Queensland, Australia October 2001

Hi all!  Here you will find a brief photo-essay on my recent trip to Australia.  Click on the photos to see a larger version.

My trip began on October 16 as I obediently arrived at Wellington International Airport two hours before my flight, as I was assured that airline travel now required you to run a gauntlet of massive security the likes of which had not been seen before.   Security was indeed tight:  I was told quite sternly I was not allowed to carry on-board any knives, blades, sythes, automatic weapons or cell phones.   Staff also confirmed that I had packed the bags myself and not employed some demented lunatic to go through my house and randomly choose items that he might think I would require in Australia.   After the rigorous check-in and security procedure, I had only one hour and fifty-nine minutes to spare, but allowed myself the luxury of a latte, all the time keeping an eye open for the inevitible hoardes of travelers arriving two, three or four hours early trying to get through security.

The flight to Brisbane was uneventful, and the ride out of Brisbane on my Yamaha TDM850 from Action Yamaha was equally drama-free.  The area north of Brisbane, the Glass Mountains, present some interesting, twisty riding.  From there I travelled through Noosa to the  town of 1770 , a very pleasant place to spend a night.  It is on the verge of massive development, and the road leading to it is just about to be completely paved.  My "shortcut" to this road saw the first of many gasoline scares, as the town I was relying on to have gas so I could fill up was out of unleaded fuel.  This road was also amazing in that it was completely red, and made entirely of washboard.
 

About an hour from 1770, it began to rain, (the only rain of the trip).  I felt reasonably comfortable in the knowledge that my replacement Joe Rocket jacket (having been replaced by the factory after I complained about the original jacket being somewhat porous) would be water-proof.  Unfortunately, this jacket is only marginally better than the last, and I was soon soaked through.  I spent the night in a very pleasant B&B listening to the rain on the tin roof.  In the morning, some very beautiful lorikeets came by to feed in the front yard. 
The ride much north of this area is pretty dull though, (the guidebook says the best activity in this area is "treading heavily on the gas pedal") and runs inland from the coast, so it's pretty hot too.   The area is dotted with cane-sugar fields, and cane-sugar railroads which run on rails of a very tiny cane-sugar guage.  The most interesting part of the ride from the town of 1770 to McKay, though,was the great flattened Kangaroo watch. The key here is to identify the topological features of any road-side kangaroos.  Any lumpy squashed kangaroos are likely to be relatively fresh, and passing by them best co-incides with exhaling.  Any of the flatter squashed kangaroos have likely been there for a while, and not too smelly.  I was warned to be off the roads by about dusk, as this is when the 'roos make their often-unsuccessful forays across the roads.  Sorry I don't have any pictures to illustrate.

The little town of Airlie Beach is the stepping off point for the Whitsunday Islands, a gateway to the Great Barrier Reef.  This is a wonderful place for backpackers and budget travelers as well, with a plethora of cheap accomodations.  I signed up for a cruise around the islands and a five-day scuba course.

The course with Pro Dive involved two days of class time and three days on a boat on the Great Barrier Reef.  They make it pretty hard to fail, ("No, you can't actually breathe underwater even if you open your eyes, but that's okay, I didn't really explain that, did I?"), but you still have to learn quite a bit.  For example, 36-year old men who haven't exercised in six months are going to find it difficult to swim 12 lengths of a swimming pool.  In any case, the diving was great... we saw all sorts of marine creatures including reef sharks, sting rays, sea tortoises, farming fish, underwater koalas, and lots and lots of coral.  We even did a night dive which kind of scared the bejeebers out of me.

I also met up with some more lorikeets in Airlie Beach.  These ones were very friendly and would land on your arms and head in anticipation of food.  Also extremely noisy, but certainly friendlier than the killer parrot my mom used to have.

After the great time I had diving, I thought I would spend one more day diving or snorkeling on Fraser Island on my way back to Brisbane.  I knew how nasty the ride from McKay to Rockhampton was going to be, so I thought I would go inland, skirting all the boring highway traffic.  On the way, I would stop in the town of Eungella, which was supposed to be a cool mountaintop village.  Indeed, it was cool, and a very nice ride to boot.  Lots of great hairpin turns and switchbacks, but watch out for cattle grates and gravel in the corners.  I had miles to go, so I continued on through, the town of Nebo only about 100 km away, and me with a good 1/3 of a tank of gasoline.  Unfortunately, Australian maps and signage are just as bad here as anywhere else, and I spent about an hour traveling in circles looking for the correct turnoff.  Having finally found it, I began the leg to Nebo.  It was an unsettling, barren landscape, the road unpopulated except by the occasional wombat.  I began to fear for what would happen should I run out of fuel here.  I imagined a night spent alone in the desert, the sound of approaching banjo music, then the inevitible, "You got purty lips...."  I decided to turn around, go back to Eungella and get fuel.

