The Dreamtime

No final month of college is complete without a road trip crammed in between deadlines. I'm already running around like a lunatic so I might as well have some fun in the process, right? And what better way to counter long periods of intense thinking than with (.......no, not alcohol) a 7-day, 3,420 mile road trip through the middle of arid/semi-arid country with nothing to see but scrub and the occasional emu, kangaroo or gas station. And the stars!! My God they were amazing! Christine bought me a Southern Hemishphere star chart that I had been drooling over in Queensland and it came into good use. All this, bye-the-way, was a dream of mine since long before I decided to come to Australia (to drive through the middle of the Red Centre and experience being in the middle of nowhere - that's the short version). So thank God my friends Matt and Lisa came out to visit to help my dream come true! Not to mention that I haven't seen them in a while - Lisa in ~4 years since she has been in Japan and India for quite a while and Matt I just don't see enough with him living out in L.A. and all.

Usually I put the trip pictures in chronological order but today I'm lazy. So, enjoy the random order people, it doesn't happen often.

This is Brutus and Jebodiah (and their friend Earl whose not in the picture). They are some 'free-range' donkeys we ran into in Silverton, New South Wales, which is a semi-ghost town a few kilometres outside of Broken Hill. 'Semi' meaning there is enough of something to keep ten people living there permanently from what used to be a booming silver mining town in the late 1800's. It was pretty dead. In our 30 minute stay we visited 2 gutted and broken down buildings, one small junk yard, two horses roaming about untethered (and who did not want bread!) a graveyard and our friends Brutus, Earl and Jebodiah who were all too happy to take the bread off our hands. Thus the picture, which I took from the passenger seat of our car after feeding them a few pieces and trying to get away with the rest!! They looked pretty despondent when we left. Like the only excitement they had in 10 years had just ended. Man, it's rough out there in Silverton. The only establishment open was a souvenir shop for the few people like us that roam in once in a while. We didn't go in. On the up side, apparently scenes from Mad Max II were filmed there!! We tried to soak up the glory but it must have fallen down a mine shaft.

Here's Matt being Matt. Who can't resist balancing on a railroad track? Especially out in the middle of nowhere, there are just miles of it to play with!! I balanced too having overcome my fear of falling off low structures and breaking my bones. Ya gotta get back on that horse, ya know?















This is in Southern Australia on the way back from Uluru. We stopped by the side of the road to go kangaroo searching in the same general area where we saw one days earlier on the way up to Uluru. The picture quality is low but if you squint you can see Lisa in the back ground and Matt waaay in the background (both under the rainbow). We panned out to try to increase our chances. We saw plenty of tracks, some poop, the railroad tracks and the rainbow but no roo's. I'll take the rainbow though. Being the winter here there was some uncommon rain in the area. It was pretty cool to be in such a dry place during a rain event.









This is Coober Pedy, which is in the northern part of Southern Australia and is the 'opal capitol' of Australia. The place is basically one big mine and is dry as hell, which is no surprise considering that the name 'Coober Pedy' comes from the Aboriginal language and means 'white man's hole in the ground.' There's dust blowing everywhere and everything there is somehow associated with opals. I'm glad we came in the winter because apparently it can get up to 125 degrees here!!! Also, the flies (which I experienced in Victoria and were INSANE!!!!!) are non-existent right now. If it were warm out they would be EVRYWHERE!!! We did get some while at Uluru but nothing like in the summertime when we were on the Great Ocean Road. As soon as you leave the car they're all over you. Oui. There's nothing like stopping to take a picture and have a fly crawl into your nose or ear within the first three seconds.

The picture is of some Aboriginal people hanging out in the center of town, which is a common sight. It's quite sad because the onset of Western Culture has left many Aboriginal people unable to cope and has resulted in high rates of unemployment and alcoholism. We encountered this most prominently in Alice Springs.

