On Travel & The End of An Era

Writing about the end of an era. Beginning sentences with dangling participles. Dangling like my future, swaying like a frayed thread on an autumnal breeze. This blog post will follow a similar pretentious tone where I lend too much weight to my own opinions and experiences, including some insight that could be perceived as either sanctimonious or inspirational. So if you want to escape like a wallaby in headlights, now is the time to stop reading... But I hope you won't.

Australia is the world's smallest continental landmass (Afro-Eurasia, The Americas and Antarctica are the bigger ones in case you were wondering), but it could also be considered the largest island. And for two years I called this critter-filled place my home, though it was never fully my home. I was always British/English living abroad: I was a pommy working holiday 'backpacker' (despite not identifying with the backpacker lifestyle in its entirety, I can't deny being one and having backpackers as most of my friends here), a group sometimes derided as litter droppers, noise polluters, unshowered mongrels, etc. However, you can't spend two years of your life in a country and not feel something for it, so I did call the different places I lived within Australia 'home', even if it felt something less than permanent. A breakdown of where I lived and for how long:

2.5 months in Melbourne (VIC)

3 months in Tasmania (TAS)

4.5 months in Renmark (SA)

7 months in Sydney (NSW)

3 months in Cairns (QLD)

The rest: travelling inside and outside of Australia (including WA/NT/ACT)

That brings me to travel in general. It never occurred to me the impact travel would have on my life. Time passes; you don't want to settle down or commit; you keep travelling because that's in your nature: suddenly you've been to a lot of places. With great travel comes great responsibility, apparently. People who have travelled less expect you to know things, to have done everything, to have some special wisdom about life. I have never sailed, bungee-jumped or jet-skied. I haven't learned to cook amazing exotic dishes (except peaches with tuna, which I learned from a Belgian). I don't have the special skills or desire needed to join a merry dinner conversation among a large group of confident strangers at a hostel common room table. My personality has not been transformed by the experiences: I'm not now some kind of perfectly balanced and patient being at zen with the world. Travel doesn't make you who you are: you're born that way. However, it has changed me in more subtle ways. I have gained confidence in who I am, and what I like, and how to connect with people, and I have learned and experienced more than can be quantified or described in a blog post. Australia in particular has definitely given me plenty of experience in the world of work through many different jobs, ranging from solar panels marketer to furniture removals to orange picker/packer to dishwasher to English tutor to hotel events, and I have been tested on countless occasions and somehow lived to tell the tale.

-- Wait, did I just imply that through travel I have found myself? I've definitely just found myself cringe right now! ---

Darwin Delights

Down to the nitty-gritty and the topic of the post: the long-awaited West Coast road trip! A group of us had planned to travel the West Coast as early as September 2016, but various things got in the way, and it was to my elation that I was able to finally do it with the very same people in the dying days of 2017, flying from Cairns to the Northern Territory capital of Darwin on 13 December.

Darwin – population of only 106,000 – had always seemed the most evocative Australian city due its location in the very tropical far north frontier of the continent, along with its reputation for steamy hotness and persistently foreboding danger warnings of various kinds given by those who had already been (mainly crime and crocs). The city's squeaky-clean waterfront is a far cry from the very visible Aboriginal presence in the downtown area; these are people that seem to occupy another world, skirting the periphery of modern Australian society: they sit in the parks in groups and there's a lot of inaudible shouting, often from drunks. I'm not going to preach about how terrible that is or what should be done, because the issue seemed somehow out of reach and inaccessible to me as a brief visitor to the city. Lacking the varied fun of Cairns, I nonetheless enjoyed the tropical fever-pitch atmosphere of the city as something unique in Australia, away from the suburban normalness of the East Coast. This included a trip to nearby Litchfield National Park, which had an abundance of waterfalls, each more impressive than the next, though swimming always felt a little iffy with the possibility of crocodiles. You kind of feel like you have to swim, though, when you see dozens of children and families already in the water!

