|
 A drunken view of Rundle Mall. |
 Dave and Denise in Adelaide. |
 Native Adelaide Resident. |
We blatantly and irresponsibly disregarded our hostel owner's request to bring the bicycles back before dark and stayed in the city to see a movie in the cinema on grungy Hindley Street. In an otherwise clean and respectable city, Hindley Street is the black spot. The street is an outlet for adult stores and peep shows, video arcades, fast food joints and greasy cafes. Many of the other buildings were for sale or rent. The cinema was almost empty, even though it was a discount-ticket Tuesday night. Pairs of reflective police cruised the street on mountain bikes, not that there were many people to watch over; in a city in which the streets become deserted after dark, Hindley Street is only a little less deserted. It reminded me of a fairground after everybody has gone home. There was no atmosphere. Even the bums looked like they would prefer to be dropouts in a more exciting city. The name of the street provoked a negative reaction on my part too - the name "Hindley" brought to mind Myra Hindley, the 1960s British murderess whose part in the gruesome murders of children earned her international infamy.
In 1998 an irritated John Saffron recorded a take off of Quindon Tarver's feel-good song "Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen" with witty lyrics comprising unsound advice which was rather less politically correct and more machiavellian in outlook than the original (to put it nicely). One fragment of the lyrics reads:
"Get to really know your parents - they're good for money.Milk them, then put them in an old peoples home.
Travel as often as you can. Live in New York City once. Live in northern California once. Never live in Adelaide - it's a hole."
I never had any intention of ever taking up permanent residence in Adelaide, but I admit that in the short term I found the city quite appealing. It is well planned, with plenty of parks and open spaces and few crowds. It has a reputation among Australia cities for being little more than a boring overgrown country town with equally unexciting residents, and I couldn't argue against the fact that the place lacked action, but its relaxed pace can be taken in a positive as well as a negative light. Although I was looking forward to venturing into the outback, I could easily have spent a few more days unwinding and exploring in Adelaide and its environs.
Outback Track, The Large Lunch Project, Damp Camp
Wednesday, July 15; Adelaide - Wilpena Pound
I was still eating
frozen-thawed toast with apricot jam when our new Wayward guide
and bus driver, Steve, called into the hostel at 7:45am to collect
Denise and I. We were the first hostel on his round of pickups
and had the choice of seats in a large 40-seater bus that looked
like it had seen considerable adventure itself. We sat immediately
behind the driver's seat, for a decent view of whatever it was
we were going to see on our trip. The bus started filling up
as we made stops at hostels, and our circuitous route around
Adelaide's tidy city blocks led Denise to coin the phrase "going
around in squares." We arrived at the bus station half an
hour late. The remaining passengers piled on and an enormous
heap of colourful and bulging backpacks was transferred from
the pavement into the bowels of the bus.
Steve was ably assisted by Scott, an amiable trainee driver and guide. On first impression, Scott's duties and responsibilities seemed to consist of loading and unloading bags and chatting to Steve to keep him alert while driving. Not that Steve was the sleepy type. Young and clean-cut, Steve was always enthusiastic and good-natured. In true Australian style, he began a response to any question with "Ahhhhhh mate..." Before he drove for Wayward Bus, Steve was a long-distance truck driver, so he had many friends and contacts along our proposed route. He also had many stories to tell, both from his days driving a truck and his several years experience driving for Wayward Bus.
There were 36 passengers in our group heading into the outback and to Alice Springs, made up of several nationalities - Danish(3), German(3), English(7), Taiwanese(1), Japanese(2), Canadian(1), French(1), Italian(2), Australian(2), American(5), Dutch(4), Swiss(1), Austrian(2). Denise and I comprised the Irish contingent. Most of the group were in their mid-twenties, but there were some exceptions, the most notable being a grey-bearded American named Bill and his sister, both of whom looked over fifty. Five people were still with us from the Melbourne to Adelaide Wayward trip - the Dutch girl and her parents (I still couldn't grasp their names), Zoe from Taiwan, and Ramon the Swiss guy.
As was to be expected on the first morning, our group was unfamiliar with itself and rather quiet. Our first stop was in Clare, an ordinary town about an hour north of Adelaide and the centre of the wine-producing Clare Valley. Named after the Irish county, Clare represented our last chance to buy civilised goods before the selection shrunk to outback necessities. Our busload combed the town looking for water bottles, insect repellent and photographic film. We regrouped shyly near the Thomas Hart Memorial car park where the bus was due to collect us. I wondered who Thomas Hart had been and what he had done for Clare to have the dubious honour of having a car park named after him. I think that a tasteful plaque or a nice flowerbed would make a more pleasing memorial - a small and unremarkable spread of asphalt off a backstreet doesn't strike me as the highest of accolades.
We drove a short distance to Leasingham winery on the town's outskirts and descended on the tasting room, where I became further convinced that it is not worth the grovelling and feigned interest that must be displayed in order to obtain a thimbleful of free wine, no matter how good it is.
