A Grand End to a Grand Adventure

King Parrot

A Miniature Royal Albert China Tea Set

Lyre Bird

Canberra

First Map with Drawing of Australia

Fossil at Dinosaur Museum

Rosella

A Family of Geese

We’re Bonafied Bell Ringers!

Herman Before His Coffee

Pinnacle Rock

Fields of Rapeseed Blooms

A Pink Lake

Field of Wildflowers

Echidna (Spiny Anteater)

Monitor Lizard

Another Field of Wildflowers

Wildflowers

Finally a Red Wildflower

Hang 10 in Carnavon

So, the last time I wrote, we had just left Sydney and were spending a couple of nights in the Blue Mountains, a really pretty area of lush, green trees (finally!), gorges and cool temperatures.

Unfortunately, it appears we had left the last decent hotel for a while. The so-called resort I had booked in Leura promised a restaurant that served dinner. When we arrived, we were told that the restaurant was only open Friday through Sunday, and of course, we’d arrived on a Thursday. Reception gave me a list of restaurants in the area that delivered, but we discovered that the one we were interested in was also closed during the week. Fortunately, we found a place that delivers to the hotel that wasn’t on the list, so our problem was solved…temporarily. The following evening, Friday, we tried the resort’s restaurant again, only this time to be told that the restaurant was fully closed for renovation. Sigh!

Meanwhile, we travelled to Wentworth Falls and the Art Deco Everglades House, where we had tea and cake served by a couple of elderly volunteers, who, bless their hearts, had a bit of a hard time keeping our order straight. Of course, not writing it down didn’t help. Herman ordered hot chai tea, only to be told that they didn’t really have any. This is now becoming a running joke for poor Herman, who seems to have a knack for ordering the very food item that is no longer available.

The following day, we visited a few Blue Mountain lookouts/waterfalls and visited the Treasured Teapot Museum, a one-man collection of teapots that fill an entire house. The attached cafe had the most wonderful scones I’ve ever eaten! Afternoon tea seems so civilized. I wonder if it should be a prerequisite to all political negotiations? How can you hold any ill will against your opponent when you’re biting into hot scones slathered in clotted cream and jam?

Oh, Herman thought he had finally photographed the elusive rosella parrot, only to discover that it was a king parrot. Rosellas have blue wings instead of green. Foiled again!

I think I’ve mentioned that our rental car booked out of Cairns for return in Melbourne had quite a stack of miles on the old odometer. Well, the car’s body was not in much better shape. As we proceeded down the eastern Australian coast, the front bumper slowly loosened to the point that occasionally we had to check it to make sure it was still hanging on. The plastic holding my seat belt when it’s retracted also had a bad habit of coming loose, as did a portion of the door handle. A piece of plastic above one of the tire wells loosened to the point that we had to buy some duct tape to hold it in place. We won’t talk about the number of window chips. My theory is that it only made sense that we’d get an old hunk of junk, as we were only driving it one way. If it weren’t for the fact that the car runs well, I’d suggest that it was time to retire the old girl.

On the way to Canberra, we stopped at an overlook of the rock formation called The Three Sisters. At another stop, Herman spotted a lyre bird. He’s racking up quite a collection of Australian birds and animals. Afterwards, we continued on to Australia’s capital.

Canberra is so different from the rest of the country! It really doesn’t have a city center, and on the weekend, the only activities are the tourists walking around and an Aborigine protest site that has been in existence for decades.

At one point, Herman pulled the car over to the curb to get out and take a few photos, but he didn’t realize that we were in a no stopping zone. Within five minutes, there was a police car heading in our direction! I jumped out of the passenger seat and ran to the driver’s side, prepared to move the car immediately. At that moment, Herman was coming my way… with two guards, AK47-type guns visible at their hips, strolling behind him. I guess they decided we weren’t a threat, but I couldn’t help feeling a little paranoid during the rest of our visit. Australia takes their no stopping zones very seriously!

We visited the National Library of Canberra, which had a great exhibition on the founding of Australia, including a map, made by Dutch mapmaker Joan Blaeu (a man, not a woman, despite the name), depicting Australia for the first time. There was also an exhibition about the 1960s in Australia and around the world. It was a bit jarring to realize that I’m now old enough for my generation’s cultural past to belong in a museum!

Just outside Canberra is a dinosaur museum, so we spent our last day in the area enjoying the displays. After seeing a Cassowary bird and platypus in the wild, I was curious to see how the age of dinosaurs played out in Australia as compared to the U.S.

According to Australian Geographic, “During the time of the dinosaurs, Australia was part of Gondwana, and its coastline stretched from subtropical zones in the north to polar latitudes in what is now Victoria. The best fossils overseas are found in geological layers that have been folded or eroded over millennia to display vertical beds from which the fossils protrude like some new-age artwork. Australia’s ancient landscape has undergone little movement; the layers of time have remained mostly horizontal, exposed only by harsh weathering.” Australia is so vast and, in some cases, inhospitable, that dinosaur fossil hunting is still in its infancy, so if you enjoy paleontology, you might want to keep an eye on their scientific journals.