Well, the gas station in Eungella, reasonably enough, doesn't sell gasoline anymore.  It's too exensive to cart it up the hill.  "But we have some gas in this can!" said the proprietress, holding up an evil-looking old-hotwater bottle coloured jerry can of some kind of sloshy liquid.  "Is it unleaded?" I asked naively.  "Sure it is!!" was the reply.  She forgot to mention it was un-flammable too.  Ignoring the "Unleaded Fuel Only - No Moonshine" decal on the tank, I emptied the mystery liquid into my bike.  I should have known that chunky gasoline is never good.   I swallowed hard, fired up the bike, and headed down the mountain.  Sure enough, one km later, the bike died, choking and smoking horribly.  I hitched a ride back up to the gas station.  "Uh, are you sure that gasoline was fresh?" I asked.  "We use it in our lawnmower," I was told.  

A call to the Automobile Association brought out a truck to load my bike for the 100 km trip back to the nearest town, the dreaded McKay.  The next day I get the bike back.  They had drained the tank of the old gasoline, and my wallet of $137.  Oh well, at least I was on the road again.  Or so I thought.  About ten clicks out of McKay, the bike bogs, then dies.  After a few minutes I'm able to fire it back up, but it almost dies twice more on my way back to the shop.  I get there at 11:55, and they close at noon on Saturday.  They don't seem to thrilled to see me.  The service manager takes it out for a ride, and then proclaims that he had no problem, so it was probably just the remants of the bad gas and it shouldn't happen again.  I reluctantly accept this lame explanation, and head off .  Sure enough, it dies on me again.  I find if I don't exceed 100 km/h, it will run.  Once I get over that, it dies.  Problem is, I have about four light-years to go to Rockhampton, and to other traffic, I appear to be moving backwards when travelling at 100 km/h.

After putting up with the humiliation of backpackers in $500 cars pass me for about an hour, I decide I'll take matters into my own hands.  Using nothing but the chrome-plated cheese tools that came with the bike, I strip it down by the side of the road and clean out the fuel system again.  It seems to be pretty clean, so I didn't think I did anything.  Sure enough, a few minutes later on the road, the bike dies.  After much fiddling, I narrow the problem down to a place between the tank and the fuel pump.  The only thing there is the petcock, from which gasoline flows freely when set to "on."  Usually, you leave it set to "off," and the vacuum from the running engine causes the petcock to open.   Finally, the penny drops -- I switch the petcock to "on," and my problems are solved.

I arrive in the cattle town of Rockhampton that day, and spend the night in the lovely Critereon Hotel.  Allegedly haunted, I am disappointed in not meeting the ghost, but am relieved to get an air-conditioned room.

The next day I again head inland, having given up the hope of being able to dive off Fraser Island.  The inland route is not too much better than the semi-coastal one.  There isn't much to see, and I begin to wonder if I can make it to Brisbane in one shot.  I stop off at the old mining town of Mount Morgan where there is a funky orange river, but there isn't much else.

Travelling through rural Australia on a Sunday afternoon is an interesting exercise, (in an academic way).  Most towns seemed to be completely deserted.  I felt like I had just walked onto the set of a movie in which the whole population of the city had disappeared.  I stengthened my resolve to make it to Brisbane that day.   Arriving in Brisbane at about six o'clock and after about 500 km's, I was glad to bed down at Annie's Shandon Inn, a pleasant enough place, but totally without Kewpies as described in my Lonely Planet guidebook.  Lots of gnomes though.

The next day I spent at the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary fondling all sorts of Oz wildlife.  The hilight was definitely the koalas, which were everwhere.  Sleeping in trees, trundling along the ground, soaring majestically through the air, (just checking to see if you're paying attention), they were breathtaking in their laziness.    Note in the second picture, the koala, having been without food for four seconds, is looking stage left to his handler wondering why the eucalyptus leaf supply has been cut.  Besides the koala-fondling, I got to feed a bunch of sleepy looking kangaroos.  They really surprised me in that they are extremely gentle -- kind of like a giant rabbit.  They didn't stink either.  There was a giant emu there that kept following me around and giving me the evil eye.  I was pretty sure you couldn't hand-feed an emu, and he was fixin' to disembowel me, so I quickly high-tailed it away whenever the emu came within striking distance.  I later noticed some pre-school Japanese children frolicking with it and having it eat out of their hands.  Hmph!!

The flight back to New Zealand was uneventful.  The landing, though,  was a hay-ride through hell as we were buffeted by 800km/h winds, plagues of locusts and a typhoon-like rain.  The pilot thought nothing of it, executing a perfect wing-slamming, spine-shortening, one-point landing.  I celebrated our safe arrival by having my pen spray ink all over myself and the guy next to me.  Luckily I was wearing green pants.  Too bad for him he was sporting light khakis.  I pretended it wasn't me.

All in all a great trip.  I don't really recommend you do it on a motorcycle though.  The distance between cities is too great, the temperatures too high, and even the roads not terribly interesting for the most part.  Go for the beaches and the diving and you'll have a great time.

Although this has nothing to do with Australia, here are some pics of the seals at Red Rocks, near Wellington.