  Thankfully it was the dry, relatively speaking; it must be unbearable in the rainy season. We stopped at the end of the paved road, Cape Tribulation, so named by James Cook who ran into troubles there while exploring Australia. There is a long, wide expanse of beach and several hiking trails, but again we
Cape Tribulation
only had enough time for a cursory view. Like
Cassowary
many of the northern beaches, they have bottles of vinegar readily available on the beach. This is used to alleviate the pain from jellyfish stings. There is another option you often hear about if you don’t have vinegar available, peeing on the sting, although I don’t know how much truth there is to that, it may be an urban legend, and you need a really good friend for that method so I would stick with the vinegar or better yet not swim with them. I mean the jellyfish not your useless friends. Jellies are very common in the summer season and most beaches have nets to protect the swimmers, not only are they painful, certain types can be  deadly. It’s best to visit in the off season. The rainforest is home to the cassowary, a large (4-5 foot tall), flightless bird; mostly black with a bright blue head and red wattle. The bus driver said it is uncommon to see a cassowary yet we saw two as we made our way through the forest. Of course we stopped to take the obligatory photos. Reputedly you don’t want to get too 

Amusingly altered road sign
close to a cassowary because they can be aggressive and they have a large claw on their feet with which they can jump up and slash you open. They’re like the velociraptors of the bird world. Again, this may be an urban legend, but any giant bird coming at you would still be intimidating. On the return we stopped at the Daintree Ice Cream shop. The flavors they were serving that day were wattle seed, raspberry, mango, and jackfruit. The wattle seed was not as good as that I had in Tasmania, the raspberry and mango were okay and I did not care for the jackfruit. If you want good ice cream, stop in at the Glenview Dairy Barn. They have some of the best ice cream in Illinois. If you’re ever in the Chicago area make your way to the northern suburb of Glenview and give it a try.  Ask for Teri and tell her Norb sent you.













Texas Chainsaw Bathroom

That ends my time in Australia; six weeks went by in the blink of an eye. I wish I had another six weeks to explore the areas I missed, Broome, Kakadu, Darwin, Perth, all of Western Australia……so much to see, so little time.  I guess I’ll just have to come back J If you ever have the opportunity to visit Australia, I highly recommend it, you will not be disappointed.

Cheers mate.

norb   

Next stop….Fiji
Pretty Flowers


Friday, August 19, 2011

Now I know why it’s not called the average barrier reef……..



One Fish, Two Fish Red Fish, Blue Fish
        From: Dr. Seuess – “One Fish, two Fish”



One Fish, Two Fish…… a Thousand Fish
Red Fish, Blue Fish…… Green Fish, Pink Fish, Purple Fish, White Fish, Black Fish, Yellow Fish, Orange Fish, every size, shape and color of the rainbow Fish, even some color changing Fish
           From: Norb’s – “Now I know why it’s not called the average barrier reef”

