Who The Hell Did Australia Piss-off?

Australia is indeed a magnificent country, not only because of its sheer magnitude but its incredible variety as well.  I’ve managed to see a lot of it over the last 7 weeks, traveling many miles, meeting lots of people and taking heaps of photos. 

My schedule has been pretty wide open, which is just how I like it, but for this journey it simply couldn’t have been any other way.  No matter where I’ve visited, I’ve ended up fleeing floods or evacuating before cyclones or running from bush fires.  It would appear that Australia is under siege, beset by plagues of biblical proportions, leading an ex-workmate of mine to quite aptly ask “Who the hell did Australia piss off, ‘cause they’re sure getting their ass kicked?!?”

Melbourne was a great way to get the trip started; visiting good friends, watching the tennis and keeping a relatively slow pace accented by many “flat white” coffees and a few beers.  I also threw in a long weekend in Sydney to visit some of the sights and compare the two cities.  The weather was “unseasonably unstable” as my friend liked to say, leading to our cancelling a drive along the

Great Ocean Road

where sections were washed out due to heavy rain.

I lingered longer than planned in the south because next on my agenda was Queensland, which as far as I could tell from the news was completely under water.  The floods weren’t directly affecting the Great Barrier Reef, which was my destination, however the cyclones that were bringing all the water most certainly were.  So I watched the weather forecast carefully and when about a week long window of sunshine finally appeared between deluges, I flew straight to Airlie Beach.

About a week was all mother nature granted.  My signal to fly had been when Cyclone Anthony weakened and headed out to sea.  Unfortunately, it sat about 700 kms offshore, brooded for a while, then decided to grow and turn back on Australia.  So, while I was on a delightful 3 day / 3 night sailing trip to the outer reef, the captain was carefully monitoring the radar.  Not only was Anthony on its way, but just behind was Yasi, promising to be much, much larger.

Even so, the sailing trip was superb, offering awesome snorkeling and breathtaking views of the Whitsunday Islands.  One of the highlights was a visit to pristine Whitehaven Beach, an uninhabited coastline with miles of white sand and meandering estuaries.  The ripple patterns in the sand were the stuff of impressionist paintings, with schools of rays hanging about to make the whole thing that much more magical.  Luckily our group arrived first, because in no time boatloads of backpackers arrived, shattering the picture postcard and turning it into Coney Island.  Some Aussie boys even started a game of Australian Rules Football, a rough and tumble bastardization of rugby sure to ruin any good stroll along a deserted beach.

Snorkeling along the Great Barrier Reef wasn’t bad either, as I swam with turtles, marvelled at brightly coloured corals and fish, and came face to face with a white tipped shark.  Yet, as soon as our sailing vessel returned to Airlie Beach I had to make plans to flee.  Anthony was less than 36 hours away.

It was earlier than I had planned to leave the reef.  Next up on my agenda was the coastline of Western Australia, starting with a visit with friends in Perth, but I had a few days before they were expecting me.  So I looked at a map and drew a line between Airlie Beach and Perth to see what was in between.  It turned out to be about 4000 km of absolutely nothing.  Nothing, that is, except for one rather famous large rock sticking out of the desert in what can only be described as literally the middle of nowhere.  I booked a flight to Ayers Rock. 

(Like in many parts of the world, the name for a location given by European explorers has been changed to the name used by the indigenous people of the area.  We see this in my hometown of Vancouver as the signs from the city to the Whistler ski resort are now full of unpronounceable native Indian words, often including the number 7.  Today, Ayers Rock is known by its Aboriginal name Uluru.  I’m not sure how to pronounce the underlined letter, but when I call it Ayers Rock, travellers look at me like I’m swearing and Australians look at me like family.  Strangely, the local airport is still called Ayers Rock, so when someone accuses me of being insensitive to Aboriginals by not saying Uluru, I simply claim to be referring to where my plane landed.)

Uluru is everything you’ve heard and expected, but so much more.  It’s an icon that we’ve all seen in pictures, but they just don’t do it justice.  It’s magical in its dimensions, colors, and more importantly, its presence. 

At the same time, you don’t get labelled as one of the wonders of the world without attracting the odd tourist, and attract them Uluru does – in droves.  Sunset and sunrise “viewings” are standing room only, with every language imaginable chattering away in the background.  Yet somehow Uluru manages to hold your focus, even when annoying tourists from England are trying to convince the Germans they’ve just met that Wimbledon is so much better than the Australian Open because, “well, it’s just more British, isn’t it?”. 

(Sometimes I’m glad I only speak one language.  I’m not sure I could handle overhearing any additional inane chatter.  Even conversations about Lady Gaga’s nail polish sound exotic in a foreign tongue.)

The desert around Uluru had been receiving much more rain than usual, so the landscape was considerably greener than normal for the season, leading to some stunning photo ops.  The rain had also brought an unseasonal explosion of insects and bugs.  My ridiculously overpriced room was a bit of an entomologist’s wet dream, especially when turning on the light to head for a late night pee.  I eventually decided it was better to just wander about in the dark and not think about the crunching noises under foot.

