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Destination:
Australia
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Land
of Oz
Australia's
grand scale is the perfect setting for spectacular and spiritual
scenery
 Sunset shows off Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock.
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ALICE SPRINGS, Australia -- "There's nothing here, mate.
Just a lot of empty space and 'roos," an Australian truck driver
named Graham tells me as we sit at the old mahogany bar of Wachoupe
Station, an isolated roadhouse pub in the middle of the Outback.
The largest region in Australia, farm property hereabouts
is measured in millions of acres; many ranchers have airstrips
for driveways so they can fly to their nearest neighbour for
pie and ice cream.
Graham wears leather work boots, tight shorts and an open-to-the-navel
blue denim shirt, typical garb for long-distance truckers in
the Australian desert.
Cigarette smoke swirls around his bushman's hat as he
drains his third can of ice-cold Victoria Bitter.
I've arrived in Wachoupe from Alice Springs, a short 240-mile
hop up the "track," as the trans-Outback Stuart Highway is called.
Graham is heading south, down the track towards Alice, and his
"road train" -- three 50-foot trailers cabled together behind
a cab-- sits in the parking lot.
I am overnighting at the pub, or rather behind the pub,
in a small backyard house trailer that's been converted to a
three-room motel. Graham is braving the dark lonely stretches
of the track in order to make Alice by daybreak.
 Members of the Tjapukai Dance Theatre continue 40,000-year-old
traditions. |
Sharing conversations with truckers like Graham, staying
in dimly lit trailer rooms behind highway road houses, eyeing
attractive Aussie barmaids and bouncing along rutted four-wheel
drive trails is all part of experiencing the Outback.
Most of Australia's 19 million people are concentrated
along its southeast coastline, from Melbourne to Brisbane. The
Outback, a huge dry rocky desert, was formerly populated entirely
by Aborigines, natives driven from their coastal homes by white
settlers.
Many Aborigines retreated to the centre of the territory,
where they established communities in the world's hottest climate
where barren rocks, sandy red soil, poisonous snakes and spiders
prevail. Food and water are scarce.
Today, the Aborigines control vast amounts of land, including
Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock.
I'm following the route taken by Britisher John Stuart
who, in 1862, made a 2,000-mile trek across Australia from Adelaide,
on the southern Tasman Sea, to the north coast, near what is
now the city of Darwin.
During the first half of the journey, I ride The Ghan,
a train named after the Afghan cameleers that helped supply
the original rail construction site during the 1930s.
The first rail line through the Outback was laid directly
onto the sand, and was often washed away by flash floods. It
was not uncommon for the track to disappear on both sides of
the train, requiring parachute drops of essential supplies for
the stranded passengers. Some trains arrived in Adelaide or
Alice Springs up to three months late.
Today, The Ghan is fast and comfortable, with sleeper
compartments and a dining car. The trip features views of sheep
pastures and agricultural fields stretching to the horizon,
where the Mt. Lofty Range shimmers in a purple haze.
One of the Ghan's stops is Alice Springs. Alice, which
gained notoriety in Neville Shute's novel A Town Like Alice,
was established as a telegraph station in 1888 and originally
named Stuart. It remained a small Outback village until the
1960s, when increased tourism brought new businesses and a young,
energetic population.
During the summer, from November to March, the temperature
around Alice Springs, as in much of the Outback, reaches 130
degrees Fahrenheit and rain is almost nonexistent. The Outback
winter, in contrast, is dry and "cool," with the mercury climbing
into the 80s and 90s, a great time to visit.
I detour from Alice and head to Ayers Rock, a 50-minute
flight away (or a six-hour drive). Ayers Rock is considered
by many to be the country's spiritual -- as well as geographical
-- centre.
The rock stands over 1,000 feet above the flat desert
floor. At sunset, the sandstone surface turns several shades
of red before becoming mauve and grey in the gathering darkness.
Until the 1960s it was possible to camp at the base of
Ayers Rock and explore the massive outcropping on your own,
or with a willing Aborigine guide. But the Aborigines, fearing
environmental damage to their spiritual gathering spots, closed
the desert airstrip and restricted access to certain parts of
the rock. Today, all overnight visitors stay at the Ayers Rock
Resort, a complex of five
separate properties 12 miles from the rock.