Leaving land behind
You can’t visit Australia without making a trip to the Great Barrier Reef, that would be like going to Paris and not seeing the Eiffel Tower or San Francisco and not viewing the Golden Gate Bridge; just unthinkable. Although those two examples are man-made structures, the Great Barrier Reef is one of the Seven Wonders of the Natural World. It stretches for 1600 miles North to South along Australia’s North-East coast.  It is not one contiguous reef, but a series of  ~4000 reefs, bommies, and islands;  like little underwater cities, similar in many ways, but  each unique with its’ own cast of marine life living in a neighborhood of sheltering coral. There are many ways to view the Great Barrier Reef, you can see it from the air by flying over in a helicopter, sail out to the reef and see it from the deck of a boat, snorkel along the top or view it from outer space (yes it can, it's that big), but really the only way to experience The Great Barrier Reef is underwater, below the surface, in the blue waters of the Coral sea.  The weekend before I departed for Australia, I braved the frigid waters of Pearl Lake, just south of the Wisconsin border, donning a wetsuit, hood, boots and gloves, to complete my training and become a certified open water diver. My main purpose in enduring dives that felt like a Chicago winter was so that I could fulfill a dream of diving the warm, clear waters of the Great Barrier Reef. Day trips from Cairns are common, but since it’s about a three hour boat ride to the outer reef I booked a 3 day live-aboard, where you basically live on a boat for three days and go diving. Never having done one before I didn’t know what to expect. There were 23 divers including myself on board, plus a Captain and crew of six. The group ran the full gamut of divers from the very experienced with hundreds of dives under their belt, to a group completing their open water certification; sure beats Pearl Lake. Since the boat wasn’t full I had a cabin all to myself. The day started at 6am (how many times have you heard me say that) with a pickup from my hotel and by ~7:00 we were on the boat making our way to the outer reef. 
A breaching humpback whale - honestly!
About an hour into our ride I was sitting on the top deck taking in the sun with several others when one said “Oh look, there’s a whale”. Sure enough off our port side was a breaching humpback whale. It came out of the water at least six times before we were out of range. It was a wonderfull unexpected bonus.  The sea was very choppy as we cruised on and many of the divers became seasick and “fed the fish”. This must be a routine experience because the crew was immediately on hand with biodegradable bags and tissues to comfort and aid the stricken; I took medicine and had no problem.  After what must have seen like eternity for those green about the gills we arrived at the outer reef and our first dive site.
The Great Barrier Reef - Awesome isn't it
The dive schedule for the three days was basically dive, eat breakfast, dive, eat lunch, dive, eat dinner, and end with a night dive; except on the last day, for a total of eleven dives. That would be a lot of diving in a short period of time. My time underwater per dive averaged about 40 minutes because I am still learning to control my breathing; I tend to be a heavy breather, and it is also dependent on the depth of the dive; the shallower the depth, the longer your air tends to last. My deepest dive was 20.6 meters (~68 feet) and the shallowest 10 meters (~33 feet), with an average around 14 meters (46 feet).  Diving is really a relatively safe sport if you concentrate and follow the safety rules. One of those is to dive with a buddy. A buddy is there to help in case something goes wrong, thankfully during our dives no one needed emergency assistance. Since I didn’t come with a buddy, I was teamed up with a guy from France named Guy. We were also joined by Antoine another guy from France and Ana a young girl from Germany. The four of us teamed together for all our dives.  I was really glad to be Guy’s buddy because he was a seasoned diver, with a lot of experience and very good at navigation. We’d get a dive briefing that would be something like: go in the water and swim in that direction (pointing) towards the bommie, keep it on your left and swim around it, when you come to the big mushroom coral (and it was big and looked surprising like a mushroom) the boat should be at 320 degrees from there.  If you get lost the reef is always at 120 degrees.  Guy was great and only got lost once or twice, he just surfaced, took a heading for the boat, then came back down and led us back. He also helped me with me breathing and reminding me to surface slowly. My first few dives I came up to fast which is a no-no in diving, but by the end I was in control. When we had own town everyone would sit around talking and you get to hear about some of their diving experiences. Guy once had an octopus on his face which would freak me out if that happened and a more serious episode happened to one of the German brothers who were traveling together. He was at about 22 meters (~72) when he ran out of air. When that happens you are taught to take the safe secondary air source from your buddy. Well he said he forgot all his training and shot to the surface. That is a very dangerous thing to do as nitrogen bubbles form in your body, mostly in the joints. That time he was lucky and had no serious side effects. Although I can understand his reaction; if you’re underwater and you can’t breathe you body wants to surface. Obviously he violated several safety rules; not near his buddy and not watching his air pressure gauge to put himself in that position. I hope I never have to test myself in that type of situation.
My towel is the blue striped one



