DOWN UNDER – PART 3

The down day in Alice Springs did us a world of good.  It was nice to get the dirt off of our dusty clothes and enjoy the air-conditioned comfort of our hotel.  We walked around the city centre and visited a few local attractions to pass the time.

After traversing the Outback for seven days, we have a better appreciation for just how difficult it must be to live there.  Imagine a family operating a cattle station covering an area the size of Prince Edward Island, no neighbour for maybe 40 kilometres, the nearest centre of any size a five-hour drive away.  Just getting groceries would be a chore, let alone clothes and other household needs.  What if someone gets sick?  Where do the children go to school?

These are things we learned more about during our short stay in Alice Springs.  When it comes to medical service, the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) is one of a kind.  Founded in 1928, the RFDS serves the 4% of Australians who live in truly remote areas.  It operates a fleet of 61 aircraft, fully equipped for medical emergencies.  The short-takeoff-and-landing aircraft can land almost anywhere, even on designated roads.  Doctors and nurses also visit remote and indigenous communities to hold clinics.

For schooling, most, if not all cattle stations, roadhouses, and family homes in remote and indigenous communities have access to internet through a satellite connection.  The school, centered in Alice Springs, offers educational services from kindergarten to Grade 9 and follows the same course calendar as other schools in the country.  Parents are responsible for teaching lessons prepared by teachers, and these are supplemented by videoconference classes.  The teacher visits each student at least once a year.  After Grade 9, students have no choice but to attend boarding school in a larger centre.

To begin the next leg of our Australian journey, we flew west to Perth, the capital of Western Australia.  We picked up our car at the Avis counter.  To say that I was a bit nervous at the prospect of driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road for the first time would be an understatement.  But we made it to our hotel in downtown Fremantle without incident.

Fremantle is about the same size as Charlottetown and serves as the port for the much bigger city of Perth, at 2 million, Australia’s fourth-largest city.  We’re glad our travel agent chose a hotel for us near the waterfront.  It’s always the best place to be in any city.  Just across the park, a short walk to the waterfront and a half-dozen restaurants, all selling fresh fish.  For two evenings in a row, we sat on the dock with a good meal at Cicerello’s and just took in the sounds and smells.

For our one full day in Fremantle, we chose to take the ferry to Rottnest Island, 18 kilometres west of the mainland, and rent bikes for a ride around the island.  As people filled the vessel to overflowing, we introduced ourselves to a couple of charming young men.  “You’re here for the big day?”, one of them asked.  “Not sure what you mean,” I answered.  “You mean you don’t know?  It’s the Rottnest Channel Swim, Mate.  The biggest event of the year in these parts,” he said.

Three thousand brave souls left Fremantle early in the morning for the 19.7 kilometre swim.  Yes Sir, 19.7 kilometres of open water - more than one-and-one-half times the distance across the Northumberland Strait!  The place was already swarming when we docked at 9:00.  When we left in the afternoon, there must have been 1,000 boats in the small harbour!

We picked up our bikes and headed out.  The only motorized vehicles allowed on the island are the bus and a few maintenance trucks that keep mostly to the small settlement around Thomson Bay.  As we rounded the first turn, our eyes fell upon that most beautiful sight: a small cove with crystal-clear turquoise water, a couple of boats bobbing on the waves, and a few people on the beach.  It was heavenly.

During the 30-kilometre ride, this idyllic scene repeated itself dozens of times.  Rottnest is one of the most beautiful islands we’ve visited in our travels.  The bike ride ranks right up there with Miquelon to Langlade in August 2010, our reigning favourite.

Swimmers crossed the finish line by the dozen as we finished our ride.  The fastest made the crossing in 4 hours 18 minutes!  As we pulled away from the dock, the last finishers were coming in, having spent an astonishing 11 hours in the water!

We’d have stayed longer in Fremantle.  Elva spent Sunday morning at the Market while I lounged around the hotel room.  We took our time driving south toward our destination for the day, Margaret River, stopping at Busselton.  The local wharf, at almost 2 kilometres long, bills itself as the “Longest wooden pier in the Southern Hemisphere.”  We were there, so why not walk it?

Margaret River reminds me a bit of Montague, without Lawrence MacAulay.  It’s a tourist town, located in the middle of a major wine-producing region, and is a magnet for surfers.  On our only full day there, we drove to the southwest corner of the continent, Cape Leeuwin, where two oceans meet: the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean.  The lighthouse is 56 metres high and made of local limestone.  It was a windy, drizzly day, and few people were around to spoil the view.

A note from Cousin Mark Gallant got me to thinking that I was about as far away from home as it’s possible to be.  In fact, if you were to drill a hole in the ground at Charlottetown, right through the centre of the earth, it would come out the other side a few hundred miles south of Cape Leeuwin.  So, the Cape is the closest point on land to the most distant point on the globe to Charlottetown.  Amazing the things that pop into your head when you’re retired, isn’t it?

On our way back to Margaret River, we drove through a forest of impressive eucalyptus trees - a sawmiller’s dream - in the Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park.  We stopped at Hamelin Bay for lunch, and then drove to a place called Surfers’ Paradise.  Unfortunately, the waves weren’t big enough to entice the best surfers.  With a steady horizontal rain pelting us, we decided to call it a day.  But I’ll take a wet, cool day anytime over a scorcher in the Outback!

The three-hour drive to Perth was without incident, remarkable in itself considering I was driving on the left on a freeway and through big city traffic.  I breathed a sigh of relief as I drove into the Avis rental parking lot and handed over the keys.  Only one driver had the nerve to honk at me in five days on the road.

