Month: December 2016

We left Adelaide on this fabulous wonder of steel: the Indian Pacific, which crosses the whole continent from Sydney to Perth.

It is a legendary luxury train with five star food and accommodation. We were, however, traveling in the cheap carriage, together with other plebeians, clapping our hands rather than rattling our jewellery so to speak.

We enjoyed this beautiful desolate view for three days, bringing our minds back to the Kazakh and Mongolian steppes. During sunset it had the most amazing sanguineous tint (#no filter). Remote and perpetual sceneries like this makes me analytical and philosophical in an objective way, and I feel that I see things so clearly.

They had a diner like buffet for us plebs. The food might not have been five star, but the service was very warm and friendly, making up tenfold for its quality.

We had been looking forward to a pit stop in a tiny town called Cook, with a population of four people, way out in the middle of nowhere. When we got there, we were not allowed to get off the train, since a supposedly armed lunatic was running amok. We waited in the train for a couple of hours until the police arrived. I have no idea how they got there so quickly, the nearest town is about 10 hours away.

The crook in Cook was not one of its four inhabitants, and was taken away by the police. Cook was built nearly a century ago to serve the train line, which later closed down when the railway was privatised.

It is now a ghost town, and you can hear the wind whistle just like in an old Clint Eastwood movie and see tumble weed rolling by (OK we didn’t see tumbleweed, but there could and should have been some).

The school was abandoned twenty years ago. That is a dingo painted on the building and I actually saw a real dingo run along the plain, which was the true icing on the cake!

The Nullarbor plain (no tree plain) stretches 200,000 square km and is an outback experience that is on the bucket list of many Australians. We were thrilled since we had not visited the true outback during this trip, but at least we got to parade around in it an hour or so.

Next time we visit Australia we will definitely visit the interior, we also want to see rock paintings.

Sadly we could not stay in this place, and got on to our lovely train and travelled..

…into Western Australia. Perth was the final destination but we quickly travelled further to…

…Freemantle, a short ride away on the coastline. We stayed for a few days and were then about to do something that we have never done before.

We took the ferry back to Melbourne and then turned the point of the compass to the west. We travelled on the Overland, this time with the Pet Shop Boys “Go west” soundtrack in my head. Internet just told me that it is a cover, Village People did the original version. Pet Shop Boys was the first concert I ever went to, I was 11 years old and went with my mother. I had the best mother one could ever wish for.

We arrived in Adelaide, which has a gold rush wild west feel to it (many places in Australia do). We only stayed briefly and then headed to the wine regions in the Barossa valley.

We visited large and famous vineyards, such as Jacob’s creek. Cabernet Sauvignon is one of our favourite grapes.

We also visited smaller vineyards. I find these rusty colours so beautiful.

The colour combination of this flowering eucalyptus is equally magnificent.

Pretty, sloping tin roofs are a common sight. There was so much tin everywhere. I don’t know if this is specific for Southern Australia or if we just started paying attention to it. According to our beloved internet it is not a big tin mining region (Tasmania and Western Australia are).

I have seen many beautiful art nouveau/deco zinc bars (mainly in France), this beautiful tin bar feels like the working men’s club version.

Painted tin fence.

We found an abandoned railway station and followed the tracks out to the countryside with a backpack full of wine.

We could not believe our luck when, in the middle of nowhere, we found a car graveyard full of beautiful old wrecks!!!

It had the most wonderful eerie, sepulchral ( I am so pleased that I finally got to use that lovely word) atmosphere.

We had a wine picknick among the dead cars, having long wine tinted quasi deep philosophical conversations. And then we remember no more.

It is not possible to continue further south by train so we traveled to Tasmania by ferry. I don’t know if it is customary to wear a minimum amount of clothing while crossing the Bass’ strait, but we had no problem meeting the requirements.

We went to Tasmania to visit my wonderful aunt Maggan!! She has lived in Australia for over 40 years, and hitchhiked pretty much all the way from Sweden. Traveling by land all that distance, sounds familiar? She took the route through India and had to fly over Burma, but took the boat from Singapore to Australia. She has been a major inspiration to me all my life and means a lot to me.

She is a crazy bird lady, her home is like an aviary. She constantly travels the world with other ornithologists, this year Ethiopia was up. When I was little she was a cow-girl working on a ranch in Queensland, looking after hundreds of cows and breeding horses. At 39 years of age she went to vet school (giving hope to people who think they are too old for a carrier change?), she is now semi-retired and sees a few cases per week. It was so much fun seeing cases together, fulfilling a childhood dream of mine!

Maggan spends most of her time gardening and planting trees, and is a true conservationist. She can also make beautiful saddles and leatherwork, is a taxidermist (for which she used to be hired by museums), makes her own furniture and is a fantastic painter/illustrator. She also loves to dance and is always the last one to leave a party.

She always brings her binoculars and knows everything about flora and fauna.

We had the pleasure of getting to know Terry, who is Maggan’s best friend. He has been a wool-classer and a seaman in the past, and is such a lovely, friendly, generous and helpful person. When we were leaving he drove us all the way up to the ferry, which is several hours away.

