North of Capricorn

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go.
I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

55 minute read (11,000 words)

Introduction

I had been looking forward to my overseas trip for months. My savings plan was well in hand, brochures about Los Angeles, the Rockies, New York, and other places were bulging a large folder, and I had joined Noreasccon III, the upcoming world sf convention. But my plans depended from several crucial pins, one of which was the US/Australian exchange rate. This had been improving for months as the US dollar continued its gradual and (we were told) inexorable descent. By February the Australian dollar was touching on 90 US cents — the highest it had been since the early years of the decade. And then I made a mistake.

I was also planning a brief trip back to New Zealand in June of 1989. The US trip wasn’t till August, the US dollar was still sliding, but the NZ dollar wasn’t — so I blew my ready cash on NZ dollars.

Two weeks later the Australian dollar crashed. I held off buying US dollars, hoping the Aussie would recover. By the end of February it was below 80 US cents. By mid-May it was below 74 US cents, after which it stabilised and began a year-long recovery to just under 80 US cents — but it never again threatened 90 US cents.

I could no longer afford both NZ and the USA. One trip had to go. I already had my NZ cash, and the budget for the US trip was now borderline even if I gave up the NZ trip. So I gave up on the US (Plan A) for this year.

I spent some of the freed up budget on a CD player and a second VCR. The rest I put aside for a less ambitious trip — a three-week jaunt around part of my adopted home.

Plan B was a leisurely exploration of coastal and northern Queensland. But I still planned overseas trips for 1990 and 1991, and it seemed a shame to put off seeing more of Australia for at least another two years. Never mind that Plan A’d nothing to do with seeing Australia. If I was going to holiday in Oz instead of the US then I wanted to see a decent chunk of Oz.

So I added a reach down through the Red Centre (Plan C). But then the bus fares proved too expensive, paying by sections. I needed a bus pass. A 21-day pass was still too expensive, but at that moment Deluxe Coachlines were offering a 25% discount on their $399 15-day pass. The $299 rate meant travelling “stand-by” — meaning I was restricted to booking a seat less than 4 hours before departure, assuming a seat was available — but most people flew long distance in Oz and the buses were rarely booked out, so I figured the risk was minor. Previous experiences with Deluxe had been pleasant, the pass offered discounts on their tours around Ayers Rock, and it meant a free ride on their regular service to and from Kakadu. Unbeatable value.

In the event, it almost came unstuck on the Darwin to Townsville leg. I was sitting in a cabin in Kakadu, reading the previous day’s paper that had just been handed to me, when my eye was slugged by a headline. The domestic pilots had resigned en masse over a pay dispute! Suddenly I was in competition with cashed-up would-be air travellers for a seat on a bus out of Darwin. They booked out all the buses days in advance — and I was faced with the hurdle of talking my way aboard a packed bus four hours in advance!

Fortunately Deluxe was a bus line that appreciated the people who’d chosen them before there was no other choice. No matter how full the service, they found a corner for me. I wound up standing in the aisle on a bus out of Three Ways, but I got a seat a few hours down the road when someone got off. In the end I made it to Sydney on time, but it was by luck rather than planning.

Deluxe Coachlines is gone now, alas. Sometimes it takes more than loyalty and good service to survive, and Australia’s once flourishing budget bus industry died out over the next decade as the fringe operators were squeezed by Greyhound and McCafferty’s and by fare wars between the airlines that made flying almost as cheap as the buses.

Anyway, that is how it came about that at 11:30 on the morning of Saturday, 19th August 1989, I climbed aboard a blue and white bus and rode off to look for Australia.

Timeline

This trip was all about movement. It had to be — I had 15 days available in which to cover 10,000 kilometres, from Melbourne to Darwin to Townsville to Sydney, before my bus pass expired. I could fall a little short — Brisbane, say — without blowing the budget, but then I risked running out of holiday before I could get back to Melbourne.

Distances (main legs only):

A bus moving at 100 km per hour — the official open road speed limit — would take more than four days to get to Sydney, following my route. Figure in meal stops, towns and other delays and it’d be more like five to six days. To cover such a distance in 15 days and to do any worthwhile sightseeing along the way, I had to be both organised and disciplined.

Here is how I did it. Some times are approximate and may contradict the text; determining which figure is correct at this remove in time is beyond me, but the legs from Melbourne to Sydney add up to 5 days, 4 hrs, 45 mins:

I can’t now remember why I arrived back in Melbourne on Thursday instead of spending the weekend hanging round Sydney or going on to Canberra. I’m pretty sure my leave period included the Friday. I suspect I got bored or just ran short of money.

Some boiled stats for you:
 Bus pass duration: 15 days
 Pass distance: 10,009 km (to Sydney)
 Required average per day: 670 km
 Time on buses: 127.75 hrs
 Velocity: 78.35 km/h, or 1880 km/24h

Enough. Time to move!

South of Capricorn

Melbourne to Yulara

Saturday, 19 August 1989

The first leg of my journey was crooked as a dog’s hind leg: Melbourne to Adelaide to Erldunda to Yulara. 1900 kilometres as the crow flies, 2300 by road. Populate the first thousand kilometres with towns and trees and things-to-see, the second with red dust and a flat horizon, and the last few hundred with more dust but a few bumps on the horizon. Got that? Good! Now save yourself the bruises and boredom — fly it!

Sunday, 20 August 1989

Actually there was one place in the second thousand kilometres that I would have liked to see more of: Coober Pedy, the opal town. The place itself is just like any other section of desert, apart from its tunnel-dwellings, but the thought of digging up a few opals for keepsakes and presents is attractive. It was extremely hot and bright, except indoors. I took a tour through an underground house, where the air was cool and dry. Everything in the shops was overpriced by Melbourne standards. Coober Pedy’s residents are friendly, but a bit … odd.

So. At 17:30, after sitting 30 hours in my clothes, I clambered my scabrous way off the bus at Ayers Rock Lodge, Yulara. Some keen adventurers climbed straight onto another bus and set off to view the sunset. But I had grasped the essence of my three-day “Rock Pass”: that it was a three day pass. I didn’t expect to need three full days, but I wasn’t going to spend $32 (my bus pass gave me 35% discount on the $49 full price) for two days and a sunset. Instead, I went in search of a nice hot shower.

