Tag: Australia

Wilsons Prom

First Published: 17 January, 2005

I was clatterbanging around in the shed the other day, looking for something which may or may not have been there, when I noticed my camping gear, neatly stowed in its plastic storage box. This caused me a slight pang of guilt because for some time, I’ve been planning on digging this out, sorting through it and setting off on a trip, just like the old days. Despite having a front yard which is as pretty as any campsite, the wanderlust has been tugging at my heart for a while and I’m determined that soon I shall dust off my backpack, dig out the hike tent, my stove, and my trusty old boots, and go spend some quality time in the wild.

It wasn’t going to be this weekend however, as through the shed window I could see the pine trees bending before the bitterly cold wind. I might be enthusiastic about roughing it, but I’m also a wimp, which is an unfortunate combination.

Although….it isn’t like I haven’t camped in worse. Much, much worse.

Australians are rightfully proud of the Wilson Promontory, a scenic peninsula off the Victoria coast, south-east of Melbourne. Affectionately known as The Wilson Prom, it’s the southernmost point on the Australian mainland, comprising 195 sq. m of wilderness; a scenic coastline framed by granite headlands, mountains, forests, and fern gullies. While I was meandering my way through the region in the early summer of 1992, almost everyone I met encouraged me to go visit.

“Oh, it’s beautiful!” they enthused, “you must see it”.

I was happy enough to follow their recommendation and the only potential challenge as I saw it, was that the park wasn’t served by public transportation. However, hitchhiking in Australia is safe and easy, and I’d been making steady progress around the country so far. I was confident I’d have no trouble and sure enough, I covered the 125 miles from my previous halt in four lifts without waiting more than twenty minutes between them.

I’d been warned that the sprawling campsite near the park’s entrance was not a good advertisement for the delights to come. Basic, functional, full of oversized motorhomes and mansion-like tents, it was nobody’s idea of a wilderness retreat. But it was late in the day when I arrived and there was little point in setting out into the bush, so instead I pitched my little hike tent, and snuggled in for the night. Just as I was switching off my torch and closing my book, I overheard a know-it-all remark. “There’s going to be a big storm coming in tonight.”

“Yeah, right” I thought, burrowing deeper into my sleeping bag, “there’s hardly a cloud in the sky!”

I think it was about 2am when it hit.

Have you ever been in the path of a steam train as it bears down on you, screaming like a thousand prehistoric monsters? No, me neither but I suspect it sounds a lot like the noise the wind made as it thundered through the trees on its way to our campsite. Wave after wave, carrying raindrops, which lashed my tent like thousands of tiny javelins. Standard camping procedure for high wind nights requires that the tent be pitched end on to the gale. Except I hadn’t expected a storm (clear sky, remember?) so had pitched mine at an angle which now turned out to be directly sideways on.

Hour after hour, I lay there listening to the next round careering its way up the valley. Each time a blast hit, my little tent would rock sideways, sometimes to the point where the wall would cover my face. It stood up pretty well but around 4am, a certain flexibility in the floor revealed that the pegs were beginning to work their way loose. Out I went and in nothing but my boxers, scuttled from pin to pin, securing them as best I could. Even the people in the big rigs were having trouble and several of my neighbours were also out (although more suitably attired than I) attempting to re-set guy ropes and take down awnings and canopies.

Once I was confident my own tent was as fastened as reliably as could be, I grabbed some warmer clothes and set about helping my compatriots. Why this act of altruism? I hear you ask. Well, because I could tell that this storm had no intention of letting up in time for me to begin my planned bush-hike in the morning and would no doubt keep me ensnared on this desolate campsite for at least one more day. And in the afternoon, most of the country would be watching the Australian Rules Football Grand Final. And most of these motor homes had televisions. And fridges full of beer. See where I’m going with this? It was a time for making friends.

I needn’t have bothered.

By 6am the air was rent with the sound of diesel engines firing into life as the pansies in their motorhomes, luxury trailers and comfort-laden cruisers packed up and ran for home. By the time I poked my red-rimmed eyes through the tent flaps, the site was almost deserted. Branches and other debris lay all around; great pools of water were attempting to link into one vast lake and the sky was dark and brooding. Every one of my newly made friends had abandoned me. However, the wind had eased somewhat so the rain was only at an angle of 45 degrees now. Even so, I’d been right in my prediction that I wasn’t doing any hiking today.

I spent that Saturday huddled in the camp’s dreary café, attempting to make single cups of coffee last for hours and for a large part of the time, sitting on a bar of chocolate trying to warm it up enough to break off a piece. By Sunday the weather was showing no signs of let up and reasoning that while hitching onto the peninsula had been easy enough, hitching off a 100-mile cul-de-sac could prove challenging if I didn’t take advantage of the few remaining folks heading back to town, I abandoned my plans for a wilderness hike and turned my feet towards Melbourne.

