With only a week to go before dashing off to Japan, Susie and I decided to head off on a trip from the Gong to Melbourne and back in a week, just so I could at least tick off another part of Oz and not feel like I’d spent the whole time here with my feet up.
Sydney and Melbourne are relative neighbours in Australian terms, but of course it takes four hours to fly from Sydney to Perth so anything close in Australian terms was not going to bear any resemblance to the kind of close I’m used to.
Susie wanted to fly, but given my flight fright and the fact every flight you take cuts your odds (and I’ve been flying a lot) I wanted to drive. Susie’s only condition then was that we go along the Great Ocean Road. Which sounded good to me.
First stop was a truck stop somewhere on the way to the Victorian border. For close to three hours we’d been driving through typical Australian bush - gum trees, dusty earth and lots of bright blue sky. The Australian countryside is not unpleasant, there’s just loads of it that looks exactly the same. The countryside here, was exactly the same as the countryside 4,000kms away in Margaret River.
Anyway, this truck stop was a welcome break as it did provide us with the opportunity to see Australia’s biggest sheep. They love their big stuff - the big turd, the big sheep, and there’s always a giant shrimp/cheese/peacock never too far away.
Still, it made us laugh and Susie had to have a ride of the miniature postbox version of course.
Only another three hours later we made it into Victoria and a town called Beechworth, right on the edge of the area affected by the recent bushfires. It also happened to be a high spot if you’re on the Ned Kelly trail. We weren’t, but he’s idolised here and it’s only recently that Australians are beginning to see him as a bit of a thug rather than a folk hero.
It was a very pretty town though. Much of Australia is criticised for lacking history or ‘culture’ - usually by us Poms - but actually their history is pretty interesting. It’s not as long or ‘regal’ as European history, but they do have it. It’s fairly brutal and ugly in parts, but interesting nonetheless and Beechworth is a fine historical town with some particularly Australian architecture. We loved it.
In atypical Aussie fashion, traditional and modern met without fuss and we found ourselves in possibly the only lesbian bar outside of Sydney. Susie was a great hit with her butch pool playing powers.
Weirdly, in a bush town with a tolerance for lesbians the Aussies let themselves down on the liberal front with a golliwog display in a shop window. Odd for a country blighted by its aboriginal history, but there it was.
The next day, we knew, was going to be another marathon slog through endless bush so imagine our surprise when round the next tree appeared a submarine. A proper, full-on submarine half-buried in the middle of the Australian bush. If nothing else, this place is surprising.
We scoured the whole place looking for an explanation but couldn’t find a reason why it was there. Oh well, on on.
As we approached a town called Gundagai Susie started to tell me about the Dog on a Tuckerbox. Apparently some 19th century bushman set off into the bush only to be injured and unable to walk a few days in. Miles from civilisation his future looked bleak. Fortunately his trusty hound trotted off and summoned help Lassie-style. They'd erected a monument to this feat of heroics just outside Gundagai so we thought we'd have a look.
When we got there and read the plaque turns out that what had actually happened was the bushman had gone off for the day leaving his dog to guard his tuckerbox. When he returned his dog was s(h)itting on his lunch and some Aussie folk singer wrote a ditty about it. What a crap story.
Eventually Melbourne emerged on the horizon out of the bush
and set about trying to find the hotel - without a map or GPS. No problem for a couple of experienced world travellers you would have thought? Throw in Melbourne’s unique hook turns though [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook_turn] and it was only thanks to a bit of Mozart on the iPod to calm the mood that we managed to find it without killing each other.
Melbourne is a nice town. Coastal, like all Aussie cities, and there was a nice buzz about the place because of the Grand Prix happening the next day.
I’ve been to a GP and Susie isn’t a fan, so we went to the MCG for an Aussie rules game. I’d done baseball in LA, footy in Buenos Aires, cricket in Christchurch, so I had to do some Aussie rules while I was here. And what better stadium than the MCG? I can only imagine what a sold-out Ashes match here must be like.
I enjoyed the game (and the pie and a schooner) but the National Sports Museum and the Cricket Hall of Fame is in the stadium’s bowels, so we foregoed the fourth quarter to have a look. As tough as it is to walk around a place that extols the virtues of the Waughs, Gilchrists and Lillees of this world, I had to give them credit - seeing Bradman’s first cap and meeting Warney was pretty special.
We spent the weekend in Melbourne, strolling round the markets, meeting Grand Prix groupies
and hanging out on the beach in St Kilda. I could hear the Grand Prix, but not see it, which is fine - watching a race live is boring apart from the engine noise!
Next stop the Great Ocean Road.
I had no real idea of what Australia’s Great Ocean Road was about, other than the fact it has some rock stacks called the 12 Apostles somewhere along it, but I was missing out on Oz’s most famous rock formation so I had better try and see some somewhere.
The road itself is very similar to Big Sur in the States [http://gingerseestheworld.blogspot.com/2008/09/san-simeon-ca-1268-miles-75f.html] - except the sea was on the right in the US. See, everything’s upside down in Australia.
I have to say, the 12 Apostles were amazing, as the locals would say “Good on ya’, Australia.” We arrived close to sunset and it was magical. There’s no longer twelve of them, but there were enough to leave me thoroughly impressed. It had taken about four hours to get there from Melbourne, but it was certainly worth it.
We pit stopped for the night at a little motel down the road with a nice view out over the beach knowing we had a lot of driving ahead of us if we were going to get back to Sydney in time for my flight.
Before we did though, we decided to just pop a bit further up the road and have a look at the Bay of Islands (NZ is not the only place with a Bay of Islands apparently http://gingerseestheworld.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html), and boy was it worth it.
I can only think that its because it’s 50kms further west of Melbourne than the apostles and noone makes the effort, but I thought the islands were even more impressive yet there didn’t seem to be anyone there. Oh well, who am I to complain? It was a great way to finish off the coast road.
We cut back inland, stopped off in Melbourne to pick up my Japan Rail Pass and headed back up the east coast towards Sydney.
There was no doubt about it, as lovely as Australia’s climate had been and how good the southern hemisphere’s spring and summer has been since I arrived October, it was on the turn and definitely time to head north for that hemisphere’s spring.
Almost as soon as we turned round to head back north, it was as though the heavens were telling me I was no longer welcome in Oz. Maybe not no longer welcome, more that it was time to move on.
On the way back we dropped into the ‘world-famous’ Bega cheese museum and stopped off to watch the surfers catch the last waves of the day as the sun set. Both beautiful in their own way!
As we hit New South Wales and headed back to the Gong I began to see why the colonists had thought it looked like Wales. The bush turned green, the mist descended and it felt so like home it was spooky.
My flight to Tokyo was only 24 hours away so Susie and I went for one last meal out together in Wollongong. As my last meal in Australia you’d expect a sun-kissed restaurant, overlooking a beautiful beach, sipping cold Australian white and swallowing delicate Pacific seafood.
Instead, we went for the true Aussie experience - pork steaks and a pint in the local club. We’d call them working men’s clubs. Plastic trees, cheap food and fruit machines, every cliché we expect of the Australians writ large and it was the perfect send off.
I wondered around the club taking pics looking like a typical tourist (except in their local club) until a big guy seemed to take exception at my Pommy patronising curiosity…
And so I was ushered out of Collegians Club Wollongong and Australia.