My Rock Pass was with Deluxe and basically covered unlimited transport anywhere that Deluxe went in the Park. The rest was up to me — which was fine, as I preferred to make my own way in my own time. There are still “Rock Passes” available today but they’re several times the price. They’re not as good for the independently-minded either, particularly around the Olgas, although you might still be able to do what I did and swap the programmed guided tour and picnic for an unprogrammed freedom walk and a pick-up by another bus at the end.

Then again, maybe not. My 2001 experience suggests that unless you have a car, the Red Centre experience has now been pretty well cut and packaged, with little room left for freedom walkers and those who don’t fit the mass-tourism mold.

The accomodation was not luxurious. $17 per night got me one of the four beds in a subdivision of a long dormitory. On the other hand, $250 per night for the Sheraton was out of the question. The Lodge was easily the cheapest accomodation at Yulara, short of a tentsite at the campground. With the mercury falling below zero at night and me without a tent, that wasn’t an option either.

Uluru — The Climb

Monday, 21 August 1989

I was up dark and early to catch the sunrise tour. Foolishly, I wore shorts in anticipation of the climb I planned afterward. I stood and shivered as the Rock turned from black to red.

Back on the bus and around the corner to the base of “The Climb”. There was already a long line of people toiling up the slope. Just after 07:00 (sunrise) I set foot on the rock. Hah! I thought as I passed “Chicken Rock” and reached the bottom of the chain that guides climbers up the steepest section of the Climb. This wasn’t going to be so tough!

Two minutes later, I changed my mind. Two years as a postie had not prepared me for walking up an interminable 40° slope. The tendons in the back of my ankles were the first victims. I started crabbing up sideways to spare them, but this put unacustomed strain on my shins and thighs. I found myself “roosting” frequently, pretending to admire the view while my lower legs spasmed and spasmed.

Then, incredibly, the slope ended. The chain ended. There was a flat place filled with puffing, sweating climbers lying around recovering from the effort. There was a tremendous view out over a flat red landscape that was already beginning to shimmer with heat haze. Below me, the “ant mob” toiled up the Climb, shrunken indeed to insect size down by the cluster of toy tour buses in the car park.

The worst was over, but I had not yet finished climbing the rock. To my left as I looked out, another chain continued up and over a stone shoulder. People were disappearing over the crest. I heaved my legs into motion again and followed them into an alien red landscape.

The top of the Rock was not flat. It billowed and folded, with pools of water and patches of soil, and even copses of trees. The highest point was marked by a large cairn. To reach the cairn, you followed a line of white dashes painted on the rock. But the shoes of generations of climbers had scarred the rock so that the line was hardly necessary any more.

The fact that hundreds of people made the climb every day was no guarantee of safety. There was always the temptation to peer over the edge; but the edge was so gradual that it was easy to walk down the slope a little too far, slip, and fall. People got killed that way every year, in addition to those who collapsed through heat exhaustion and heart attack. The Rock was 348 metres high and the Climb involved a distance of about about 1.6 kilometres each way (two hours return, 2/3 of which was the ascent). Climbing it was not for the old, the infirm, or the reckless.

For me it was once-in-a-lifetime. I’m glad I did it once, but if I go back I shall not climb it again. Not just because it’s no longer allowed, although that counts. Not because the local Aboriginal groups decry it, although that also counts (they decried it in 1989 and their disapproval stopped few people from climbing). Age and fitness, yes. But mainly … it would be the second time. You see, when I reached the cairn I did not stop for long. I carried on and walked across the entire expanse of the top. I can honestly say I “did” the Rock. I don’t need a replay.

A crowd had gathered about the cairn, gawking at the view. Yet the view was impressive mainly because it was astonishing that such eminence was surrounded by such tremendous nothingness. Only Kata Tjuta, the Olgas, 30 kilometres west, broke the flat expanse. They squatted like stone marbles on the horizon.

I headed east, exploring the rolling surface. Even close up, the Rock remained monolithic, but it bore smaller rocks atop it. The processes that formed them must work very slowly. Many looked like they must have been carried there, for they were out in the open and there was no obvious matrix nearby from which they might have cracked. But they weighed hundreds of kilograms: nobody would have bothered with such pointless exertion. So the boulders must be harder rock left behind while wind and heat and cold removed the softer material around them.

In one place I did find the undeniable hand of man: another cairn, almost lost in the red wasteland. I added a loose rock to it in passing.

In the middle there were places where the real horizon was entirely hidden below the edge of the Rock. Those were the strangest places of all, for there the Rock became the entire world: it was easy to forget that this was merely a hollow in a pebble in a desert in an island in a sea that covers half a world.

There were fields of spinifex and shrinking pools of water, shivering beneath the sky. There were the copses already mentioned, clusters of living trees and dead stumps. There was a string of deep sinkholes, filled with clear watter and floored with pebbles. What could form these? Not wind: they would probably keep their water long into the driest seasons. It must be the flow of water when (rarely) it rains.

The Rock itself was intricately patterned in bands and ripples, with a flaky-looking but almost indestructible surface. The colour changed with the angle of the sun. When the sun struck straight upon it the colour was paler, but when it struck at an angle the shadows and the less weathered edges intensified the tone. Add the natural reddening effect of the sunset and the Rock’s famous colour changes are understandable.

Eventually I found myself back at the top of the Climb. The sun was high and the temperature was rising. So I descended.

I started to walk clockwise around the base of the rock, but the temperature was soaring and the climb had taken more out of me than I’d expected. My exhaustion can be measured by the fact that I’m not sure how far I got. I have a photograph of Organ Cave, so I’d say that’s the limit. But I had two days left on my Rock Pass: I didn’t need to knock myself out today. I walked back to the Climb and there was a Deluxe bus there, so I climbed aboard. By mid-afternoon I was relaxing back at Yulara, after a stop at the ranger station and a ranger-guided “desert talk”.

Uluru — Base walk

Tuesday, 22 August 1989

I spared myself the frosty pre-dawn by waiting till the sun was well up before heading for the Rock. It was a brilliantly clear, cloudless morning and despite a little soreness in the calves I was ready to tackle the 9km Base Walk around the Rock.