Set like an oasis (the closest town, Alice Springs, is
300 miles away) amid the kangaroo grass, palms, spinifex, and
irrigated gardens, the resort offers accommodations ranging
from camping sites to the five-star deluxe Sails in the Desert
Hotel.
After spending a few days exploring the rock and the Aboriginal
Cultural Centre, I return to Alice and begin the drive north,
following the two-lane Stuart Highway towards Darwin, almost
1,000 miles away.
Through Robby Dee, a taxi driver I met in Alice, I get
names of people along the route who, Dee suggests, represent
the true Outback spirit.
Fred Coulsen, owner of the Aileron Roadhouse, 70 miles
up the track, has been living in the Outback since his parents
built a small cabin along the then-rutted highway in 1935. He
now raises cattle on a million acres and runs a roadside ostrich
farm and gem store.
Another 94 miles up the track, I stop in at Les Pilton's
Barrow Creek Hotel. Pilton, a refugee from eastern Australia's
crowded cities, bought the historic roadhouse 10 years ago,
the only public building for several hundred square miles. Pilton's
nearest neighbour runs cattle on 3.25 million acres, and when
the ranch hands drift in on Friday afternoons, the drinking
is heavy, and the chances of fisticuffs is "better than two
to one," Pilton admits.
After stops in Tennant Creek and Katherine, I continue
driving north, watching the landscape slowly evolve from arid
to tropical, as the highway stretches towards Darwin and the
warm waters of the Timor Sea.
I drive past thousands of termite mounds, including the
world's largest one in Mataranka; past brush fires that roast
the car doors with a searing heat; through the tiny villages
of sun-baked villages of Dunmarra, Daly Waters, Larrimah, and
Pine Creek.
The trees are taller and greener; the brush is higher
and filled now with birds and butterflies. Road signs now warn
of crocodiles and water monitors.
As I approach Darwin, the terminus of the Stuart Highway,
the light is more intense and the terrain becomes a luminous
green. Civilization finally appears in the form of car dealerships,
fast-food restaurants, palm-shaded office parks and marinas.
Darwin, with 75,000 residents, feels like a big city,
but there are no towering glass office buildings here, no hustle
and bustle, no traffic-clogged freeways.
This tropical, laid-back city -- flattened by Japanese
bombers during World War II and again, in 1974, by Cyclone Tracy
-- has wonderful outdoor markets, filled with Asian immigrants
peddling extraordinary cuisine.
Despite the paradise atmosphere of Darwin and the swaying
palms of Australia's "Top End," I yearn for the grittiness of
the Outback, for the long stretches of empty space. Maybe it's
the silence of the desert, or the night sky filled with stars
or the small, dusty towns, complete with raucous Aborigine pubs
and side streets that end at the perimeter of a brown-and-red
landscape.
Perhaps, like so many other travellers who have ventured
into Australia's centre, I was touched by the Outback's spirituality
and mesmerized by its tremendous beauty. Perhaps.
GETTING THERE: Qantas, Australia's national carrier,
flies direct to Sydney from Vancouver. Fares start at $1670
round trip. Qantas also flies domestically into Adelaide,
Ayers Rock, Alice Springs, and Darwin. 1-800-227-4500.
THE GHAN operates between Adelaide and Alice
Springs twice weekly. Fares range between US$106-$336 one-way
for the 20-hour trip. Information is available from Great
Southern Railway at www.gsr.com.au.
WHERE TO STAY: (In $US) Ayers Rock Resort offers
various levels of accommodations, including Sails in the Desert
Hotel ($171-$310); Desert Gardens Hotel ($140-$162); Emu Walk
Apartments (US$128-158); Outback Pioneer Hotel & Lodge
($125-private room/$10-dorm room); and Spinifex Lodge ($50-shared
bath); and Ayers Rock Campground.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: Visit the Australian
Travel Information Exchange Web site at www.atie.com.au
CALL THE Australian Tourist Commission.
www.summer
holiday.info
www.winter holiday.org.uk
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