We settled in to our hotel in the heart of the city’s financial district.  Perth is Australia’s fourth largest city and the only metropolis on the west coast.  Like most cities with half a brain, Perth is taking full advantage of its waterfront on the Swan River by filling the space with parks, attractive businesses, and interesting public art.  The photo shows the area around Elizabeth Quay.

We joined our third Intrepid tour in Perth and were greeted by Luke, our guide and driver for the next seven days; the stereotypical tall, blond, charming, able, good-natured Aussie.  Our travel mates are from England, Switzerland, United States, Japan, and Australia.  By the time we’d had our first adventure, sandboarding in Lancelin, we could tell it would be a good group.

We drove north to Nambung National Park and explored the unusual formations of the Pinnacle Dessert.  At this point, we lost sight of the coast and the landscape changed from farmland, to pasture, to scrub.  Soon, we were once again in the middle of nowhere, and we didn’t see much until we pulled into the small, seaside town of Kalbarri and settled in for the night in our modest hostel.

Happiness is barreling down a dirt road to God knows where, going fast enough to skim over the washboard surface, dust flying, bouncing around like beach balls.  At Murchison Gorge in the Kalbarri National Park, we walked the narrow, treacherous path down to the bottom.

Along the way, several members of the group tried abseiling, sliding down a cliff-face tied to a rope.  Elva and me decided to pass, having already done it in Mexico several years before.  The views of the gorges were spectacular.  Another long drive took us to our second overnight stop, Denham, where we feasted on lamb chops and kangaroo steaks.  Yummy!

Our morning activity on Day 3 involved a pod of semi-wild bottle-nosed dolphins who come into the beach at a place called Monkey Mia on Shark Bay.  On most days, the friendly creatures show up for a snack.  We watched and listened as a ranger explained how the tradition began with local fishermen who, being too generous with their catch, spoiled the dolphins rotten.  It got to the point where young dolphins were starving to death, having never learned to fend for themselves.  Things are far more controlled now.  It’s an interesting place, with sea turtles and emus in abundance as well.

Then it was off to see the stromatolites, the principle reason for Shark Bay’s UNESCO World Heritage Site status and one of only two locations on earth where these most primitive of life forms can be seen.  They don’t look like much but, 3.5 billion years ago, the cyanobacteria that create the stromatolites were among the first organisms to produce oxygen.  Without this essential element, we would not exist.  The amazing thing is that they’re still doing their thing, essentially unchanged.

Too soon, we were off again on another long, rather boring drive with nothing but scrub to look at, as far as the eye could see.  We drove into the pretty seaside town of Carnarvon and saw extensive banana and mango plantations along the Gascoyne River floodplain.  Things were looking up!  Our enthusiasm didn’t last however.  Soon, we were back to miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles, with little to do but snooze, kill flies (yes, the goddamn flies are back - with a vengeance), and count road-killed kangaroos.  Finally, we turned west and arrived in Coral Bay, just in time to see a most beautiful sunset.

The two days we spent along the Ningaloo Coast (another UNESCO World Heritage Site) were the highlight of this part of the trip for me.  The snorkeling was amazing.  We booked a three-hour tour with Coral Bay Ecotours.  What a treat it was!  Excellent guide and captain.  I swam a couple of times, seeing dozens of species of fish of every colour of the rainbow, and at least a dozen species of coral.  The highlight was swimming with a green turtle.  It was in no rush and neither was I.  Our second time in the water, we swam out to a channel and saw a group of grey reef sharks circling below.  Beautiful!

The boat had a glass bottom.  Elva got the fright of her life when this creature showed up: the rare great northern uglifish, never seen before outside the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  This one must have taken a wrong turn near Antigonish!

We drove north to Exmouth and entered the Coast Range National Park.  We set up camp for two nights in comfortable tents just outside the Park boundary.  Next morning, we snorkeled at Oyster Towers and Turquoise Bay.  It was magical!  I swam for a full three hours, the longest I’ve in the water in over 40 years!  Elva put on the gear as well and, with a little help, was able to appreciate why people get hooked on the sport.  Ningaloo Reef is the third-longest in the world, at 260 kilometres, surpassed only by the one off the coast of Belize, and Australia’s own Great Barrier Reef.  As I enjoyed this marvel of nature, I thought of friends and acquaintances I’ve lost over the past few years who’d have loved to be doing what I was, and how truly lucky I am.

We stopped in at the Northbrook Farm Stay for our last night on the road and were welcomed by owners Amie and Chad, and by Blair, their charming three-year-old, out for a ride on his pony.  Before supper, the Intrepid gang, including the two family dogs, piled into the back of Chad’s truck and drove to a back field to feed the sow and her litter.  After a delicious meal, Chad shared stories with us of his interesting work and life on the farm.

One last adventure awaited us on the last leg of our journey toward Perth.  On our way to a wildlife sanctuary, we took a detour around a damaged bridge only to bog down in the bottom of a dry riverbed.  We jacked, we shoveled and we pushed, but she wouldn’t budge an inch.  Luckily for us, we found a guy nearby with a payloader, and he had us out in jig time.

Our adventure ended too soon, and we had to say goodbye to one of the best groups we’ve ever travelled with.  Although we were much older than the rest, they all made us feel welcome.  Everyone pitched in with chores to make the experience even better and to take the pressure off our hard-working guide.  Now, it’s off to the northeast, to Port Douglas and the Great Barrier Reef.