From the Desert to the Sea

After 5 event-filled days on the road. I think I may finally be all road-tripped out. Oskar (an aussie guy who offered me a lift to Adelaide) and I left Alice Springs on Thurs and began our long trek down to South Australia. On the way to our first big stop, we pulled off the road to take a look at the breakaways, a starkly beautiful and vast desert plain. It was very different than the rest of the outback terrain I’d seen thus far which was surprisingly covered with foliage.




We also passed a huge and surreal salt lake which looked like a snow field in the middle of the desert.




It took us two full days from Alice Springs to make it to an opal mining town called Coober Pedy… translated from the Aboriginal as “white man’s hole in the ground.” The aboriginals do not mince words. Coober Pedy’s climate is so inhospitable that most of the town’s residents live in underground homes carved out of the rock in the dusty hills. There are about 10 opal stores for every person. While we were walking through the town (actually shuffling due to the intense heat), a local named Elias offered to give us a lift to one of the underground churches we wanted to check out. He had some time to spare, so he drove us to his home to give us a grand tour. Pretty cool place, and the best part about it was that there was no need for heating or air conditioning, as the temperature in the cave dwelling stays comfortably cool all year round. Elias was an interesting guy…he is a yoga instructor/miner who spends all his days digging in the hope of hitting a large deposit of opal. He mostly comes out empty-handed, but has a pretty positive attitude about his chances at striking it rich. After letting us pick out a few pieces of opal for ourselves, he dropped us off at our destination, which was really not all that exciting. But Coober Pedy is a pretty unique place and I’m glad we got to see it through a local’s eyes.

We left Coober Pedy early the next day to head on down to Adelaide. For some reason, I thought Adelaide was a LOT closer to Alice Springs than it was. It’s far, fuel is very expensive, and it took us 8 hours of solid driving before we reached the city. Did I mention I don’t drive stick? Poor Oskar had to drive almost the whole way, though I tried my hand at the driving and actually did ok as I’d had a quick lesson from the horse farmer before my unfortunate accident. I’d say I drove for about an hour in all. Exhausted and freezing, we stayed at a dingy hostel that night and woke up very early as we’d decided to check out Kangaroo Island the next day. Kangaroo Island is a beautiful, wind-swept, pristine island off the coast of Adelaide and its charms include large numbers of kangaroos and seal colonies. We made it to the ferry thinking that it departed every hour. Turned out that we’d missed the 12:00 ferry and that the next one was leaving at 6:00. We also discovered that getting Oskar’s van to the island would cost us twice as much as we’d thought. The info we’d read was very misleading, and so there we were, sans ferry tickets and down an extra hundred dollars each. Ouch. Well, we debated going back to Adelaide, but I had gotten my heart set on checking out the island (it was that or spend the next 2 days bumming around the city) so we just sucked up the extra cost and managed to board the 6 pm ferry. (We were actually very lucky as there was only one car space left when we bought the tickets.) Killing time before boarding the ferry, I was able to get a few cool shots of a wind farm on a hillside near the ferry terminal.






The ferry ride was very rough…the seas were NOT calm and as soon as the boat started moving, so did the contents of my stomach. I passed out for the hour-long ride and we arrived at the island after dark and called it an early night so that we could make the most of the one full day we had. The day started off cloudy and cold, but eventually the sun came out and we got to see just how spectacular the island really was. We were pretty underwhelmed by the first half of what we saw, but when we made it to the west end of the island, we understood what all the hype was about. It was stunning. The coasts were wild and tons of seals could be seen frolicking about in the rock pools and on the beaches. They are total cuddle bugs.






The highlight of the trip was a bizarre rock formation called the Remarkables. They were aptly named…




You can’t get a good sense of scale, but when you’re standing under the undulating rock faces you can’t help but think they were created by a sculptor. The forms were just so unique and the lines were an artist’s dream.

After visiting the Remarkables, we drove the full 2 hours back the ferry and made it back to Adelaide that night at about 10pm. It was an exhausting and expensive endeavor, but I’m glad we did it. I mean, did you see those seal’s faces? That alone made the trip worthwhile.

So now I’m headed to Melbourne for a few days and then it’s off to Sydney where I will be basically doing nothing except for soaking in a hot tub until I leave. My much-abused back will appreciate the rest, as I haven’t exactly been taking it easy.