Abandoned on Penguin Island

I’d picked up a leaflet on Penguin Island – a bird sanctuary in Rockingham, not far from Perth.  I find myself disgruntled and moody about being in an ordinary city again and the island trip seems to offer a last look at the wild world I’ve come to feel so much at ease in.  Grant is just about amenable, though nature is not his thing. and so we set out for Rockingham, guided by the trusty GPS which is speaking with an Aussie accent today. This is a relief as the American voice that takes over now and hen often mixes up left and right.

We get to the little seaside town in time to book our dolphin watching trip which includes visiting a sea lion beach as well as the feeding of misfit orphan penguins who cannot yet be let go into the wild.

The café by the dock is swarming with elderly bikies in leather jackets with their gleaming machines all lined up outside.  I observe that one or two of them glance approvingly at me in my akubra hat and laugh at myself for feeling pleased at being appreciated by these gentlemen of the road.  Old age does do away with girlish shyness. I ask on if they’ve come to see the penguins. “Shit no!” one says, looking  a mite offended.

We get on our boat, only six of us, and the wind and the sea blow away my moodiness.  I lurch about trying to catch a glimpse of a dorsal fin or two. Grant however sits tight on his bench chalking up brownie points for giving me such a nice time.  And it is so lovely.  We pass an islet with a huge osprey’s nest on it.  Apparently ospreys mate for life and improve their nest each year. ( I’m reminded that we’ve got to do something about the kitchen when we get back – can it really be the day after tomorrow?) There are these muscular looking pied cormorants who swim on the waves like ducks and then dive into the depths for their fish.  We are told that unlike most birds, they don’t have oil in their feathers and  so get waterlogged which helps them stay sunk long enough to catch fish.  When they come up they have to flap their wings dry in the wind if they want to fly.

Then we see dolphins – a group of mothers and calves.  Our guide is ecstatic. 

“They are playing.  They are having such fun”

And indeed perhaps they are. They are black and sleek with what looked like smiles on their rostrums. They rise and snort out of the air holes on their heads.  We can see the calves alongside the mothers who suckle them but never feed them fish.  It’s tough love in the dolphin world.  The calves have to learn to do it for themselves.  They actually stay with their mothers for about six years so that they can.  We are told that it’s quite an ordeal being a female dolphin.  A group of up to a hundred males will hold a female hostage and have her mate with them.  This is actually a good thing because the resulting calf could belong to any one of them and so none of them kill it.  A mother who has had only a couple of mates has to be very protective.  I think of the ospreys and their home improvements and how they seem so like us.  These dolphins on the other hand have some very different customs.

I begin to wonder if it right to assume that it is fun they are having   as they jump and dart about our boat.  Could it be that they have a cosmic memory of whales and harpoons and really want us to go away.  “We are going to make a wave now so they can have a surf”  says the guide and our boat speeds up and sure enough there is wonderful graceful leaping over the foam of the wake as we speed away.  I hope our visit was nice for them but I think it a bit presumptuous to assume that it was.  Could the surfing just be a way of saying “Good riddance”

We stop just inside the little bay of an island full of birds of all sorts – pelicans, cormorants and seagulls all perched and looking at us attentive as meercats. On the beach are sluggish sea lions.  One is reared up as though for a portrait.  I am forced to revise my rather disrespectful view of sea lions as ill favoured creatures to be pitied for their cumbersome design.  Apparently they can run as fast as thirty kilometers an hour and they bite like bears.

Our last encounter is back on Penguin Island.  The orphanage  has a pool in the middle with platforms around it for the penguins to walk on and jump off  There are tiers of benches surrounding the pool  with lots of  children as well as adults waiting for the keeper to come with her bucket of fish.  “Aaah” we say as two fairy penguins emerge from their burrows to stand, looking this way and that on the edge of the pool.  A low chuckle passes through the adults in the crowd as the couple advance on each other and begin vigorously to copulate.  The keeper hangs back with her bucket.  We hear her complaining later to another wildlife person “I had a hundred kids there with two bonking penguins.  What was I supposed to say?”  Actually once she got going she told us lots, including the fact that the penguins in question were actually both male.  One was blind which meant he would not survive in the wild.  The others, about six who emerged from their boxes for the little fish, were injured or abandoned by their mothers and would eventually get to join the other 900 odd penguins living around the island.

