This is only the first part of the journey.
Patience. We'll get to my 2010 trip in good time.
Introduction
I had been looking forward to my overseas trip for months. My savings plan was well in hand, brochures about Los Angeles, the Rockies, New York, and other places were bulging a large folder, and I had joined Noreasccon III, the upcoming world sf convention. But my plans depended from several crucial pins, one of which was the US/Australian exchange rate. This had been improving for months as the US dollar continued its gradual and (we were told) inexorable descent. By February the Australian dollar was touching on 90 US cents — the highest it had been since the early years of the decade. And then I made a mistake.
I was also planning a brief trip back to New Zealand in June of 1989. The US trip wasn't till August, the US dollar was still sliding, but the NZ dollar wasn't — so I blew my ready cash on NZ dollars.
Two weeks later the Australian dollar crashed. I held off buying US dollars, hoping it would recover. By the end of February it was below 80 US cents. By mid-May it was below 74 US cents, after which it stabilised and began a year-long recovery to just under 80 US cents — but it never again threatened 90 US cents.
I could no longer afford both NZ and the USA. One trip had to go. I already had my NZ cash, and the budget for the US trip was now borderline even if I gave up the NZ trip. So I gave up on the US (Plan A) for this year.
I spent some of the freed up budget on a CD player and a VCR. The rest I put aside for a less ambitious trip — a three-week jaunt around part of my adopted home.
Plan B was a leisurely exploration of coastal and northern Queensland. But I still planned overseas trips for 1990 and 1991, and it seemed a shame to put off seeing more of Australia for at least another two years. Never mind that Plan A had nothing to do with seeing Australia. If I was going to holiday in Oz instead of the US then I wanted to see a decent chunk of Oz.
So I added a reach down through the Red Centre (Plan C). But then the bus fares proved too expensive, paying by sections. I needed a bus pass. A 21-day pass was still too expensive, but at that moment Deluxe Coachlines were offering a 25% discount on their $399 15-day pass. The $299 rate meant travelling "stand-by" — meaning I was restricted to booking a seat less than 4 hours before departure, assuming a seat was available — but most people flew long distance in Oz and the buses were rarely booked out, so I figured the risk was minor. Previous experiences with Deluxe had been pleasant, the pass offered discounts on their tours around Ayers Rock, and it meant a free ride on their regular service to and from Kakadu. Unbeatable value.
In the event, it almost came unstuck on the Darwin to Townsville leg. I was sitting in a cabin in Kakadu, reading the previous day's paper, when my eye was slugged by a headline. The domestic pilots had resigned en masse over a pay dispute! Suddenly I was in competition with cashed-up would-be air travellers for a seat on a bus out of Darwin. They booked out all the buses days in advance — and I was faced with the hurdle of talking my way aboard a packed bus four hours in advance!
Fortunately Deluxe was a bus line that appreciated the people who'd chosen them before there was no other choice. No matter how full the service, they found a corner for me. In fact I wound up standing in the aisle on the bus out of Three Ways (I got a seat a few hours down the road when someone got off). In the end I made it to Sydney on time, but it was by luck rather than planning.
Deluxe Coachlines are gone now, alas. Sometimes it takes more than loyalty and good service to survive, and Australia's once flourishing budget bus industry died out over the next decade as the fringe operators were squeezed by Greyhound and McCafferty's and by fare wars between the airlines that made flying almost as cheap as the buses.
Anyway, that is how it came about that at 11:30 on the morning of Saturday 19th August 1989 I climbed aboard a blue and white bus and set off to look for Australia.
Timeline
This trip was all about movement. It had to be — I had 15 days available in which to cover 10,000 kilometres, from Melbourne to Darwin to Townsville to Sydney, before my bus passs expired. I could fall a little short — Brisbane, say — without blowing the budget, but then I risked running out of holiday before I could get back to Melbourne.