I got there easily enough and by late-afternoon was sipping a coke in the garden of a Backpacker’s Hostel. Predictably, the sun was brilliantly warm by this time and remained so for the next few months. I continued my way around Australia and never did see The Wilson Prom but for the remainder of my stay, whenever I outlined my route to a local the response was always the same.

“Oh, The Wilson Prom, isn’t it beautiful there?”   

Lost in the Bush

First Published: 7 December, 2004

Enthusiastic as I am over the concept of social drinking, even I balked a little when the aboriginal handed me the can of Scotch and Coke. It was after all, only a little after 7am which is early, even by my standards. However, I rationalized that it wasn’t all that long since I’d had my last drink and even though the sun was high in the sky, I hadn’t been to bed so technically it was still late at night, not early in the morning. Plus, as we stared down at the truck firmly embedded in the sand, it was obvious we weren’t going anywhere for a while. I popped the top and took a swig. It was warm and tasted vile but what the heck.

The evening had started out promisingly enough. A bunch of us from the backpackers’ hostel had set out to the bar to sink a few cold ones with the locals. The company was excellent and even though it was karaoke night, we were having a blast. Because of Broome’s location in Australia’s Northwest, it tends to attract a fair number of travellers on their way either to Darwin at the top end or down the west coast. Australia doesn’t have too many roads and generally, you’re either traveling this way, or the other way. As there are only a limited number of places to stop, you tend to make friends with the people going in your direction since you’re meeting up with them repeatedly. Although I’d already been in Broome a week, I’d decided to make it my base for Christmas, now only a few days away. Several others had made the same choice, each as determined as I, to have a good time and the sense of camaraderie was strong.

The night before had been something of a session and several of us had resolved to take it easy this evening. It never turns out like that of course and when somebody suggested we move on to the local night club, the agreement was unanimous. Back to the hostel to change flip flips for trainers, shorts for jeans, T-shirts for collars. Being backpackers, we didn’t all possess such elegant attire or if we did, being backpackers, it was currently somewhat pungent. So, the more fastidious among us found themselves in the positions of being able to trade clean clothes for goods or services. I myself obtained the loan of a very smart white shirt in exchange for the promise of a meat pie, to be delivered at a later date.

Once in the night club, the evening merely picked up speed. Brimming with beer induced self-confidence I was trying to make headway with a drop-dead gorgeous Swedish girl called Kattus, “as in catastrophic.”  I never really got anywhere but at this stage in the evening she was hanging on my arm in a manner that suggested all kinds of delights to come. It was probably due to her looks rather than mine that a bunch of Australian lads invited us all to a party on the beach. We had no real idea where the beach was, but not to worry – we piled into the enclosed back of a ute (pick-up) and off we went, singing and joking as we bounced through the bush. You can’t have a beach party without a fire but rather than follow the time-honoured tradition of collecting driftwood, our driver simply drove over the wooden safety marker posts at the side of the road and once they’d snapped off their bases, threw them into the back with us.

The fire was soon ablaze, and the remainder of the night was spent joking, gossiping, skinny-dipping, drinking and predictably, losing Kattus to a muscular Australian surfer dude named Shane. By the time the velvety night turned grey with the first suggestion of dawn, most people had crashed, either by the fire or off in the dunes somewhere. I was still awake, but tired, stiff, and somewhat cranky. So, when Shane announced he was giving someone a lift to the nearby resort, I invited myself along, thinking he could drop me back at the hostel. I’d have a shower, catch a few hours in my nice comfy bunk and be awake and refreshed by the time the others straggled home from the beach.

Congratulating myself on my forward planning, I hopped in the back and in a few minutes was on my way back to bed. Or rather I wasn’t. Shane wasn’t a local and it turned out that he’d assumed I would be able to give him directions. Not only did he not know how to get to town; he had no idea how to get back to the beach where we’d left everyone else. Neither of us was familiar with the area, we had no map and within a few minutes were unable to determine where even the resort was. We weren’t helped by the fact that the highway system around Broome is a network of dirt roads surrounded by scrubby bush without a landmark in sight. Quite simply, we were lost.

I’ve no idea how many miles we covered cruising up and down, but we seemed to be driving for hours. Occasionally we would pop out and find ourselves beside the ocean but never anywhere we’d been before. Eventually we came across the family of aborigines who were at the far end of several cases of beer. They were more than happy to take us to our beach, if we would only help them get their truck started. Thirty minutes later we were on our way and the only problem now was that they didn’t know where our beach was either. We’d simply exchanged cruising up and down the dirt roads, for crawling on and off an endless collection of identical beaches.  It was only a matter of time before we got stuck and it was then the drinks came out.

I got back to my bed eventually, although not until nearly lunchtime. I got a kiss from the adorable Kattus, but not until three days later when she and Shane were an established couple. And I got grease on the borrowed white shirt, so ultimately it cost me more than a meat pie. But I also got the chance to drink Scotch and Coke from a can at seven in the morning, with a party of Australian aborigines, while watching the sun come up over the Indian Ocean.