After the feeding I told Grant I was going round the boardwalks that circled the sanctuary island and he said he’d stay and read his emails in the penguin house.  It was windy and all around were male seagulls, their red mouths agape and screeching.  There was little doubt in my mind about them wanting me to go away.  All around the boardwalks were mother gulls sitting like china birds on their nests, plump and still.  One or two had a couple of fluffy brown chicks with them.   I wandered through the cacophony feeling intrusive but also awed to be so near the colony.  As usual I got a bit lost and I couldn’t cut across the island lest I harm a nest so it was quite a while before I got back to the penguin house and there was no Grant to be seen. The penultimate ferry of the day was pulling out.  Enquiries about a man with long silver hair and beard confirmed my suspicion that he’d got fed up and taken the ferry, which didn’t seem unreasonable under the circumstances.  The penguin lady, was however outraged.  “You mean he left you behind?” she said.  In her book it was deviant  human behaviour. Indeed I was mildly outraged myself. What were mobile phones for?  In the end the ferry came back with four Japanese girls who had pleaded to be taken to the island in time for the four o’clock feeding.  My champion, the penguin lady ran down to the quay to stop the ferryman before he left so I could get on board this extra run.

Grant was snug back in the van with a beer and my protest was only token even though I’d promised the penguin person to tear a strip off him for not behaving like a model human.  I wondered if all those coupled creatures had days like this, seagulls getting tired of protective squawking, mother dolphins slipping their calves the odd fish just to shut them up.  How standard can all we creatures be expected to be when all is said and done?

Bogan Bingo, the Earthquake and the Golden Pipeline

For the last two days we have had an intermittent companion on the road.  Sometimes on the right side and sometimes on the left a great pipe runs alongside us. Now and then it vanishes for a bit.  “Where’s the pipe gone?” we say but it always comes back, sometimes rusty and dark and sometimes bright white.  It is the water pipe that runs up hill from Perth to the dry gold fields at the other end.  Before its arrival water cost a shilling a bucket and was produced by evaporating and distilling salt water.  It was begun in 1896 and completed in 1903. Its inventor, C Y. O’Connor however never saw his water run because he rode into the sea and shot himself after being harassed and accused of corruption by his contemporaries the year before the pipe was put into commission.  It is a lovely pipe but looks so vulnerable.  We wonder what happens when bits need replacing.  There must be some kind of open heart surgery arrangement with bypasses I suppose.

It’s nice to have the pipe with us because for the first time in our long journey the drive is a bit boring.  There are huge flat wheatfields to be got through.  They look so sterile compared to the grand bush and it is easy to imagine how the aboriginal population must have hated the stripping of the land to plant the wheat.  There are a couple of interesting stops though.  One is the little town of  Merredin with a row of thriving shops including a bakers.  I am intrigued by a notice in many shops advertising Bogan Bingo in June for $33.  It seems a lot for a bit of Bingo. I pop into the pub to find out what it is and the barmaid gestures to a poster which explains “Half party, half parlour game and Australian as a Bali Prison” I think they must have a lot of fun in Merredin.

The second stop is at the site of Australia’s biggest ever earthquake,6.9 on the Richter scale.  The little town of Meckering was totally destroyed on 14^th October 1968 but nobody died. A broken collarbone was apparently the worst injury. The Meckeringians have preserved the ruin of the Snooke family’s house which is like other ruins except for a sign stuck in the middle of the rubble “Baby’s cot here”  Apparently Mrs Snooke was hanging out the washing when the quake occurred and rushed in to rescue her baby girl.  Luckily the wall beside her cot had collapsed outwards and she was unharmed.  I wondered if her miraculous escape had influenced her life.  One would surely feel a bit special.  In the information centre I was shown a photo of her on her wedding day – tall and beautiful with her smaller parents. 

We are rather uplifted by this unusual good news story and chug on more cheerfully to Perth.

