9-14 March: Adelaide to Tassie

9 March - 14 March: Adelaide to Tassie

Imagine for a moment you are traveling through the whoop-whoop (another term for the deep bush…). It is late, the roo’s are starting to cluster on the roadsides for the evenings game of dodge-car. You have driven for 6 or 7 hours. A dot on the map is actually a small town with a holiday park and a couple of chain motels. One of the motels is the namesake of the large carved bandicoot at the head of its carpark. It looks clean and inviting, the price is also right.

A warm shower before you eat sounds like an invitation to nirvana itself. The motel has graciously provided towels, little shampoos, and little sealed packages of soap. Somewhat bleary from the road you step into the shower and open your little soap packet. The soap is smaller than you would have thought, and contrary to previous experience, there is no embossed logo or name. Again, you are somewhat bleary from the road, thinking about food. As you begin to lather up your hands a non-soap like texture is felt. (You have very sensitive hands; after all, you are a chiropractor…) As you inspect the soap you notice wiry black strands imbedded throughout one side… Your brain begins to engage. Neurological pattern recognition runs through possible matches. A spark forms. You have not yet washed the nether regions of you own body, therefore the wiry strands are definitely SOMEONE ELSES! Some dodgy bastard pubed up the soap and snuck it back into the package!

Somehow I forgot to add that little tidbit about our journey to Adelaide in the last blog. How? I don’t knooeew…

If you can picture Oz as a kidney bean with the rounded part as the north coast, South Australia is the small inner curve at the bottom. South Australia suffers from the same weather issues as its easterly neighbor Victoria. Somehow Adelaide manages to have a lot more greenery surviving. It’s an orderly city, set up in a manageable grid pattern. It is surrounded by low hills containing the ‘burbs. A bit farther out are the small agricultural and niche towns. Straight north is the Flinders Range. Real bush where men can be men, and women can be men too. Past that is the true Outback, 10’s of 1,000’s of square kilometers of real hot and real nasty. There is a road that can take you to Alice Springs, gateway to Uluru (The Rock). There are a few “last petrol fro 350 kilometer” signs… We are saving the west, north and interior for our next trip.

Christine’s cousin’s family lives in the hills south of city proper. They have a great house that is along a koala migration route. Susanne’s daughter, Christen, works as a veterinary assistant and brings home the occasional unwanted critter, bird, cat, lizard, etc. Susanne’s husband, Rob, is particularly fond of birds. At the moment they have a lorikeet (who is a real wimp) and a cool red and blue parrot/cockatoo beastie who has too much personality for one little birdie body. A mostly bald Pomeranian named Skeeter tops off the bird and cat menagerie. He was bald because the had shaved him three years ago for the summer, and his coat never grew back…

Adelaide is the festival and alternative ideas center for Oz. This particular weekend begins a citywide fringe festival that will last the rest of the month. Buskers, comedy acts, musicians, late night adult themed entertainment, and a variety of other stimulating activities are on tap. It is also the weekend for WOMADelaide (World of Music Adelaide), a Woodstock/Lollapalooza music festival with regional, national, and international bands on multiple stages. Needless to say, we will not be trying to find a parking space downtown. Hello public transport.

Susanne and Rob treated us to a good ol’ fashioned Ozzie Barbie for dinner. We had steak, chicken wings, roo snags, chicken snags, tinnies, box wine, and bottle wine. (Snags, for those who really want to know, are sausages… Tinnies are canned beer) Rob looks and sounds just like Red Forman from “That 70’s Show”. JD spent the whole night trying not to call him Red, which became harder and harder as more empty bottles were created. Susanne is a rabid footie fan. (Aussie Rules Football, a cross between rugby and American football)

Red recently installed a hot tub. They keep it around 36 C (98-99F) for the warmer months. Adelaide got into the mid 40’s (mid 100’s) just a couple of weeks ago. He dislikes chemistry, not unlike us, so he installed an ozonator and diatomaceous earth filter system. The impressive part being they are designed for an in ground swimming pool. It smells like a lightening storm when you lift the tub lid.

The public transport system is not well mapped or marked. It is great if you already know where you are trying to go, but it is not real user friendly if you haven’t been on it before. We still manage to find our way into the city. Adelaide is tenser than we had expected. Could be the volume of visitors for the assorted festivals. We wander about for the afternoon, checking into some of the entertainment options. The comedians we were interested in are sold out. Bummer that. Susanne meets us when she gets off work. She leads us to the city market, a fantastic collection of food and fun. A pub in the market has a happy hour special- half dozen oysters and a beer for AU$8. She splits an order with KK. We have been introduced to a lollie called “Chicos Choco Babies”. In essence it’s a chocolate gummie bear shaped like a baby. These things are yummy! There is a confectioner in the market that has them for AU$5 for 450 grams (more or less a pound), about half the price elsewhere.

