Troy Archie – Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

In Adelaide now and I must say I am dam glad to get out of the desert. This is the first true city that I’ve been in since I left Perth over a month ago and I’m a bit glad to get back to civillization but I don’t know how long that feeling will last and in fact I think it’s already starting to leave and is being filled with a feeling of ill-contempt.

My last couple day’s in Alice Spring’s I went to a Desert Park with a guy from the hostel that I met, Dave. Dave is from Sydney and just finished off a 6 month wwoofing stint in Queensland near Brisbaine. I guess he is pretty big on organic foods and perma-culture living, took a course on it all and then went to go and live it for a couple months. I don’t know if I could do that for 6 months.
The Desert Park was pretty interesting; it had a lot of the natural vegetation and flaura in the region and how the natives managed to live off of it. I got to say that the natives in this country were a pretty resilient group of people to manage to meek out a life in this harsh climate; I’d be dead in a hour if you left me out in the desert to fend for myself. Unfortunately though I think most of that life is gone for the natives here too.
The heat in Alice Springs was pretty steady teh rest of my stay in town and I pretty much just chilled out by the pool the rest of the time I was in Alice. I’m sure that I jumped into the pool at that hostel more times than my entire previous 2 months in this country.

A big ass bird of prey that was hanging around the park. The picture doesn’t give it any justice but it is a big bird. There was suppose to be a feeding but the birds were being very unruly so they had to cancel it. When Dave and I first walked to where the feeding was suppose to be, we saw one of them swooping at some lady. That was cool.

The bird of prey was big but it wasn’t this big. I’ve got to find a super market where they sell emu…

Lazy days. He almost looks drunk in this picture…

Until Broome it had not rained once my entire time here then it was just down pour there. I flew to Alice thinking that I’m out of the wet yet it rained more in Alice Springs than anywhere else I had been save Broome. Now I’m not talking a major down pour or anything, in fact it was just a sprinkle but it was rain sure enough.

To get to Adelaide from Alice Springs I took a tour bus that would normally go from Adelaide to Alice Spring’s taking about 5-8 days, stopping along the way at all the interesting spots. Instead of heading back to Adelaide empty, they pretty much charge people a small fee to head back south, stopping over at a town called Coober Pedy, the Opal capital of the world and where a number of the residents make there homes underground.

If you’re travelling Australia, learn German

The bus took off pretty early in the morning and was filled with 6 travellers and the driver. I wouldn’t really call this thing a bus but more of a van with 2 benches in the back for people to sit on. There was pretty much no A/C in the back and where I sat the sun always seemed to be on me. The people in the van were all young travellers, 2 German girls, a Swiss-Germans couple, a French-Canadian girl and myself. The french Canadian girl got to sit up front (lucky her) so I didn’t get to talk to her too much while on the road. I didn’t manage to find out who she would have voted for if she was back home but she was pretty nice. I was thrown into the back with all the Germans. At first it was all good, everyone was talking, exchanging stories and having a good time. As time wore on though the inevitable happened; everyone started to speak German. I guess it was my own fault since I somehow managed to fall asleep amongst the uncomfortable, twisted mess of people in the back of the van and when I awoke, I was in Germany. There are a lot of Germans in this country as I guess just a couple years ago they aloud them the working-holiday visa so they’re just flooding in when they finish off high school. Lot’s of Swiss too but most of them are here for vacation or school in the instance of Corin and Simona.

We drove from about 7:00am to I think around 5:00pm the first day with stops at the roadhouses along the way. There only 5 towns in the entire Northern Territory of Australia and the rest is just little shit hole roadhouses in the middle of nowhere charging an arm and a leg for anything and everything. I don’t understand how or why other travellers spend money like they do, $7.00 for spaghetti and toast is just simple not a good deal. Either is a $4.00 bag of chips but sure enough, everytime the can stopped, they got out and bought some sort of over-priced junk food. The only thing that I find is good about the roadhouses is free peanut butter they have in little packages for breakfast. Unfortunately I think I’m out of roadhouse territory now.

We spent one night in Coober Pedy, which is also the opal capital of the world. Now, there’s no major company that does the mining, it’s just local people and from what I can gather, most have a regular job and then dig in their spare time or support someone else to dig for them. I asked if anyone strikes it big and then takes off for a nice beach or an early retirement but it doesn’t sound like it as most of the people do it for the thrill.

