Copyright © Tanya Piejus, 2001

23 April 2001

G'day from Adelaide

As I didn't get a horde of panicky emails last week, I assume you all realised that I wasn't in jail for any wrongdoing so I'd better tell you the truth about my time in stir, hadn't I? Mt Gambier jail was used for locking up local miscreants from the 1880s until 1995 when it was turned into a backpackers' hostel. I had a cell, complete with toilet and sink, to myself for four nights. I soon found out that three men had hanged themselves in there and it was consequently supposed to be haunted. Fortunately, I had no ghostly visitations and the only things that went bump in the night were drunken backpackers falling out of the bar. In true prison spirit, I was put to work for a few hours a day sweeping cells, cleaning toilets and doing the laundry. Unlike a convict, however, I got paid for my labours so my stay at Mt Gambier cost me virtually nothing. While I was there I also visited some caves full of fossilised megafauna from around 700 000 years ago. I'd love to travel back in time and see Australia when it was populated with giant wombats, monster leaf-eating kangaroos and marsupial lions.

I'm not doing too well on the health front at the moment. I've come down with the 'Melbourne lergy' - a particularly nasal cold - that seems to have hit everyone now that the weather's cooled down a bit. I have a pirate-like patch over one eye today too as a result of getting a load of dust and sand blown into it yesterday. But, despite getting an eyeful of muck, Kangaroo Island was good fun.

During the days we got close to rare Australian sealions, fur seals and pelicans, tried and failed to see platypuses, went sandboarding on some massive dunes, swam in a clear but freezing ocean and saw some remarkable rock formations. At night we slept in swags by a campfire. Swags are something of a cultural institution that consist of a tube of canvas with a mattress in the bottom and a flap to keep the weather off your head. You put your sleeping bag inside it and are as snug as a bug. However, I got a rather alarming wake-up call when a large, ugly spider dropped on my head the first night. I made sure I kept my swag well zipped up after that.

I'm now in pretty Adelaide, the City of Churches, with plans to see some more Big Things. We saw Larry, the Big Lobster, on the way here. He is 17m high and impressively orange. A giant rocking horse and an outsize orange now beckon...

28 April 2001

G'day from Adelaide, part 2

South Australia is my fourth state and in my second time zone (I'm now only eight and half hours ahead of you British Summer Timers) and it's also Australia's driest bit. As I said last week Adelaide, the capital, is a pretty kind of city full of impressive old buildings and churches. It also has a lovely botanic garden with a great indoor Australian rainforest which I visited earlier in the week.

I also went to the South Australian Museum which is full of all kinds of interesting bits and pieces, especially Aboriginal artefacts, and the Migration Museum round the corner was particularly good and thought-provoking. From the first British settlers to the new arrivals today, it charts the long history of immigration into Australia and how the new Australians fared. It wasn't at all easy for many of them, especially when arcane concepts like the White Australia Policy were in place in the 1800s. Basically if you weren't fair-skinned, blue-eyed and a native English speaker, you didn't have a snowflake's chance in Hell of getting in. These days, anyone can apply for citizenship regardless of where they come from and what they look like. Interestingly enough, the British are amongst the most frequent applicants now, bringing the immigration story full circle.

Other than getting some culture, I've had 'a real tropical haircut' from a very nice man called Charles who used to be a Wigmaster for the BBC in the 70s. Wednesday was ANZAC Day and I went to watch the parade through the city centre. It was mostly old soldiers, smart in suits and medals, every one of them looking immensely proud to be there with their former brothers in arms. I got talking to the lady next to me whose 82-year-old husband marches every ANZAC Day with the dwindling remains of his regiment and when she left to go and meet him she gave me a little paper Aussie flag, slightly torn for which she apologised, itself a veteran of many ANZAC Day parades. I was very touched.

Today I went on a wine tour in the Barossa Valley. It went by way of the Big Rocking Horse which was actually my main reason for going. The samples of Jacob's Creek and Richmond Grove's finest plonk were incidental to a large metal structure which is an exact scaled-up replica of a wooden toy made by the factory where the Big Rocking Horse is. I've also paid a visit to the Big Orange this week and have discovered a soulmate in the world of Big Things. The woman who runs the Big Orange has a collection of photos of the ones she's visited and, joy of joys, a near-definitive list of them all so I now have to mark even more places with yellow highlighter on my map of Australia.

I think that about wraps it up for this week. I'm back on the Oz bus tomorrow afternoon and starting to head for Alice Springs. There might be a delay in next week's email as I'm going out to an Aboriginal community for a few days and I don't know whether they'll have an internet connection or not.

10 May 2001

G'day from Coober Pedy

As I mentioned before, I was on my way into the Outback and planning to go and stay with an Aboriginal community. Prior to that, I hopped off the Oz Experience bus from Adelaide at the first overnight stop, Marananga in the Barossa Valley. For those who don't know their wines, the Barossa is famous for its reds and ports. Myself and another girl from the Oz bus spent three intoxicating days cycling and walking the wineries within staggering distance of our hostel in what used to be the Marananga School. Fifteen vineyards and seventy samples later and I was really looking forward to a cold beer when I got to Parachilna in the Flinders Ranges.

