First of all, I’ve finally put up the last of my Tibet photos. I’ve also added Thailand and a few from New Zealand and Australia. Check them out!
I’m now in the Blue Mountains, which rise to the west of Sydney. All I can say is that Australia is a BIG country. I already knew that intellectually, but now I have physically seen it. Tim and I spent the last 4 days in a spirited little Thrifty Car Rental Hyundai called a “Getz” travelling across the vast breadth of Western Victoria and Southern New South Wales. Our route covered nearly 1,700 km from Melbourne, down the Great Ocean Road, up to the Grampians, on to Bendigo, Echuca, Deniliquin, Bathurst, and Katoomba all the way to Sydney. Mind you, this is probably more driving than I have done in the past 3 years combined… and it was all on the wrong side of the road!
No worries though. All the roads were 2 lanes wide, and Aussie drivers are only minorly insane when it comes to passing you with very little space. Truth be told, much of the trip was pretty easy-going. Once you get outside the cities, there ain’t much out there. We went as far out as Echuca and Deniliquin — breezing through tiny 4-house towns (which were the biggest thing for endless miles around) and big empty sheep stations — and we weren’t even in the “outback” or “the big empty”. This is a big place.
"ute on a pole"
It’s all very scenic, and the Aussies are good fun. After partying our socks off in Melbourne, we hit the Great Ocean Road, which is rather like California’s Pacific Coast Highway but with eucalyptus trees. It’s equally stunning! Then we went hiking in the Grampians, which are some REALLY OLD mountains. The weathering on them makes it almost look like a big pile of rocks. From there, it was through old gold mining towns, sheep stations, and truck stops. We saw the “ute on a pole”, and a ton of spots that were robbed by the famous Ned Kelly. It’s all very Old-West like, as much of this country was settled during the Gold Rush of 1851.
And in all this, we only covered a teeny tiny corner of this vast continent. In all that driving, we definitely heard a lot of our CD’s several times. Even the Meatloaf one…
Aside from driving on the wrong side of the road (and hence having the manual transmission to my left side), driving in Australia is fairly easy-going. The one thing you have to watch out for, of course, is kangaroos! At night they have a tendency to jump in front of cars, rather like deer in the Northeastern US. The roads are littered with ‘roo roadkill. You also gotta watch out for emus too, though they seem smart enough to give cars a wide berth. Fortunately, at the end of a long drive, Tim and I could hit our local supermarket and check the meat case for some kangaroo. Throw it on the barbie, and it’s actually quite nice.
Tomorrow we head into Sydney, the final destination down here. Oh, and we hope to find some koala on the way!
Tadhog Goes Walkabout (Part 3) 