Nine kilometres on the flat doesn’t sound much — I routinely walk further than that for exercise even today — but heat and glare tire people quickly, and it wasn’t a straightforward walk because there were many places of interest along the way.

I quickly retraced my steps of the day before. Organ Cave is a cave inside a rock pierced by large holes. The wind, when there is one, moans through the holes. Today was still, so the organ was silent.

Wind and floods had carved the base of the Rock into amazing shapes. Some looked like architecture. There was a bell-shaped cavity in the rock that I scrambled into to have my photo taken. There were huge cliffs where the surface resembled exposed lobes of a giant brain. There were fields of natural pillars, like graveyards. There was the Gigeresque skull of an Alien. There was aboriginal rock art. The gaping mouth of the sacred Cave of the Women was hung with stone baleen, like the mouth of a whale. I can’t be sure, but I think the string of sinkholes I saw up above emptied their rainy season overflow into Mutitjulu Springs. The Springs themselves were nestled in a deep, cool cleft in the flank of the Rock and rarely ran dry.

Best of all, the Base Walk was largely free of tour parties. Most people rode around the Rock, only getting out at the “big ticket” items such as Mutitjulu. Those who chose to walk it all as I did spent most of their time out of eyeshot and earshot of others. The walk was a brilliant success and a definite “must” repeat if I ever go back.

I got back to the base of the Climb just as the afternoon heat was taking hold. There was a Deluxe bus there, just about to pull out. Twenty minutes later I was wrapping myself around a very late lunch and a cool drink back at Yulara.

Kata Tjuta

Wednesday, 23 August 1989

My third day was reserved for the Olgas, Kata Tjuta. This collection of rock domes is the only rival to Uluru. They may once have been a single monolith even bigger than Uluru. The biggest dome, Mt Olga, was 200 metres taller than Uluru, but there was no climbing it. The domes covered 36 square kilometres and enclosed a space that felt as queer as the top of the rock.

My Rock Pass didn’t really cover what I wanted to do, but Deluxe were happy to oblige me. Normally people bussed out, walked into a gorge, walked back out, and left on the same bus. I wanted to get there on one bus, walk 12 kilometres through the centre of the domed land, and catch a 16:00 bus back from the other side. The Olgas buses were running only half full, so it cost Deluxe nothing to let me do this.

The bus droppped me off at the Kata Tjuta Lookout turnoff before 10:00. I was carrying about four litres of water (barely enough as it turned out), a picnic lunch, and my camera.

The first leg was a 4 km walk up to the lookout. The road was well graded and I covered the ground quickly. The first hurdle came when I reached the great sloping wall of rubble that spilled out between two domes. I didn’t realise how much height I had gained tiill I looked back and down partway up. No wonder I felt so knackered!

There was a side path that led up onto one of the domes. From the top I could see right across the interior of the domed land and pick out my path. The massive dome beneath me was dwarfed by the giants ahead. They crowded the horizon like a row of sunburnt buttocks on a packed beach.

The interior was mostly scrub and spinifex, but there were several clumps of trees — mostly ghost gums — a couple of which were on my route. There was also a line of greenery that might mark running water.

I scrambled off the lookout and headed into the scenery. It had taken over an hour to get this far, but that meant I was making good time. I resolved to slow down and smell the roses — not that there were many roses here.

The silence was the first thing I noticed. There was no wind. There was no sound except my breathing, the slap and scuff of my sandals, and the other incidental sounds of my passage. Even the trees, when I reached them, were motionless. I was the only moving thing in the landscape.

The domes were now great bald heads, holding their breath and watching in fascination as a gnat crawled across the shag pile in their living room. I tried to move across the land without damaging anything, as if the domes might reach out and crush me if I knocked their furniture.

Eventually I reached the green line that had suggested running water. There was water, but it wasn’t running. The main streambed was dry. The remaining water was locked into dampish ground and green puddles in a few deep, rocky crevices. I sucked on my second litre of water and contemplated the dessicated creek. The Red Centre was proving to be quite green. It had been a wet winter by local standards. But even in winter this land did not retain water for long.

The domes ahead began to dominate the world, and then I reached them, an hour on from the lookout.

I headed up the nearest gorge, following a well beaten trail. At the end I turned right. The gorges were uncanny, filled with scrub and yet feeling more like a city street than the product of nature. But eventually I came back into the open.

At this point I finally discovered where I was, for a signpost announced that the Valley of the Winds walk went each way from here but that there was no access to Olga Gorge. Hah!

Well, since I had walked the western arm of the Valley of the Winds to get here, I might as well complete the circuit by walking back on the eastern arm. So I did. Then I continued south.

It was now well after 13:00, but my ride back from Olga Gorge wasn’t till 16:00 so I had plenty of time in hand. It was hot now. When I reached a spot that was as close to cool and shady as I was likely to find, I stopped for lunch. I broke open my third litre of water and munched sandwiches, gazing out over the serene landscape.

It was a sublime moment, resting in the navel of this ancient land, listening to the flies — funny I hadn’t noticed them till now — and with no responsibilities. I was just where I wanted to be, just when I had to be there. My soul was at peace. These are the moments that make a trip memorable.

After lunch, I made my way into Olga Gorge, and through it.

The Gorge was interminable, but then I came across a low fence and heard voices shouting on the far side. The tour bus was already here — I think because it included a picnic in the Gorge — and the tourists were dashing around noisily, breaking up the scenery and photographing each other against what was left.

When I contrasted this scene of noisy destruction with the serene isolation of the domed land, I blessed the foresight of those who had carefully laid out the marked paths in a way that discouraged these maggots from penetrating the heart of the Olgas. One person passing through, treading carefully, packing their rubbish, taking only pictures and leaving only footprints, does negligible damage. One party of these noisy stompers could do damage that would take years to repair. Hundreds of people visit Kata Tjuta daily and only one or two do the long walk through the heart of the domed land — I’m happy to say!

That evening I took the sunset tour to watch the Rock turn from orange to red and fade to black. It was a satisfying way to end my exploration of one of the world’s most peculiar places.

North of Capricorn

Yulara to Darwin

Thursday, 24 August 1989

My Rock Pass was used up, so I spent the morn­ing wan­der­ing around Yulara. After lunch I clambered aboard a Deluxe bus for the 24-hour marathon ride to Darwin.