Distances:
- Melbourne-Adelaide, 738 (738) km
- Adelaide-Erldunda, 1335 (2073) km
- Erldunda-Yulara, 242 (2315) km
- Yulara-Erldunda, 242 (2557) km
- Erldunda-Darwin, 1724 (4281) km
- Darwin-Cooinda, 313 (4594) km
- Cooinda-Darwin, 337 (4931) km
- Darwin-Three Ways, 991 (5922) km
- Three Ways-Mt Isa, 648 (6570) km
- Mt Isa-Townsville, 917 (7487) km
- Townsville-Brisbane, 1425 (8912) km
- Brisbane-Sydney, 1097 (10,009) km
- Sydney-Melbourne, 904 (10,923) km
A bus moving at 100 km per hour — the official open road speed limit — would take more than four days to cover the distance. Figure in meal stops, towns and other delays and it'd be more like five to six days. To cover such a distance and do any worthwhile sightseeing along the way I had to be both organised and disciplined.
Here is how I did it:
Date Time Note
19/08 11:30 Dep Melbourne (Saturday)
19/08 21:00 Arr Adelaide
19/08 21:30 Dep Adelaide
20/08 07:00 Arr Coober Pedy
20/08 07:50 Dep Coober Pedy
20/08 13:35 Arr Erdunda
20/08 14:30 Dep Erldunda
20/08 17:20 Arr Yulara Ayers Rock Lodge
21/08 Sunrise, climb, base
22/08 Base walk
23/08 Kata Tjuta
24/08 13:50 Dep Yulara Ayers Rock Lodge
24/08 16:20 Arr Erldunda
24/08 16:45 Dep Erldunda
24/08 18:45 Arr Alice Springs
24/08 19:30 Dep Alice Springs
25/08 01:10 Arr Three Ways
25/08 01:55 Dep Three Ways
25/08 10:00 Arr Katherine
25/08 10:20 Dep Katherine
25/08 14:00 Arr Darwin
26/08 07:00 Dep Darwin
26/08 11:00 Arr Cooinda
27/08 13:30 Dep Cooinda
27/08 19:00 Arr Darwin
28/08 12:15 Dep Darwin
28/08 16:00 Arr Katherine
28/08 16:20 Dep Katherine
29/08 00:35 Arr Three Ways
29/08 01:40 Dep Three Ways
29/08 08:55 Arr Mt Isa
29/08 09:30 Dep Mt Isa
29/08 20:00 Arr Townsville
30/08 Reef trip
31/08 20:45 Dep Townsville
01/09 16:30 Arr Brisbane
02/09 07:00 Dep Brisbane
02/09 23:15 Arr Sydney
Some boiled stats for you:
Bus pass duration: 15 days
Distance to cover: 10,009 km (to Sydney)
Required average distance per day: 670 km
Time on buses excluding changes: 127.75 hrs
Velocity: 1880 km/day or 78.35 km/hour
Melbourne to Yulara
The first leg of my journey was crooked as a dog's hind leg: Melbourne to Adelaide to Erldunda to Yulara. 1900 kilometres as the crow flies, 2300 by road. Populate the first thousand kilometres with towns and trees and things-to-see, the second with red dust and a flat horizon, and the last few hundred with more dust but a few bumps on the horizon. Got that? Good! Now save yourself the bruises and boredom — fly it!
Actually there was one place in the second thousand kilometres that I would have likeed to see more of: Coober Pedy, the opal town. The place itself is just like any other section of desert, apart from its tuunnel-dwellings, but the thought of digging up a few opals for keepsakes and presents is attractive. It was extremely hot and bright, except indoors. I took a tour through an underground house. Everything in the shops was overpriced by Melbourne standards. Coober Pedy's residents are friendly, but a bit … odd.
So. At 17:30, after sitting 30 hours in my clothes, I clambered my scabrous way off the bus at Ayers Rock Lodge, Yulara. Some keen adventurers climbed straight onto another bus and set off to view the sunset. But I had grasped the essence of my three-day "Rock Pass": that it was a three day pass. I didn't expect to need three full days, but I wasn't going to spend $32 (my bus pass gave me 35% discount on the $49 full price) for two days and a sunset. Instead I went in search of a nice hot shower.