Kalgoorlie and the Golden Hole

The caravan park in Norseman is my favourite sort – large, a bit shabby, no jumping pillows for kids and no keyboards on the amenities.  It sort of melts into the woody landscape which is populated by little flocks of noisy green parrots. There’s a gate in the corner which leads in to what is a huge golf course, though not knowing anything about golf, it didn’t seem like that to me. No green lawns and humps – just twiggy woodland and the odd clearing with deeply rutted red soil.  Every so often there is, I think it is called a tee, sponsored by someone – the butcher for instance.  It’s a nice walk for me but there isn’t a soul here.  It’s difficult to imagine people chatting along with bags of clubs.

 The hop from Norseman to Kalgoorlie is quite quick.  On the way we see one of the FIFO accommodation places.  It’s a petrol station with cars parked higgledy piggledy in front of it and  the cabins behind.  It looks tough and not like a place one would want to stay in for any longer than ten days straight.

As we approach Kalgoorlie we become aware of the huge upheaval in the landscape brought about by the gold mining,  Slag heaps great and small and fenced off mine shafts. Tumbled earth with tussocks of grass trying to get a grip.  Rusty machinery and rigs not unlike small Eiffel towers

We get to Kalgoorlie in daylight and in time to do a tour of a historic brothel which I’ve written all about in another blog. .  

Kalgoorlie is a  fine town which bears witness with the wealth that has come from all the gold and apparently will continue to do so until 2021 when the mighty Superpit open cut mine will run out of puff. There are glorious sprawling pubs on the corners of the main streets,  elegant and ornate government buildings.  Lots of modern shops like Subway at road level but above them the old signs for Tailors, Drapers and so on.  It is a town that loves its past and in some way incorporates it without a whiff of phoniness into its present.  You often see men with huge beards and dessicated faces and bright little eyes just like cartoon miners.  But they are for real.  They are out there with their metal detectors and shovels.  A car passes with the disconcerting word “Explosives” written on the side. 

I am at first puzzled by the chalkboards outside the pubs that say “Tonight’s skimpy is Jess” or Susie or whatever.  I wonder if they are racing tips and when I ask the young girl in the caravan park what a skimpy is and she laughs. “The barmaids aren’t naked or anything. Just bra and pants or a bikini”  The pubs themselves are old and cheerful.  One has a mine shaft in the floor where miners used to toss nuggets for retrieval later rather than hand them over to their employers. It has a grubby glass panel over it now.  It’s a bit of a puzzle.  I mean, how did they know whose was whose later on?  When we went to the museum later I got a possible answer.  Nuggets are very individual, having been worn into strange shapes and the lumps of gold bearing minerals are different too.  Perhaps pinching someone else’s nugget was as difficult to get away with as kidnapping his baby.

There are actually two towns which have more or less become one.  Kalgoorlie came first and then Boulder was established to be nearer the diggings.  We were lucky to arrive on market day in Boulder when the big mining company runs a free bus tour up to the open cut mine.  I didn’t realize it was a mine tour or I might not have gone as I was by then a bit jaded with picks and shovels and gold pans etc.  But I am so glad I did because it was one of the most extraordinary sights I have ever seen.  I wish Shakespeare could have seen it in all its splendour and horror.  We wound our way up to it on the mud roads in a rather posh modern bus.   On either side were ghastly mountains of rock.  Our very good guide told us what was what, some of the rock was minimal gold bearing and some better.  There were also rather poignant piles of timber carefully separated out as they muck up the crushers and cause thousands of dollars worth of damage.  They are the result of the open cut mine gobbling up the tunnels and shafts that had been hand dug by the original prospectors.

Our guide has a Scottish accent and was once miner himself. He tells us lots of facts and figures about the mighty trucks to which no photograph does justice because they are simply so enormous.  Tossed about are old tyres cracked and crusted with mud.  Finally we get to the top of the pit itself.  Nothing has prepared me for its depth. It is the biggest hole I have ever seen. Way way down below us the big trucks look like woodlice and doggedly crawl along the terraces. We can hear nothing for the savage wind which is blowing as if it is angry with this place.  Right at the bottom of the pit gleams water, apparently several times the salinity of the sea . All of it seems the opposite of anything human. I cannot deny its glory, but it seems mad that all this is not for needful things like bread or water but for gold, two thirds of which is made into jewellery.   It makes no sense at all.  But then what does.