We covered some more miles before halting for lunch at a shady park near the town of Laura. Lunch was carried out in the same manner as for our Melbourne to Adelaide trip, although on a much larger scale. Feeding thirty-eight people is no small task. The storage compartments of the bus produced foldout tables, stools, basins, stoves, huge pots and several large plastic crates. The plastic crates in turn, produced plates, kettles, cups, cutlery, tin-openers, bowls, graters, chopping boards, and lots of food - loaves of bread, bags of fruit, blocks of cheese, sides of ham, slabs of butter, and cartons of milk. We discovered tins of sweetcorn, beetroot, and tuna, jars of mayonnaise, peanut-butter and pasta sauce, and bottles of juice, ketchup and sweet chili. There was lots more too, and under Steve's direction, the contribution of many pairs of hands, and some feverish chopping, a salad and sandwich buffet was laid out. It was surprising at first to see such an enormous amount of food prepared and devoured in such a short time, but as the trip progressed and such meals became routine, I began to think of food as something that was only obtained in large quantities - ten loaves of bread, eight cooked chickens, fifteen pizzas, three dozen apples and so on. The cleanups were equally phenomenal - when that many people are working together and everybody knows the drill, a fully functional kitchen could be packed away into the bus in ten minutes.
Our next stop was Quorn, and the evidence that we were leaving urban life behind could already be seen. With wide, dusty and empty streets, and scattered buildings facing the now seldom-used railway station, Quorn gave off the impression of a wild west town. Steve reminded that the price of alcohol increased as we travelled further from the cities, so all of the thirsty and thrifty descended on the local bottle shop. We returned several minutes later laden down with crates of beer and cider and tried to fit them into the already bulging luggage compartments under the bus.
 Steve takes us into the outback. |
We were headed towards Wilpena Pound, an elevated basin within the Flinders Ranges National Park, and an area steeped in Aboriginal legend. The amphitheatre-shaped Pound features the highest point in South Australia at a point on its rim, and is reached via rugged outer slopes, at whose base we were going to camp. It was getting dark when we arrived at the campground. It was still raining too, much to Denise's dismay. Two-person tents were doled out and quickly set up in an area covered in well-drained shale, so my concerns about a washed-out night in our tent village were eased. The sight of our instant village was striking - so many identical silver dome tents clustered together in a small clearing, it looked like a futuristic back to nature convention. There was some mud around, a deep red earth that characterised the entire mountain range and stuck stubbornly to my shoes. The group got its first chance to make acquaintances over dinner - takeaway lasagna and chips. The rain was still coming down and the campfire was having difficulty taking hold, but we had a large shelter with tables and benches, and even a sink, so we sat and ate and got to know each other over our self-enforced beer ration (the grossly underestimated supply Denise and I had picked up in Quorn was supposed to last until Uluru). I alternated between feeling warm and getting wet at the fire, and staying dry but feeling cold under the shelter.
I slept poorly on the wafer-thin bedroll. I woke in the middle of the night to hear somebody in the group snoring so heavily that it was almost funny. Almost. It was incredible, with tumultuous wheezing when the perpetrator inhaled and exhaled. The sound seemed to be coming from all around me, and I had no idea who or where the guilty party was. I spent much of the next morning privately guessing at the identity of the snorer, but didn't figure it out for several days. Steve slept in a swag (a toughened all-weather sleeping bag used for sleeping outside) in the bottom of the bus, leaving one door open so that he could get out. He told us about a previous trip, during which he slept this way in the bus in a small outback town on the solitary return trip from Alice to Adelaide. During the night, someone walking home from the pub was passing the bus and saw the compartment door open. The do-gooder individual didn't see Steve asleep inside, and mistakenly shut the door in case something would be stolen. There is no way to open the compartment doors from the inside, so Steve was locked inside in the darkness. Recounting the story, Steve laughed that he probably would have had to answer the call of nature in a rather immediate and displeasing fashion had a local hostel owner not heard his scrabbling on the door while passing by early the next morning.
Hazy Hike, Basic Bunkhouse, Dopey Dumplings
Thursday, July 16; Wilpena Pound - Angorichina Village
I ignored my alarm chiming merrily at 6:30am, since I was so contorted and caught up in my sleeping bag that it was impossible to turn over even if I had wanted to. I heard movements around the campsite, followed by Steve's wake-up call of cheerily shaking all of the tents in turn. Breakfast cereal was postponed until after tea and toast, as I needed some heating up before trying to consume cold milk. Over breakfast, we planned a hike of several hours to the rim of Wilpena Pound and back. There was little hope that we would catch a view of the surrounding countryside from the rim, as a mantle of mist accompanied by a light drizzle was keeping visibility poor, even at our relatively low elevation. About twenty of us, including Scott but not Steve, set off at about 8:30am. The less energetic members of the group elected to relax by the campfire, wander down to the visitor's centre, or, in the case of the pair of American girls, stay in their tent and sleep.