So, all in all, it wasn’t a bad night.

What a dive!

First Published: 16 November, 2004

The dolphins were skimming along beside us, easily keeping up with our small craft as they surfed on our wake. Three of them, four of them, I wasn’t sure as they seemed to be everywhere at once, disappearing below the surface for minutes at a time before reappearing on the other side of the bow, laughing at their game. Sailors have long considered dolphins to be an omen of good luck and sitting on the roof of the cabin, washed by sun and sea spray, I decided they were proof the next three days would be the fabulous experience I had always imagined it would be. I was, as usual, hopelessly wrong.

I had arrived in Townsville, Australia a few days before and as I had planned many months before while still in Britain, set about signing up for a scuba diving course. Taking a diving course while on the Great Barrier Reef is just something every world traveller does, like getting ripped off in Bangkok, or sick in Jakarta and I was no exception. There were various outfits all offering variations on the theme, but the essential elements were the same. You’d spent a couple of days learning theory in a classroom setting, then putting it into practice in a swimming pool. Then you would board a luxury cruiser to sail some sixty miles off the coast and complete your training on the Barrier Reef itself. It sounded awesome.

The classroom stuff was something of a chore as the weather was hot and close. However, in the afternoons we headed over to the outdoor public pool where we joined the local retirees, each one a charming shade of tobacco, and learned how to enter and exit the water, use the gear correctly and practice rescue operations. It was easy enough even for Ryan, a Canadian guy who’d signed up for the course, completed the compulsory medical and passed all the other required tests without revealing that he couldn’t swim. We were pumped, we were ready; it was time – bring on the open sea.

Bright and ugly the next morning, we met at the dock where we were not really surprised to learn that our home for the next 3 days was not the luxury cruiser portrayed on the brochures, but a tiny, rusting tub. We had barely left harbour when the sea began to pick up and my classmates who had chosen to retire below decks were already experiencing the joys of mal-de-mer. I, on the other hand, was atop the cabin roof, loving every minute. My happiness lasted right up to the time we arrived at the dive site, strapped on our gear and began our first dive in open water.

When you scuba dive, you’re equipped with a stubby snorkel so you can swim along the surface with your face submerged, viewing the ocean deep via your facemask. You expel the water from the snorkel with a short, sharp blow, which is easy enough in a swimming pool, but with waves slopping into the tube every few seconds, I was inhaling more water than I was expelling. Sea water in the lungs doesn’t assist in aerobic activity and even with flippers, swimming against this current was disturbingly difficult. With each expedition, I was becoming feeling increasingly tired, nauseous and feverish.

Below the surface, things were much pleasanter even though the visibility was only about one quarter what we should have enjoyed. Many of the psychedelic fish and brilliantly coloured coral were lost in the murk. Some of us saw a shark, others saw a turtle and we all saw a sea cucumber which is a remarkably dull looking creature, something like a gherkin. If we’d spent the whole dive course diving, I would have been a lot happier. Sadly, for the first two days, we were still in training, which meant the bulk of our time was spent on the surface. Fighting the waves, fighting the current, fighting fatigue and inhaling water. It was horrible.

There were arguments, such as when one diver “borrowed” the prescription glass mask of another without asking; reprimands, such as when two Swiss boys surfaced some two hundred yards off target during a compass navigation section and a near drowning when yours truly was swept away by the current while wrestling with his buoyancy belt buckle which had a lead weight jammed hard against it.

Each dive was more of an ordeal than the last and I’m convinced I lowered the level of the Pacific Ocean a good 2 or 3 inches due to my intake of saltwater. Finally, the training was complete, and we were free to dive on our own, without an instructor to hold our hands. Only problem was with the storm showing signs of increasing violence, none of us had any real desire to enter the water.

Eventually our captain announced that qualified divers or no, our voyage was over, and we were heading for home. Nobody was particularly sorry about that, but the bad news was, there would be no riding on the roof of the cabin this time. Due to the severity of the weather, we were all sentenced to spend the return journey below decks in our bunks. I’d been assigned a berth at the sharp end, positively the worst place to be in inclement weather.

If I had thought trying to sleep at night had been rough, it was nothing compared to the rodeo ride of the return trip. For seven hours we bounced, we bucked, we dipped, and we dived as my stomach did summersaults and my throat was rasped raw by the diesel fumes. Distinctly below par before we started, by the time we finally made port I was battered, bruised and never happier to reach terra-firma.

We’d all made plans to meet up in a local bar for a post-course celebration. I’m not sure how many of the team made it; I certainly didn’t. In fact, it was all I could do to totter home from the docks to my hostel and once there, even a simple task like lying on my bed proved to be quite demanding. It was a good week before I felt healthy again and despite the intervening years, I’ve never felt any real urge to try scuba diving again.

Still, I can at least claim I’ve dived on the Great Barrier Reef and when people exclaim “Wow! I bet that was an experience.” I can smile enigmatically and reply “Yes. Yes, it was.”