Kalgoorlie and That House in Hay Street

I had a dream last night, made up of fragments of the day as all dreams are but also encompassing a deep unease about an experience we’d had.  The dream began with some naughty aboriginal children plus one of mine tearing across one of the wide camel friendly roads of Norseman.  I was worried and flew in hot pursuit.  I found them deeply absorbed in playing with little Leggo cars on the real road with other traffic driving by as best it could.  One of the children was lying dead.  “He got hit” my child said casually.  And I woke at that.

But the experience was a visit to a “historical brothel” on Hay Street in Kalgoorlie which used to be the containment area for prostitution in the town until not so very long ago. There was plenty of money to be made from gold miners far from home. But there was a price to pay for making it. The girls had to live in the brothels and were not allowed into town alone lest they solicit there and cause anxiety to respectable townsfolk.  Police could do spot checks at night to make sue everyone was present.  Girls could not live in town once they’d been prostitutes unless they married a client, which they sometimes did.

But this information was not what troubled me.  Perhaps I should go back to how the tour began.  I rang to book and was answered by a cultured, friendly and very sexy voice.  “Just come to the door at a quarter to three” she said “ and I accept cards or cash” Something about the way she said it made it seem like a sleazy transaction.

Grant and I found our way to shabby Hay Street and located Questa Casa, with its four doors painted pink, one of which was open.   An elegant woman of a certain age beckoned us in and we joined a group of about fifteen all tucked in a little room behind the counter.  All sorts we were, young and old, male and female, different nationalities too.  The lady came in and sorted us like children, short ones in the front and tall ones in the back and had us sit on chairs.  She sat down herself.  “I am the madam here” she said in a soft and pleasant voice.  “We used to have four working rooms but now we just have two”.  She told us how a couple of decades ago she had been very depressed after being widowed and thought it was her hormones.  Her doctor said it wasn’t her hormones at all but she did need something to do.  She spotted the ad offering the brothel in Kalgoorlie for sale and bought it.  When she told her doctor what she had done he said “But I meant charity work!”  She made us laugh and got us under her spell. 

She showed us how the brothel, along with all the others in Hay Street (the rest now shut down) had a high iron fence with doors in it leading into what were known as “the starting stalls” The girls would sit on chairs inside the wrought iron inner door and the gentlemen could negotiate privately from the cubicles.  If things went well they were let through the door into the brothel proper. 

We were given a tour of two rooms one of which was the domination room, appropriately (and somewhat theatrically) equipped.  A large teddy bear was elaborately chained for our education,  “They come because they cannot forgive themselves” she said “It is our job to hurt them but without doing any harm”  That sadness came into her eyes as it had when she told us about being a widow.

We went back to the close little room in which we began and she organized us again by height and began to tell stories of different sorts – the policeman who tried to trap her into sending a girl to the Exchange Hotel.  Because of the containment rule this was not allowed and if she had agreed he would have been able to shut her down.  The narcoleptic client who apparently died on the bed but sprang to life after the police and an ambulance had been called.  All sorts of  tales as well as a description of how her girls got clients to climax with minimum effort.  Because of her gentle humorous manner none of us doubted her for a second. 

After we left I felt uneasy.  If it was all true it seemed like the prostitution of prostitution.  There seemed something a bit gross about us tourists listening in to salacious but essentially humorous  tales of a trade which must take a huge toll on its workers and surely couldn’t all be quite such fun.  At one point she asked us to guess the maximum number of clients that a Dutch girl had handled in a night.  So we were playing guessing games now.  But her power over us was such that we did what we were told.

I think my dream of kids (us tourists) playing with Leggo cars amongst the real traffic emanated from the moral issue of whether you should be entertained by real life sadness. Naughty us, were playing in the road and should know better. History – well that’s another thing. But this woman and the way she handled us seemed so real.

 Very slowly it began to dawn on me that perhaps she was just a superlative actress and maybe there was a different widowed  madam next day.  Perhaps it was all a splendid con.  But doubt lingered.  There was a notice outside saying the place was open for trade from six pm.  I suggested Grant go along as an undercover client and clear the matter up once and for all, but he said no – perhaps we could ask at the police station instead.  In the event a lovely man in the tourist office told us the rather pathetic truth. 

