Australia 2010: The Great Ocean Road
Back in Melbourne, the arrangements weren't quick. At the airport, we picked up our stuff and went straight to Hertz, the car-rental. We had exactly 48 hours to drive through the Great Ocean Road and return back to the airport, to grab our flight back to Europe. That afternoon, with an automatic-gearbox Toyota Corolla, our final adventure began to be written..
Our target was to reach Torquay (the town where the Great Ocean Road officially starts) by sundown. We just drove on the freeway without much to see on the sides, until we reached this town. It was cold and gloomy, but we took the car to the front-line of the town to see the beach at sunset. The dusk was amazing, and the water of the ocean blended nicely with the sky.
After visiting the beach, we went around with the car and tried to find our hostel. Marc told me there should be a tiny place that was supposed to be cheap and cozy, and we found it! It was, actually, a normal house, with its owner living there and charging ridiculously low amounts of money to people wanting to stay there. The place was nice. The woman treated you like a baby, we paid like 15€ to stay one night, and that included dinner cooked by her.
This place was small but famous. Many backpackers and amateur surfers used to stay at that place. After dinner, there were only English guests, and Marc was already in bed, so I felt a little shifted. After having the standard minimalist conversation with everyone, I decided to go back to our room and tidy up my stuff for the rest of the trip.
The next morning we got up early and started driving through the Great Ocean Road. I was driving and Marc was exploring his guide, and so we were stopping at the most important locations of the Great Ocean Road. One interesting fact is that, at the Great Ocean Road, there are lookouts every 500 meters. That is, if you want to see all the interest points, it will take you a while (several days) to reach the other end of the Great Ocean Road.
For those who didn't know, the Great Ocean Road is a national road in the Victoria region, in the southern-east part of Australia. This road escapes from the inner freeway and follows the coastline at one of the most beautiful places on Earth, where the ocean gets lost in the horizon and the next shoreline is the Antarctica. That, added to the beauty of giant rocks coming out of the water at many points, makes the Great Ocean Road a real touristic attraction.
In the afternoon, we stopped at Apollo Bay, a very famous place as well, and we had lunch in a fine restaurant. I had a seafood soup, which was very delicious and full of different tastes: octopus, prawns, jumbo-shrimps, clams, oysters, king-crab, etcetera. After lunch, we continued our tour. Our purpose was to go to the end, at Warrnambool. This is the end of the Great Ocean Road. The choice was clear, since the next day we wanted to be fresh to return to Melbourne and spend the day doing shopping at the airport, before our flight back to Finland.
The part from Apollo Bay till Warrnambool was the most beautiful one. The most important stop, of course, was The Twelve Apostles, which is the biggest attraction at the Great Ocean Road. We spent most of the time there, and it was extremely beautiful. Giant rocks literally emerge from the ocean water and form incredible shapes.
The continuation after The Twelve Apostles was very beautiful as well. For instance, the London Bridge and other lookouts were amazing, specially at sunset. Once at Warrnambool, we found a cheap backpackers with nice rooms (also from Marc's guide) and we decided not to complicate and stay there. The dinner was huge, at a posh restaurant where there were only rich people. We did nothing special after that, but rest instead, for the next day to return back to Melbourne.
The following morning, we refueled the car and drove back to Melbourne. This time, we took the freeway (we didn't come back the same way, through the Great Ocean Road), and we were there in less than three hours. The day was a mix of feelings. I felt disappointed that our adventure was ending already, yet some part of me was happy to return with good memories and a nice experience to Finland. We spent plenty of money at the airport in shopping, and then we agonized through its corridors waiting for our plain to return to Helsinki.
As soon as I stepped on the airplane, I realized how much I was going to miss after those five and a half weeks of being fully free and traveling in such a beautiful country like Australia. I have to tell one thing: most of the times when I visit a country, I instantly know that I won't visit it again. Somehow, something told me, before getting into that airplane, that this wasn't the last time I was going to be in Australia. And still, as of today, I have something inside me that constantly tells me I will be there again, one day..
Australia 2010: Ayers Rock
And so we arrived to Alice Springs. The trip on the train (The Ghan) across the desert was a 24-hour experience that we won't forget. Both the sunset and the sunrise were extremely beautiful, and the train was really in the middle of nowhere when crossing the vast outback. Ayers Rock is the name of the area that beholds the famous Uluru. However, Alice Springs is the only city in the red center, and it is about 500km away from Ayers Rock, so Marc and I took a flight there. But I will tell a little bit before that..
We had about three hours at Alice Springs, so we went shopping and had lunch there at a terrace. Marc bought plenty of souvenirs, while I just bought a few and things for myself. At lunch time, we saw, by coincidence, Iris and Mirjam (the dutch girls from Litchfield). It was nice to see them, and there were other people that came down from Darwin to Alice Springs. Somehow, this was the same story as with the East Coast, but this time happening at the outback, right at the red center.