Driven to Camp

It was here in Darwin that I joined Renmark chums Rose & Baris, and Baris's Nissan Patrol ('Betty'). Unfortunately, we had a few issues with the car: after changing the fan due to overheating problems they'd had driving through the Red Centre, the car overheated even more intensively and we had to return to Darwin just half-an-hour into our road trip! Two tyres also exploded (not 'went flat', they properly exploded!) a few weeks apart in different terrains. Of course, Baris is the most skilled non-mechanic who ever lived and he patiently and tirelessly fixed the car, generally with zero assistance needed from yours truly, which was just as well, because all I could muster in help was to comment that stuff looked broken and to find bolts dropped in the grass.

We would typically arrive at a campsite – found using the very helpful WikiCamps app – before sunset to avoid driving in the dark, where the risk of hitting a kangaroo is much greater (a far more likely cause of death than snake/spider/shark bite). I would pitch my one-man tent while those two set up the rooftop tent on the car. Then we would get the table and chairs out, cook dinner on the portable gas stove (regular dishes were minestrone soup with noodles, or pasta with sweetcorn, cream, pesto and other veg), wash up without wasting water from the 25L we carried, play cards (Shithead) or Yahtzee, have a few beers and watch in amusement at the various kinds of insects that kamikazied themselves on the light. The rest areas were often basic with just a toilet and no drinking water. Some had no toilet either, and we often went 4-5 days without showering. Some nights were stuffy and hot, some blew sand everywhere, and in others we even experienced a cold wind. Gum and mulga trees, a couple of benches and flat red/brown rock characterised many of the Typical Australian Middle of Absolutely Nowhere campsites.

The best place we stayed was a wild camp over some sand dunes and on the edge of a small promontory in Cape Range National Park, with nobody else around and the Indian Ocean right below us. Falling asleep with the cover off my tent, I could gaze up at the stars and out to the moonlit sea at the same time. Although I loved camping and regretted not doing more of it in Australia, I won't miss the baking hot sunrise wake-ups where the tent became insufferable and the morning flies outside relentless.

Journey to Perth: Land of the Deep Sea Sunsets

We visited some truly inspirational places on the 3-week trip across 4000km of asphalt road. Travelling in the Northern Territory and northern Western Australia during SUMMER was marked by extreme heat and humidity which reached the low 40ºs, and was stiflingly hot at night (though this also meant the rest areas were very quiet). Sweat was inevitable. It's probably not what you want to hear about, but when it's that hot, the unstoppable perspiration is on your mind (and your back, your armpits, your eyes...) We kept running into an older Swiss couple doing a similar trip whose names we always forgot to ask: the husband had a somewhat vampirical look about him (nicknamed Dracula, naturally), while the wife we named Hilda after the cyclone we experienced.

The highlights and major sites included:

Kakadu National Park which glowed green, red, brown and yellow with electric summer heat and frogs leapt plentifully when the rain gushed. The Aboriginal rock art there is tens of thousands of years old and mystically impressive.

Edith Falls, Katherine Gorge and the Aboriginal-dominated town of Katherine itself “where the Outback meets the tropics.”

Lake Argyle at the eastern edge of the Kimberley Plateau; close by was the border town of Kununurra where we spent Christmas, which included turkey, gravy and stuffing for dinner, an exchange of presents at a nameless rest area, a horse in a lake, and meeting a blackfella called Monday whose idol was (somewhat surprisingly) former heavyweight world champion Wladimir Klitschko!

Broome where we endured a category 1 cyclone stuck in the YHA with cards, films and an obnoxiously French Anthony Kiedis look-alike who ran around the room with bed-sheets on his head. Maybe he sometimes feels like he doesn't have a partner, that his only friend is the city he lives in?

Karijini National Park which had some stunning gorges and other rocky topography, though it was too hot to do most of the longer walks. One that we did tackle took us down a narrow canyon into a pool where insects and reptiles go to die; the water was stale and we regretted putting our heads under! A magical place nonetheless.

Ningaloo Reef at Cape Range N.P. and Coral Bay, which was better than the Great Barrier Reef in my opinion, mostly because it was so accessible in the welcoming blue waters right from the beach (no $120 tours where you wake up at 5.30am and crowd onto a boat full of people you don't know with sickeningly over-enthusiastic youthful vibrant go-getter crew saying “woo-hoo” and telling you how much fun you're going to have).