Day fish
Night fish
Dive boats in Australia have been known to occasionally leave divers behind with fatal results. They even made a movie, "Open Water", about one incident. I saw the movie, not a happy ending. It seems incredible to me that something like that could happen. I thought our boat had agood procedure. One crew member was on the dive deck, gave a final check of your equipment, wrote your name down, your buddys name down and the time you entered the water. When you got back to the ship, they noted the time and your depth and had you sign the dive sheet; and they did occasional role calls to make sure everyone was present. I did catch a wrong date on one of the dives forms; once in QA always in QA. It seemed like a solid system. Maybe they changed the rules after the incident. We did two night dives, my first time ever. You get a little flashlight and you and your buddy wear glowsticks of the same color on your tank so you can recognize each other in the dark water. Surprisingly you can see fairly well even with the small light, but my guy Guy brought his own light which was powerful enough to get a suntan. When they turn the lights on by the diving platform in the back of the boat, little fish are attracted to the light. With the little fish, come bigger fish that want to eat them. We even had one little fish jump on the platform to escape being eaten. Unfortunately he had to go back in the water; we don’t know if he avoided being someone’s dinner.  And with the bigger fish came ….shark! Yes, that’s right, shark. As you are standing on the platform getting ready to step off into this school of swarming, feeding fish you see flashes of shark. You are told they are “harmless” reef shark, but I must say it is a little disconcerting jumping into the water knowing they are there. Night diving is okay, but I prefer day diving.
As for the rest of the diving, all I can say is the Great Barrier Reef is........ GREAT! Think of the best aquarium you’ve ever seen, multiply it by a hundred, and put yourself in the middle of the tank. I saw amazing hard coral, fish of every size, shape and color, shrimp, clams, jellyfish, rays, turtles, moray eel and shark. If you’ve never been diving, it is hard to explain because it is not only what you see but what you feel. It’s like flying through water. You’re just floating midway between the surface and the bottom, listening to yourself breathe and bubbles floating to the surface, surrounded by all this marine life, it’s just incredible. Visibility was over 25 meters, sunlight streaming down, color, everwhere, sea life swimming all around. Many times I would just stare mouth agape, which is really hard to do with a regulator in your mouth, at the beauty of it all. Watching turtles effortless glide through the water, amazing! Seeing a school of about 70 bumphead parrot fish swimming along like a train 2 or 3 deep, amazing! These are big fish, about 3 feet long built like tanks. Puffer fish, box fish, barracuda, trigger fish, parrot fish… amazing, amazing, amazing! Moray eel coming out of a coral cave, amazing! Of course Nemo i.e. clown anemones and a dozen other types of anemones, amazing! The biodiversity of the Great Barrier Reef is phenomenal. Unfortunately I did not have an underwater camera. If you're a diver and haven't been to the Great Barrier reef, you've got to go and if you're not a diver, learn to dive and go. You will not be disappointed. All I can say is, now I know why it’s not called the average barrier reef!

Amazing!  Isn't it? 


From down underwater

norb

Sunday, August 14, 2011

The holiest place in Australia.........

Coober Pedy

Kulgera bus stop
Coober Pedy (CP) is the holiest place in Australia and I’m not talking religion, although I’m sure more than a few of the miners pray to their god(s)everyday to keep them safe and bring them the luck that is needed to find the holy grail of gems……..Opal. Australia produces the majority (~97%) of the world’s opals and “The Opal Capital of the World” is Coober Pedy; more than 75% of the world’s commercial opal is mined here.  Coober Pedy sits in the middle of nowhere, about halfway (~700Km) between Alice Springs and Adelaide; not even the train stops here. If you take The Ghan and want to get off for Coober Pedy, the train will stop sometime around midnight at the “Manguri Station”, nothing more than a train signal about ~50Km from CP; you have to arrange for someone to pick you up beforehand and hope they will be there when you get off the train. I took the bus from Alice so that I could view more of that beautiful Australian outback and have assurance I would be dropped off in town. The bus made a few interesting stops along the way, and the countryside as seen from the bus is the same as from the train; flat, desert, scrubland for miles in every direction, but then as you approach Coober Pedy, you begin to see white teepees of soil looking like albino termite mounds on both sides of the road; as you get closer, there are more and more mounds until suddenly...... Unfortunately it was getting dark by the time I arrived so I would have to wait until morning to get a better picture of the surroundings.
Fred Flinstone never had it so good

