A Year in Australia (part 3 of 3)
For
the final six weeks I traveled on my own. After making enough money to move again,
I bought a train ticket from Melbourne to Perth stopping in Adelaide for a weekend.
Adelaide is dull and hardly warrants a mention at all other then that it has nice
beaches.
From Adelaide I went on to Perth which took about fifty hours through the Nullabor Plain. It is an amazing trip through the bush with nothing for thousands of miles except red earth and parched plants.
Train-lagged and in bad need of a bed I arrived in Perth. I had met a group of Irish and Scottish backpackers on the train so we all went to the same hostel in Northbridge. Over the weekend we discovered that Perth is, fortunately, a party town. After spending the weekend on a complete bender, I had to leave for the sake of my sanity and went over to Rottnest Island with some mates for a few days camping.
Rottnest
is a practically uninhabited island which gets its name from the furry little marsupials
called quakkas which inhabit the island. A Dutch explorer who circumnavigated the
island decided, quite rashly, that they were rats, thus 'rats nest'. They are, in
fact, the cutest little creatures imaginable. We snorkeled most of the way around
the island which was fantastic save for the long-tentacled transparent jellyfish
which lacerate the unsuspecting snorkeller. Still, at least when people comment
on your wounds you get to say "oh, just a jellyfish sting" rather than something
very pedestrian like "oh, just heat rash".
The
West coast feels like the real Australia. There is nobody there. On a 500km bus
journey I saw five kangaroos, three emus and two cars. Sandy beaches stretch for
miles without a soul on them. Outside of the few key tourist places to visit, it
is utterly uninhabited. It is just as impressive as the East coast and every evening
the sunsets over the ocean are breathtaking. I cycled for miles every day accompanied
by a goodly percentage of the world's flies. After getting about 1000km up the west
coast I began to run out of both time and money. I had overstayed my visa by about
two months and I couldn't work legally so, time was called on the meandering tour
of Australia.
Just before people on the one year visa went home, the standard question other backpackers asked them was: 'So, has it changed you?'. Typically "Yes, without a doubt" went the reply. Sounds cheesy, but I think most go home a new and improved version of their former selves. Their livers may be completely knackered but their souls are definitely in better shape.
<< Back to part 1
<< Back to part 2
Also check out the adventures of CLUAS on the plains of Andalucia in Spain.