The longest train in the world goes through Parachilna, official population 5. This train consists of three engines, 161 trucks (I know, I counted them) and a spare bogey at the back, making it 2.8km long, Every night it delivers coal from the mine in Leigh Creek to a power station in Port Augusta and is about the only thing to get excited about in Parachilna apart from the flies. This was my first real Australian fly experience and, not having got round to stringing corks from the brim of my bush-hat, I had to make do with the 'Aussie salute' - a constantly-flapping hand in front of my face - to keep the little beggars out of my ears, eyes and nose.

Parachilna is the jumping off point for the Iga Warta Culture Centre where I spent four days amongst five brothers, their wives, kids and assorted others of the Adnyamathanha people. Right from the start it was like being part of their family. They take the attitude that the wrongs done to the Aboriginal people are now part of history and they are looking into a reconciled future by passing on their experiences and culture to non-Aboriginals in the hope of increasing awareness and understanding. During my time at Iga Warta I learnt about their art, social history, extended family structure, language, music, men's and women's roles, Dreaming stories, food and relationship with their environment. I also got to make a boomerang from mulga wood, do some dot painting, play footy with the kids and attend a birthday party. They are such welcoming and giving people who, even though they live and work in the modern world, still retain and rejoice in a long and rich cultural history. It was an immense pleasure and a rare privilege to share in some of it with them and my only regret was that I couldn't have stayed there longer to really become part of their community.

From Parachilna, it was on through the Flinders Ranges to Wilpena Pound, a large bowl of rock amongst long lines of jagged and angled hills. I love the colours of the Outback - a rich Martian red in the soil, soft greens and yellows in the sparse foliage and a vast dome of bright blue sky punctuated with fluffy, flat-bottomed clouds. This is the Australia I've always had in my head and it is as aridly beautiful as I'd hoped.

I think I'll save Coober Pedy itself for next time as I've gone on too long already. Next email from the Red Centre and my 30s...

21 May 2001

G'day from Alice Springs

Those who have looked at my photos of Coober Pedy will have gained some impression of it already. It's the kind of town that you either form an instant, inexplicable liking for or just can't wait to leave. I fell into the former category as I enjoyed the rough, tough frontier feel of its hot, dusty streets and colourful personalities. The twinkling of opals was what brought 45 different nationalities of people to Coober to seek their fortunes, making it one of the most cosmopolitan places in Australia. The town's name is a corruption of the local Aboriginal phrase meaning 'white man in a hole' and holes is what you first notice about it. They're everywhere and are 30-foot deep, vertical shafts mostly dug by a variety of botched-together, home-made mining machines. These are accompanied by conical piles of waste which you can see standing along the horizon everywhere you look. This and the fact that most people live troglodyte existences in dug-outs to avoid the heat makes for a pretty peculiar place. It's also the start of the mail run to Oodnadatta and William Creek which I joined with 12 others to take post and supplies to the remote cattle stations and hotels along the way. We crossed the dingo fence and hostile Moon Plain on the way to Oodnadatta, a whacky Outback town of 150 or so residents. Then it was on to William Creek, population 15. On the way our back windscreen shattered and we had to put up with 30km of dust filling the truck before we rigged up a temporary replacement made from a punctured airbed. We also passed through the largest cattle station in the world which is the size of Holland.

700km of bitumen along the Stuart Highway brought me here to my final destination with the small Oz Experience buses and their nutty drivers. Waiting for me was Jenny, top mate from London, who had flown out to help me celebrate my big birthday. We started the day at 4.30 a.m. watching a large, floppy bag of material transform into a pretty red balloon which was to take us drifting 2000 feet above the desert outside Alice. This was the big treat I had been looking forward to for months and it was worth every cent. It's such a serene way to travel, floating on the morning breeze as the sun slowly lights the sky, watching the roos bouncing along in our shadow and the toy-sized cars thowing up clouds of dust along the Old South Road. A champagne breakfast finished off the occasion and I got showers of party poppers, a free bottle of bubbly and 50 people singing 'Happy Birthday' from the balloon crew.

Spurning the suckers' option of taking yet another tour bus, Jenny and I hired a little 4WD Toyota, which we named Edna, to take us to Uluru, a.k.a. Ayer's Rock. We got there in time for sunset. I popped the cork on the champagne and we sipped as the big rock took off its everyday brown workclothes and slipped into its firy red eveningwear. The change was subtle, not sudden, as the sun crept down the sky but the light seemed to burn from within Uluru, like blowing on the embers of an old campfire. A posh dinner, red wine I had been saving from Tasmania and cocktails finished off a perfect day.