Underground Motel
Hopping off the bus, I slung my pack over my back and hiked through town to my accommodation for the next few days , “The Underground Motel”. The name is accurate for the lodging is underground, more accurately the rooms are built into the hillside like hobbit homes; one room caves with electricity, running water and very cozy. No AC or heat is necessary; the rooms stay comfortable (~74F) year  round, even when the temperature outside reaches over 120F in the shade during summer. There are buildings above ground, but the majority live and work underground. Exactly how many people live in Coober Pedy is not certain, somewhere between 3000-5000; no one knows for sure.  I heard the comment made many times that if you want to hide out, Coober Pedy is the place to do it; people don’t ask too many questions around here. The town is quite international too, there are over 45 nationalities represented in the small population.  Mike, the motel owner, filled me in on what to see and do and asked me if I wanted a ride back into town for dinner. When he found out I was from Chicago he said he would introduce me to another guy who came from Chicago and owned “John’s Pizza Bar and Restaurant”.  So off we went with Mike to meet Nick, who is Greek, lived in Chicago during his teenage years, came to Coober Pedy when he was in his early twenties and hasn’t left after 30 years. The menu was extensive but of course I ordered a pizza….. an Emu pizza. I had been watching the staff pulling pizzas from the oven; they looked great and tasted even better; the crust
Passing a "road train"
which really makes a pizza, was perfect. As I sat eating, Nick came over and we started talking. When he found out I was taking the bus back to Adelaide he said NO! and told me to cancel my reservation. He was driving to Adelaide the same day and he said I could ride with him. Sure thing, two days later I’m in the car with Nick, the Greek, ex-Chicagoan, opal mining, , Coober Pedian restauranteur, driving nine hours through the deslolate Australian desert from Coober Pedy to Adelaide. That’s what you do on an odyssey. Along the way I got a chance to see some emus, road trains (trucks 3 semi’s long) and learn more about opal mining than I ever thought I would. For about $600 you can get a permit, stake your claim, dig a hole and take a chance at striking it rich; unfortunately as I also learned, that last part doesn’t happen too often.
There is an open mine shaft next to each mound.

It's called a blower but it really sucks.
Cooper Pedy comes from the Aboriginal "kupa-piti" meaning "white man in a hole". When researching my trip I read that there are over 250,000 holes in Coober Pedy and on the town tour our guide “Jimmy”; who was also Greek and whose real name isn’t Jimmy, said there are over 400,000. Now I don’t know which figure is accurate but there are a lot of holes; and next to each hole is a conical mound of dirt, bleached white by the desert sun. The cones are formed when the dirt from the mine shaft is removed and dumped by the “blower”. The blower is a piece of mining equipment invented in Cooper Pedy specifically for opal mining. It is basically a giant, truck mounted, vacuum cleaner that sucks the dirt out of the hole into a big garbage can like bucket with a hinged bottom that allows the dirt to fall out once filled. I went to a demonstration at the “Old Timers Mine” Museum and that thing sucks (not the museum, the blower).  They let you hold up rocks and have it suck them out of your hand. The museum was very interesting showing how the old timers dug the mines with picks and shovels and removed the dirt with cowhide buckets raised and lowered on a windlass; and contained a great deal of Coober Pedy history. The museum also highlighted the fickleness of opal mining. The original mine, hand dug in 1916, was well worked, with some of the tunnels backfilled by dirt from new tunnels. When they were cleaning out the tunnels to create the museum they also expanded the entrance and found a seam of opal worth tens of thousands the original miners missed by a mere 10 centimeters. Opal mining is not like gold or
Watch your step
diamond mining where you have whole lot of it concentrated in a small area. Opals are more like hermits of the precious stone world. You might have one here and the next one could be right next door or hundreds of feet away, hence all the holes. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack and the area around Coober Pedy is one big haystack. There are no large opal mining operations in Coober Pedy; all the mines are individually owned 100m x 50m plots. Once you get your permit, you just walk out into the mine field and place your four stakes into the ground forming a rectangle. As long as no one has staked out the area, the plot is yours.  You dig a hole and hopefully find some opals. If not you can dig more holes on your plot or pick up your stakes and move to a new plot and start again. It’s as simple as that. Sometimes you find opals almost accidently. There were two women who were digging the first room of their home and found opals. They dug a second room and found opals again, so they dug a third room and you guessed it, they found opals; they now have a 21 room home. Sometimes it works out that way.

Sederbian Church
Coober Pedy is holy too, I visited the Catholic church, the Catacomb church and the Serbian church; all underground. Boot Hill cemetery was interesting; reading the names on the headstones you got a real feel for number the nationalities living in Coober Pedy and some of their sense of humor. One guy’s tombstone was screwed into the
One for the road
ground; apparently he yapped so much when he was alive they wanted to be sure he didn’t come back and talk their ear off after he died. Another guy has a beer keg for a headstone; allegedly it was full of beer and in working order when they buried him.

