The flight from Sydney to Adelaide takes only two hours, dear reader. I arrived in the beautiful South Australian capital without a planned itinerary, but with a fortnight to explore this often neglected state of Australia. I’ve visited the City of Churches before, but was thrilled by the chance to finally explore the legendary tourist sights in the rest of the nation’s driest state. I stumbled into a travel agency in Adelaide, and stumbled out a few hours later with a fully booked itinerary for the fortnight. Oh yes, we don’t muck around here in Oz!
The first journey was a long bus trip north on the Stuart Highway to the mining town of Coober Pedy, which is in the middle of the outback half way up the track to Alice Springs. Coober Pedy is seriously hot, and is a world famous opal mining town. It’s so hot the locals have built most of their houses twenty feet underground. I stayed in an underground hostel where you walked down the stairs carved into the rock, to relax in a dorm room at a year round temperature of 18 degrees celsius. No worries mate, I reckon the locals are on to something, particularly when you consider the outside temperature is over 40 degrees! I joined a tour group for the day led by a colourful local guide, and we visited above ground mines and an underground mine museum in this fascinating town. The mine lots are divided equally by the local government and there are no multinational companies dominating mining in Coober Pedy, in fact they won’t even allow department chain stores in the town! Any old bloke who’s down on his luck can grab his swag, lob on into town on his pat malone and have a crack at making a fortune, providing he’s nabbed a mining licence. This is a genuine frontier town which is full of rough and ready, but quintessentially Australian characters. Coober Pedy is a truly unique mining town where the locals have developed quite a fondness for explosives. Our guide told us if the locals don’t like a proposal for a big store in Coober Pedy, they just threaten to blow it up! That’s enough to give the department chain stores pause for thought regarding future outback expansion plans.
From there I headed back south to the Flinders Ranges, where I met my guide in the small town of Hawker. He drove me to his home at dusk, and the roos were totally demented at that time of day. They’re attracted to the headlights and were hopping straight at the truck from all directions. I’ll never understand how we didn’t end up with fresh kangaroo stew under the wheels! After a good sleep we started out on the first day of the tour. I was on my Pat Malone that day, and the guide led me on a private tour of the awe inspiring Flinders Ranges. My guide is a great Aussie character; laconic, gregarious and outgoing coupled with a genuine passion and impressive knowledge of nature. We had a great day and he crammed in many of the best tourist destinations in the Flinders Ranges. On day two we drove back into town early to pick up another Aussie guy for our tour who lobbed into town, and together we drove out to explore Wilpena Pound. This incredible rock formation looks like the centre of an ancient meteor strike, it was great fun bushwalking in the Great Outdoors and exploring the Aussie scrub, in this barren and remote part of the world.
From there I bused it back to Adelaide, where I joined a group of ten for a weekend tour on Kangaroo island off the coast of Adelaide. This is one of the best kept secrets among Australian tourist destinations, the wildlife and scenery on the island are stunning. We saw mobs of kangaroos, emus running along the track beside the truck, an echidna, heaps of seals on the beach … in fact the island turned out to be a wildlife paradise! On the first night our guide took us from the campfire where six girls and I clambered up onto the roof for a drive into the bush to view the stars. We soon launched into song, and most of the girls on the tour were from an American university. I sang local songs with a couple of Aussie girls, and the American girls returned the favour with American songs. Before long I joined the girls in belting out Cyndi Lauper at the top of my lungs … “I wanna be the one who walks in the sun, and girls they wanna have fu-un. Woh, ooh girls…” I’m sure you know the rest.
The rest of my roof companions thought this was a great laugh, particularly the American girls who oohed and aahed over me for the rest of the weekend. Even one of the Aussie girls said “Respect”. It seems I’d inadvertently been accepted into some sort of secret feminine society, but I put it down to blowing the froth off of one too many tinnies earlier at the campfire! Anyways, we had a great fun weekend with an excellent local guide. A highlight of the tour was visiting the Remarkable Rocks and Admiral’s Arch in Flinders Chase National Park, and taking pictures of these unique rock formations. I decided to hire a quad bike and proceeded to hoon it up Aussie style, which included heaps of fishtailing around paddocks while trying to keep up with my quad bike leader. I know how to ride alright, but quad bikes are something else and make for an extreme riding experience!
Back in Adelaide I went on a day tour to the world famous wineries of the Barossa Valley only a short drive out of Adelaide, and then joined my final group tour travelling east along the Great Ocean Road into Victoria, to enjoy the spectacular ocean views on the way to Melbourne. The Great Ocean Road is famous for rock formations in the sea carved away from the mainland over several millennia, as the seas pound the high coast of the Great Australian Bight. The most famous rock formations are the Twelve Apostles and London Bridge. The tour included a visit to the Grampians in Victoria with beautiful mountain scenery, which is the equal of the Blue Mountains in New South Wales. We also went on the Otway Fly tree top walk in the heart of the ancient Otways, for spectacular canopy views of the magnificent trees. We ended the tour in stylish Melbourne which is a gorgeous city I know well, and I spent the last few days exploring the city before my return flight to Sydney. Come to the land down under to visit the lucky country, and be sure to explore beautiful South Australia where, basically all of you should be here now!
“Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share it’s luck.” Donald Horne
It’s home time so until next time, I’m signing off for now
Tom
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Tom's music blog can be found here:
http://www.tomrooneymusic.com
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