The following morning, we left Canberra for the long drive to Bairnsdale. We had been warned that kangaroos were quite prolific in the area and even had a tendency to take over the government center at night. However, it was still a bit of a shock to see all the dead kangaroos (about every 100 feet) on the side of the road as we drove out of the city. There’s a reason that all the car rental companies prohibit driving before dawn and after dusk.

There were just two more days of driving before we returned to Melbourne, a rest stop for which we were well ready. On the road out of Bairnsdale, we drove on a back road, where, we were told, you could see Rosellas. After some patient waiting, Herman was finally rewarded with a few of the parrots, which were taking a bath in a puddle of water. They’re shy birds, so we considered this a major coup.

We spend the night on Phillip Island, where there is a species of penguins. Alas, the only way to see them outside of their burrows is at dusk, but the location where they parade across the beach from the water to their hideouts is an expensive tourist trap, with a strict no photography rule, so we walked around in the hopes of seeing a rebel waddling around. Herman did manage to get a photo of a couple of them in their manmade burrows. Despite a cold wind, we spent some time enjoying the view from the coastline as well.

I mentioned that the hotels have been less than great. Well, there’s another strange “feature” that has become a standard frustration: face towels. We’ve stayed in some rooms that only had one face towel for two people (ew!) or none at all. And the heat pumps, in general, do NOT warm up a cold room. Of course, it doesn’t help that old hotel rooms that haven’t been updated since the ‘60s install bathroom windows with slits that are permanently open to the outside in an effort to avoid mold/mildew buildup (trust me, it didn’t work). And don’t for a second think that a brand name hotel will fare any better! As a warning to any of you thinking of an extended trip to Australia, avoid 2-star hotels and any place that charges under AU$100! It’s not worth the discomfort.

The day after we returned to Melbourne, we held our breath as we dropped off the car at the rental company. It was all I could do to avoid saying, “Really?” when the representative told us that everything looked good. I’m sure that our stress-free insurance policy had something to do with her remarks. Farewell, ol’ Trigger, you were a good car, even though you threw a few “shoes” here or there.

The flight to Perth in Western Australia signaled the beginning of the last three-week leg of our six-month journey. Needless to say, we had become a bit road weary, so facing a section of the country with long driving distances between stopovers had us wondering what in hell we were thinking!

As we exited the airport, the weather was definitely warmer, though still on the cool side. Well, after all, it was still winter. We picked up the car and checked into the hotel. Within a couple of hours, we realized it was really cold in the room and didn’t seem to be getting any warmer. For some reason, the heat/AC controls were locked, so I called the front desk. I was told that the floor we were on didn’t have any heating!! Say, what?! We solved the problem by turning the system off entirely.

Perth is a nice city, though our first impression was that it’s not very large. Our lodging was in the central business district and we arrived on a Sunday, so perhaps that colored our opinion. Near our hotel was a structure called the Swan Bell Tower, built specifically to house 18 bells, 12 of which come from the St Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square in London. During our tour of the tower, the guide offered us the chance to ring one of the bells. I never realized how heavy church bells were until I tried to pull the rope. One of the bells weighed 1,000 pounds! Actually true bell ringers learn how to pull the ropes so that the full weight doesn’t impact them. We did manage to each ring our bell, for which we received a certificate.

Our next sightseeing outing took us to Fremantle prison, which is not that far from Perth. Normally I’m not that intrigued to tour a prison, but the history of Australia is so interconnected with the convicts brought here against their will to help build Perth and the surrounding area (including their own prison) so that investors wouldn’t lose their shirts, that I was interested to learn about their journeys and fates. Apparently it didn’t take much to be incarcerated in the UK back then (one boy was jailed and sent to Australia for stealing 7 pounds!). Part of the justification for transferring prisoners from the UK was overflowing prisons and disease outbreaks in London. And prisoners were allowed to work off their sentences faster in Australia, though they were never allowed to return home. In later years, the prison reverted to use for Australian-based criminals, but it remained in use until the 1990s!

Now the time had come for our journey north of Perth, where we hoped to see some wild flowers, and we were not disappointed! Almost from the moment we left Perth, we started seeing hints that spring had sprung in Western Australia, or at least the northern part of the region was transitioning out of winter. And not only wildflowers, but field upon field of farmed rapeseed blooms blanketed the land. On our way to Geraldton, we also stopped to visit Pinnacle National Park, where rocks seem to “grow” out of the sandy ground beneath them.