Shark Bay which is full of activities, including cool wildlife: emus roam the suburbs like men about town; dolphins are very social and not in captivity at Monkey Mia; sharks prowl the seas too of course (and whale-sharks in the right season, which was not when we were there). There are also a couple of beaches: Shell Beach which is metres deep with shells from just one species of animal (Fragum erugatum, a type of cockle); and Hamlin Pools where the stromatolites lie (they are the oldest living fossils on Earth, made of cyanobacteria and 3.5 billion years old)

Kalbarri National Park, similar to Kairjini but with the spectacular Nature's Window lookout

Hutt River Province near Geraldton which is a self-declared independent state, formed in 1970 when later-Prince Leonard found loopholes in the WA law after the government was imposing harsh wheat quotas and his family were in financial trouble; we were given a tour by the current prince, Graeme, who stamped our passports (they also have visas, currency, postage stamps, a flag and tonnes of gifts from other nations)

The Pinnacles, a series of pointy photogenic limestone formations jutting out of the desert

Perth, maybe the world's most isolated city and a pleasant place to catch up with friends and stroll a real city for the first time in months. Also quokka-laden Rottnest Island (which had some of the best beaches I've seen in Oz) and laid-back Fremantle at the incredibly fun Little Creatures Brewery (and an interesting stay with a Couchsurfer named Neil)

Perth to Adelaide: Tall Trees & The Legendary Nullarbor Plain

We travelled for the last week to Perth with two German travel-mates, Marius and Sina, leaving the German to British ratio at 3:2 and precipitating many conversations about language (that's a conversation topic you find far more abroad than at home). In Perth, Sina swapped Marius for another travel-mate - a Parisian with a van named Lukas - and they continued eastwards along the south coast with us. The Margaret River wine region and Tall Timber Country in the southwest corner of the state were enticing alternative (temperate) landscapes to visit, including Albany for fantastic free showers and viewpoint, charming Esperance, and the very-high treetop walk at Walpole. We plunged along to the notoriously long, flat and boring Nullarbor Plain which stretches for over 1000km from eastern WA into South Australia and is the world's largest single piece of limestone and full of low scrubby bushes, with an endless desert stretching into the horizon for yet another reminder of how vast this country is. Along the way are a number of kooky roadhouses hundreds of kilometres from anywhere, for example Eucla, with a giant whale and a half-hearted attempt to prevent obligatory climbing with a faded sign below it saying “Please keep off the whale.”

The temperatures soared abhorrently at this time, reaching 46 degrees on one day... And Lukas’s van didn’t have air-conditioning!

The road trip ended over a Coopers Pale Ale back in mild coastal civilisation at Adelaide after a full four weeks of travelling. The remaining three of us (Sina, Lukas and I) met up with Matt – an Adelaidian I'd met in Darwin – and he and his girlfriend Kara enthusiastically (and kindly) chaperoned us to many sights and wineries around the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale (including the D'Arenberg Cube, a strangely seductive modern-art museum doubling as a winery and restaurant). Sina flew to Broken Hill for a doomed farm experience, while Lukas and I travelled in his van to Melbourne via the Grampian Mountains and Great Ocean Road for a very nice final few days of camping and road-tripping. Melbourne was where the adventure had started in February 2016, and it was where it would end on 1 February 2018. I reconnected with good friends, and also felt a bit lost and disconnected as I prepared myself for another international relocation, to Australia's Antipodean neighbour: New Zealand. When will the travel stop? Maybe never. However, I feel not just the geographical distance, but also the distance of time from having been away so long and hope to return to Europe for good soon. I will continue to live, laugh and learn in New Zealand while appreciating the opportunities I have on this side of the world, and forever treasuring the memories I have made on the other side of the Tasman Sea.

“You only live once, but if you do it right: once is enough” - Mae West

Thanks a lot for reading this and all of the other blog posts, and see you soon!

See below for maps and photos.