The next day we walked around the base of the rock rather than doing the climb. Since talking to the folk at Iga Warta, I haven't wanted to stomp all over something of such importance to all Aboriginal people. The base walk is probably more rewarding anyway as you get to fully appreciate the cratered, lined and pitted face of the great rock. I had most wanted to touch its surface and it feels oddly rough and smooth at the same time. The emotional feeling I get from Uluru is not a spiritual one, more the sense of a huge presence of wisdom, nobility and great age that is so much more than just an outcrop of sandstone in a flat landscape. The sunrise we saw the next morning was more dramatic than the slow redressing of sunset. The stone suddenly flamed into a fierce orange as the sun peeped up over the horizon.

We reluctantly said good-bye to Uluru and set off for Kata-Tjuta, or The Olgas. These are great, round, red protrusions of a different rock that are a hazy blob in the distance from Uluru. Close up they are just as spectacular as their neighbour and we walked the aptly-named Valley of the Winds to see them close up. Next stop was Watarrka which contains King's Canyon. It's actually several canyons formed by collapsing rock shelves leaving sheer, stripy walls, weird domes of rock that look like they've been made from children's building blocks, and an oasis of ancient plants and deep, cool waterholes. The walk that goes around King's Canyon is breath-taking.

We'd chosen the 4WD option to avoid backtracking to get to the Western MacDonnell Ranges. And to have some fun! Not having driven anything bigger than a quad bike in 8 years, I decided it was time to get back behind the wheel. I started with a couple of circuits of the Uluru campsite, moved onto the smooth tarmac of the Lasseter Highway, then graduated to dust, corrugations and potholes on the Mereenie Loop, a 260km dirt road. We spent our last night's camping at Palm Valley, a beautiful strip of greenery along the Finke River and was strictly four-wheel drive only. Jenny did the hard bits but I still got to drive Edna through sandpits, fords and twisty narrow bits to get back to the main track. This took us through Tyler's Pass and on to Redbank Gorge, a gorgeous (excuse the pun) slit of craggy red rock with a tranquil waterhole running through it.

The dirt road ended at Glen Helen where we enjoyed the relative silence of bitumen again as we called in at Ormiston Gorge, the Ochre Pits where Aboriginals mine their pigments from a magnificent many-coloured cliff, and Ellery Creek Big Hole, a tranquil watery spot with its own little beach. Our final site before saying a sad farewell to Edna was Standley Chasm which we went to this morning. We got there before the tour buses and enjoyed the peace and natural wonder of a high-sided, narrow slot in the big redness of the MacDonnells.

The Red Centre was just as magnificent and startling as I'd hoped and it will definitely be one of the major highlights of my trip. Doing it our own way rather than being a sheep-like tourist added to the specialness of the experience.

26 May 2001

G'day from the Alice, part 2

Yup, I'm still here. I've decided to spend a bit more time in Alice Springs and chill out awhile before moving on - that's if it's linguistically possible to 'chill out' in a desert.

Both Jenny and I felt Alice to be somewhat intimidating on our first venturings into its night-time streets, but we also found that it grew on us. It certainly seemed much more welcoming when we returned from our five-day Outback safari. It's the first big town I've been to with a substantial Aboriginal population and that is the saddest thing about it. Many Aboriginal reserves have declared themselves 'dry', i.e. alcohol-free, so those who do want to drink are driven into unrestricted Alice to satisfy their craving. Many have ended up homeless and destitute and shamble about the streets with nothing better to do than buy cheap grog with their benefit money and slum it in the bed of the usually-dry Todd River. It's heart-breaking to see them reduced to such a state of deprivation and resorting to petty thievery after the prosperity and industry in evidence at Iga Warta. It's little wonder that some white Australians have such a negative view of Aboriginals if this is all they see of them.

Alice has a lot to offer the visitor in the way of diversions, however. Jenny and I spent the last few days she was here visiting the Governors' Residency, The Pioneer Women's Hall of Fame in the old courthouse, Olive Pick Botanical Reserve and Arts Precinct, and climbing Anzac Hill. We also went to the Desert Park which was excellent and the School of the Air. Having met a 13-year-old being educated by radio and correspondence whilst I was on the mail run from Coober Pedy, it was interesting to be at the other end of the wire. When we visited, a teacher was giving a lesson to preschoolers hundreds of kilometres away, their tinny voices floating in through the radio receiver in their distant 'classroom'. If meeting young Todd at Mt Barry Station was anything to go by, the kids who get their schooling in this manner certainly don't suffer by it. Despite the lack of day-to-day contact with other kids, he was a confident and friendly lad and the highly personalised tuition the School of the Air kids receive probably gives them a better start than they'd get in a regular school. I was most impressed.

Jenny's gone to take in the sights of Sydney before heading home and I miss her familiar companionship. I feel now that I need a bit of a break from the constant shifting from place to place and creating new, transient friendships all the time. I might have a casual job by the end of the week which should at least cover my accommodation costs so I could be enjoying Alice for quite a bit longer. Failing that, I'll be heading north to Katherine in about ten days time.

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