The golf course - FORE!
One of the "greens"
Then there is the golf course; no grass, in fact it's against the rules to step on grass,  they give you a piece of Astroturf to carry around and hit off of; they use colored balls during the day, the white ones are hard to locate amongst all the rocks in the glaring sun; they play a lot of night golf with lighted balls because it’s too hot to play during the day; and the greens are actually black from the oil used to create them and keep the dust down, you also have to rake the greens. 
 The golf club gave an opal mine to St. Andrews in Scotland and in return received reciprocal playing rights (okay so it’s only at the Balgove Course and not the Links, but still); the letter of thanks from St. Andrews is posted in the Old Timers Museum and is pretty funny.   

The Breakaways, an ancient seafloor, and one lucky bloke!
The town tour also included a trip out to “The Breakaways”, a string of hills that "broke away" from the Flinders range millions of years ago and now overlooks the bottom of what once was a vast inland ocean. Jimmy discovered fossils of sea creatures that are now on display in various Australian museums; and fossils can still be found, although now it is illegal to hunt for and remove them.  
The Sleeping Camel - part of the Breakaways
From the top of The Breakaways we drove down to the desert ocean floor and on to the “Moon Plain”. The Moon Plain is so named because usually there is nothing there but a flat, barren, harsh, sun-bleached rocky plain that resembles the moon. The site has been used in a few movies as the surface of another planet; most notably “Pitch Black” starring Vin Diesel. Unfortunately with all the rain even the Moon Plain has plants growing on it so it no longer looks like its moniker. I would have preferred seeing it as the
The moon if it had shrubbery
as the desolate Moon Plain, but I did have the chance to see it in a rare vegitive state. From the Moon Plain we moved on to the “Dog Fence”, the longest fence in the world. It stretches over 5200Km and is designed to keep the wild dogs and dingoes in northern cattle country from invading southern sheep country.  Towns along the way have responsibility for monitoring and maintaining sections of the fence; Coober Pedy is accountable for ~350Km. Kangaroos can jump the fence, but it is the some 1 million feral camels that do the most damage when the big creatures walk through the fence.
The Dog Fence - used to keep mongrel dogs out

Again because of all the rain I had the chance to view another once in a lifetime occurrence, a full Lake Eyre. Avast inland salt lake, the Lake Eyre Basin covers about 1/6 of Australia. During the rainy
"Yes I do know how to fly the palne and stop taking my picture"
Flying out over Lake Eyre
season most of the runoff from ariund Australia drains into northern Lake Eyre. Southern Lake Eyre is usually  a dry salt flat similar to our Bonneville Salt Flats. Land speed records have been set on the Lake Eyre salt flat. It is rare that the lake  spills over from the north into the south and fills completely; this has happened only three times in the last 150 years. It wasn’t on my original agenda but I couldn’t pass on the opportunity so after Mike gave me a ride to the Coober Pedy airport, I boarded a small 6 seat propeller plane for the 2  hour flight out to Lake Eyre. Lucky me, I got to sit in the co-pilot seat. We took off and headed East into the sun. The plane was noisy and you had to wear a microphone headset to protect your ears and be heard. Going out we flew at ~1500 feet. It was awesome. From the air you get a very good view of all the holes dotting the land around Coober Pedy and staying low you could really see the changing landscape. We started with the basic desert scrubland, crossed
William Creek Station
The Painted Hills
barely 500 feet above a small set of hills, and moved on to a landscape of vegetation covered sand dunes that litterally looked like waves rolling across the land below. The color palette changed from a green background with brown patches, to  brown background with green patches, and when we later flew towards the PaInted Hills, a red background with green and brown patches. You could also see the green snakes of vegetation following the now dry riverbeds and the arrow straight, rusty-orange, unsealed roads reaching out to infinity. In the distance we saw this huge blue body of water glimmering in the brilliant sun. Lake Eyre is big but our pilot guide Peter said that the average depth is just 10 centimeters with the deepest part only 1 meter and it is 2.5 times saltier than the Dead Sea. We flew low, ~1000 feet, as we did a couple turns around the southern edge of the lake, and the lowest spot in Australia, before landing for a break at William Creek Station; population less than 10. They just paved their runway a few years ago and there is a hotel and a bar (of course). Every place we stopped in the outback, no
matter how remote, has a bar. Back in the air we headed for the Painted Hills; ancient sandstone mountaintops slowly eroding over eons into colorful works of art. Their color makes them look like the aftermath of an open pit mining
operation, but the colors are all natural. The hills lie on the property of Anna Creek Station which severely restricts access. Pete said not even Anna Creek employees can visit the hills and the only way to view them is from the air.  We headed
That's a lot of holes
back over the opal fields and the open holes to Coober Pedy. I noted as we landed that the airport is surrounded by opal mines and actually sits atop the opal minefield. I’m surprised no one has yet dug a hole into the runway. My guess is there are probably some tunnels from nearby mines running under the airport.