My wallet couldn’t handle another night at the Ayers Rock resort, so I carried on to Perth.  My timing couldn’t have been better.  According to the news in Perth, Alice Springs (the closest town to Uluru at a mere 5 hours to the north) and environs had been hit with massive rains.  Alice Springs itself had become a swimming pool, complete with unhappy, newly homeless, poisonous snakes.

Perth brought a welcome reprise from the traveling life, as I stayed with friends in the city’s northern suburbs.  Mind you, suburbia in Perth isn’t what you might expect.  Our days were spent riding bikes to the local beach and having a dip before the surf came up.  We’d watch the surfers in the calm of the morning and kite surfers in the afternoon winds.  In the evenings we’d barbeque and listen to the various exotic birds sing song overhead.  Yup, it was pretty good and not a cyclone in sight.

On the weekend we did what any city folk would, we drove out into wine country and watched polo.  Now isn’t that the life - sitting on blankets sipping Sauvignon Blanc and cheering on the ponies? 

There was just one small complication.  As we looked back over the horse prep area, we couldn’t help but notice large billows of smoke.  In fact, we could occasionally smell the smoke over all the horse sweat and shit.  We inquired and the landowner informed us that large sections of the Swan Valley were beset by out of control bush fires!  Some were quite close, he mentioned in a typically understated Australian fashion, but we were protected by “The River”.  Further prying resulted in us realizing that said river was a creek at best, and was located about 100 meters away.  We decided that it didn’t look like a very good bush fire barrier to us, and high tailed it out of there.

All told, more than 90 homes were lost to the Perth bush fires, and with polo playing types living in the area, you can imagine the scale of the homes.  The premier had declared the area a state of emergency, a concept that seemed lost on our polo pals at the time.

I could tell an omen when I saw one, and decided that was my indication to leave the comforts of the ‘burbs and head out on a road trip.  This time my destination was north up the Western Australia coastline, a region resplendent with white sand beaches and turquoise water.  I had a rental car, credit card and about 11 days to kill.

I’ll spare you the details as I don’t have the time to write them all down and I know you don’t have the patience to slog through them.  However, there were certainly some highlights worth mention:

-          the Pinnacles: curious limestone features poking out of sand dunes, absolutely stunning at sunset

-          Kalbarri: home to the Murchison River gorge where I joined a canoe trip deep into the canyon to observe the brilliant red cliffs

-          Monkey Mia/Shark Bay: a world heritage site boasting some of the only stromatolites remaining on earth (exciting to geologists and no one else) and dolphins that swim into the bay every morning to show off and to be fed (exciting to everyone else)

-          Coral Bay/Ningaloo Reef: the world’s largest fringing reef, meaning some of the most spectacular snorkeling and diving in the world is only 30 to 40 meters off shore

Coral Bay actually deserves some elaboration.  The town is so small as to not even be incorporated, consisting of some accommodation and minimal services, but it serves as a great access point to the reef.  I snorkeled with manta rays, watched sharks get their teeth cleaned by small fish that I dubbed “dental hygienists”, and marvelled at some of the brightest coral I have ever seen. 

I planned to spend my last days in Australia at Coral Bay, snorkeling every morning and relaxing in the afternoons when the winds came up.  There was just one small problem.  On the drive up from Monkey Mia there had been major flooding, with water flowing over the highway in many locations.  Each evening I was in Coral Bay, thunderstorms provided brilliant light shows, but also dumped huge amounts of water on the region.  Rumours began to circulate that the road, the only connection back to Perth, would soon be closed.

So, rather than be stuck in the North when my non-refundable flight to Vietnam left Perth, I again changed my plans and left Coral Bay a day early.  There weren’t as many river crossings on the return trip, but there was one pretty hairy spot.  The flood indicator on the side of the road showed a water depth of 0.4 meters and the current was strong.  At one point while crossing I could feel the car begin to lose grip and shimmy sideways with the flow.  I envisioned my little compact being washed away into the Outback (and me with it), but it managed to find traction and I was on my way.

That’s the benefit of being flexible with travel plans. I had an extra day on my hands, so did a quick flip through the Lonely Planet and decided to drive past Perth to Rockingham, home to about 180 wild dolphins.  The attraction to this location is that the dolphins love to play with humans, providing an opportunity to swim with them.  It was a glorious way to spend my last day in Australia.  The dolphins whirled around us as we swam, squealing all the while (us and the dolphins).  As our boat sped back to the dock, they swam along with us, performing acrobatics in our wake.  Afterwards, I made a quick stop to visit an island with rare little penguins and then headed for the airport, confident that I had squeezed everything I possibly could out of my last hours in Australia.

While driving to the airport, I heard a weather warning on the radio.  Coral Bay was bracing for a cyclone.  The community, and many others in the region, were on alert and expected to be evacuated within days.  “It figures” I thought to myself.  “This country is surely cursed!  Everywhere I go there’s been storms, flooding, fires…”  And then it hit me – I wasn’t happy to be leaving Australia, but then again, perhaps Australia wasn’t too sorry to be seeing the last of my ass?