Saturday we head to the botanical gardens. WOMADelaide takes over the northern portion. The band we can hear on our way through intrigues us, so we camp out for a bit and enjoy. Dinner includes a bit of wine. After dinner we decide to have some more wine. One thing leads to another and next thing you know we have had a lot of wine. Good wine. Tasty wine. Unfortunately for JD, later in the morning it became cheeky bugger wine. This makes packing up and leaving for the Kangaroo Island ferry at O’ dark thirty an entertaining adventure.

JD grew up in a tourist area. You learn to read between the lines of the travel snippet, and see between the colors in the fold out brochures. Kangaroo Island is touted as a must-do in South Australia: Overrun with lush verdant bush and more wildlife than you could shake a stick at. Roos, wallabies, koalas, heath goanna, seals, penguins, birds, birds, and more birds. Doctor Dolittles own piece of paradise. Caves, treks, fine dining, wineries, scenic drives, scenic views, all this can be yours- Just a short ferry ride away! We had heard over and over we had to see Kangaroo Island. We had scrambled to find literally the last available room on the island. SeaLink is the sole ferry. They know it. The 45 minute ferry for three people and a car cost over AU$300. The earthly vision of Eden painted by the guidebooks should more than justify the expense…

The only living roo was in the eucalyptus distillery. The rest decorated the roadsides. There were a few koalas along a private koala walk. Kimberly and Christine went on the guided seal walk, and did get to see seals. Kangaroo Island was in the same drought as the rest of the country. The only green was what had previously been kangaroos along the side of the road. There are ten penguins in the rookery, which can only be seen at night, on a paid tour. The scenic drive was 157 kilometers of what we had been looking at for 900+ kilometers from Melbourne to Adelaide: dry brown scrub with the occasional eucalypt.

We did find a delicious dinner. It was the only restaurant open Sunday evening, but it was still delicious. Kimberly admits she did get to see things, and we did have a brisk walk along the coast. This would normally be acceptable, except for the so incredibly over hyped expectation build-up and extortionist ferry charges.

We will be traveling the Great Ocean Road for our trip back to Melbourne. We catch a plane to Tasmania (Tassie) early Wednesday afternoon. We get off the ferry from KI at 5:30 Monday afternoon. We have some driving to do. We push our luck during the “dodge-car” opening salvo (dusk) and into the early night: Us-0 Roos-0 good score both ways. We end up in Kingston, crayfish capital of the south coast. Home of the Big Lobster. JD is intrigued. Apparently there are dozens of these ‘Big …” throughout the country. The Big Pineapple, The Big Banana, The Big Bullock (with real swinging bollocks!), and the Big Rocking Horse are but a few. Similar to the themed roadside café’s of the fifties (teapots, boots, etc), they are big resin and fiberglass sculptures that exist solely for tourists to come and admire. Almost all are located in Queensland. Yet another reason to visit the tropical northeast.

The Great Ocean Road was originally built as a tribute to Ozzie casualties of WW1. It is now considered a memorial highway for all war casualties. Started in 1918, it took over 14 years to complete. It runs along the south coast of Victoria, directly exposed to the wrath of the Southern Ocean. The designers had not realized that the south coast gives up 15cm a year to erosion. Those kinds of studies just weren’t done then. The sea is actively eating the soft limestone coastline at lightning pace, geologically. During the last 70 years more than a few of the formations in and along the coast have modified themselves. One when people were on it… (More on that in a moment)

Spectacular rock formations and scenic lookouts abound all along the highway. Shipwrecks were common through the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Dozens of wrecks are documented. Blowhole and Thundercave have a part in the shipwreck history. Blowhole is a sinkhole connected to the sea by a hydraulically powerful underwater cavern. A few hundred meters away is Thundercave. Thundercave started just like Blowhole, with the cavern collapsing at some point leaving an open channel to the sea. In the late 1800’s a particularly nasty storm dashed a ship on the rocks near Blowhole. 50 sailors were sucked into Blowhole. They were all dead. Two people were sucked into Thundercave. They both lived and were rescued a few days later. Kimberly enjoys saying “Blowhole and Thundercave.” Repeatedly. Then laughing. JD enjoys ignoring her.