For the first hour we trekked around the base of the crater through a forest of cypresses until we reached a point where the trail started to ascend. Denise and Hanneka, a Dutch girl, turned back at this point, disheartened by the gloomy weather and the prospect of an arduous trek without a rewarding view. A middle-aged, reserved Danish woman travelling with two of her daughters strode ahead at a pace almost as lively as her bright orange anorak. As we climbed, through rock and ubiquitous red mud, the trees became smaller and gave way to scrub, but any views were still obscured by low and heavy cloud. This discouraged some others, who turned back after a short ascent, as there was no sign of the mist clearing, and we could not even see the summit. Nine of us went on, which became six after a strenuous hike up a particularly rugged and steep portion of the crater. The Danish lady had outlasted her two daughters and pushed eagerly onwards. Jerome (France), Alex (Canada), Mark (England), Katrine (Germany) and I scrambled over the rocks and up the narrow trail after her. We eventually reached Tandera Saddle, on the rim of the Pound. The cold wind from which we had been sheltered from thus far now slammed into us, and layers of clothing which had been peeled off during the demanding climb were quickly put back into service. Dense cloud prevented us from seeing into the crater, but we all took photographs anyway. St Mary's Peak, the highest point of the Pound at 1136 metres was only 800 metres further around the rim according to the map
 On the rim of Wilpena Pound: (L-R) Dave, Alex, Katrine, Jerome (front), Mark. |
We all descended more or less together, stringing out and chatting less as fatigue set in. From the base of the climb, the hour-long hike back through the forest seemed to go on forever. My legs were tiring and my enthusiasm was fading. I didn't want to pause, for I subconsciously rationalised that restarting walking would require more energy than I was using to keep my legs moving at a steady pace. I was daydreaming and so visually focused on the path ahead towards the end of the hike that I walked straight past a pair of wallabies loitering not far from the side of the trail. I would have kept going had Mark not called me back. The larger wallaby all but ignored us and nibbled away at a small shrub. His smaller companion eyed us warily from a distance. As my companions approached the larger wallaby with cameras snapping, he bounded away gracefully and took great interest in some undergrowth on the opposite side of the track. The persevering photographers pursued him again, until eventually he became fed up and bounded off into the distance, no doubt cursing tourists and mankind in general.
On our arrival back at camp, I was delighted to see that lunch was just about ready, a hearty feast of soup, hot dogs and sandwiches that we devoured hungrily. After we had packed and washed up, we hit the frog and toad again, travelling 70km north to the village of Angorichina. By this stage we had left the main Stuart Highway and were travelling on dusty and unfrequented back roads. I'm not convinced that Angorichina deserves to be accredited as a village."Homestead" is probably a more accurate term, as Angorichina is just a small group of simple buildings nestled amongst the Flinder's Ranges, miles from anywhere and owned and operated as a bunkhouse/general store/petrol station by one man and his family. The place was built in the mid-1920s as a mental rehabilitation hospital, accommodating war veterans and general patients for long periods of recuperation. At first glance, I could tell that Angorichina would be more likely to drive me insane than to help me rehabilitate. It was a pleasant place to spend one night, but I would be very reluctant to stay in such a remote and desolate place for longer. The hospital was closed when the last patient checked out (for good) in 1970, and the place became an accommodation stopover for travellers talking the scenic route north.
The bunkhouse was simple, consisting of several undecorated rooms with four to eight beds in each. Denise and I shared with the Dutch girl and her parents. We had tried to get a room as far away from the snorer as possible, who we suspected to be Bill the snowy-bearded American psychologist. As it turned out, he took a bunk in the next room, leaving only a few inches of plasterboard between our heads. Still, either I was very tired or he decided to sleep on his side, for I didn't hear a single rasp all night.
Once we had checked ourselves in, we wandered down a path
leading away from the homestead to explore Blinman Creek and
to build up an appetite for our upcoming barbecue dinner. There
were huge amounts of food prepared, and we sat around the campfire
under a light drizzle, tucking into barbecued sausages, steak,
and kangaroo. The roo was tasty, although I ate it in the near-darkness
by the fire with a plateful of miscellaneous vegetables, sauces
and other meats, so it could have been grilled mountain goat
for all I knew. Dinner was accompanied by my ration of three
bottles of Cooper's Pale Ale. Even with that meagre daily allowance,
Denise and I were going to be out of beer long before we reached
Alice, with little chance of obtaining a reasonably priced crate
before then. Things looked grim. I savoured each mouthful of
beer thoughtfully, not truly enjoying it as I wondered if I was
squandering precious ale that I might need more later in the
trip. To top off our meal, a rich dessert of dumplings with syrup
and cream was served which sent me into a profound state of lethargy.
The heavy dumplings fostered some strange attraction to the ground,
which prevented me from standing up or moving around. When I
could finally move, I pitched in with the washing up, which was
a monumental task requiring a dozen people, three sinks, most
of the water from Blinman Creek, and countless damp dishcloths.
Dumpling digestion left me with little energy for any further
activity besides sleeping, and I joined the crowd of early faders.
An alcohol-enlivened handful stayed up until the ridiculous hour
of 11pm. Once they had retired, however, only the occasional
creaking of a bunk and a few stifled coughs disturbed the silence
of the remote homestead.
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