Wind, Rain, Sand, and Frogs
| Happy New Year!!! 2004 |
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Wind, Rain, Sand, and Frogs |
Surfing Australia : 18 January 2004
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If you're ever in White Cliffs, Australia, you have to go to Jock's. Since our last report, we've driven through hell and back. We spent a pleasant couple of nights in Adelaide, then started our drive into the "Accessible Outback" of Broken Hill. This is mining country, and there's very little out there. It was also incredibly hot. It was so hot that even the locals were complaining about how hot it was. For once, we were thinking ahead for our trip to Broken Hill, and planned to stay two nights so that we could have a full day to see the sights, such as they are. Of course, we cleverly forgot that the day we were spending was a Sunday, when everything is closed. Not that the temperature stopped us. Broken Hill, besides a huge mine, is also a budding art community. No, seriously. We were the idiots standing in the middle of the desert, in the middle of they day, looking at these twelve sculptures they have on this hill outside of town. At least we decided to pay the $6 to drive up to it instead of having to walk up to it. We also saw the world's largest oil painting on canvas in Broken Hill. I'm not sure it beat the world's largest sweater we saw in New Zealand, though. The hostel we were at was a little odd, but pleasant enough. It had a pool, though, which made for a pleasant afternoon break from the heat. And, believe it or not, Broken Hill had the best dinner of our travels yet. I had this spaghetti carbonara that was awesome. We did get to do the mine tour on the morning after our second night. This was Monday the 6th, I believe. The tour was pretty fun, and it was nice to walk around in the relative cool of the closed mine. I suppose it would have been much less pleasant if we actually had to, like, actually do mining or anything. After the tour, we drove to our next stop, White Cliffs. White Cliffs is an opal mining town, known for it's holes in the ground. There are something like 50,000 holes in the ground, with piles of dirt around them. Many of these holes have been turned into the houses where the 70 people that live there actually live. They were very excited to get electricity about 15 years ago. Now this is a town. We were within half a kilometer to the Underground Motel where we were staying, when we heard this weird sound. It was an intermittent hissing sound, not good on a car. By the time we stopped, the hissing had turned into the flopping of a flat tire. Sure enough, the right rear tire was totally flat. Andrea walked up the road to the motel while I started trying to change the tire. This would have been unpleasant enough in the dusty desert, on a dirt road, in 100+ degree heat. But the best part was that it turns out we are missing part of the jack. Luckily, someone else in a Land Cruiser drove by and had the part. He was the owner of the photo studio next to our motel. We'd been planning on trying to get to his gallery anyway, but now we had to go for sure. We changed the tire, and made it to the motel. Both of us were totally dripping with sweat. The woman who checked Andrea in actually said, "Rough Drive?" Now, the main reason for us coming to White Cliffs was to stay in the Underground Motel. Everything here is dug underground, because it's so damn hot. And trust me, it was really hot. Once you get deep inside the motel, though, the rooms were pleasantly cool. The rough rock walls were all covered with a white paint or sealer or something. The only real hassle was that the bathroom was way far away from our room. Wandering through the halls was like a maze, and it was easy to get lost. With our newly fixed tire, we drove through the opal fields right around sunset time. It was truly bizarre to see all these holes in the ground, with their little loose rock craters around them. They estimate something like 50,000 holes in White Cliffs. It's very weird. Most of the holes are old, dug before World War 1. But you also see new claims, with little signs marking who's made the claim and the date. Some of these were being excavated, but most work was on hold because of the heat. Robin forgets to mention that there where rats and roaches there. In the morning we headed over to Jock's. Everyone we met in White Cliffs told us we had to go see Jock's. Jock is this eccentric,(he was a madman) slightly smelly guy that's lived there for 30 years in an old mine on one of the town's hills. For $4 per person, he'll show you around his house, through all the rooms, both the new ones he's dug, and the old timers' mines that connect to his house. The whole time he shouts at you telling stories and discussing opal mining with himself, but usually you can't understand him so it isn't that bad. The place is totally filled with rusted and broken junk dating back over 100 years. Since we are American, he was very excited to show us this scale from the late 1800s that was made in America. Of course, it was broken, but who's counting? He did have a bit of opal in one