The road from Yulara to Darwin was smooth and well maintained — and empty and long. The only towns worth the label were Alice Springs (25,000), Katherine (10,000) and Tennant Creek (4,000). No other places mustered more than a few hundred people. Darwin itself had only 85,000 people.

My bus was going all the way, taking 24 hours to cover just under 2,000 kilometres. Apart from the Nullarbor I know of no other place on Earth where you can travel 2,000 kilometres on a major paved highway and pass through only three towns. In the third world, empty land means rutted tracks. Elsewhere such a highway soon develops a sizeable population.

The first leg simply retraced the 240 kilometres of empty Lasseter Highway to Erldunda. There the bus turned north onto the stuart Highway for another 200 empty kilometres to Alice Springs. From Yulara to Alice was just under 5 hours. Since sunset was about 18:20, that meant arriving in Alice after dark. I was a bit disappointed, as the movie A Town Like Alice was a childhood favourite. My dominant memory of the town is riding towards a dark rampart of stone only to have it split at the last moment to reveal the street lights of central Alice Spring. That was the Heavitree Gap.

I don’t remember my dinner at Alice Springs (45 minutes), or anything of the 1185-kilometre, 14 ½ hour leg from Alice to Katherine. It’s not really surprising. I slept through the dark time, and in the morning there was only empty land until Katherine — I was probably in a trance most of the time. The memory has melted into all the identical rides before and since.

Just north of Alice, I crossed the Tropic of Capricorn for the first time in my life. My first time in the tropics! I’d be north of Capricorn now until I passed through Rockhampton, on the Queensland coast, on the run to Brisbane.

Friday, 25 August 1989

I have photos and fragmentary memories of Katherine and of the 340 kilometre, 4 hour ride north to Darwin. There were trees and traffic, and long blackened stretches of burning landscape, and a tourism logo painted on a rock.

The bus pulled into Darwin at around 14:00 on the 25th. I pulled my pack from beneath the bus — the same humungous pack I’d once toted around New Zealand, but not nearly so heavily loaded now — and headed for the youth hostel. Later, I took a stroll around town.

I came across a familiar sight. Someone had built a small park and rest area around a couple of old W-class trams from Melbourne. I bought some coffee and sandwiches and sat in one of them, letting it all soak in.

This was the furthest north I had ever been. It was a record that would stand for eleven years. My previous record was Brisbane, so I’d been setting new personal records since before the South Australian border.

So I sat there and breathed in the tropical air (hint of salt, hint of swamp), slapped mosquitoes and watched the palms sway, and marvelled that it all felt quite normal. I love Melbourne dearly, but its midwinter glooms are one of its less appealing features. To escape for a few weeks in midwinter to some place warm and sunny was a boon to be savored. I should be exulting in my freedom. I was certainly happy and carefree, but not excessively so.

My last foray north had been in September 1986. I went from Sydney to Brisbane on the overnight bus, but one morning in Brisbane was enough and I headed down to Surfer’s Paradise. The hostel I stayed in was a former motel, its units converted to self-contained dormitories. The air conditioning had packed it in and was replaced by ceiling fans. The room was an inferno by day and almost uninhabitable at night, but it was cheap and convenient to the beach. I got most of my sleep sunbathing.

Surfer’s Paradise was a long sweep of white beach, backed by the cliff of towering development that destroyed it. Once it was all good all day, but by mid-afternoon now the shadow of the buildings crept across the sand. I eventually found a section without buildings behind it and with few people on it, but it was a long walk from the hostel. On the other hand the relative seclusion tempted female bathers out of their bikini tops, so on balance even the remoteness was good.

But enough of 1986. This was 1989.

I liked Darwin. It was quiet and pretty and cheerful, and I wished I could spend more time there. But my bus pass was ticking, and there was a place nearby that I wanted intensely to see. I was on the bus at 07:00 the next morning.

Kakadu — Yellow Waters

Saturday, 26 August 1989

If Uluru is the star attraction of central Australia, Kakadu domi­nates the far north. But where Uluru’s stellar attractions are on a human scale, Kakadu’s attractions are widely spread and too big to be appreciated the same way, such as the Escarpment, or are fundamentally different in nature, such as the wetlands and the rock galleries. But as with Uluru, the tour operators are ready to help, with neat little packages that are the sightseeing equivalent of a Big Mac, but cost more.

My bus pass gave me a free ride to and from Kakadu via a roundabout route, and a discounted Yellow Waters cruise, and by staying overnight at Kakadu I got a free stop at Nourlangie Rock on the way back to Darwin.

I started seeing pillars of mud jutting up just off the road. We passed several before I realised that they were termite mounds. Then the bus pulled up close to some particularly fine specimens (the Magnetic Termite Mounds in Litchfield NP) and we were allowed off to have a closer look.

Close up, the mounds were even more impressive. They were fluted around the top, probably a climate control feature. Most of the fluting ran north and south. Some mounds looked like frozen bomb bursts. Many were not only taller than I am, which isn’t saying a lot, but were taller than anyone else too. I didn’t touch any of the “living” mounds, but there was an abandoned one. The mud was stiff but didn’t crumble quite the way hardened mud usually does. It tended to flake.

The bus stopped at Cooinda at about 11:00. I was booked into a share cabin. I’d hoped to luck onto one to myself, but my luck failed there — someone else’s stuff was spread over one of the beds.

My Yellow Waters cruise was the sunset trip, so I had a few hours to look around. I had a few handouts from the office, one of which detailed a local wetlands walk. So I did that.

This was my first tropical wetland. I don’t know what I expected — a jungle out of the movies, perhaps, swarming with predators and nasties lusting for blood. It certainly had those, but a cloud of mosquitoes, however irritating, lacks oomph.

However, the sticky mud and luxuriant vegetation were not entirely lacking in menace. At several points along the way the mud and reed beside the water gave way to muddy races. They looked like nice spots to kneel down and splash water over my neck. If I did that I might get more than I bargained for, because salt water crocs lived here. I could see the slots in the mud where the tail of a croc had rested. Odds were it was only a “freshie”, but it only took one “saltie” to make it a bad, bad day.

There were also big puddles in the trees, their edges torn up by hooves. Water buffalo are beasts of burden in South East Asia, ridden by children, but in Australia they run wild. If I found myself contesting the track with an angry buffalo disturbed from its wallow, I might be tempted to risk the crocs!

