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British Mensa Travel Special Interest Group |
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Adventures
Down Under How often does one look around when on holiday and think, "I never imagined that I would ever come here!" It has happened to me in Red Square, Moscow, in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, in Christchurch in New Zealand and in Vancouver, but I think it has never hit me as it did when I found myself gazing at Ayers Rock or Uluru as the Aboriginals call it. But how can you do justice to a five-week holiday in such surroundings in anything less than a short book? Here are some brief highlights... Perth We were well fed and had plenty of time to relax and wander about the large farm attached to the lodge. We marvelled at the colourful birds the strange trees and bushes and even got a quick glimpse at kangaroos. We were intrigued by some large plants with lots of narrow leaves at the top, these used to be called 'blackboys' but some bright spark thought this was derogatory so they are now 'grass trees', the aborigines still call them 'blackboys'! We saw eucalyptus trees of many different types and the national flower; the wattle. On our last evening we had a most impressive, in fact probably the best ever, barbecue. We noticed that the moon was in a position we don't see in England, on its back with its horns in the air. It looked most odd, made us wonder if we had had too much Aussie wine! During our tour of Perth and Freemantle, we had an example of a practice we hadn't come across in any other country we had toured. At about four in the afternoon the coach pulled up at a viewpoint overlooking the harbour. The guide and the driver unloaded a table, an urn and a selection of cakes, including some specially for the diabetics in our party. These had been made for the occasion by the driver's mother. So we had afternoon tea in the middle of a rather upper-class suburb of Perth with glorious view spread out before us. (I mentioned this to our British coach driver when I got back but he wasn't impressed!) We had two excursions to the north of the city, one to see the wide range of wild flowers and one to visit the Pinnacles, a geological delight of several acres of naturally formed rocks protruding from a flat sandy base and standing anything up to ten feet high in a variety of shapes. While we were at Perth we took a trip to Rottnest Island just off Freemantle. The Dutch named the place named for the small animals unique to the island. However they are not rats as the Dutch thought but a rabbit sized marsupial called quokkas. They are supposed to be nocturnal but they obviously had not read the leaflets as we saw quite a lot of them as we walked around. In fact there was a mother and a baby playing around the tearooms. Some of the party saw whales out to sea, but we were not looking at the right time. Cairns I nearly managed to drown myself in the larger of the hotel swimming pools. It was quite a long pool and I am not a strong swimmer. So I swam a length and turned to swim back, half way I had had enough and decided to put my feet down. Now, I don't swim in my glasses and I couldn't read the depth signs, but it never occurred to me that the pool might be deeper in the middle (two metres) than at the ends. Fortunately I was near the side and a lady pulled me up so that I could haul myself out. I thanked her profusely and only found out later that she couldn't speak English! Pamela and I took an optional day trip to Green Island on the Barrier reef and treated ourselves to a short cruise on a glass- bottomed boat. We saw a turtle and shoals of multicoloured fish as well as the coral. There were lots of birds about and we saw various sea creatures in the water as we walked along the pier to the shore. Pamela took some photographs through the clear water but unfortunately dropped the camera case into an area where swimming was not allowed. Pam now has a new digital camera and I have the 35mm job. It was while we were at Cairns one of the party who had left a 'house-sitter' at home heard that her credit card details had been used all over southeast Asia, mostly at petrol stations! Another person who had also used her credit card at the batik factory had about £400 fraudulently put on her account. It was fortunate that we heard about it so quickly. The Rocks A little way from the rock is another, to my mind more interesting rock feature, the Olgas (Kata-Tjuta). The Aboriginal name means 'many heads' and it is a series of domes and gorges, the highest dome being 660 feet higher than Uluru. Five of us walked along a gorge and had our first proper daylight view of a red kangaroo (the big ones). We had to scamper back to the coach as the walk took longer than the three quarters of an hour we had been allowed. The evening before we left we had a dinner under the stars when we were serenaded, if that's the right word, by a didgeridoo player. The buffet boasted various indigenous meats but in the lantern light it was impossible to distinguish between kangaroo, emu and camel! Next day we set off by coach to Alice Springs. A stop for lunch and another at a camel farm where they breed racing camels for sale in the Middle East. Here we saw our only dingo of the tour; it lay there fast asleep right through our visit - most disappointing! Alice Springs
was also something of a disappointment. True the 'School of the Air',
the Flying Doctor Base and the Desert Park were very interesting and we
saw the original Telegraph Station that gave rise to the town. However,
the town itself was a bit run down looking and, in the centre, at least
every second building was a tourist shop or an eatery of some kind. There
were families of aborigines lazing about smoking and looking depressed.
