Extra: road trip infrastructure

One of the things that Ruthie and I discussed a fair bit while on our road trip was the prevalence of the little blue and yellow i.  Every town that we have entered – not just on this particular trip – has had a well-marked location where you can find information about the town you’ve just entered.  Allow me to caveat this with the fact that it must actually be something of a town, as some of the bumps in the road we’ve passed, might not actually classify as towns, but definitely had no i.  Naturally, some information locations are bigger than others: some are whole buildings, and some are just little billboards.  But mostly we’ve seen staffed buildings, with someone always willing to provide some assistance, advice, or just some small talk.

We’ve agreed that this is something just not as common in America, and that’s just a bit sad.  It seems that gone are the days of the epic road trips.  Everyone just seems to drive to and from work and fly everywhere else.  My theory is that the retired generation in this country caravans.  While the US is plagued with snowbirds, Australia is riddled with geriatric RV owners/drivers.  In fact, the couple we ran into at the sculpture garden had bought a trailer and was spending six months driving Oz.

Again, theory only, but my guess is that because Australia’s taken some time to provide for the road tripping pensioners, others have followed suit [actually, it really does seem to be pretty common to find Aussies who genuinely enjoy camping].  Meanwhile, the US has spent money building up 10-lane superhighways, and thus killed Scenic Route 66 and the road trip beauty that goes with.

-EP

Day 5 – Adelaide, flight home

25 February 2013.

Today, after sleeping in a bit, has been a good one.  The only thing is that the stuff we did today could’ve easily been done in Melbourne. 

Following a brief visit to the gym while Ruthie slept in, we packed up, checked out, and went in search of breakfast.  The only problem: Ruthie’s plans for us to wander the multitudinous parks that surrounded the city required sunshine, or at least a lack of rain. 

It was still raining lightly after we’d finished our breakfast in North Adelaide, so we wandered across the street to the movie theatre.  We started our day with late morning showing of Silver Linings Playbook.  Actually, let me be more accurate: we started the day with watching the last 10 minutes of some Nicolas Sparks film which made Ruthie teary, and then we watched Silver Linings Playbook.  Turns out that finding seats 30 minutes early at this particular theatre – or at least at this particular time of day – was totally not necessarily.  But instead of potentially being disruptive twice by walking back out, we just stayed in our seats. 

Then, not one to turn down Ruthie’s movie-watching moods and considering that it was still dreary outside, we decided to double feature and returned to the lobby to refill on snacks, another soda, and tickets to Django Unchained. 

I’m happy to report that both films were enjoyable, and I’m sure watching them in Adelaide made them all the better. 

Our double feature wrapped up with enough time for dinner at a Thai restaurant and now we’re at the airport.  Our plane’s been delayed coming from Perth, and so we’re delayed getting back to Melbourne. 

Our flight out here was probably half full, first thing on Thursday morning.  But sitting here watching the terminal fill up, it looks like our flight back, late on a Monday night will be slammed full.  What makes me most nervous: the quantity of babies and small children.  Fingers crossed… [Edit: Apparently the A320 we used seats more than I’d envisioned – and no screaming babies disturbed our 1.5hr flight.]

Also, it’s been interesting to note that airport security is not nearly as strict as what we’re used to dealing with in the US.  Not only was I able to carry on multiple full bottles of liquid, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a couple family members escorted down to the terminal by non-flying members.  Since there was no check of boarding pass or ID, this makes sense as possible – but it’s so out of place to see that it’s still a bit startling. 

All in all, I have to say it was a really good trip.  Given how much time it takes to travel to/from/through the airport combined with flight time, I’m not entirely certain we saved heaps of time by flying to Adelaide.  But, at the end of the day, it was as much of a chance to drive parts of the Outback and other sections of Oz as it was for experiencing the other cities themselves. 

-EP

Day 4: Broken Hill and o/n at Adelaide

24 February 2013.
 

The morning started off great with a fantastic dose of culture.  We hit not one, but two art galleries, containing both international and Australian art – both aboriginal and otherwise.  The first, the regional art gallery, was surprisingly good.  I’m not really sure what I expected, but it far surpassed whatever low standard I had imagined.  It was full of historical and contemporary Australian artists, including a couple by a bloke called Pro Hart. 

Pro Hart also has his own gallery, and so it was to his building we went next.  Ruthie, being much more cultured than I, knew the name of Pro Hart prior to our visiting.  The man was incredibly prolific and produced a massive range of style of art to boot.  Lastly, it was obvious he was successful in his art by the four Rolls Royces parked out front. 

From getting our serving of art and culture, we went back to the information centre to pick up one last souvenir and feed our newly discovered Gloria Jean’s addiction before hitting the road. 

This time, the road trip portion – while long – was almost a bit more interesting.  The bumps in the road that one might consider towns were both more frequent and much more varied in size.  One or two were barely more than a public toilet and a general store [not even petrol available].  Others were towns that looked really run down.  And then there were at least two towns that a successful, thriving sense about them.  Which caused us to ponder, Why?  What was it that made one town survive and the other one not?  Both were significantly far away from a major city, but something made a difference.  Or perhaps it was not the actual success of the city that differed, but the simple upkeep.  Ruthie reckons that neat sidewalks make all the difference in the world. 