As I had mentioned before, some peoples houses or at least part of their houses were underground or built into the sides of hills and that included the hostel we stayed in. The underground dwellings were old mines that they stopped mining and started living in as above ground it’s just barren rock as far as the eye can see and often gets over 50 degrees. In a lot of places all the sand and rock they dug up from mines they just dump out in the middle of nowhere and there’s plenty of nowhere out there. Underground though it’s a nice cool constant temperature of around 24 degress.

The pictures I took of inside the hostel didn’t turn out so here’s the outside.

This looks as if it might have been someones house at one time. I figure from the amount of spider, bugs and snakes I’ve seen in this country there’s only going to be more in there.

Part Coober Pedy’s residential zone.

More desolation

We stayed at a hostel that was underground the night we were there. It was pretty cool but nothing too exciting. We had to get up at like 5 to be on the road by 6 so I didn’t get too much time to soak it all in. So back on the bus we go for a nice 10 hour drive of hell and misery before we get to Adelaide. For pretty much the whole day it was German that I had to listen to so it was a very long drive. The night before we went out to a bar and they were playing the remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on the TV there. In the movie there’s a German kid that wins one of the golden tickets that’s a very stereotypical german; fat and pudgy, love chocolate and in the background his dad was making sausages. All the Germans were so adament that it was not true and such a cheesy stereotype, the German guy was especially adament about it yet he fitted the stereotype to a “T”. He was always munching away on chocolate, was rather plump and was overall very jolly.

So far on my journys of Western and Centrel Australia, I’ve gone to and seen some great and interesting but as I leave that place I always have the thought in the back of my mind of, “Who in there right mind would want to live there?” There are so many isolated little towns and roadhouses in some of the most inhospitable places that I can’t help but question what the hell people are doing out here. Case in point; Port Geraldton. I don’t think I wrote about Port Geraldton before because all we did was drive through it on the way to Broome but that drive through was enough for me to see to just keep moving. The town is hardcore industry with a major railway and sea port for it’s huge steal and salt industry. Because it has such a huge steal industry, everything in the town is red from the dirt and then baked in the sun from it. The town is located in the Pilbara region of Australia and it’s notoriously hot there. Marble Bar, which is just north of Hedland has a record of 161 days above 37.8 celcious. It was a bizzare town, I was glad to leave and I can’t help but think that the people living there are just a little tiny bit crazy. Coober Pedy was another town like that. I left there thinking “Why?” Alice Springs is another one of those towns too. It;s in the middle of the scorching desert and the only thing they’ve got going is a big ass rock near by. So far from what I’ve seen of Western Australia and the Northern Territory there’s a lot of these places and you have to be just a little teeny-tiny bit insane to want to live there.

This is what passes for as a lake in Australia; salt flats. I guess it fills up with water sometimes.

More Coober Pedy Pics

When we finally got to Adelaide I was hot, miserable, didn’t like Germans and very itchy; I guess I got a nice batch of bed bugs from my stay in Coober Pedy. I was unsure where to stay, was tromping around town looking for a decent place and just about checked into a real hotel with my own room where I could unwind but I resisted. Instead i checked into the local YHA which was the 5-star resort, creme de la creme of hostels. It was easily the nices hostel I have ever stayed in; great kitchen, cinema room, good internet computers, nice rooms, 2 TV rooms, a good quiet room and just an overall beautiful place. Unfortunately it was $25 a night with is a bit out of my range. I was just going to stay for one night but ended up staying for 3 on account of being very itchy from bed bug bites. I’ve changed hostels now to a different place just down the street that’s $21 a night but I don’t know if it was too good an idea yet.

The 5-star YHA Resort.

This time I know they were bed bugs because they are up my legs and arms in lines and itch like crazy making a bit tough to sleep. I was starting to really upset and over this; I keep getting biten and it seems very reoccuring and it makes things very frustrating and not a lot of fun. To top it off I feel rather ashamed; I’m a clean guy, I shower each day, twice right now with all these bites and I hand-wash all my clothes just about everyday in hot water. I’m told it’s not my fault but bad upkeep by hostel managers but that doesn’t give much solace when it looks like you have leprosy. I do think that this time around it was my own fault because when I got to Coober Pedy I was pretty tired and didn’t want to go digging for my sleep sheet so I just laid down right on the matress, that had no covers or anything and fell asleep. Bad move. I’m hoping that now that I’m back to civillization, things will be better. A guy in my room reccomended using Tea Tree oil on the bites and I’ve found that to make a huge difference. Stuff is expensive though a $5 a small bottle and I’ve been dousing it on like crazy but I can feel it working.

Woe is me.