I had an unfortunate experience, which went to reinforce my opinion. I
was cleaning my electric shaver in the hotel bathroom when the blade came
loose and vanished down the basin plughole! The nearest to a domestic
electrician's shop I could find was a Radio Shack! Eventually I was directed
to an out of town warehouse, which incidentally had changed hands and
the sign outside wasn't the one I was looking for, although the name was
still on the assistants badges when I eventually entered. They would have
had to send away for the spare blade so I ended up buying a new shaver. The hotel was made of undecorated compressed mud blocks. I suppose they had some way of preventing the mud liquefying if it rained, or perhaps it never rained, it look as if that was a possibility. Before we left the town we had a drive around. We visited a church cut out of the rock. Many of the houses and other 'buildings' were made the same way. We understood this method of construction made for cooler conditions in the hottest weather. We were amused to see a 'Keep off the Grass' sign on the cricket pitch, not a blade to be seen! Pam reckons it was a golf course but I don't remember any bunkers! (She was right; we've looked at the video again!) Opals are the raison d'etre for the town so we had to visit a mine. Actually it was just a semi-underground shop but the range of opals was fascinating. Pamela has a pair of opal earrings and I have a geological specimen! There followed a number of one-night stands as we followed rough roads and tracks through the Flinders Ranges. We saw a large 'quarry' from which the aborigines obtained the coloured earth that they used for their paintings and body adornment; we saw several kangaroos and feral camels and many emus, some fossils in the rocks and never a Japanese tourist! The most memorable event was a ridge drive in a number of local 4x4s. It really was scary and having at last reached our viewpoint we had to go back the same way. One lady in the party swore she would never leave Somerset again! We left the mountains wishing we could have had more time to explore the area especially Wilpena Pound, a large natural basin. After the wilderness, we moved on to civilization, rain and Christmas shopping in Adelaide! We liked Adelaide in spite of the rain. We had a walk round, visited The Don Bradman and the Migration Museums, and could have also gone into the South Australia Museum but we decided, since the rain had stopped, to go to the Botanical Gardens. We wandered happily around the various sections and found ourselves at the Bicentennial Conservatory, a domelike affair reminiscent of the Eden Project. Inside a rainforest environment had been created. The attendant in the ticket office knew of the Eden Project and was interested to hear our views of it. Inside one could go around at floor level or on walkways some ten or twelve feet up in the foliage. We could hear a bird with a loud shrill call which was being answered some distance away. Eventually we managed to spot the bird and then realized that the other part of the duet was a small boy! Up early the next day and our first lady coach driver who took us on to the Great Ocean Road. We spent a night at Mount Gambia with its strange and vividly coloured Blue Lake. Then on to Ballarat. We passed the Twelve Apostles on the way, not a religious experience but a group of limestone rock formations lying only yards from the shoreline. Actually there aren't twelve anymore as the sea is eroding them away, in fact there is one less now than there were when we were there. Not guilty, m'lord! We also saw London Bridge; another formation once attached to the mainland but now like its namesake partly 'fallen down'. Ballarat is home to Sovereign Hill, a reconstruction of a gold mining town. Actors and other people in historical costumes walk the streets and manned the shops, all well stocked with appropriate goods. We saw a candle maker and other craftsmen in wood and pewter and the longest skittle alley I've ever played on. Outside the delightful little theatre, we saw Lola Montez being harangued by a respectable citizen. Lola laid into him with her sunshade. All good clean fun! On the road again and in the late afternoon we reached Melbourne. Next day was 'free' and we arranged to meet friends we had known in our London days. She is English; he Australian and they now live in Melbourne. They showed us the city centre and some of the parks and something I had wanted to see; Cook's cottage. It was shipped piece by piece from Yorkshire in 1933. It contains displays about Cook and 18th century life. Actually James never lived there, it was bought by his parents after he left home, still it was very interesting. Penguin parade From Melbourne and its rather quaint old-fashioned hotel (actually called The Old Melbourne Hotel) to Canberra all so very modern. We flew in and were met by yet another coach driver, the last one to take us any distance. He took us to a view point overlooking the capital and then on to our very modern could-be-anywhere hotel. The next day we saw all the sights and we were very impressed with the old and the new Parliament buildings, the war memorial, the law courts, where we had lunch, and the museum. In retrospect it seems to be an awful lot of stone and cement, but at the time it was very interesting. The coach driver gave us a didgeridoo recital, including a dingo imitation and an exhibition of boomerang throwing, up to three at a time and all coming back to him! The next day was November 11th. We had guest seats at the ceremony at the War Memorial and it rained heavens hardest! Notwithstanding it was very impressive. There were representatives from very many countries and both the Governor and the Prime Minister, the later giving a short address before the wreaths were laid. The band marched off and we found our coach for the ride to Sydney. I was interested
to see signs to 'Liverpool' on signposts along the route to Sydney, as
I'm a Scouser. We had a quick drive around the city and our group photograph
taken - no prizes for guessing the background to the picture! We stayed
at a rather grand hotel, which had once been a department store, Grace
Brothers! Yes, that was where the name came from in Are You Being Served? Cook to cricket We rather
expected Australia to be rather less welcoming than New Zealand, which
we visited a few years ago, but we were pleasantly surprised. Everyone
we met was friendly and helpful, with one exception. The country was very
varied and often beautiful. And no evidence of 'pommie-bashing'! First published in VISA issu 71 (Dec 2006) |