My Rock Pass was with Deluxe and basically covered unlimited transport anywhere that Deluxe went in the Park. The rest was up to me — which was fine as I preferred to make my own way in my own time. There are still "Rock Passes" available today (McCafferty's and AAT-King) but they're three times the price. They're not as good for the independently-minded either, particularly around the Olgas, although you might still be able to do what I did and swap the programmed guided tour and picnic for an unprogrammed freedom walk and a pick-up by another bus at the end.
Then again, maybe not. My 2001 experience suggests that unless you have a car, the Red Centre experience has now been pretty well cut and packaged, with little room left for freedom walkers and those who don't fit the mass-tourism mold.
The accomodation was not luxurious. $17 per night got me one of the four beds in a subdivision of a long dormitory. On the other hand, $250 per night for the Sheraton was out of the question. The Lodge was easily the cheapest accomodation at Yulara, short of a tentsite at the campground. With the mercury falling below zero at night and me without a tent, that wasn't an option either.
Uluru — The Climb
Back on the bus and around the corner to the base 0f the "Climb". There was already a long line of people toiling up the slope. Just after 07:00 (sunrise) I set foot on the rock. Hah! I thought as I passed "chicken rock" and reached the bottom of the chain that guides climbers up the steepest section of the Climb. This wasn't going to be so tough!
Then, incredibly, the slope ended. The chain ended. There was a flat place filled with puffing, sweating climbers lying around recovering from the effort. There was a tremendous view out over a flat red landscape that was already beginning to shimmer with heat haze. Below me, the "ant mob" toiled up the Climb, shrunken indeed to insect size down by the cluster of toy tour buses in the car park.
The worst was over, but I had not yet finished climbing the rock. To my left as I looked out, another chain continued up and over a stone shoulder. People were disappearing over the crest. I heaved my legs into motion again and followed them into an alien red landscape.
The fact that hundreds of people made the climb every day was no guarantee of safety. There was always the temptation to peer over the edge; but the edge was so gradual that it was easy to walk down the slope a little too far, slip, and fall. People got killed that way every year, in addition to those who collapsed through heat exhaustion and heart attack. The Rock was 348 metres high and the Climb involved a distance of about about 1.6 kilometres each way (two hours return, 2/3 of which was the ascent). Climbing it was not for the old, the infirm, or the reckless.
A crowd had gathered about the cairn, gawking at the view. Yet the view was impressive mainly because it was astonishing that such eminence was surrounded by such tremendous nothingness. Only Kata Tjuta, the Olgas, 30 kilometres west, broke the flat expanse. They squatted like stone marbles on the horizon.
In one place I did find the undeniable hand of man: another cairn, almost lost in the red wasteland. I added a loose rock to it in passing.
There were fields of spinifex and shrinking pools of water, shivering beneath the sky. There were the copses already mentioned, clusters of living trees and dead stumps. There was a string of deep sinkholes, floored with pebbles. What could form these? Not wind: they would probably keep their water long into the driest seasons. It must be the flow of water when (rarely) it rains.
Eventually I found myself back at the top of the Climb. The sun was high and the temperature was rising. So I descended.
Uluru — Base walk
Next morning I spared myself the frosty pre-dawn by waiting till the sun was well up before heading for the Rock. It was a brilliantly clear, cloudless morning and despite a little soreness in the calves I was ready to tackle the 9km Base Walk around the Rock.
I quickly retraced my steps of the day before. Organ Cave is a cave inside a rock pierced by large holes. The wind, when there is one, moans through the holes. Today was still, so the organ was silent.