Further down the coast is London Bridge Arch. Until 1998 it was London Bridge. At that time there was a well used official trail that led over a pair of thick, solid limestone arches to a viewpoint. One very normal sunny day, while two people were standing admiring the view, the first arch collapsed into the sea. No one was hurt, and the trapped tourists were lifted off the rock by helicopter. Needless to say, that particular trail is now closed…

The Twelve Apostles formation originally had 13 seastacks, and also had been know as the Sow and the Piglets. No one is sure why the name was changed, but it happened in the thirties. Currently there are nine left that can be seen, with one collapsing spectacularly just a few years ago.

As humans we tend to view the planet as static. Geology is something that happened a long time ago. Volcanoes and earthquakes make sense, mostly because of the expectation of change following a major cataclysmic event. Coastlines are supposed to stay put. We can’t be changing maps every few years after all… The continent of Oz disagrees.

After an uneventful overnighter in a small coast town we make the dash for Melbourne. There is time to stop at a beach or two, including Bells Beach to watch some of the Rip Curl surf challenge. Kimberly and Christine got to enjoy a few surfer dude muffin tops. JD vows to think about doing a few ab crunches… An early lunch in Geelong and a short jaunt along the waterfront prepares us for the Melbourne Airport challenge.

Domestic airlines in Oz limit the total weight of luggage per passenger to 20 kilos. More than that and you pay $7 per kilo to a max allowable of 32 kilo. The carry on is still capped at 7 kilos. At our best we have 70 kilo between us, more often 75… We are ecstatic when we can get the two main packs under 20 kilo each, without the rope bag, climbing pack and JD’s technology bag. We did not know about the draconian weight requirements before we got to the ticket counter. With some fancy maneuvering, cajoling, and fancy footwork, we get away with only 4 kilos over. It helped significantly that JD’s tech bag didn’t get weighed… It is at least 15 kilos by itself. It just doesn’t look big and heavy.

Jetstar is the no-frills domestic arm of Qantas. The crews are nice, but the planes are set up to move the maximum number of bodies in the smallest amount of space. Classic cattle car setup. It is only an hour in the air. We arrive on time and catch the shuttle into Hobart.

We have rented another el-cheapo car from a company called AAA rentals. The shuttle drops us about a block and a half away: “Too much traffic” to drop us near the entrance… right. We see a large self-store building labeled AAA, but do not see any car rental signs. We wander up and down the block, with our 70 kilos worth of stuff, wondering if we had been dropped in the wrong place. JD checked inside the AAA storage. Sure enough there was a rental car office inside. A closed rental office. When we made the reservation we said we’d be there at 5:30. We were there at 5:30. The office supposedly had closed at 5:00. (Kimberly had called form the airport around 4:30 and left a message to let them know we were getting on the shuttle…) JD called the after hours number. The owner, Paul, was mildly apologetic and said someone would be in tomorrow morning. He said our hostel was about five blocks away and hoped we didn’t have a lot of baggage. We were less than impressed. Royally pissed off for a brief moment, then we chalked it up to adventure. 2 kilometers and a partial incline later we were less keen on adventure.

Our hostel was a small step up from the Sydney hostel. We were only mildly afraid of the showers. Our roommates didn’t snore and an elderly German man complemented Kimberly’s legs, confirming her German ancestry is still genetically strong.

We walked to AAA the next morning to get our car. It didn’t matter we had a confirming email with times, nor that we slogged our stuff halfway across town. No apologies for inconvenience or hassle. At times the thought of getting ugly American on someone’s ass is enticing. Somehow we managed to suppress the urge. The icing on the cake was the car itself: A 1989 Nissan sentra (whatever the Ozzie equivalent of the sentra is anyway) with 225,000 kilometers. A 15-year old threadbare sheepskin seat cover with a scent that would embarrass any sheep covered the driver’s seat. The seat springs long since sprung by the weight of thousands of different ass shapes over the decades. It did have a spacious boot. For the privilege of driving this one of a kind classic automobile we were paying AU$35 a day. Sadly still $20 a day cheaper than any other car rental company was charging. We drove back to the hostel and loaded up the bags. We were crossing the main bridge out of town when the dash lights started flashing like a disco ball. Alternator light, brake light, parking brake light all flashing to their own beats. The car was still running. They all went out. Car was still running. So were we. Off to Coles Bay and the Freycinet Peninsula 200 k north.

Our main job is to keep the “Love Bubble” engaged around the car and have a good laugh. The car will definitely keep us laughing…and at times gasping for air.