We took our flight from Alice Springs, which was only 45 minutes, and arrived to Ayers Rock ready to take a hired car. From the tiny airport to the Ayers Rock resort, there were only 5 kilometers. We passed the resort and went straight to the Kata Tjuta National Park, where Uluru lays (together with the Kata Tjuta rocks). To make up for the sunset, we drove first to the Kata Tjuta rocks, and we left Uluru for the end of the evening.
The evening was quite wet. It was pouring from the sky and we didn't know if we were going to have a good picture from Uluru. Our plan was to see the sunset, and the next morning come back to the park and see the sunrise. After all, our plane was leaving to Melbourne the next morning, so we didn't have time at all.
Kata Tjuta was massive. Already on the way to Kata Tjuta, Uluru showed itself through the trees on every curve, and it was getting bigger and bigger after every new turn on the road. However, as we didn't expect Kata Tjuta to be so impressive, we were almost shocked by its size and the nice forms the rocks were creating, looking like all resting on the side of another rock.
After observing the structure of Kata Tjuta, we moved to Uluru. We arrived just in time. The rain stopped for a while and the sunset got started, although the sun was mostly covered behind the clouds. We took trillions of pictures (from which I picked one or two..) and we went with the car around the rock. This formation is so immense, that you cannot imagine it in real size until you are there. And, even though it looks like a huge heap of sand, it is a one-piece solid red rock.
At night, after visiting Uluru, we went to the resort. The room was shared, but there was nobody. The restaurant was very expensive (about 50€) and the rooms weren't cheap either. We ate some fast food and we went to rest. Our plan was to wake up very early in order to catch the sunrise at Uluru. One detail I forgot to tell is that, at the red center (including Alice Springs), the temperature was quite low. In fact, during the day topped 25 degrees Celsius, but at night it reached zero degrees Celsius (and sometimes even below zero).
The next morning we picked our stuff and went to the Uluru. It was night still, and we parked right on a stop marked as the sunrise lookout. The place was full of cars, buses and people, already set with their cameras and tripods, ready for the sun to come out and bathe the rock with its rays. I set my tripod and talked with an Englishman for some minutes before the sun rose. Marc got lost to some hidden lookout to take grab some shots.
When the sun was up and shining, the people started to leave the place and we went back to the airport, were we left the hired car and waited for our flight back to Melbourne. There, we had a hired car waiting and we were going to start our last trip, the Great Ocean Road. The adventure at the red center was quite short, yet intense. Having only one month to see a country as big as Europe, we had to prioritize, and so we did. Next (and last) adventure: the Great Ocean Road (from Melbourne to Warnambool and back).
Australia 2010: Darwin
It was Friday morning when we arrived to Darwin, the northern-most city of Australia. Sanna and Mervi (the two Finnish girls that we met in Cairns and who were traveling with us on the same plane) had their hostel on the same street as ours, and so we all took the shuttle from the airport to the hostels. We didn't know that it was going to by goodbye (or a least a see you later back in Finland) when we split to each of our hostels.
Arrival at Darwin
Darwin is a very humid and warm city. The temperature was about 35 Celsius degrees and the humidity reached 99% most of the days. It reminded me Mallorca, my beloved island where my parents live. The room in the hostel was quite big, although shared with two more people (who weren't there yet). Marc and I headed to the supermarket to buy some goods, since we had several days to stay at Darwin.
The shopping was great. The prices of the meat were really low, and we got two kilograms of T-bone for dinner for only $10 (which was less than 8€). We grilled the dinner by the hostel's pool and so we met several guys that were around our table (from Germany, France and U.K.). We decided, that night already, to go out and have a beer.
The beer wasn't just a beer. In Darwin there is only one main street, and all the pubs are there. Many pubs offered us a free drink for entering the place, and so we took advantage of that and started hopping from pub to pub, until we settle at one of them. We started ordering jags of beer and the night passed really quickly.
The next morning, Marc didn't want to do anything. I decided to go for a walk with a French guy we met the night before. Suddenly, before I got out of the hostel, I saw two nice-looking girls posting a note on the hostel's pinboard. I decided to say hello, just to be nice. But then, they told me that they were looking for two people to come with them to Litchfield (a national park near Darwin). Hence, I literally grabbed Marc and introduced them to him, and we told them that we would go with them to the park.
Everything went nicely, and I spent the morning with them looking for cars to hire and more information. In the evening, we talked to the people in the hostel and organized some meeting at the main park, to have drinks. Meanwhile, Marc and I went with the dutch girls (Iris and Mirjam) to have dinner to a restaurant where they had a free-dinner deal. Then, we all went to the park and had some drinks, but then was time to have a rest for the next day.
