A quick roadside stop at the Tropic of Capricorn, headed north. I myself am a Capricorn, after all.Ok, it's been a little while since I last wrote. This is because I had a whirlwind trip to Malaysia where there has not been time to think, a quick 48 hours in Singapore where a cheetah hissed at me (I hissed back) and then a midnight shot down to Perth, Western Australia.
Hsssss! Has Will finally met his hissing match in the Singapore Zoo?We arrived and quickly started pursuit of a car for our Australia adventure. Australia is like America in the sense that it is impossible or very expensive to see the place without having a car.
I had previously decided that I would never, ever ever have a sport utility, however, the realities of the Australian outback made clear that some sort of four wheel drive vehicle was in order. And as my friend Sam's dad says, nothing exceeds like excess! As a result, we ended up with a pretty sizeable Nissan Patrol 4wd. It's actually pretty sweet, and a lot of the time I find myself having flashbacks to my time spent living on our converted school bus, Schoolie, back in America.
Everyone, Meet The Camel.
The Camel crossing Yardie Creek. We consulted a long time before we did this as the crossing is in the tidal zone and the bottom is soft sand.I outfitted the back of the car so that it has a bed, tons of storage, two spare tires, enough camp equipment for 4 or 5 people and 60 liters of extra fuel. Trust me, this all comes in handy, as we shall see.
My travel companions are Paula (my girlfriend) and two backpacker girls we found using the informal bulletin board network at the youth hostels around Perth, Marilyn and Tracy.
Left to Right: Paula, Marilyn and Tracy at a lighthouse. They are actually hiding right now from a dive-bombing raven.Tracy is the kind of British girl you might not expect to find in Australia, honestly. She started off being a bit nervous when we do things that are a bit against the rules, like illegally camping or walking off of approved trails. Though I imagine having to go anywhere with me can be an adventure and Tracy is ready for anything- after teatime, that is (she is English after all). Good for her.
If Tracy is quiet, reserved and law abiding, Marilyn is her opposite. A French girl who grew up in Africa for half of her life, she seems to have the attitude that rules are made to be broken, or at least ignored when no one is looking. If I ask the girls ‘do you think it’s ok if…?’ Marilyn will almost always reply with the French ‘pffft’ followed by ‘Will iz fine to do zis.’ I know I write her accent like I just picked up a copy of Writing Stereotype Dialog for Dummies, but I swear to you she sounds this way. I can be a bit too serious about things, and she helps to lighten the mood in the car.
I like our random little mix of people in the car. I think about if we had actually come when we were initially supposed to, how different everything would be- different car, different travel partners, perhaps even a different route.
One night at a 24 hour campsite, we share our fire and wine with a young Swiss couple. They are traveling by rented 4x4 van, but it is costing them $3400 for three weeks. Relatively speaking, we are getting a bargain. In the morning, we make a bit of chitchat over tea and they say that they had strange dreams last night. I tell them I gad dreams, but they just involved doing things around the camp like collecting firewood and going to the composting toilets. “Ah so here we are and your dreams come true” he tells me. I reflect on this for a moment. “Yes, I suppose they do.”
When we have dreams of travels and adventures, we often imagine the breathtaking sunset vistas we will see, but we ignore the more common experiences like making camp with new friends and stopping for a roadside picnic while a kangaroo watches you.
Driving out to set up camp, we joked about if we accidentally hit an animal if we should stop to collect it as food. I was cruising a conservative eighty Km/h and not more than half a kilometer down the road, a kangaroo stood in the center of the road. I did not have time to stop before it jumped at the side of the car. As according to plan, I did not swerve. Fortunately, the roo just grazed the rear mudguard, so no damage was done to us or the car. Later, after we stopped to set up camp off a sandy trail, I look for blood on the car, but I find none, so hopefully the poor thing was ok. Driving back the next morning, I saw no roadkill.
Continuing on, we stopped for a dip in a stock tank that is fed by a brackish artesian hot spring at the site of an old sheep shearing station. The scene just seems so unlikely when described, but after a week away from showers it felt very right indeed. In the Francaise Peron national park, there are a series of very red, very sandy tracks that stretch on for ages and lead to some of the most remote beaches I have ever encountered. Where the land meets the sea, a dramatic change takes place as the coffee ground red brown sand of West Australia disappears into a white shell beach. Granted, it is the off-season, but there were just one other set of people camping there, also foreign tourists.
Donde hay termales, hay Will (Where there are hotsprings, There is Will)On the sand track in, we got a little stuck because our tires were a little too high in pressure and our extra LPG fuel tank rides a bit low. Fortunately, after a few minutes a couple of other 4x4’s arrived driven by men of that sort of indeterminate old age range that you get with country folk. These are the kind of guys who look weathered at fifty but pretty much stay the same way until they die so that by the time they are eighty, they are looking pretty good by comparison. Incidentally, my grandfather, Bruce was a guy like that- fifty until his dying days.
Ocean and Red Cliffs at Francois Peron National Park, Western Australia. (Click to enlarge, it's worth it)After much experienced offroader consultation and generally bullshitting with the older guys, it was determined that the best course of action would be to push the car backward down the track. All three girls from our car plus the two wives from the helper cars stood shoulder to shoulder and grabbed a hold of the roo bar to begin pushing. One of the old timers approached them, contemplated the scene for a minute and said, “whose bottom do a push on?” with a wry smile.
We were unstuck again in no time.
As we left, one old guy appraised me and said, “you’re not a bad rooster in that henhouse.” Whatever that meant.
