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| AUSTRALIA 1999 |
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| My first visit to Oz in 1992 led to the decision to live down under, and although I ended up living in New Zealand for the next six years I visited Australia many times during that period. The "real" travel here began when I quit the corporate life in August 1998 and joined two friends in a 1974 VW Kombi and entered the world of nomadic van life which has a special flavour here. It is also the choice of many first-time young travellers and so the east coast backpacker scene between Sydney and Cairns often feels like one long repetiton of mob drunkenness, toad races, and package tours. I have to admit I enjoyed this a bit the first time through, but now I avoid it and prefer the quieter places. In the van, which we Christened "Henry", we went up the coast to all the usual spots - Byron Bay, Fraser Island, Airlie Beach, and Cairns. However, we had to sell this van when we got to Cairns, and I bought a more reliable 1993 Mitsubishi L300. I spent a few weeks fitting it with a timber frame bed, curtains, and plenty of storage space - "Vincent" (Van Go, haha sorry bad joke) hasn't let me down sine then. I returned back down the coast, under the threat of impending cyclone season which starts in the tropics around Decemeber. People start to go "troppo" at this time, and I understood the feeling when waking up at 7AM in the van and already it's 30C with 99% humidity - sort of makes one tempermental, and did I mention the flies up your nose?. So I went back south along the east coast and ended up in Melbourne. There I went along the beautiful Great Ocean Road and via Adelaide out across the Nullarbor Plains, which is the largest and most unpopulated stretch of arrow-straight road you'll find anywhere. I had Christmas and New Years in Perth with some other friends and hung out in the area for a while. I wanted to go back to Melbourne because I liked it the most of the big cities, and I planned to store the van there, so I returned across the Nullarbor again - 3000km - and hung up the van there in February. I was in SE Asia and Europe for the following year, and came back to Australia for three more months in March-June 2000 and went back up the coast to Cairns and into the outback and Kakadu and did a side-trip to Bali (because it was there). The photographs below are some of my favourite scenes and moments from the two periods during 1998-2000, in no particular order. I'm going back in November 2001 for part-3! |
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| A roadside stop with the van under large skies in west Victoria and the Grampian ranges in the background. |
| Posing with large object telling us we are in the middle of bloody nowhere - actually near the town of Camooweal on our way to the "Three Ways" and Tenant Creek via the extremely barren Barkley Tablelands (It was actually on fire when we got there). |
| Byron Bay * |
| Fraser Island * |
| Airlie Beach * |
| Kakadu * |
| ^ Bali |
| --- Nullarbor Plains --- |
| Great Ocean Road * |
| * Cairns |
| * Sydney |
| * Melbourne |
| * Adelaide |
| Perth * |
| Darwin* |
| Tenant Creek* |
| This section of the Nullarbor is on the west end, where they actually do have trees, but most of it lives up to its latin-based name and consists of short scrub and red earth. A car went by here and it was a good five minutes before it diasappeared. |
| The Pinnacle Desert is a couple hours north from Perth. The van is out there somewhere when you look closely. |
| Some of the excellent cave drawings at Ubirr in Kakadu National Park. They are dated as being 20-30 thousand years old. It makes Stonehenge seem like a recent development. |
| Bush fire along the lonely stretch of highway in the Barkley Tablelands, from the NT border to the Three Ways. |
| Desert flowers along the Stuart Highway south of Darwin. The dominant flower seemed to change every day as we moved around and by the end we had a pretty nice variety deocating the van interior. |
| Three Ways * |
| It's not all dry and barren out there. At Kakadu we got a great relief from Gunlom Falls, which is down a long dirt road with just enough river crossings to make you feel you've accomplished something by getting there. Gorgeous place! |
| Sample of the giant termite mounds which are everywhere along the Stuart Highway running up to Darwin. |
| Standing on the cliffs overlooking Gunlom Falls and the sprawl of bush at Kakadu. |
| Spare fuel on the roof mate! Gotta have it. |
| Free camping on the Yalata Aboriginal Reserve in eastern South Australia, another days drive and we'll see an actual town! |
| Curious friend at Hervey Bay. Skippy! |
| Cooperative Koala at Hervey Bay. The offspring live in their mothers pouch during infancy, where they eat her poos which spawns the special bactertia in their stomache required for digesting eucalyptus leaves - their only food for life. Disgusting & fascinating fact for you! |
| A cockatoo at Bundeena, in the Royal National Park which lies south of Sydney's furthest suburbs. Fact: It is the 2nd oldest National Park in the world. |
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| The 1974 Kombi known as "Henry" set up for camping at Sunrise Beach near Noosa on the Sunshine Coast north of Brisbane. It was the first day of a new life. Excellent! |
| Sunset at the town of Seventeen Seventy, named for being the second spot Captain Cook landed in... I forget which year, anyway. But it is a magic spot where you'll find a quiet fishing village, a river mouth full of aquatic life, the northernmost surf beach on the coast and access to Lady Musgrave Island - the southernmost point of the Great Barrier Reef. I won't tell you where it is though because you'd go there and that would spoil everything! |
| Cruising upstream at Seventeen Seventy. There are freshwater dolphins here, not to mention many stingrays and very painful and toxic stonefish so wear hard-soled shoes on the mud flats or else... |
| Getting into the Christmas spirit at Royal National Park |
| Rainbow over the lighthouse at Byron Bay at Australia's most easterly point. Byron is a cool place - sometimes too cool with it's masses of pseudo-hippie backpackers, but it does have great surf and dolphin watching, and a magic feeling at moments like this. |
| Endless ocean views and the aftermath of last nights party on Bait Reef outside the Whitsunday Islands from Airlie Beach. |
| Elvis is alive and well, doing a dive at Byron Bay on the Julian Rocks |
| A decent job of photographing my dive buddy on the fringe reefs near Lizard Island, north of the Cairns coast. |
| Abundant life at Steve's Bomie, one of the many pinacles inside the fringe reefs leading out to the Coral Sea. Perhaps the best diving I have seen so far? |
| Gorgeous waters of the Whitsunday Islands at Abel Point Marina in Airlie Beach. It's like a second home to me and is a very attractive location, with beautiful islands, great diving, loads of animal life, and a couple of good pubs. ;-) |
| Camping costs $5 but happy attacks are free on Dunk Island off the Mission Beach area south of Cairns. It is another one of those magic places in Australia with many adjoining natural systems and stunning beauty. |
| Somewhat exhausted after a practice rescue dive at Elizabeth Reef, Whitsunday group. |
| My own room in Airlie Beach in a communal house shared with a dozen other travellers and transcients. |
| On the hilltop overlooking Abel Point Marina in Airlie Beach. I'll be back! |
| Surprise rainbow after a tropical storm at Airlie Beach |
| Flight over the Tanami Desert in the outback, en route from Brisbane to Bangkok and a total change of scene until next time... |
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| We sold the van after 3 months when she was getting too costly to maintain, but I still saw her again several times in the following months and even passed her a year later on the Stuart highway. Sail on, Henry! |
| The world's most blue ocean at Cape Le Grande National Park near Esperance. The park is on my top 10 list for places you must see in Australia, and being far away from tourism keeps it that way - so don't go there! |
| The Nullarbor cliffs, which drop some 100-200 metres vertically into the sea, and where whales are easily spotted in the right season. You can walk right to the edge and get that special "oh shit" feeling. |
| Video frame taken of our drive toward a bushfire in the middle of nowhere. It looked ominous from this distance, but when we actually got in there it wasn't so scarey. |
| Sailing on a super cool Ferrari-style boat through the Whitsunday Islands, with some of the bluest water I have ever seen. |
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