Crash landed

There are many other quirky things and characters in Coober Pedy. The first tree “planted” is made of welded iron beams; old movie props abound; the Italian family who despite the cost of water has a garden with flowers, a lemon tree and a fountain; and “Crocodile Harry”. Crocodile Harry was a crocodile hunter from the Northern territory who once killed 89 crocs in one day and is most likely the inspiration for the movie “Crocodile Dundee”.
Inside "Crocodile Harry's" Home
 When crocodile hunting became illegal, he moved to Coober Pedy and mined opals. Harry died a few years back but you can visit his underground “home”; a series of caves, filled with indescribable paraphernalia, that was used in the movie "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome". He was quite a character; you’ll have to look him up on the internet to learn more.






They say if you stay in Coober Pedy more than two days you will stay forever. There is some truth to aphorism; something seductive pulls at your soul. I asked Mike about it, he said it's the freedom; I think the people have a lot to do with it as well. One more day and I would become one of the mole people, carving a dugout and never leaving; it's that alluring. I'd love to come back to Coober Pedy someday, so if everyone wants to chip in a fews bucks, I'll travel the thousands of miles, cross the dry desert sands, to come to a place in the middle of nowhere, live underground, dig a few holes, and maybe, just maybe find us a fortune in opals.

This could be ours

Literally from down under.

norb

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

The Olgas , Kings Canyon and ………… Mice!

Sunrise at Uluru

Sunrise at Uluru woithout Norb
I t was a little chilly as we awoke in our swags at 5:00am so that we could set off to see Uluru at sunrise. After a quick breakfast we broke camp and headed to our viewing spot, along with about 100 of our closest friends. It seems all the tours and individual wanderers are on the same plan. Some years back the park installed viewing platforms to accommodate all the people who want to experience the pageantry of daybreak at Ayers Rock. One guy climbed on the roof covering the platform with a camera on a tripod so he could get a better photo. When the young girl ranger working for the park asked him to come down, his response was there is no sign saying I can’t climb on the roof. This must be how we get those warnings on products that say don’t trim your hedges with a lawn mower or use the power drill to clean ear wax; I expect there will be a sign next year. The flat desert stretched before us to Uluru and then on beyond to the horizon looking like it went all the way to the sun. From our vantage point the sun slowly started to rise to the left of Ayers Rock; first a sliver of light then turning into a full round ball of fiery yellow fury. I’ve seen a lot of sunrises, but there was something palpably mystical about the sunrise as backdrop to the sacred dome sandstone Uluru.  It is an image I will never forget.
The Olgas

A short 30 minute drive brought us to The Olgas (Western name) or Kata Tjura (Aboriginal name). Kata Tjura means “many heads” and there are 36 domed shaped, sandstone rocks in the area. This area too is sacred to the Aborigines, but unlike Uluru, only men were allowed here. We hiked the full 7.5km “Valley of the Wind” circuit. The trail goes through a valley between two of the largest domed heads. Again because of all the rain, the valley was in full bloom. There was even a pool of water in a
Valley of the Wind
place that doesn’t normally have water because the blue trail markers ran right into the pool and you could see them come out on the other side. I was surprised by the number of birds in the valley. We stopped on the side slope of one dome and looked out across the canyon and valley floor into the entrance of a box canyon. Chris said the men would sit in this spot sharpening their spears; waiting for a kangaroo or other animal to wander into the box canyon. They would then follow them in and have them cornered where they could dispatch them with impunity. He said this taught them patience. They must be the most patient people in the world because it would have taken a long time for an animal to come wandering in; I could never be aborigine. Maybe there were more animals around at that time, Chris also added that Australia has wiped out more species than any other country; 19 at last count. We came up out of the valley and crested a small hill between the domes. It was very windy up there,
Endless Road
hence the name “valley of the Winds” and the view was cool. You could see out the end of the canyon to other domed rocks beyond. The rest of the walk was at ground level around the base of the domes.