Litchfield
The next morning (on Sunday), the four of us went to the rental office (in front of our hostel) and picked the car, and so our trip to Litchfield began. We stopped at a gas station to buy some sandwiches and then we followed our map to visit the most interesting places around the park.
The first attraction were the giant termite mounds, right at the entrance of the Litchfield park. These termite mounds are known world-wide, they measure up to 7 meters and they are built magnetically. The orientation is north-south, which helps the termites to control the temperature inside the mound itself.
Afterwards, we had a swim at the Buley Rockhole, where there are many series of cascading pools. There were quite many people, but it was nice to see a paradise in front of us. The water was worm, and it was flowing down to the Florence Falls with plenty of strength, so it was very cool to swim against.
After the Buley Rockhole, we went to a settled part of the cascades and had lunch. I was the only one wanting to have a bath after lunch, so I had my bath at the river and then we packed and went to the Florence Falls, the biggest ones around the Darwin area. Once at the Florence Falls, we bathed for more than an hour and we took many pictures. We did a walk through a forest that was full of giant spiders (female ones), and we went around the falls to have an overview of the whole place. It was extremely beautiful.
As the sundown was approaching, we went to visit other minor falls, which were closed due to the existence of saltwater crocodiles. We were excited, because we wanted to see this type of crocodile in action, but there was no luck. After visiting all the minor attractions, we all voted for going back to the Buley Rockhole to have the last bath right at sunset.
That moment was beautiful, because everybody had left, and it was only the four of us, swimming in the plunge pools, watching the sunset and some sporadic eagles feeding themselves. The rest of the trip was on the road, back home, and we went to have dinner with the girls that night, since they were leaving the next morning. After dinner, we had some drinks and they asked us to write on their diary, it was an incredible experience even for one day.
By the way, that night, we met the Finnish girls (Sanna and Mervi), and we said goodbye to them. I had been calling the for the whole week, but they were sick or didn't want to go out of the hostel (probably to save some money, since they were going to Vietnam after Australia). We exchanged our Finnish telephone numbers and that was it, we agreed to meet them back in Finland when they would come back from Asia.
Kakadu National Park
The next morning we woke up early and went to the reception, where we were picked up by a tour company to take us to the Kakadu National Park. It is a huge national park of about twenty thousand square kilometers, but we were going to visit only the key places.
On the bus, I quickly got to know three guys from the U.K.: Yumna, Ivana and Juanito Banana. Yumna was from Gibraltar (it was funny to speak half-English half-Andalusian with her), Ivana was half-Serbian half-English, and John was completely English, but we named him Juanito Banana, he was very funny.
The first day (on Monday), we visited an aboriginal family, where they showed us their music instruments (basically the didgeridoo and the music sticks), and how they usually live in the forest. After that, we went on a small trip through a river to spot crocodiles, but we didn't spot anything at all, and we were all so disappointed. Then, we moved to the Kakadu National Park itself, where we visited ancient paintings from the first tribes in Australia. Some of the paintings where quite old and included animals, such as the long-neck turtle or the kangaroo. But most of the paintings described guns and weapons, which tell how they felt when they saw the white men conquering their land. After this visit, by sunset, we headed to the camping, where our tents were waiting for us.
That night, we had a big dinner and Norman, a guy working for Disney and traveling around the world with his camera, showed us great pictures and videos from his trip around Australia. Afterwards, we moved to a swimming pool that was there for the people who camped and we had a short party, drinking wine in the pool and having some laughs.
The next morning, we had to get up at 5 AM. The tour guide was cool, but his assistant was like a dictator, telling us to wake up or we would miss our breakfast. She also commanded us to sweep the whole tent, just before the breakfast. We all were so tired and slept in the bus on our way to the Twin Falls. There, we hiked for a while until we reached the top of the mountain and, right there, there was a tiny paradise, with plunge pools and tiny cascades. The main plunge pool was quite spread and it ended at a cliff, where there were huge waterfalls coming down to a small lake at the bottom. It was amazingly beautiful to swim there.
After that swim, we had lunch and said goodbye to the three people that were going to Litchfield the next day with the tour. The rest of us took a 2-day tour and so we were going back to Darwin. Once at the hostel, we met our friends again (including a very sweet couple from Denmark that we met the second day there) and we said goodbye to everybody. The next morning we were going to take The Ghan (one of the few trains around Australia) to go down to Alice Springs.
That night, we met a Spanish girl in the kitchen of the hostel, and she was taking the same train as us the next morning. Therefore, we agreed on taking a taxi to the station and share the costs. The next morning we basically moved out of the hostel and said goodbye to Darwin. We had a long trip to Alice Springs (about 24h by train), but the trip was going to be worthy. Let's talk more in the next entry about Alice Springs and our visit to Uluru..
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