Wind and floods had carved the base of the Rock into amazing shapes. Some looked like architecture. There was a bell-shaped cavity in the rock that I scrambled into to have my photo taken. There were huge cliffs where the surface resembled exposed lobes of a giant brain. There were fields of natural pillars, like graveyards. There was the Gigeresque skull of an Alien. There was aboriginal rock art. The gaping mouth of the sacred Cave of the Women was hung with stone baleen, like the mouth of a whale. I can't be sure, but I think the string of sinkholes I saw up above emptied their rainy season overflow into Mutitjulu Springs. The Springs themselves were nestled in a deep, cool cleft in the flank of the Rock and rarely ran dry.
I got back to the base of the Climb just as the afternoon heat was taking hold. There was a Deluxe bus there, just about to pull out. Twenty minutes later I was wrapping myself around a very late lunch and a cool drink back at Yulara.
Kata Tjuta
My Rock Pass didn't really cover what I wanted to do, but Deluxe were happy to oblige me. Normally people bussed out, walked into a gorge, walked back out, and left on the same bus. I wanted to get there on one bus, walk 12 kilometres through the centre of the domed land, and catch a 16:00 bus back from the other side. The Olgas buses were running only half full, so it cost Deluxe nothing to let me do this.
The first leg was a 4 km walk up to the lookout. The road wad well graded and I covered the ground quickly. The first hurdle came when I reached the great sloping wall of rubble that spilled out between two domes. I didn't realise how much height I had gained tiill I looked back and down partway up. No wonder I felt so knackered!
There was a side path that led up onto one of the domes. From the top I could see right across the interior of the domed land and pick out my path. The massive dome beneath me was dwarfed by the giants ahead. They crowded the horizon like a row of sunburnt buttocks on a packed beach.
I scrambled off the lookout and headed into the scenery. It had taken over an hour to get this far, but that meant I was making good time. I resolved to slow down and smell the roses — not that there were many roses here.
The silence was the first thing I noticed. There was no wind. There was no sound except my breathing, the slap and scuff of my sandals, and the other incidental sounds of my passage. Even the trees, when I reached them, were motionless. I was the only moving thing in the landscape.
The domes were now great bald heads, holding their breath and watching in fascination as a gnat crawled across the shag pile in their living room. I tried to move across the land without damaging anything, as if the domes might reach out and crush me if I damaged their furniture.
The domes ahead began to dominate the world, and then I reached them, an hour on from the lookout.
I headed up the nearest gorge, following a well beaten trail. At the end I turned right. The gorges were uncanny, filled with scrub and yet feeling more like a city street than the product of nature. But eventually I came back into the open.
Well, since I had walked the western arm of the Valley of the Winds to get here, I might as well complete the circuit by walking back on the eastern arm. So I did. Then I continued south.
It was now well after 13:00, but my ride back from Olga Gorge wasn't till 16:00 so I had plenty of time in hand. It was hot now. When I reached a spot that was as close to cool and shady as I was likely to find, I stopped for lunch. I broke open my third litre of water and munched sandwiches, gazing out over the serene landscape.
It was a sublime moment, resting in the navel of this ancient land, listening to the flies — funny I hadn't noticed them till now — and with no responsibilities. I was just where I wanted to be, just when I had to be there. My soul was at peace. These are the moments that make a trip memorable.
The Gorge was interminable, but then I came across a low fence and heard voices shouting on the far side. The tour bus was already here — I think because it included a picnic in the Gorge — and the tourists were dashing around noisily, breaking up the scenery and photographing each other against what was left.
When I contrasted this scene of noisy destruction with the serene isolation of the domed land, I blessed the foresight of those who had carefully laid out the marked paths in a way that discouraged these maggots from penetrating the heart of the Olgas. One person passing through, treading carefully, packing their rubbish, taking only pictures and leaving only footprints, does negligible damage. One party of these noisy stompers could do damage that would take years to repair. Hundreds of people visit Kata Tjuta daily and only one or two do the long walk through the heart of the domed land — I'm happy to say!
My Rock Pass was used up, so I spent the next morning wandering around Yulara. After lunch I clambered aboard a Deluxe bus for the 24-hour marathon ride to Darwin.
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