The road trip continued on [and on], and all was well until I got busted for speeding.  Two things played in here, one apparently the speed limit had changed from 110kph to 100kph between the aforementioned bumps; and two, 8.6mph over on a county road [even if it is the major thoroughfare] is apparently enough unlike I95 in Maryland.  Honestly, I don’t even know how I ended up doing 114 even when I thought it was still 110 because I had been using cruise control.  It must’ve just been one of the random and varied moments I was driving by foot instead of finger.  Anyways, hurt pride aside, the next hurt will be felt in the wallet: $400 for my speeding ticket.  Ouch.

At first I was over it, and then after the next town [not that it matters, but for all the towns we went through, I was definitely going the speed limit – isn’t that where it counts most?], I got passed by a dude in a SUV when I was going the speed limit of 100.  Where was the copper then?  So that then spoiled my mood, and soured our approach to Adelaide. 

The distance to the city finally dropped into double digits, and then a couple more long breaths and we were suddenly paying attention to street names looking for our hotel.  After the long, and ultimately frustrating drive, we’ve called it an early night with room service and Day and Knight on the local television.  

-EP

Hot

I interrupt the regularly scheduled recount of our road trip to have a mini-whinge about the weather.  On one hand, I'm not really complaining because I don't mind the heat, and I love the eternal sunshine.  On the other hand, I need a break from it.  Today and tomorrow's high temps: 97F.  But the problem is that the low temps are 72F.  And we have no air conditioning.  So on our day off today, we've been sitting in a dark apartment [all the blinds are drawn], with the fans on, still sweating whilst sitting down.  I've been tempted multiple times to just give into the heat, and open all the blinds back in to get rid of the gloomy blinds ... but it's still only 85F inside while it's 97F outside ...

The other issue is that it's now technically autumn - and it feels like it's been a steadier heat now that the summer's over than was experienced in the heart of summer.  Perhaps that's just a perception, but in order to help me visualise it, I went all nerdy and made some charts.

Source for both data sets: http://www.bom.gov.au/vic/observations/melbourne.shtml

Basically since the 4th, the temperature hasn't dropped below 60F, and over the past couple days it's barely made it down to 70F. 

At the end of the day, I'm not really complaining about the sunshine and the heat - those are totally tolerable.  It's the lack of respite, especially at night.  If Ruthie and I had been smart, we would've gone somewhere with A/C today [movies, etc] ... but we stayed home in an attempt to not be busy today [a rarity of late]. 

Anyways, back to the road trip.

-EP

Day 3: Broken Hill, Silverton, o/n at Broken Hill

23 February 2013.

If the past two days were vacation, it was definitely one of those go-go-go vacations.  Today, however, actually felt like a bit of R&R.  We slept in a bit, went to the information centre, had late brekky at a local café, and then hit the road towards Silverton.  Realising we were actually on the road in time to make it to the Daydream Mine tour, we veered off the main drag in hopes of heading underground.  Just in time for the second of the two tours of the day, we were greeted by some true Aussies, and a bloke named Gary [a former miner himself] took us on our tour. 

The mine tour was pretty cool.  Mining in those days [very late 1800s] was definitely not an easy task.  Sure, it paid a lot of money, but retirement was at 40, and if you hit 45, you were a lucky, lucky man.  Your wife and kids [if they survived] were lucky by your money, hopefully – although if you were dead at 38, suddenly your widow had multiple kids and no income.  Also, when the mine first started [at least this particular mine], your wife and family lived in neighbouring town, and you only saw her/them once a year when you came home to get a bath.  Perhaps not surprising is that the highest paid members of the mining society were the dozen or so women living and working at mine’s hotel.

After the mine, we drove into and around Silverton.  Unfortunately, due to it being off season, access to the Mad Max 2 “museum” and most of the galleries were closed.  The old gaol had been turned into the historical society’s museum, though, so we had a poke around there.  Growing weary of the slow shuffle that’s required for exhibits such as those, we retired to the car and drove 5km out of town to the Mundi Mundi plains, famous for some scenes in Mad Max and Priscilla.

 As an aside, Broken Hill is now not only surviving as an active mining town, but it’s experienced its own bit of resurgence by way of a movie industry.  Most recently, the rebirth of Mad Max was supposed to be filmed there.  That was until Australia broke a massive drought, had heaps of rain, and the Mundi Mundi plain bloomed.  Since pretty flowers aren’t really a great setting for a post-apocalyptic world, the producers moved the filming location.  Way to go Ma Nature. 

On the way back from Mundi Mundi, we also took the time to stop by the Silverton Historic Cemetery that started in the days of the old and is still being used.  From what miner Gary was explaining, the old graves were all timber, and so everything rotted, the graves filled in on themselves, and the same areas were used again.  The cemetery is 42 acres, but the section with the oldest graves has been marked off; I believe the oldest marker I saw was 1892.

