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"Road-trip! Road-trip! Road-trip!..."
Geetings everyone!
In keeping with us being lazy bastards when it comes to writing postcards, these pages explore the holiday we took to central Australia.
We hadn't really thought about it beforehand, but a few people had looked oddly at us when we said we were making the trip. Their reasoning was "Isn't that a holiday that old, like, you know, retired people do???"
Well, yes. And no.
It is true that a large chunk of tourists are retired Australians (or, as we shall refer to them, the "over 55's"). Finishing work, taking the retirement lump-sum to purchase a large 4WD and a spanking new caravan and heading off "around Australia" seems a popular enough thing to do.
However, the area is also popular with a younger group (most often from Europe, and most often backpacking) who are either travelling around in a car they purchased for the interval or a hired camper-van. You tend to find 3 or 4 sharing the car, and couples in the campervans.
Call us bewildered, but we had this crazy notion of seeing central Australia before we joined the over 55's. We figured that some of the interesting walks etc that we had been reading about might be better tackled (for the first time) when younger rather than when older. Of course, we did see some much older people who were tramping around the walking tracks and enjoying the scenery; but many were just contenting themselves with a drive up to the carpark, a few photos and a nice cup of tea from the campervan. There is something about a 9km walk in 36degC heat that doesn't hold much appeal for many of the older 55's; particularly the wives, who often seemed to be on this annoying around-Australia trip under duress. But you know, it has always been something that Barry wanted to do... and the camper does have a very noice new kitchen...
[Having said that, we also found some of the most adventurous to be the over 55's. Given the time on their hands, many had tackled some of the roughest parts of the country and dealt with all sorts of adversities -- driving the Tanami track through from the remotest parts of the Kimberlys, or crossing the Simpson Desert from North Queensland, as examples. But rarely was this their first time in the Outback, and that sort of justifies our own reasoning for not waiting much longer for our first trip.]
Now having had a small taste of the more remote parts of Australia, and thoroughly enjoyed what was in reality a comparatively easy trip, we are inclined to go back in the future in something other than our city car and set up to travel more independently. We have our eyes on reaching the top end and seeing the North of Western Australia... but that will have to wait. This 2½ week trip got to the major attractions, and was a painless introduction.
Hope these latest pages find everyone healthy and happy!
x
Grant & Dale
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| Anyway you look at it, to visit the number of places we did will involve at lot of travel. You can fly (but miss seeing the view along the way). You can take a tour and let someone else drive (but then you have to go where they want to go and at what time). Or, you can drive yourself. | |
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All up we did 6,150 km (3,850 miles) from Melbourne in our own car, and another 300 km on the day tour to Palm Valley. You can add another 50 km or so with the walks we did. That's a fair honker of a trip in 2½ weeks; especially for these Prahran Boys who think anything East of Bourke Rd, Camberwell, needs a map and a water-bottle. Fortunately, the driving isn't as tiresome as this would suggest. The Stuart Highway is a good one, with the towns being about 200 km apart, and the traffic is quite light. The scenery, once you have adjusted your short-range city-focus, is interesting and surprisingly varied and we simply planned for a full day's driving followed by rest days. |
The main thing to remember is never plan to be driving at dusk or at night. That is the time when many large, heavy, stupid objects (called cows) have a habit of wandering onto the unfenced roads. Hitting one of those big buggers will not only destroy your vehicle, it could likely prove fatal as 1 tonne of animal positioned at just the right height comes crashing through your windscreen at 110 km/h. The cows are typically walking through to a water-hole and if panicked will probably continue straight onto the road (and your car) because that was the last direction their tiny brains could remember before they freaked out. Kangaroos, emus and sheep present other equally stupid menaces; but at least they aren't so large and heavy as a cow. If you were unfortunate to have such an encounter with the wildlife, make sure you stay well clear of the road while waiting for help -- roadtrains and buses continue to travel at night and could easily squash you and your car flatter than a pancake.
If you do breakdown, try to avoid leaving your car alone on the highway. If you do, you can expect to return in the morning to find it stripped of all useful items and torched. But at least you can have the satisfaction of knowing that somewhere in some Outback community will now be a few fellows driving around with new tyres and battery.
Strictly without any other comment on the subject -- mainly because it'll take too long to explain here -- but the white locals are always likely to stop for a white person broken down beside the road and rarely for a group of aboriginal men; especially at night. (They may let the police in the next town know, but there have been too many occasions of car-jackings on lonely roads or having to rescue people driving thoroughly unroadworthy vehicles for them to often stop.)
Women and children are different, but unless you are driving a tow-truck there's probably not much you can do for someone who neglected to fill-up with oil and fried their engine or who started a journey with 3 already blown-out tyres. Best just let the stranded know that you'll contact the authorities in the next roadstop as soon as you can.
(Silly hippies in a fried-out Combi should be likewise warned. You'll have a long wait before the road rescue arrives.)
The driving days broke down this way, and you can expect to average 100 km/h most of the time :
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| Explore the rest of Grant & Dale's Outback holiday | |||||
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