Eventually it was time for the cruise. The cruise boat was a rickety-looking shell with a fabric roof over it. I was one of the first arrivals, but it was close to full by the time it pulled out into the river.

Yellow Waters is a huge swamp, packed with birdlife. We didn’t have to go far before we came across some Jabiru storks, the trademark animal of the area. They were big, black and white storks with the solemn air and appearance of a hotel maitre de.

We also passed some small crocs, perhaps two metres, resting on logs, mouths half open to shed heat. The crocs, of course, are the main attraction of the cruise and even though these were small fry the tourists did their best to keep the Kodak and Fuji balance sheets healthy.

A more exciting moment was when we came across two crocs lying in the water in a face-off. Mating? Territorial invasion? Who knows. They didn’t move while we made more dedications to film company profits.

And then a big croc surfaced nearby and swam lazily down the length of the boat. It looked as long as the boat, but that would make it seven metres long, and crocs don’t run that big nowadays. Looking at my photos I can see it was only two or three metres. It was pursued on its way by a lightstorm of camera flashes.

The cruise ended with the sunset. The sunset was OK, but what made it special was the lovely reflection of the sky in the still water — and the exponential increase in the mozzie population once it was too dark to spot the buggers coming.

Back at the cabin, I met my room-mate: a pom, on his way down the middle. I also met the local mosquito control devices, small lizards that clung to the ceilings.

Kakadu — Nourlangie Rock

Sunday, 27 August 1989

My ride back to Darwin didn’t leave till the afternoon, so I slacked off around the resort, resting at the swimming pool, and generally recharging. I had a feeling that getting to Townsville would demand all my strength.

I had learned a lesson half a decade before, when I slogged my sweaty, footsore way past people enjoying a swim beneath a tall bridge. I was determined to hitch to Nelson that long ago day. If I went swimming I might miss my ride. But lifts were scarce and I arrived at Nelson late that evening in company with people who’d had been swimming beneath that bridge when I passed by. Never let the destination get in the way of enjoying the journey!

The previous night, I had explained my travel plans to my room-mate. He had a copy of Friday’s The Australian. He handed it to me.

My eye immediately saw the headline. The simmering pay dispute between the government and the airline pilots had boiled over. The pilots had resigned en masse. Air travel in Australia was at a standstill. Thousands of travellers were stranded and would soon be looking for ways to get home.

I think I’ve explained how remote Darwin is from where the people live. Adelaide and Brisbane were both two days away by bus. Perth, Melbourne and Sydney, add another half day. Suddenly people who had been a couple of hours from home were faced with bum-numbing two- or three-day odysseys. A lot of holidays got cut short to free up enough time for the journey.

The hire cars went first: within hours, desperate travellers had emptied the garages of anything that could move under its own power. There being no train closer than Alice Springs, the buses went next.

The bus com­panies, en­gaged in a dis­count war just days before, piled on extra coaches. But as fast as extra seats were made available, they were booked out, days in advance. My bus pass was stand-by. That meant that I could not book until a few hours before departure. Short of blowing my budget by paying full fare, how could I compete?

Worse, Darwin to Townsville was always going to be the tightest leg of my journey: Deluxe had only one service per day and it had usually been full, or close to full, even before the pilots strike.

Well, there was nothing I could do about it till I got back to Darwin. That leg at least was certain. Since most people came by car or tour bus, the Deluxe buses out of Kakadu still had seats left, as I discovered at 9:30 when I rang them to book my seat on the 13:30 from Cooinda. So I might as well enjoy the journey and hope the destination would take care of itself.

The bus stopped at Nourlangie Rock on the way back to Darwin, and the driver turned tour guide. Nourlangie Rock is a knob on the edge of the escarpment, well peppered with aboriginal art “galleries”. It’s also very scenic and offers great views over Kakadu.

The rock art was remarkably well preserved — apparently the locals still refreshed the paint every few years, a practice that astonished many visitors who thought it detracted from their historical value. But from the aboriginal point of view, these images were still part of their everyday culture, and keeping them in good nick was equivalent to varnishing the pews or repairing the stained glass windows in a church. And many a European masterpiece has been “restored”.

I’ve never been a fan of aboriginal art. I wasn’t even born in Australia, so it forms no part of my heritage. But the galleries at Nourlangie Rock were well signposted — obtrusively so. I wonder how people would feel if a bunch of aborigines posted big white explanatory signs all over the Sistine Chapel? Still, the signs gave an “in” on the meaning of the art, and I came away impressed.

Then it was back on the bus, back to Darwin, back to the looming nightmare of getting to Townsville.

Darwin to Townsville

My first stop was the Deluxe service counter to see how bad the news could get. It was bad, but not hopeless.

A lot of people were headed for Alice Springs, hoping to score a seat on the Ghan or on one of the trickle of planes that were soon flying again as foreign and Air Force pilots were brought in. This route offered the bus operators a quick turnaround, so there were plenty of seats and my chances of getting as far as the roadhouse at Three Ways the next day were good. But that was the only good news. There was a glut of people heading east from Three Ways. It was the quickest way to Brisbane and Sydney. Every seat was gone, days in advance.

My face must have fallen, because the guy grinned. “She’ll be right. There are a lot of no-shows from people booked through from Western Australia who’re missing their connections. If you can get to Three Ways, something is bound to turn up.”

Monday, 28 August 1989

Once again I entrusted myself to serendipity, and again serendipity delivered. The next day was Monday, and Deluxe had a convoy of buses bound for Alice Springs. The Alice leg was booked solid, but there were people coming from Townsville who would board at Three Ways. I had a seat as far as Three Ways.

Twelve hours later, I stumbled off the bus at Three Ways. The driver had been on the radio on my behalf on the way down, and now he grabbed my arm and trotted me across the bus parking area. There was a McCafferty’s coach there, due to leave at the same time as the booked-out Deluxe service. It too was booked out, but whereas the Deluxe service was full all the way to Mt Isa, some of the McCafferty’s passengers were only going a few hundred kilometres. If I was willing to stand in the aisle until then, I would get a seat when those people got off. And I’d keep that seat all the way to Townsville, since fewer people would get on at Mt Isa than got off.