After a little bit more driving, it back to Broken Hill where we enjoyed a fancy feast of Subway, relaxed in the room for a few minutes, and waited for the beginning of sunset.  We’d been told by the gentleman at the information desk that sunset at the living sculptures was a sight to see, and that’s what we did.  We almost had the whole sculpture park to ourselves until an older couple showed up for sunset, and then another family showed up afterwards.  Unfortunately, with the park closing at 8.30, just 30 minutes after sunset, we didn’t get to stay for the entirety of dusk’s glow.  In fact, it was almost as if the park was getting brighter just as we packed up and drove off.

Now, the fantastic piece of Hollywood that is Battleship is on the TV, we’re eating the last of our foot longs, and then it’s bedtime.  No need to see sunrise tomorrow, but it’s a long 550km from here to Adelaide.

 
-EP

Day 2: Lake Mungo, back to Mildura, o/n at Broken Hill

22 February 2013.

Two days and two pre-sunrise starts.  Mark the calendars because that might actually be the last time Ruthie sees predawn for another decade.  Not to mention the last sunrise she purposely watched was in Hawaii in 2009. 

This morning’s start was an adventure in the pre-dawn twilight at the Walls of China.  These sand-salt-clay dunes provided a great vantage point for the sun to appear over the flat curve of the distant horizon.  It magical except for one thing.  Well millions of one thing: flies.  We were completely swarmed with them.  Our theory is that they were buried under the surface of the sand during the night and broke free with the sun.  What started as being overwhelmed by these bugs simply became the theme for the day.  Everywhere we went, we were pestered by flies, and while we were wandering sections of the Outback it always felt like the longer we walked, the more we attracted.  Ruthie quickly came to regret not buying the over-the-head fly netting she saw at the info center in Mildura yesterday.

Returning from sunrise, we broke the fast at Mungo Lodge, and then did the self-drive tour around the lake.  What I naïvely hoped was that we’d find an exhibit dedicated to Mungo Lady and Mungo Man, combined providing some of the oldest bones found outside of Africa, some 40,000 years young.  Instead, we found some other exhibits, and an exhibit explaining the meaning of the Mungo Man and Mungo Lady as well as all the other things that have been found around Lake Mungo.  Aside from some of the fossilized animal parts, the best we had was a reproduction of the footprints that were also found at Mungo.  [Edit: it wasn’t until doing some later reading that we discovered Mungo Lady is in a vault at Lake Mungo exhibition centre and Mungo Man is in Canberra.] 

Another highlight of our adventure this morning: we had the park to ourselves.  Well, not entirely, as we briefly played leapfrog with two motorcyclists.  For the record, we’ve decided to ignore the Aussie accent of the second rider [we said hello as they drove past us at one of the stops], and are sticking with the story that it was Ewan McGregor and Charlie Borman doing their 3^rd show by way of traveling Australia: Long Way Under.  Never mind that there was no caravan of SUVs laden with support crew: there was a camera mounted on the bike and on the helmet and that’s enough.  Also, I find it worth noting that given the red dirt and desert surroundings, when the two motorcycles appeared in my rear view quickly catching up to me – I had a brief moment of panic that I was suddenly about to live out a scene in Mad Max for myself.

Anyways, we completed the 70km circuit around the Lake [undisturbed by the bikies], and then made our way back to Mildura.  We were advised that our two-wheeled drive vehicle might not be the safest choice for the alternate route between Mungo and Broken Hill as it had just rained a bit in that area overnight.  So back to Mildura, where we had a much needed stroll and lunch break, and then we took off for Broken Hill.

Leaving Mildura took us through a large agricultural area dominated by orange groves.  And then civilization seemed to just stop.  No groves, no farms, no rows of unidentified short yellow stalks – just country.  Oh and multiple pointers towards a town named Pooncarie. 

On the silly excitement level, I finally have encountered the mythical being that is the Road Train.  I’d been told of these things shortly after arriving, but had not actually seen one in person.  Road Trains don’t leave much to the imagination: they are quite literally two trailers behind one truck.  It’s a lot of wheels and wind to be passing you on a two-lane undivided high way at 110kph.  I’d love to see the granddaddy of road trains, the quad, but since I won’t be driving in any of the vast areas of the open road in WA or NT, I doubt that’ll happen.

Broken Hill finally arrived, and it was a bit like driving into a thriving mid-Pennsylvania town.  I’ve never actually seen a prosperous mining town, which is partly why we’re here.  The other part might be the fact that some scenes of Priscilla were shot at the restaurant/hotel at which we ate dinner and in the desert about 30km west of here.  Mad Max was, too. 

Another thing that tickled me today: friendly drivers.  There seemed to be a pretty steady flow of traffic headed away from Broken Hill and towards Mildura, and I eventually figured out that I was occasionally being casually waved at by the opposing drivers.  So I began to initiate the wave myself, and success: people are nice when you’re in the middle of the Outback with nothing but the road and two tons of metal between you.  Not everyone though – I soon learned that women drivers didn’t seem to wave much, if at all.  Mostly men, and now that I think more on it, I’m going to theorise it was mostly other Ford drivers. 

Tomorrow: a mine tour and Silverton.  Those might not be mutually exclusive, I don’t yet know.

-EP