After a two hour drive we stopped for firewood and another two hours brought us to our last camp. Along the way we were stopped by a police roadblock for a random alcohol test; they even have a show about them on TV. You have to blow zero; there is no tolerance for drinking while driving. Although that shouldn’t be too hard in this area, beers were $70 a case. Of course we
Price for a case of 30 beer...and that's in Australian dollars!
stopped to view the sunset, the other bookend to a perfect day. Camp was another story. There was a shower with hot water, once you got the fire going under the water tank; and it had three walls with no door. There was a flush toilet, but it too had no door. We used the “Coo-ee” system with these. When approach one would yell “Coo-ee”, if there was no response the facility was yours. However the doors were the least of our worries. When the desert blooms everything multiples because of the increased food supplies; there are more berries, flowers, birds, insects and ……mice! The spinifex mice were everywhere in camp and there were A LOT of them; more than enough to do a long term study. We put our bag on a pallet in the camp kitchen and you could see them run underneath. They were scurrying around our feet as we prepared dinner. As we sat around the fire the mice were there too. One girl sat with her feet up the whole time because a mouse had run across them and one guy slept in the bus because he was so freaked out by them. Funny thing was the mice got in the bus and he didn’t sleep a wink. Those of us who slept outside were fine. Chris had told us once the temperature dropped the mice would go to sleep, and they did.
King's Canyon

Garden of Eden
5:00, time to get up and see another sunrise; beautiful as usual. On our last day we would take the 4 hour hike around the rim of “King’s Canyon”. The canyon is basically “V” shaped. You climb about four hundred steps to the top of the canyon at one side of the wide end and hike along the edge until the canyon narrows. You then descend into the “Garden of Eden”; the valley at the bottom of the
canyon, and up the other side. There are various lookouts along the way where you get a chance to peer over the 300 meter vertical cliff face.
There are no railings and they prefer you don’t get to close because of the instability of the rock; the last major rock fall being about 80 years ago. It’s not the Grand Canyon, but it had a grand beauty all its own.
Look at the disco dancer busting a move









We stopped to barbeque for lunch before beginning our 6 hour ride back to Alice Springs. This is where the ruggedness of our bus would be put to the test; about half that time would be travelling on unsealed (i.e. dirt) road. It was a bone jarring, teeth rattling, wash board of a road, so bumpy and
Put another shrimp on the barbie!
noisy you couldn’t hear yourself think. It was funny for the first ten minutes and after that you just wanted it to end. I don’t know how the bus held together. Chris said this was a good road as it had recently been graded; I’d hate to ride on a bad one. The torture finally ended when we stopped for an ice cold beer at the Glen Helen Resort and to switch buses. Three folks would be continuing on for two more days of camping the rest of us would return to Alice. Since the other bus hadn’t arrived we ordered another round and of course the bus immediately showed up. We finished our beers said goodbye to our fellow travelers and headed in opposite directions. On our way back we could see smoke ahead and as we got nearer there were flames on both sides of
The "good" unsealed road
the road. They were doing some “controlled” bush fires, although there was no one around controlling the fires. It was pretty cool to drive through. We still had about an hour to go when a young guy in the back of the bus requested a toilet stop; the beer was too much for him. I was glad he broke down first because I wasn’t sure I could make it all the way. We were still in the middle of nowhere and the gal driving the bus said there were no toilets until we get back to Alice and there really weren’t any trees either, but she immediately pulled the bus over and said have at it. The men went on one side of the road and one girl went on the other side to have a little
Controlled Fire
privacy. Maybe we should have stopped a little sooner to help control the fire. Peeing on the side of the road, what better way to end a great adventure to the Red Centre of the Australian outback.                  





It’s a ripper.

norb