I learned that there was a lot of this sort of thing going on. All the bus companies were going out of their way to accomodate those people who’d bought their tickets or bus passes before the pilot strike. It didn’t matter that my bus pass was with Deluxe: somewhere there would be a McCafferty’s passenger riding a Deluxe bus. It evened out. Since they were swapping seats paid for by no-shows, or unsalable due to people getting off in odd places, it cost the bus companies virtually nothing, but they got a lot of good will from their grateful passengers.

When the bus pulled out, I was perched on the steps watching my holiday pull away from the edge of ruin. Two hours later, at what must have been the Barkly Roadhouse, I got my seat. The departing passengers were apparently headed for a nearby cattle station.

After the hard, jolting aisle the seat was heavenly. I was asleep in minutes, and I didn’t wake up until the sun glared in the windscreen.

Tuesday, 29 August 1989

The landscape was empty and flat. Red dust and scattered bushes. Welcome to Queensland! There was nothing to see until, suddenly, we pulled into Mt Isa. The mining town was little improvement.

The only excitement in the entire the day was the road works we encountered while winding our way through the Great Dividing Range. Traffic jams in the middle of nowhere. But the driver had been expecting them, and after Mt Isa, with no more pick-ups expected till Townsville, he’d floored the accelerator wherever there was a good stretch of open road. Despite long holdups due to the road works, we pulled into Townsville almost on time.

I booked in at the nearest Backpackers, dumped my pack on the bed, and headed for the showers. By now I was 32 hours out of Darwin, all spent riding the buses.

But I got off lightly. Some passengers were booked through all the way to Brisbane, a 52-hour hell ride from Darwin. Have I told you how big Australia is? By road, Darwin to Townsville is more than 2,500 kilometres and to Brisbane is about 4,000 kilometres. From Brisbane, Sydney is another 1100 kilometres and Mebourne is 2,000 kilometres. By the time I got back to Melbourne on this trip I’d travelled almost 11,000 kilometres around Australia by bus, equivalent to more than a quarter of the circumference of the Earth.

Meantime, I was through the bottleneck. Seats were plentiful all the way to Sydney, and even if they were booked out on one day, I was sure of a seat the next.

Clean and fed, worries eased, my head hit the pillow and I was out like a light.

The Great Barrier Reef

Wednesday, 30 August 1989

I was up early the next morning to book a reef excursion. I was in luck. There was one with vacancies. There was also another hosteller, a pom (I seemed to be running into them everywhere on this trip) who was booking the same trip, so I wouldn’t be among total strangers. (I ran into him again later, in Sydney.)

The excursion boat was a big double-decked cruiser. They offered two rates: a pricy one for people who wanted to mix their reef experience wuth scuba lessons, and a cheaper one for those satisfied to snorkel. Since the scuba experience required several lessons, I chose the snorkel.

The day did not look good. Heavy clouds rolled their way over Townsville. But the captain assured us that the weather would be good out on the reef. So out we went. Gloomy Townsville receded. Gloomy Magnetic Island came up and receded. And then we passed from beneath the cloud and the gloom receded. The boat thundered merrily across sparkling waters, scattering turquoise waves to left and right. We stripped to our bathers and packed onto the upper deck.

Eventually the boat slowed, hunted a bit, then stopped in open ocean. The water was perhaps a fraction brighter than elsewhere. We were on the reef.

The divers had disappeared below to gear up. Now they waddled out on the stern of the boat and one by one toppled into the water. The snorkellers crowded the balcony, watching. The instructor checked each student one last time, then led them away and down.

Now it was the snorkellers’ turn. We grabbed our masks and fins and jumped in.

The water was warm and languid. I slid through waves that had no energy. My attention was on the colorful landscape passing a dozen metres below me.

It was mostly blue and green and black, but there were red and purple highlights. Weeds waved gently. Striped fish swam through them. And all around were huge heads and clumps of coral, the least impressive part of the scenery until I remembered that everything else here was built upon their bones. Even the white sand that made the water so bright was pulverised coral. Some coral looked like trees, some like brains, and some like huge pagan altars.

I tried to swim down to the bottom, but it was further than it looked. I could reach some of the taller coral altars, but the sand was too far down.

The swim quickly exhausted me. I grew up in a beachside suburb and snorkelled frequently as a child, but there was no comparison between the churning, silty beach at Castlecliff and this transparent wonder. The water tasted the same, though, whenever I got excited and forgot that my breathing depended on keeping one end of that awkward tube out of the water. I lost track of time and almost ran out of energy before I reluctantly returned to the boat.

The scuba divers also returned and the boat moved on, dropping anchor for lunch near a coral cay. The seafood lunch soon disappeared down a dozen famished gullets. The leftovers went overboard, attracting swarms of scavengers.

Some energetic people swam after lunch. One group took the inflatable motorised dinghy and went over to explore the cay. The rest lay around digesting their meal and working on their tans. Cameras came out and Kodak did a thriving business.

Eventually we headed back to Townsville. By the time we got there the clouds had receded inland and the town was frying beneath the glare. I wandered around a bit, shopping, picking up odds and ends that had run low during the mad early rush of the trip. Then I regained my sanity and lay down on my bed until the sun went away.

Magnetic Island

Thursday, 31 August 1989

The morning dawned clear and sunny. A perfect day to go out to Magnetic Island.

Magnetic Island started life as a resort island just off Townsville. Being both large and conveniently located, it quickly became a retirement village and dormitory suburb of Townsville as well. I didn’t know if it was worth the effort, but it was there and it would make a convenient day trip, so I went.

At the island, I walked off the ferry and a bus to Horseshoe Bay was waiting, This was a big bay on the far side of the island, a satisfactory hop away, so I took it.

The island was gorgeous. Its popularity was easy to understand. But it was also overrun with people and was falling prey to rampant development.

I walked around a rocky headland. At one point a boulder was propped up over the track, leaning on another boulder. Someone had painted dont Knock the Rock on it. It was the most interesting sight on the island.

Gorgeous, yes, but dull.

That evening, I boarded the bus for Brisbane. I had two days left on my bus pass and I wanted to reach Sydney before it expired.