During our drive the following day to Kalbarri, we stumbled on a pink lake. Yes, I mean pink! Apparently, there’s a microorganism that excretes beta-carotene that causes this phenomenon when conditions are right. We had plans to see another pink lake south of Perth, but we were told that lake was dry, so this sight was a lucky find. We also noticed odd, round squash-like plants growing alongside the road. At first, we thought someone had tossed them out a car window, but when we stopped to look, we could see they were attached to a slim stem. Herman was a happy camper photographer that day, as he also had an opportunity to take photos of surfers in Kalbarri, and boy, was that surf strong!

After three days of daylong driving (until your bum was sore), including the road to Denham, we were grateful for a two-day stay in a bed and breakfast establishment, where we did absolutely nothing!

So, it was with a sense of dread that we got back in the car for the drive to Carnavon, though parts of the trip turned to delight when we started noticing field of yellow, white and purple wildflowers.

The road tends to lull the passenger (and sometimes the driver) into a drowsy state after so many hours, so I was somewhat startled when Herman suddenly jammed on the brakes and pulled the car over to the side of the road. We had seen photos of echidnas (spiny anteaters), but to date, neither Herman nor I had seen one in the wild. Suddenly, there was one crossing the road. Herman sprung out of the car with his camera to chase after it before it disappeared into the bushes, while I waited in the car. A few minutes later, he motioned me to join him, and we both quietly peered down at the creature, who had taken refuge in a bush. I felt a little bad for disturbing the little guy’s day, but once we backed off, he simply high-tailed it farther into the outback. I couldn’t help thinking how much I would have loved to have had such a compact little anteater (it was about the size of a Roomba) to suck up all the ants we had in our former condo.

By this point in our travels, we had seen enough of the Western Australian outback to last a lifetime, so we faced the drive to Exmouth with grim determination. Well, it was certainly worth it! About 100 miles from Exmouth, we stopped at Coral Bay, which featured one of the most pristine beaches I had ever seen, and we decided to take a swim there on our way back from Exmouth. Once we reached Exmouth, we drove along the coast, where you could see whale after whale swimming through the waters! On the way to Yardie Creek Gorge, Herman also stumbled upon another creature that he had hoped to photograph: a monitor lizard, which is distantly related to the Komodo Dragon.

Now that we had reached the farthest northern spot of our itinerary, we turned around after two nights in Exmouth and headed back toward Carnavon. Due to the length of the drive, we weren’t sure we had time to stop at Coral Bay, but we finally decided we just couldn’t pass it by without dipping out toes into the Indian Ocean. Since we didn’t have our swimsuits on underneath our clothes, we pulled over at a rest stop to try and struggle into them while sitting in the front seats. I should tell you that traffic along this stretch of the road was light to non-existent, so it was with a sense of embarrassment when a family pulled into the same rest stop. Fortunately, we hadn’t fully undressed yet (or at least taken off anything that would have raised eyebrows), and we just smiled pleasantly (and innocently) at them while we waited for them to leave. I give the both of us a 9.5 for the gymnastic moves it took to complete our wardrobe change. Wading in the ocean was heavenly, as you could see all the way to the bottom for quite a distance. Having grown up in Texas, where the Gulf of Mexico is brown and not overly inviting, and having lived in Los Angeles, where a person is often worried about pollution and rip tides, it was truly a relaxing experience despite the big fish that swam just outside the shallows.

For several days, we had been debating if we wanted to continue our itinerary south of Perth, since our main goal for traveling in that direction was to see the wildflowers. Now that we had met that goal, we no longer felt much incentive to spend another week driving five to six hours a day, as we were exhausted. So, we cancelled the southern route hotels (alas not without some non-refundable pain) and booked a week at a hotel that featured a heated pool; an exercise room; and, most importantly, free wifi that actually works, a comfortable room with plenty of towels, a breakfast buffet and room service.

Our drive back through Carnavon and Geraldton passed by much quicker, particularly since we’d already stopped for wildflower photos and we were now fixated on the wonderful thought of not having to go anywhere for an entire week. However, on our drive to Northam, we did stop at a particularly eye-popping field of wildflowers…and ants! I was afraid to stand still, there were so many of them on the path.

So, for the past week, we have been living in the lap of luxury and have absolutely no guilt feelings or concerns that we have missed any vital tourist sights. Tomorrow, we are moving to our last hotel in Perth (I couldn’t cancel that one) before we fly to Melbourne on Wednesday. Friday, we leave Australia to fly back to Los Angeles via Auckland, New Zealand.

It has been quite a journey, and it’s hard to believe that six months have passed so quickly. I would like to thank those friends that have offered us refuge upon our return to Los Angeles, as we will be there only three weeks before we travel to the Netherlands (but that’s another story). I would also like to thank our readers, who have stuck with us throughout the trip. Keep an eye out for blog updates in the future. Our adventures are just beginning. Cheers!