I couldn't resist taking a picture of these gas station dunnies (or toilets as we say in America), which say 'Sheila's' and 'Bloke's'. As I took this shot a huge dust cloud from the parking lot blew up. Unfortunately it didn't come out in the picture. It would have summed up the setting quite nicely.








Here's good ol' Uluru for which we drove many miles to see. I have many other pictures but thought one would be just fine. It was really beautiful. We pulled a semi-all nighter from Alice Springs (Lisa and I got a few z's while Matt drove and he caught some later) to see Uluru at sunrise. It was very cool as you could see the colors change slowly as the sun got higher. It was also literally cool out. The wind was blowing and we weren't quite prepared for the night-time desert temps. so we watched mostly from the car, while venturing out to snap the occasional picture. After sunrise we drove to the base and did the 9.4 km base walk. You could climb it but there were signs everywhere asking not to because it's a sacred Aboriginal site. There were also many sections along the base with signs asking us to not take pictures. Thought the temptation was great, we did not climb it or take pictures in the restricted areas. I believe in Karma and am a little superstitious. On those grounds, screwing with the sacred sites of a people that have continuously been on this Earth for over 40,000 years didn't seem like a good idea. In any case, it was quite beautiful.


"There's GOTTA be a kangaroo around here somewhere!"

We were a few hours away from Alice Springs and we wanted to catch the sunset and needed to expound some of the built up energy from the previous 12-15 hours of (somewhat) continuous driving from Port Augusta in Southern Australia. We left Port Augusta at 2:00 am and it was now sunset (~5:50 maybe) a freakin' long way away.

Part way up I saw the ass end of a kangaroo about 50 feet ahead of us before it went hopping away. We ran up this hill try to catch it but instead spent 10 minutes trying to get our breath back. Expound some energy indeed!


This was a sign in Alice Springs pointing to a plethora of international cities. When you actually stand under it a picture where you are on the globe it all makes sense. The shortest route to the cities in the U.S. that were on the sign (Chicago and Washington) is over the Pacific Ocean. Ohh yeah, Alice Springs was a hoot, let me tell you! Signs, building and stuff, the occasional gift shop. Actually, we spent practically the whole day in the Alice Springs Desert Park, which had all the animals of the desert. We (and Lisa in particular) liked the enclosed bird cage/netting. Everywhere you looked there was a different kind of funky bird hanging out and making some noise. We also saw roos and emus very close up. Good stuff!!






Rewind one picture and this is what we caught of the sunset. We waited too long and it set as we were on our way up the hill. As we chased the kangaroo we were also chasing the sun's shadow, which moved faster than we could run up a partly vegetated and rocky slope. What we did catch was still very nice though.













This was at a gas station just before the border to the Northern Territory. Come on, does it get more fun than this?!! Matt is the big fat guy on the left an I'm the looker on the right. What better way to celebrate Australian beer culture than with an interactive advertisement. I know the picture is a bit fuzzy but I promise you I'm not flipping the bird.






No road trip is complete without a Bill Bryson-like visit to a giant version of something completely unremarkable. Quite often these attractions are a tribute to a beloved local commodity or local attraction or something crazy enough that people just might go out of their way too see. While we were in Queensland over the summer we saw a giant orange Guava in fruit growing country. In this case it's a giant lobster (or crayfish as they call it here) in a fishing town in Southern Australia near the Great Ocean Road. We didn't really visit it as much as randomly pass by but it was definitely worth a picture! If you look at it hard enough you can picture it coming to life and smashing the whole town.

Matt took about 5,000 more pictures throughout the trip of which I haven't gotten my hands on yet. As soon as I do, I will throw some more up here to fill in the gaps complete the story of our adventures. All-in-all it was a great time with two great friends. It felt like (and was) a whirlwind. Matt and Lisa saw Melbourne for two days, took this trip with me and got right back on a plane. However, not before they visited the cute little Fairy Penguins on Phillip Island (see Z penguins are z cutest, below). I got right back to writing my last paper. Ahh, how time moves on.

Next adventure please.