The East Coast

Brisbane

Friday, 1 September 1989

I don’t remember the bus trip. I left Townsville in the dark, and the next day was consumed rolling down the Sunshine Coast towards Brisbane. I got to Brisbane in the afternoon (16:30). By the time I got squared away with bed and shower, it was dark (just after 17:30 — it seemed unfair for such beautiful, warm days to end in the middle of the afternoon).

I went out to see what Brisbane’s Friday night had to offer. The answer was, not much unless you had a lot more money in your pocket than I did. Even staid, boring Melbourne had more nightlife than exciting, touristy Brisbane in those days.

I took some photos, but my little one-shot 35mm disposables didn’t have the oomph for night photography. I finished the current box and took the accumulated boxes to a one-hour photo shop. If I couldn’t have night-life I’d spend the evening poring through my memories.

Three years earlier I’d come to Brisbane, looked at it by morning light, and headed off to the Gold Coast by the afternoon. That was Brisbane under Joh.

Saturday, 2 September 1989

The next morning, I was on the bus again, but only by luck. The coast service was full of would-be fliers, so instead of running down the coast I had to take the inland service instead. Once again the trip itself has left no mark in my memory. Once again it was a long, boring journey.

This was the end of my bus pass. It was due to expire at midnight, and I climbed off the bus in Sydney at about 23:15. Not that they would’ve tossed me off if the journey had finished after midnight, but it was nice to end it so neatly.

Looking back, it might have been wiser to dig deeper in my pocket and go for a 21-day pass. That would’ve let me swap a couple of Sydney days for visits to Katherine Gorge and Kings Canyon, and I could have discounted the saved Sydney to Melbourne fare against it. If I’d known it would be a decade before “next year” in the USA and eleven years before I saw the Red Centre again, I might have done it.

But I probably couldn’t have afforded both the more expensive pass and the extra excursions, and we can’t see the future. At the time I was well pleased with what I’d achieved on a small budget and in adverse conditions.

Sydney

Sunday, 3 September 1989

More than 10,000 kilometres of road lay behind me, and now only 900 remained between me and Melbourne. I still had time in hand. Hitherto I’d been driven by the ticking bus pass. That feat was accomplished. I’d stuck to my plan. Now it was time to relax.

From the bus station I followed my feet across to Kings Cross, up the stairs, and around to my usual Backpacker haunt in Victoria Street. It was a dump, but cheap and filled with travellers.

My first full day was spent wandering central Sydney, camera in hand.

My pommy friend from the Reef excursion had arrived in Sydney and had turned up at the same hostel. We teamed up and headed out for Chinese at a local restaurant, finishing the evening in one of the Cross’s pubs.

Bondi Beach

Monday, 4 September 1989

I was up and out early, drawn by the promise of bright sun and bright sand and bright water at Sydney’s premiere tourist beach, Bondi.

If there is one Australian beach most foreigners will recognise, that beach is Bondi. As with their Opera House and Harbour Bridge, Sydneysiders have laboured to present Bondi as quintessentially Sydney — and Australian.

Having lived in Sydney but also elsewhere, and after two weeks on the bus, I was well positioned to debunk the myth. There were 18,000 beaches in Australia and Bondi was as far from representative as can be imagined. Most Australian beaches didn’t have huge cities just behind them. Most Australian beaches didn’t turn into heaving masses of flesh on weekends. Most Australian beaches were visited by more Australians than tourists.

But why bother debunking it? Nobody cared. The tourists didn’t. The locals didn’t. Least of all the tourist traps that did a roaring trade on the foreign flies attracted by the honeyed name. I let myself go with the flow, and set out to “experience” Bondi.

The first sight was that sweep of silver sand, pent between rocky headlands and bounded by frothing surf. I’d chosen a good day: the beach was almost deserted. Almost.

Below me, some people were playing a game with velcro bats and a fuzzy ball. What gave it interest was that one player, tall and statuesquely built, wore only a g-string. When she jumped, everything moved. Buttocks, breasts, hair and heels flew in all directions. She obviously knew she had the undivided attention of every male eye nearby, and either she liked it or she simply didn’t care. I was riveted by the display.

Eventually the game wound down and the players plunged into the water to cool down. I moved on towards the south head (MacKenzies Point) to cool down, too.

Bondi actually opens south-east, not east, which is not ideal for sunbathing. Despite Sydney’s self-promotion of itself as Australia’s beach capital (the Gold Coast has a better claim), Bondi is almost the only good beach on the pacific front south of Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour). Maroubra Bay, further south, is larger but harder to reach and is adjacent to a rifle range. So infrastructure development has concentrated around Bondi.

The salt-water baths at the south end of the beach may seem an odd invention, but they were safe from rips and sharks and provided a measured length for swimmers. Further along, I saw more evidence of Sydney’s reluctance to let nature alone. Where a ledge had cracked and threatened to bring the overhanging cliff down, a concrete wedge had been installed to hold things up. In Melbourne, the cliff would have been permitted to collapse. The repair job was obviously not popular: somebody had painted a tart comment on it: “Concrete intrusion, Brutal solution”.

A similar solution was employed at the end of the path, but here it worked: two pillars held up a ledge that formed a cave, a shelter from rain. A stone wall provided a convenient place to prop elbows and bottoms. It looked like a ruinous temple.

I walked back to the beach and headed north. I had barely started when I ran into a storm of seagulls. Two Russian guys had bought some fish and chips and had made the mistake of tossing a chip to a hungry gull with no feet. Within minutes, every gull on the beach had zeroed in on the manna.

Many of the gulls had missing feet, I don’t know why. The gulls elsewhere in Sydney averaged close to two apiece, but at Bondi the average was closer to one apiece. Perhaps someone was trapping them. The lack of one or both feet didn’t seem to cause the gulls much difficulty. They were adept at taking food on the wing.

With the sun now high, I headed for the sand. I settled down on a level spot and soon dozed off, soothed by the warmth on my back. It was still early September, but Sydney had turned its thermostat to the mid-20s, and I hadn’t slept well last night. Too many hostellers banging too many doors at too many hours.

When I’d had enough sun and sleep I packed it in and finished my walk toward the north end of the bay. Then, as the sun started down, I walked through the park and caught the bus back to Sydney.

Manly Beach

Tuesday, 5 September 1989

Morning at Circular Quay: people everywhere. It was a Tuesday, which made this a good day to see the north shore’s most famous beach.

