Wanderlust Heaven!

Iain and I left Adelaide bound for the Flinders Mountain Range and the Outback. He hadn’t been up there in many years, and I was looking forward to getting out of the city – although Adelaide isn’t the most stressful place I’ve known. Perhaps I was really hoping to get far away from the construction site – I had already demonstrated remarkably limited building capabilities and wanted another area in which to show my incompetence.

Iain made all the arrangements from Adelaide. We first drove up to a remote station called Arkaroola. For most of the drive up I tormented Iain with my attempts to pronounce words like this – Arkaroola, Anamooka (a major opal-mining site), Coober Pedy (probably the #1 opal-mining site), Parachilna, etc. I like the fact that Aboriginal names have been preserved in many cases – they have a deep, rich sound that somehow also comes off as playful. They’re also quite distinct, as you might expect, from the Indian names that have lived on in the US – such as my home state of Massachusetts. All of these are a hell of a lot more interesting than the typical British names – Yorke, Wales, etc. Although I am drawn to the sound of Cape Tribulation…and to the Nullarbor (“no trees” in Latin) Plain.

After a pleasant’s day drive we reached Arkaroola after sunset. Arkaroola was founded in the late 60s by Reg and Griselda Sprigg, and is now run by their kids. It’s a basic place with a decent-sized common hall/restaurant/bar and reception, and there are various campsites and rooms for hire. It’s really in the middle of nowhere, right amidst the Northern Flinders mountains. We hit the sack a bit early as we had an 8 a.m. tour for the next morning. This was the Ridgetop 4WD Tour, in which you sit in the back of an open-air uber-jeep while an extremely knowledgeable young ranger carts you up and down various ridges and lookouts. It’s a very cool 4-5 hour adventure and you cover some serious, challenging ground. This area is interesting, because in addition to the spectacular views, it’s one of the world’s biggest uranium sites. Mining started in 1911, and while that mostly petered out you can still pick up rocks and see trace amounts of the stuff today. Apparently there are other sites in South Australia – which has so much of the stuff that it’s like a ‘Saudi Arabia for uranium’ – where it’s easier to extract and transport the mineral to processing plants. Our guide Ryan told us that back in the early days, the miners strapped the rocks onto camels’ backs, but by the time the camels got onto flat ground there had been so much grinding of the rocks that most of the uranium chipped off and fell through cracks in the packs down to the ground. Bummer. Anyway, this led to an interesting discussion about preventing North Korean and Iranian agents from accessing the Arkaroola mines. We didn’t come to any conclusion about how to do that…

Later that day we went up in a small prop plane with Doug Sprigg, who owns Arkaroola and who’s one of the more switched-on people I’ve ever met. I don’t think he stopped talking the entire time we were with him…and he was interesting the whole way though. He knew the name of every single type of vegetation around the Flinders, knew the history of the rock formations (some of which were 1.7 billion years old), and was as friendly as could be. We flew over the Northern Flinders, radioed some mates down on the ridges (the afternoon version of the Ridgeway Tour was underway), and Doug let me take the controls for a few minutes. I fought off a few North Korean drones and then handed the controls back to Doug. All in all, a fun experience and well worth the cost.

Iain and I then drove down to the town of Parachilna, which has 6 full-time residents – basically, those who work at the Prairie Hotel, a wonderful little establishment. We stopped at another nice place, the Blinman Hotel, for a beer en route. The sun was going down as we left Blinman for the final short stretch of driving. When we were nearly at Parachilna an approaching car flashed its brights, so we stopped…and then noticed it was a cop car. Iain thought we might have broken the speed limit; I was generally nervous given the annoying power of the police to ruin our lives. The cop was just doing random breath-checks and breathalyzed Iain, who had had only 1 small glass of beer in Blinman and passed with flying colors. We proceeded on our way, but I was left with the lesson that the Aussie police aren’t fooling around, and that if you have more than a couple small drinks you’d better not get behind the wheel.

We checked into the Prairie Hotel in Parachilna – which had no record of our booking, and so we couldn’t get a regular (plush) hotel room, and instead had to stay in the “Overflow” accommodations, which were prefab cheapo rooms which turned out to be perfectly fine (and cheapo). There was to be live music that night, so we went over to the pub – which is the only game in Parachilna. To make a long story short, we ran into an old friend of Iain’s, who was there with her boyfriend, and we had many drinks and dinner together. The Prairie Hotel specializes in wild outback cuisine – the F.M.G. (Feral Mixed Grill) is the top draw. The F.M.G. included kangaroo (roo) shanks, camel sausage, and emu patties. All of it was unusual and strangely delicious. And the wine list was top-notch, too. I was amazed at the quality of food and drink right there in the middle of the great blue yonder. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, Australia has become quite the gourmet place and while you can find the old-style fish & chips, you can do a lot better almost everywhere these days.

The band started up around 9 p.m., and besides the 6 local residents of Parachilna there were probably another 40-50 visitors. The band was a 2-man set with the usual electronic gizmos backing it up – worked pretty well. Everyone was completely pissed (i.e., drunk) and the dancing became increasingly uninhibited and joyous as the night rolled on. As the working staff came off their shifts, they joined in the fun – a fine display of mateship and camaraderie. The band played till midnight, Iain and I and his friends bought each other a slew of drinks, and we enjoyed ourselves there in that oasis of life and friendship.

The next morning was a bit challenging, but we managed to get up (Iain before I) and wolf down some brekky before setting off. We headed south, as Iain needed to get home that night and I had to catch a bus to Alice Springs. But we had the better part of the day, and made the most of it. We spent the late morning driving through Brachina Gorge, which is a virtual museum of geological sights – many hundreds of millions of years old. We then went over to Wilpena Pound, which is a massive (100 km in circumference) rock basis which may have been formed by a meteor. Supposedly some of the basin walls were as high as Mt. Everest before being ground down by the forces of nature. We took another flight, over the Pound, and saw just how impressive it is. Inside the pound there’s a sort of parkland, which is partially denuded. About 100 years ago a family tried to grow wheat in the Pound but was unsuccessful…the only real outcome being destruction of the fragile soil system. The outback is a highly precarious ecosystem and man has done a real job on it. Near the Northern Territory boundary is the ‘Dog Fence,’ which stretches 5,300 km and is the world’s longest fence – three times longer than the Great Wall of China. There’s also the semi-famous ‘Rabbit-Proof Fence’ (of move fame) up north which is something like 2,500 km. Man introduced rabbits, goats, camels, etc. to Oz and naturally, some escaped, multiplied, and became feral. While there are limited benefits – a la the Feral Mixed Grill – the destruction wrought is immense and the solutions aren’t easy.

We then drove south to the charmless burg of Port Augusta, where I awaited my overnight bus to Alice Springs. I’ll cover that in my next blog, as my laptop and I both need a rest.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 14th, 2006 at 3:18 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.