Apr 2009

You can view the photos from this part of the trip here.

On January 2nd, I picked up a rental car in Sydney and started a 6-day drive to Adelaide, via Melbourne. In the end, I drove 2325 km (1445 miles). Some stories from the road trip:

- In the town of Bairnsdale, in southeast Victoria near the coast, I was checking into a motel which was owned by a very friendly couple. The provided breakfast, delivered to my room, and the man checking me in asked if I wanted milk for my tea. Being American, I said I didn't need it, so he offered me a beer as compensation. How Australian...

- Before heading from Bairnsdale to Melbourne, I went to an Aboriginal site that I had read about called the Den of Nargun, a cave where a mythical creature dwelled. It was an interesting drive there, out on a country road and then onto a gravel road that lead to the park that the cave was in. I fortunately got there when it was still rather quiet (though it was already off the beaten path), so I saw hardly anyone on the steep climb down to the cave. It was really sunny and the air buzzed with the sound of tons of insects. I saw some little lizards, but fortunately none of the larger lizards that a sign said lived in the park. After visiting the cave, which was in a beautiful setting, I hiked back up to the parking lot and tried to destickify myself, since it was getting quite hot by then. As I drove out of the park, I did catch sight of one of these larger lizards crossing the road, and perhaps my memory is exaggerating things, but I swear it was 2-3 feet long. Very glad I didn't run into one of those while walking around...

- The night I stayed in Melbourne was probably the worst night of sleep I had in all of the hostels I stayed in. First of all, it had been about 35 degrees (95F) that day and there was no air conditioning, only an open window and a fan to help cool us. Then the woman in the bunk above me was one of the loudest, most constant snorers I came across. Maybe if there was only one of those two things I could have slept better, but the two together lead to me only getting little spurts of sleep for about 2 hours. I put a damp towel on my legs and stomach to help keep cool, but then someone in the room decided it was a good idea to shut off the fan and I decided that was the last straw. I left the room and slept for a few hours on a couch in the TV lounge. I was desperate enough for some sleep at that point I was actually considering going out to my car and sleeping in the back seat...

- In Port Fairy, on the coast, I was looking forward to going on a walk past some of the shipwrecks in the area, but instead I found out that that evening there was a tour in the local cemetery lead by a woman from the town's historical society. It was one of the best things I did, the woman was well versed in the town's history, but she had also done a lot of study regarding the people buried in the cemetery and the symbolism on gravestones and such. In its early days the town got a lot of Irish immigrants (and was originally called Belfast), so some of the older gravestones had inscriptions in Irish and some were carved from stone brought over from Ireland. The woman told many interesting stories about people from the early days of Port Fairy, or of people who drowned or children who died young. I wish I could remember more of the stories now, but it was wonderful to hear this history, all the things you can learn from a cemetery.

- A video from the drive to Adelaide. It was a long drive through some very empty countryside. The road was often flat and straight, with no other cars in sight, so I easily could pull my camera out of my bag and take this video of the bare landscape.