Yes she was a madam and had run brothels in Queensland but no – Questa Casa was no longer an active brothel because  girls these days formed syndicates and got themselves places around town to avoid having to split their earnings with a madam. These days she just gave her three o’clock tours to keep her head above water. I was sort of relieved and stopped feeling ashamed of myself but I was also amazed at our madam’s skill as an actress. Or was it actually not so much acting as living her role in the way that some hoaxers can do.  Never mind the domination room, she had got her way with us – but then of course we had asked for it.

Ennui at Fraser Range Sheep Station and Understanding Norseman

Today we have more or less finished our Nullarbor crossing and I’m a bit sad.  It feels like coming back to normal life. No more hypnotic hours on the road, no more quirky roadhouses.  Cocklebiddy actually had a wedge tailed eagle in a cage at the back and a sign at the front “Honk for wedge tailed eagles”  No more grand swaying road trains batting along.

It’s funny how some places make you feel good and others for no good reason simply don’t.  Fraser Range Sheep Station which is being developed as a clever tourist place, was like that.  We’d had our longest day’s drive yet (about 450 kms) and had booked two nights in “historic shearers stone cottage accommodation” as a treat, but  when it came to it I didn’t fancy  sleeping  outside the van and so we changed to a plain site.  The van has come to mean security over the weeks. I realized last night that it provides a walled bed that you can’t fall out of and I haven’t had one of them since I was a baby in a cot.  It is so snug with the curtains drawn and the world shut out

There were lots of people, mostly our age. being friendly round a campfire as well as a young couple from the UK on working visas to whom we bequeathed our sleeping bags having bought a luxurious quilt at Crestwick Wool Mill.  The place itself had a rose garden and carefully tended bushes round the sites as well as a cosy camp kitchen.  What was not to like?

 Dunno but both of us wanted to move on next day and it was good to get on the road and reach the puzzling little town of Norseman, named for a horse who pawed at the earth one night when tied up by his owner. Laurie Sinclair, and in the process unearthed a lovely gold nugget and triggered a rush.  But there is no rushing going on in Norseman now.  Some of the few shops have closed down and empty houses are to be seen in every street, Despite this, an air of civic pride prevails.  Every sign naming a road has a little pawing horse on it and four banners celebrating the town lead up to the central island upon which a some camels finely crafted from corrugated iron are grouped.  It seems a thoroughly good place to live.  The roads are wide because in the past the camel trains needed a big turning circle.  The houses are neat and there seems to be enough water.

The puzzle is solved for us by a woman called Patricia who is manning the till in the hardware store.  It’s almost closing time and she’s happy to chat. It’s FIFO – the way mining companies now fly in their workers for ten days, accommodate them in purpose built quarters and then fly them out for four days to bewith their families in places like Perth “Even New Zealand” she says witheringly. It’s that that has sucked the people out of the town.   There is an ad for a community development officer in the local photocopied paper.  What would we do, we wonder, to bring back people to Norseman?  Over wine in the van we come up with a plan. Refugees. The money wasted on detention centres could provide all sorts of support for settlement here.  The poor little monthly market made up of four stalls selling honey, candles, sausages and massage oil respectively could be full of exotic handicrafts and food.  Someone could bring back the camels perhaps…

Our informant Patricia who has been a truck driver in Woomera and Roxby Downs in the past, has faith.  Mining towns wax and wane and there seems to be serious investment in the wind.   And nothing will stop the place being a crossroads for travelers across the Nullarbor going to Esperance to the south and Kalgoorlie in the north. In fact Kalgoorli is beckoning us now.

The Nullarbor's not boring

I’m finding it difficult to blog today, perhaps because this part of the trip is hard to put in words.

After leaving Ceduna we have a long long drive through unchanging silver and dark green scrub. Despite road signs warning against camels, wombats and kangaroos we see none of them, Just road trains whomping past every so often and shaking the bejesus out of our van.  There’s a sense of endlessness on either side of the road that is rather peaceful but also intimidating.