Manly was not only a beautiful beach, but was the place where Australian bathers first challenged Mrs. Grundy for the right to wear what they pleased to the beach. The prudes won the battle but lost the war. Yesterday’s eye-poppers at Bondi were the heritors of that legacy.

When I lived briefly in Sydney in 1986, I preferred Manly to Bondi on my beach days. But I would not have gone to the beach on days like this: it was too cool and overcast. Winter had reasserted its grip on Sydney. Today was for camerawork, not sunbathing.

Fortunately, getting there from Sydney could be half the fun. Buses ran across the Harbour Bridge. That was the boring way. Ferries ran direct from Circular Quay to Manly. They were just as fast as the bus, and healthier and more scenic to boot.

The Manly Ferry was rather like the Eminönü to Üsküdar ferry in Istanbul or the Staten Island ferry New York: a cheap scenic excursion. It offered superb views of the harbour, the bridge, the opera house, the CBD, and also the harbour mouth.

Sydney’s seaward coastline was a forbidding line of cliffs, broken in a few places. The harbour mouth was one such break. Some early explorers sailed right past it, not realising the scale of the water behind the cliffs, even though the gap is a couple of kilometres wide. There was a big bluff (Middle Head) that would make it look like a shallow bay with a couple of small inlets.

Eventually the ferry crawled around a point and shouldered up to the Manly terminal. The passengers trickled off.

The ferry terminal was linked to the beach by a mall called The Corso. This was lined with eateries and tourist traps, mostly deserted today.

The beach itself was an attractive but relatively anonymous stretch of sand, backed by an esplanade and palm trees. Manly didn’t even own the whole stretch of sand: the northern half was called North Steyne. I’m not quite sure why I preferred Manly to Bondi. Probably the relative lack of hype.

Once in 1986 I set out to explore the north end. I crabbed my way around the point called Queenscliff, a dangerous expanse of sharp rocks and beetling stone. I slipped at one point and tore the backside out of my favourite togs. That more or less ended the excursion, although I did wait to reach the safety of Queenscliff Bay before stopping to pull my pants on.

The return ferry sailed closer to the harbour mouth. I caught a glimpse of the nudist beach at Lady Bay, encircled as usual by boats. I’d gone there too in 1986, but had been put off by the population of binoculars, clifftop and shipboard both.

The end of the road

Wednesday, 6 September 1989

I started my last day with a tour of Centrepoint Tower, took a walk in Hyde Park, booked my seat to Melbourne, then went back to the hostel to pack.

My sentimental last dinner in Sydney: gyros from a greasy spoon in the Cross. If I’d been really soppy I would’ve gone up to Newtown to find the place where I’d been introduced to this portable souvlaki, three years earlier. Replete, I shouldered my boulder and made my way to the bus terminal.

Deluxe had been booked out, but Firefly had a $25 seat. For only the second time this trip I found myself boarding an intercity bus that was not blue and white.

One last night spent bumping and rumbling through the dark, this time counting down the kilometres on the Hume Highway.

Thursday, 7 September 1989

At dawn, we entered Melbourne’s northern suburbs. An hour later, the bus groaned to a stop in Flinders Street. Across St Kilda Road loomed the familar façade of Flinders Street Station.

I climbed down. My pack was scooted from a bin, covered with one last layer of road dust. I shouldered it and walked across St Kilda Road. A #48 W-Class tram was coming, so I crossed Flinders Street to the tram stop and climbed aboard. The few commuters on board ignored me: a short, dishevelled figure, bowed beneath a mammoth pack.

The pack sat companiably beside me as the tram rumbled up Flinders Street. As we crossed St Kilda Road, I saw the Firefly Coach pull out, headed for Spencer Street.

Wellington Parade. The light-towers of the MCG waved hello above the trees.

Bridge Road. A few more blocks down was the Post Office where I worked. But not today; I pulled the cord, and the tram spluttered to a halt at Lennox Street.

I walked down Lennox Street, wearing the pack again.

Goodwood Street. I looked to the right. Down there where Goodwood met Rotherwood was where I’d found my feet in Melbourne — and paid dearly for it in coin of the heart. But she’d moved: that flat was history.

Rowena Parade. I looked right again, down to where a small street ran off to the left. Rogers Street, heart of my social life. They would have headed off to work by now.

A familar brown building. Up the path. Up the stairs. There. A white door, with a brass “7”. My key? It would be a nice joke to travel 11,000 kilometres only to find myself locked out. But here was my key in my wallet, where I’d placed it last night.

In the door. Slam. Stale, disused-flat smell. Past the kitchen into the living room. Shucked my pack, dumping it on the bean bag. Went to the mains box and flicked the master switch. Went to the stereo and pushed the power button. What CD was in there? Who cared. Pushed “Play”. Ah. Mike Oldfield, Tubular Bells.

There. My easy-chair. One more step, the last step in the journey of 11,000 kilometres. I collapsed into the chair, caressing the familiar worn vinyl arms, listening to the familiar music, looking out the familiar windows, rocking gently, letting the stillness sink in.

Home.

Disillusion

Life is a gamble at terrible odds — if it was a bet, you wouldn’t take it.
— Tom Stoppard

I didn’t know it then, but that was to be my last holiday for more than a decade. The next year, I chose to have my holidays paid out when I left the Post Office in search of a job that did not depend on strong legs and a strong back.

What I found instead was “the recession Australia had to have”. The next seven years I prefer to forget, for by and large they were filled by broken dreams and grinding poverty. There were some bright spots — in 1994 I was even briefly wealthy enough to pay to bring my parents over from NZ for a visit, and from 1993 to 1996 I ran a small computer bulletin board that absorbed my minute disposable income (and then some) — but they didn’t really make up for the downers.

Sure, I had plenty of free time, but I could never save enough money to use it to travel.

At the end of 1997, things looked up. A temp assignment kept being extended. In 1999 it became a full time job, and suddenly I was accruing paid leave again.

In August 2000, eleven years later than originally planned, I finally got my US trip.

But that is another story …

— — — The End — — —

Although it targets 1989, I only began writing this trip report in 2000. The oldest version that I have is a draft internally dated July 2000 that breaks off at my arrival in Uluru. It was complete by August 2004. This version is dated 25th April 2024.