Leprosy

All in all I feel that traveling thus far is tough work. I always seem to have a cut or two on me and being eaten alive by something feels like it’s the norm. At times I feel rather beat up and I think to myself that if I can barely mange this country what will happen when I get up to Asia? At this rate I’ll be dead in a week up there.

So here I am telling people in one entry to go to hostels, stay there, meet people, do it for the fraction of the cost and then a couple posts later I post all these horror stories of being eaten alive and getting cut, beaten and bruised.

Anyway’s I’m finally out of the outback and into a decent sized city. Adelaide is a pretty nice city and is a lot more temperate compared to the harsh desert, no bugs and no dust. So far on my travels I’ve yet to find a place that I could see myself living in but Adelaide is probably the first, that said, my view is probably slightly skewed comparing to where I was the last couple months but I think that again is changing and I’m already starting to miss the laid back small places like Coral Bay and Broome. Meanwhile a German guy that I met says that he thinks Adelaide is rather bland and doesn’t like it that much, he of course is coming from the opposite way that I am and was just in Melbourne and Sydney.

There’s a strong Asian presence here and it’s a pretty multi-cultural town, which is a nice change of pace. There is an amazing fresh food market here with super cheap fruits, veggies and cool little Asian markets. I went a little crazy there and now I’m walking around with way too much food with me but whatever, I’ll eat it. I seem to be a sucker for these places and just the Asian atmosphere, I can just walk around in these markets for hours on end not necessarily buying anything but just soaking in the atmosphere.

The market

I’m told there’s a really nice museum, botanical gardens and beach close by and they’re all free. The internet at the library is free too and I found a free chocolate factory tour in town too at some famous chocolate producers. Yep free is good plus with cheap food from the market, I can’t go wrong. Free is also good because it looks like I’m going to be kicking around in town until the 20th of this month, waiting to get onto a local place for a wwoofing stay. The place is a bed and breakfast called Maslin House and looks pretty posh. If things go well I might end up staying there for up to a month. Until then I have to find things to occupy my time and free things are the way to go.

There’s lot’s of Canadian and Americans here in the hostels. I’ve met like 4 Canadians and 2 Americans on the west coast but so far here I’m hearing a lot of people without accents, in fact one of the guys in my room was from Spruce Grove and a couple days later his brother came to town. I seem to be getting back onto the tourist trail and from here I hear it’s a lot of big city lights and which is where I think my ill-contempt lies:

Everything is so commercial

I think it was always there but I just didn’t notice it that much at first but everyone and their dog wants to sell you some package tour where they load you up on a bus drive you to something out in the middle of nowhere, you get out, take some pictures, jump back on the bus and go off to the next thing, which in this country more often then not, seems to be a rock. You then stop someplace for lunch, jump back on the bus and repeat. For me there’s just no appeal in any of that. They take a simple thing like going to see the sun setting and find a way to sell it, for instance doing it on camel back or by quad-bike. Add in the word “Adventure” and suddenly it’s marketable.

A Low?

I don’t know, I’m feeling like I’m getting a bit bitter and since I’ve gotten back to Adelaide I’ve questioned, “What am I doing here?” Everything is the same as back home. I don’t think I’m homesick but just…I dunno. Perhaps it’s a whole mix of things like the bed bugs and a new city and area.

The thing that I’m liking the most so far is just meeting other people but it’s hard to break out of that travellers bubble and get in with the real people. I much more prefer to meet people that actually live here and are part of the culture, which can be a very hard thing to do. My only exposure to “Real Australians” seems to be through wwoofing thus far. To top it off, from what I’m told it’s only going to get worse the more I go up the east coast as it gets more and more commercial. The one guy from Spruce Grove I met was saying that if he was in my shoes he would just get a regular job at like Subway or something and just live here for a while. I didn’t come halfway around the world to make sandwhiches, I came here to try new things and experience life. I guess it’s hard at times to keep in sight the many new things that I have done thus far and the many new things that I will do. At times I think that perhaps I should stop being so damn cheap and go on one of these big tour packages but then again not too many of them really interest me and most of them just seem fake.

Regardless, I have a wwoofing stay starting up here in a weeks time so hopefully I don’t get too borred kicking around town. It should be interesting to get back onto a farm and such and I guess I’ll see how I’ll feel when I’m out there.

Well, that’s about enough gripping for one post. Here’s some pics from Adelaide that I’ve taken thus far and I’ve updated a few more from my last couple days in Alice Springs

Safe Travels

Troy

Tags: Australia

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