Our first night we stopped at Nullarbor Roadhouse Caravan Park – a rather chilling place, full of caravans shut up tight like clams on the white ground and truck drivers in the bar, their faces glazed with fatigue and perhaps loneliness. There’s no camaraderie or the “east or west?” question here. We hop into our van ourselves, draw the curtains and have a gin and tonic.

In the morning everyone except us has driven off.  The caravan park is empty as the landscape.  I decided to have a little walk on the plain knowing for once I can’t get lost as the roadhouse is the only interruption in the landscape for as far the eye can see.  I set off feeling faintly absurd – there being not even a tree to aim for. No goal. No possible objective. There is a certain lesson in it for me.  This is life, just stepping out into the unmarked unknown.  Intentions not needed. Tomorrow will happen anyway and tomorrow after that.

Suddenly with my back to the road I begin to really see where I am – not on a desert but in a rich vibrant place.  Wombat holes chiseled into the red clay. Little silver salt bush puffs. Once this all used to be the sea and it feels that way – ancient and crumbly.  There are reportedly huge cave complexes underneath it all.  I hop across  white rocks and a spikey thorn penetrates my croc sole.  It doesn’t hurt me but makes me look where I step. Yesterday Pam in the Indigenous Culture Centre in Ceduna ran her finger over her tattered map to show the storylines of the area.  “Beautiful country” she rhapsodized and I got it at last. It is so different from the stern straight bushscape that we sped by all yesterday.  I feel like walking on and on but also feel the need for a pee.  I am inhibited, however by the lack of the merest bush to crouch behind. It seems rather exhibitionistic to pee on this huge stage. Way back sit the mighty articulated road trains and I just can’t face the sense of exposure so I turn around  and go back,  Perhaps its just as well because the call of the horizon is quite powerful.  I could have gone on for ever.

We set off again with the intention of getting to the roadhouse at Cocklebiddy because of the nice name but various off road temptations slow us down,  There is the Whale Watching  platform which is windy but very spectacular.  The whales haven’t arrived yet but  it is full of information,  The cove there is where mother whales have their calves and feed them up in the warmer water before their long migration in October.   Sometimes there are as many as a hundred whacking their tails and breaching.  I wish I could have seen them.  When I get back to the van, Grant has stuck a teeny whale on to the dashboard with bluetack which was nice of him.

Our next distraction was an old telegraph station half buried in a sand dune.  The beautiful brickwork was reminiscent of Macchu Picchu – all the stones locked together.  But it was fast falling apart under the pressure of the wind and the sand and all the graffiti will soon be gone along with the whole building.

We are now seriously behind schedule and the blinding afternoon sun makes the drive difficult.  As dusk begins to fall it is hard to see which side of the road the headlights are on and reluctantly we abandon Cocklebiddy as a destination and settle for a nearer roadhouse called Madura Pass Oasis, We are given a red key to the Mens amenity block but no key for the Womens’ which is open. If anything one would expect it to be the other way round. I wasn’t meaning to criticize but I was curious and so I ask about the disparity and get a scowl.  That’s apparently just the way it is.  I guess roadhouses get sick of travelers asking the same questions over and over again.  In fact there is a little trick that gets played in the roadhouse bars all across the Nullarbor.  A large notice above the bar features this sequence of letters

 YCWCYTDFTRFDSTY.

 Of course inquisitive people like me ask what the sign is for – perhaps a test to check you are not too drunk to order another beer?  With a grin you get told “Your Curiosity Will Cost Two Dollars For The Royal Flying Doctor Service Thank You”

But at last there are trees again and hardly anyone in this park. Despite being called an oasis there is no water for our van and no Dump Point.  It is also the most expensive site we've stopped at - $40 a night. There is one other caravan, however with a sign on the back CYCLIST AHEAD.  A ride is being done by a couple to raise funds  for kids’ cancer research. The guy is riding from Adelaide to Broome and wearing pink socks while his partner drives behind  with the van to protect him a bit. I wonder what it’s like when a road train goes by if you are on a bike.

 For once we are not the last to leave in the morning.  The cyclist and his partner are still in situ.  I hope he isn’t getting tired already.  He’s got a long way to go yet.