of his walls, but he said it was such a thin piece that it likely wasn't worth the effort to dig it out. We also got to dig in one of his chambers for opal ourselves with a jackhammer. Personally, I think he just wants to get sucker tourists to dig out a new room for more of his junk. That day we drove down to Hay, where the weather wasn't over 100 degrees, and actually included rain...a lot of rain! This was day one of our giant detour back to the Victoria coast and the Great Ocean Road take 2. This time is all about the surfing. Being from California, and doing this whole life-changing thing, we have decided to become surfers. Dude. So we headed back to the coast for a little time to explore the possibilities, and to recover from the heat of the outback with a nice hotel by the ocean with a spa tub. Of course, I screwed up the date (it's so hard to keep track of what day it is, let alone the date, on this trip), so we only had our splurge room for two nights. We were staying in Lorne, the hottest spot for family vacations down here, and it was the weekend of the Pier to Pub Swim, the biggest event of the year. So now we will have spent two nights in Torquay, just down the road, right by Bells Beach, and some of the best surfing in the world. Torquay calls itself the Surf Capital, and it is where we bought all of our surf stuff. However, the surf was big and beautiful and completely unridable for the likes of us. There was a contest going on and the jet skies where on hand for the surfers. we were too embarrassed to actually flounder near this area. So we drove up the coast a bit, Of course, peak of summer on a weekend, so no surprise that every good surf spot on the entire Great Ocean Road has lots of people in it. We found a nice sandy stretch of beach, the surf was pretty blown out and crappy, the wind was howling and the tide was ripping us up but we went for it anyway. OK, so we didn't start carving it up, and we didn't do any mad tricks or win sponsorship from Quicksilver. The waves where way bigger and rougher once we where in the water than they looked from the road. We were sorta stuck in the crash zone of the waves because it was way to big and rough for us to go out farther. So we basically got pummeled by every wave. But we were in the water, and used our very own boards without any help from anyone else. And it was fun! We did actually ride some of the shoreline waves in to practice trying to stand without going to your knees, basically though, We have a long way to go, but we will have fun doing it. We both love our boards, even if we ended up with the plain white ones. They're big enough for us to learn on, but small enough to not be too easy.
After Torquay we're going to start our journey up the east coast. Our plan currently is to get up as fast as possible, then take a little longer getting back down, finding cool places to visit and to surf along the way. Then, by the end of January, it's on to China, hopefully with stops in Micronesia and New Guinea and possibly Hawaii, a short backtrack to see the kids. |
Replies: 8 comments
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hello Posted by Sean @ 01/18/2004 01:43 AM PST |
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What? We love your ute...we can't stop. The only reason we didn't go to Alice was because you told us not to. ha ha. Posted by Andrea @ 01/18/2004 07:45 PM PST |
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hey guys! i finally looked up your website. very cool! sounds like you are having a great time. good luck on all your adventures. come visit me in madrid! Posted by Jennifer Miller @ 01/19/2004 11:01 AM PST |
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Well the following is my lesson on the little spiky creature that you took a photo of.Let me start by saying that you guys where lucky to see one of these in the wild as they are nocturnal and most of us aussie don't get the chance to see them. Posted by Shona Wessely @ 01/20/2004 06:12 AM PST |
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Hey you two crazy cats! Sorry it took me so long to check out your site. Sounds like you've had some crazy adventures (probably alot more to come too!) Sounds like you're having a blast and I'm glad you've been able to hook up with people. Keep up the great work! (and perhaps I may just take up that invitation of meeting up with you guys somewhere) No Saudi for me, too dangerous right now! Can't wait to hear more! Take care, Jackie Posted by Jackie @ 01/20/2004 07:53 PM PST |
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Hey mates! Sounds like you're truly never gonna leave Australia. Things here are well for the most part. Gary is engaged, Liz is engaged and Radiohead, Air, The Cure, The Pixies and many others are gonna be at Coachella this year. Ain't gonna be the same without you! Posted by Chris @ 01/21/2004 10:45 PM PST |
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Gary's pregnant? Posted by Robin @ 01/21/2004 11:51 PM PST |
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Good thing Andrea likes spiders so much. Posted by Stephanie @ 01/23/2004 04:22 PM PST |
