Goodbye Australia!

Cheers from rainy Adelaide!

I'm finally back from the Outback. The last two weeks were definitely the most remote of the trip, and as we chose a much more budget tour, they were also the more basic. There is nothing like appreciating a warm shower after having spent two nights sleeping in 3 degree temperature in a swag, which is an Australian roll-up mattress with a PVC cover in which you put your sleeping bag.

So, within a matter of five days the temperatures dipped from 30 + degrees in Darwin to about 15-20 degrees in Alice, going down to 3 degrees at night. Alice Springs was small and quaint and definitely very dry. It's a small town of 27 000 souls, a good percentage of which are Aborigines. The sad part is that the only visible aborigines were the drunk kind hanging out in the town square, the ones that had been kicked out of their community. So most backpackers and tourists, not knowing better, think that they represent the brunt of Aborigines; very much like the Inuit in downtown Montreal. It makes Alice Springs one of the least safe places to walk at night, which we didn't attempt. But it also misrepresents Aboriginals as most live healthily in their community and are definitely hard workers...

Aside from that, our stay in Alice was unremarkable. The highlights were 1) shopping for a Crocodile Dundee hat for my travelmate K (I gave up on the idea, it looked slightly ridiculous on my skull anyways) and 2) watching Star Wars, which was a lot of fun. I also befriended two girls from la belle ville de Québec and we had fun listening to my only Québécois music, Daniel Bélanger...

From Alice we started another tour with swags and early mornings. The first day was hiking Kings Canyon, which was absolutely stunning, a little bit like Grand Canyon (from what I remember of it) but lots more colour. The nights in the swags were cold: had to wear pj's, long sleeved shirt, sweater, and my borrowed fleece and hat and gloves. But it wasn't exactly unpleasant, just different. Then the next day was the Olgas/Kata Tjuta, which were stunning as well. And then sunset on Ayers Rock/Uluru, which goes through every shade of orange and pink with the sunset before finally settling. The next day we were supposed to hike it up but then it got too windy! We were very disappointed as the previous day, the climb was open but hey, if it's dangerous, it's dangerous. So we did the hike around it instead, with some frustration which lead to a much faster hike than planned. The event of the day was the fact that one of the Québécoises accompanied me to climb up part of Uluru on the other side while the other took a picture. The only thing is that 1) we hadn't seen the 'do not climb, it's a sacred site' sign which was after and 2) it was right in front of one of the rangers! So we got yelled at by a Uluru ranger (but still got the picture on Uluru!) who softened out when we pretended with stoopid grins that we didn't speak English. Definitely a funny moment. That was wonderful, otherwise we could have had a 3000$ fine to pay. Oh well, gotta live dangerously. It all turned out well.

Downwards to South Australia after that. We spent one night in Coober Pedy, capital of Australian opals. Apparently the next Star Wars is supposed to get filmed there, and Mad Max also used it as a backdrop. One of the strangest towns I've ever seen. Because the temperatures go to extremes in that part of the desert, people build their houses underground and call them 'dug-outs'. 'In a hole there lived a hobbit' - the first sentence of Tolkien's book just would not get out of my head. They're far from the surface and are usually old opal mining sites; 10 m under the ground the temperature remains a cool 24 Celsius all year long, so there is no need for heating or air conditioning. The decoration is very Spanish hacienda-like, with a constant darkness to the house as there is no daylight. To add an extension to a house in Coober Pedy one only needs a shovel and mining tools. Because residential areas aren't supposed to be used for mining opals anymore, if one suspects that there is opals below one's kitchen, one only needs a permit to extend the house to mine more. So as the local guide said, there are people in town who have permits for underground swimming pools and squash courts and numerous more bedrooms; everyone knows they're onto opals instead :). Very strange indeed. As well, in Coober Pedy a litre of water was 8 cents, so I took a short shower indeed. At one point it was cheaper to brush one's teeth with beer than with water. How Australian is that!!!

We then headed on to Wilpena Pound in the Flinders Range, a chain of mountains shaped like a giant crater. There was a beautiful hike up Mount Olsen Bagge at 941 m that we did with joy after endless hours spent on the bus crossing the desert. I think I'm picking up this hiking thing, and my new friends said that I wasn't so bad at it, so maybe more is on the way when I get back. It wasn't an easy hike, a little like Kings Canyon but steeper and longer; but it was such a reward to reach the top after 2 hours. Took tons of pictures. Our final stop before Adelaide was in Parachilna, population 5, oops, one's deceased in the last 2 days, it's now 4. A tiny little town where people really get excited when the train passes. And a lot of backpackers on working holidays, mostly cuz the work involved can't be too hard when the population is 5 and only our tour company stops there :).

I'm now off to Fiji tomorrow for a week of liveaboard diving; the thought of the sea is a little strange after having seen so much desert and dust. But Australia has struck me with its excessive colours: the blues of the Great Barrier Reef, the greens of the rainforest, and the orange-red of the Outback. It's so striking that it looks fake.