We visited former clients of my aunt that had a sheep-cheese farm! Tasmania has changed so much since I last visited, it has become very trendy and a bit of a foodie heaven. People on the mainland seemed impressed when we said we were going for some reason, 14 years ago the majority laughed and said that “Tassie’s” inhabitants were stupid and generally two-headed. No hydras in sight though.

There are wallabies everywhere in Tasmania.

I found some wallaby skulls in my aunt’s garden and here I am seriously trying to figure out how to sneak them through customs. Unfortunately, I chickened out. What a shame on such splendid skulls!

And they have penguins! Little penguins, literally and by name. They are sometimes referred to as fairy penguins, which sounds very Disney. There is actually a very cute true story about a dog called Oddball that saved a colony of penguins from a pack of foxes. The story has even turned into a saccharine movie, you can check out the trailer here.

One of my favourite things about Tasmania is that they have tree ferns pretty much everywhere. I absolutely love tree ferns, they are one of my favourite plants. I can fully relate to the pteridomania (or fern fever) of Victorian times.

I love how pre-historic their unfurling fronds look. They are sometimes called monkey paws, croziers or fiddleheads, which makes them even cuter. They certainly are pre-historic, most ferns go back to the Cretaceous period, some even to the Devonian period. I have had a fascination with them for as long as I can remember, probably because I had a dinosaur book, illustrated by Zdenêc Burian, that was filled with tree ferns.

We stayed with my aunt for nearly two weeks, and then went back to Melbourne by ferry, going slightly north for the first time in several months.

A couple of years ago we saw a beautiful moon-themed exhibition in London, which was accompanied by the Moonlight Sonata. Ever since, I have had a cerebral soundtrack (only the first melancholic part) when looking at the moon.

Beethoven and this magical moon accompanied and perfected our night train experience, and we woke up the next morning in…

…Melbourne. Where there are lots and lots of filigree ornamented buildings, I love the rusty faded beauty of these especially, with the surf board providing the icing on the cake.

They resemble exquisite patisseries, and Moorish architecture, which paradoxically made us think of Europe. This made us homesick for the first time in five months. Melbourne has a very European feel to it, the fabulous restaurants reminded me of London.

As did the bookshops…

…and the well curated museums.

There was also a slice of Russia…

…and the former Soviet Union, which always makes me nostalgic. I’m not sure why, since I certainly don’t romanticise communism, but there is something bittersweet about bygone eras. I do, however, romanticise Europe immensely, no matter how much I love the rest of the world I could never live anywhere outside Europe permanently.

Back to Australia, which this rain soaked koala perfectly symbolises. Feeling very sorry for him/herself, patiently waiting for better times, maybe dreaming of the bygone era of pre-deforestation? We saw him/her (you need to see the chest in order to tell the sex) in the wild on a day-trip to the dramatic coastline.

It was raining all day, which was a slight nuisance, but we loved how it intensified and dimmed the colours at the same time.

The weather created a dramatic atmosphere, as did this calligraphic witch hand.

I love this colour palette of green, blue, white and sand. It is similar to the sandstone cliffs in Algarve, Portugal. And so, I’ve drifted away back to Europe again. We will, however, continue south before turning back to the west.

The purpose of this blog was to keep our friends and family updated on our whereabouts. Halfway through, I unexplainably (to me) stopped making the effort. I hate unfinished business and will now continue, and pretend nothing happened.

Fortunately we could continue by our favourite mode of transport, traveling further south, to Sydney in New South Wales.

By European standards, the buildings in Australia could almost be referred to as contemporary. This obviously does not go for its native culture and art, with rock paintings potentially dating  50 000 years according to current research. This beautiful art deco building might not be that old, not even a centenarian (Kirk Douglas is!), but is nevertheless impressive.

The art deco splendour is mixed with older terraced houses with filigree ornaments on breezy, leafy streets, giving it a flirty southern belle atmosphere.

Other buildings might draw one’s mind to the wild west or gold rush era.

The most famous building of them all is undoubtedly the iconic opera house. The last time I was in Sydney, I did not get its glory, but this time I appreciated the 60’s sci-fi connotations. Unfortunately, there were no tickets that we could afford, but next time we come to Sydney I hope our budget is less stringent. Admiring natural wonders is fortunately free, so we left for the Blue Mountains for a few days.

They surely do look blue, whether it simply is because of the Rayleigh scattering effect or if the vapoured Eucalyptus oil contributes to its haze – some say it does – but I am not sure how evidence-based that is.

What I do, however, know is that the mountains are filled with beautiful silver hued eucalyptus trees. Something that I strongly associate with my childhood in Uruguay, where it isn’t a native species, but was introduced roughly a century ago.

And and abundance of curiously cocky cockatoos!

I am certainly not cocky when hiking in Australia. I make fun of Joen and his snake phobia, but in New South Wales they have the deadly funnel-web spider, that can bite through boots!!! A spider that can chew through boots!!! I carried a stick for protection and was always ready for an attack. Oh, the twisted mind of an arachnophobic!

Needless to say, Joen was none to happy about the prospects of encountering a brown snake. He actually saw a coastal taipan on the gold coast, one of the deadliest snakes in the world, and John nearly stepped on it!

There is a Darwin walk in the blue mountains, in an area that he explored during the famous Beagle expedition. It felt grand to walk in the footsteps of my hero, and we took special care to examine the nature in detail.