Outback Recap

Km Driven: 6445

Much has happened over the past thousand or so kilometres. As most people know, Paul flew home a week ago which means that I don't have to contend with his snoring in the van anymore and have more than enough room for myself. With the days winding down I'm still trying to get the most that I can out of this lovely country. Just today I saw a crocodile on the way to the beach but was too slow to take a picture (fact is, it was probably just a big lizard that looked ugly b/c I think the croc are further north). but don't worry, soon enough!

There are a few pictures from the end of my trip with Paul that i thought were really cool. We did a long drive out to Broken Hill, from Melbourne. When we got there we had to trek across dirt roads and dusty trails to get to this old abandoned mine in the area. Really cool and really authentic aussie. It was the kind of desolate emptiness all around that I nervously kept checking our fuel situation for fear of having to resort to some kind of worst case scenario kangaroo hunting.

The mine that we got to was (as eveything else is in the outback) in the middle of nowhere. There were two guys working there who seemed to have been waiting forever for visitors who took us around the area and underground. COmparing this to the Krakow mine is cool b/c of how unregulated this one was. It was pretty much some guy taking us out to the the mine in his backyard. Very un-touristic and very cool.

We donned hard hats and lights and trekked through these antfarm-like tunnels that had been cut through solid rock. One of the weirdest things was when our guide lit a candle at one point and instructed us to turn off all our lights. Then we sat around looking at how gloomy it was without powered lights before he blew out the candle and we were surrounded by the darkest darkness that ever darknessed, really scary stuff.

The amount of driving that goes on in Australia is hard to picture by just looking at the map or listening to me whine about how there's no good radio stations to listen to. Some of the treks that we've done have been to remote areas that were 200km stretches without gas or towns. Here's a cool photo that sometimes made me reconsider how much I like driving.

Just kidding, I love driving. It's like a game. Especially when you're dodging wildlife. On the way back to he coast from the outback we were driving down a one-lane highway when the sun started to go down. Desperate to find a place to pull over, we suddenly found ourselves on a long very straight strech of highway with no where to stop. As the darkness started to increase, we joked about the lack of (live) kangaroos that we'd seen on the highways. All of a sudden, two tiny roos appeared within 10m of the car, skipping happily across the highway and completely oblivious to the careening doom in front of them. I yanked the steering as har as I could, without tipping the van and we narrowly avoided having a huge mess to clean up.

To give you all a little update, since dropping Paul off last week I spent a couple of days cleaning up the van and enjoying the Bondi life once again. That place has really become a new home for me. I even have 'my parking spot' which is right beside a park with a cliffside view of Bondi. The park is a 3 minute walk from the beach and a 3 minutes walk from the hostel which provides me with showers, facilities, movie night and social fun (at least until they realize that I actually live in a van down the street). Here's a view from my backyard

I spent a few day trying to round up people to drive up tp Byron Bay with me. When two Italian signed up for my bus I was excited to have some van company. Unfortunatly they pulled out the day before I thought to leave so I decided to drive up alone instead. Luckily, they felt bad for ditching me and cooked me a fantastic Italian pasta lunch to make up for it. And then, because I felt bad for myself too, I went and bought a surfboard! I haggled with the guy at the desk to lower the price b/c of the lessons that I'd taken and to throw in some freebies. He accused me of 'using the system', to which I just smiled and nodded Either way, I ended up with a cheap board taking up Paul's place in the car and have now spent every day since my purchase out in the water. I think I'm addicted