There is something just slightly gloomy  and inhospitable about Madura Pass Oasis Roadhouse and it is a relief to get to jolly little Balladonia, the hundred km further on. This roadhouse got an apology phone call from US President Carter when chunks of the US Sky Lab fell around the area in 1979  They’ve got a bit of its insulation in a glass case in the little museum there, A lucky lad in Esperance apparently got a reward of thousands of dollars for finding the first piece of the debris and sending it to President Carter. It must have all been so exciting for this little outpost.  There is also a picture of an elephant that came with a circus in the thirties with a note that unfortunately all the performing dogs died on the journey due to dust inhalation.  I think how lucky we are to have a sealed road and not be choked like the doggies.

Downs and Ups in Ceduna - the edge of the Nullarbor

My first impression is that Ceduna is  a sad and tough place. There seems to be a big alcohol problem here. An  aboriginal couple have been yelling at each other in their own language all afternoon, even raising stones (but not throwing them) outside the barbed wire of the caravan park.  It was sad to see and even sadder when I went into the  town and sensed the tangle of feelings there.  In the café I was greeted with friendliness but an aboriginal woman and baby with an adolescent girl got a rather wary “What can I do for you then darl?” Maybe it was my imagination. The woman ordered a pizza very exotic to my ears – crab, mussels and something else and it was happily supplied.  But everywhere there seemed a tension bordering on disgust. Aboriginal people looked the other way when I passed.  I went into a charity shop to find an apron (and did, it was a dollar, a bargain) and noticed a sign indicating that only shoes and clothes would be “put away”  It was explained to me that a curtain behind the counter was full of things selected but not paid for.  “We keep them a fortnight and then they go back on the shelves and we don’t put away big things”  To have to save up to buy second hand clothes suggests poverty indeed.

Feeling a bit  dispirited and slightly ashamed of being a caravan person with butterfish and cauliflower in the fridge I went on to the indigenous art and language centre and was uplifted by some really lovely paintings. I got into conversation with Lynnette who runs the language side of things. Herself aboriginal, she is passionate about  the centre and the vision she had for the whole place.  She told me about Maralinga and how the nuclear testing had wrecked whole communities by bundling them them off their land and how the authorities had neglected to get everyone out before the detonations.  Even now she reckons the wind brings the dust down to Ceduna and contributes to the high cancer rate.   Lynette is a woman of many parts.  She goes round Ceduna after work in a van to gather up the drunks and get them somewhere safe and warm for the night.  

Before we left for the drive across the desert we revisited the centre thinking we might get a small painting.  We each had a favourite but disliked each other’s and eventually settled on a dot painting involving a very blue waterhole.  The artist was working in the studio room and came out rather shyly to meet us.  She’d had a painting bought by a gallery in Switzerland, she said.  We felt lucky to get ours.  We had lunch at the training café in the back of the building,  Tasty potato with coleslaw rather surprisingly served in a MacDonald style box.  Apparently MacDonalds and KFC are coming to Ceduna soon and the centre is providing essential experience for aboriginal young people to put on their job applications.

It was cheering to see all this going on and I felt very happy to have been received with such warmth by these good people who spent ages telling us things we wanted to know.  Pam even gave me a twig from a medicine tree.  “What does it cure?”  I asked.”Everything” she said “Drink it like tea.”  And I shall.

Going west - Venus Bay to Ceduna

We got a little cabin in the park here because all the sites were taken up by regulars who come for months at a time to fish.  The men are round with sweaters and beanies and the women look tough.  But everyone is friendly and full of advice.  Grant was a bit appalled at the place – really harsh with white sand and rock and just scrubby vegetation.  There are fossilized weevil cocoons all over the place that are known as “clogs’ and are about 100,000 years old.  We picked up a couple.

On the little beaches there are carpets of sea birds.  There is a sort of pattern, plump grey and white ones all together near the sealine and black ones with red beaks like straws a bit inland. No mixing.  They are not tame like the pelicans who are casual to the point of cheekiness.  If you creep up on the bird carpet it rises and sails away.

I went on a cliff track walk in a wind that made my nose hurt.  Extraordinary cliffs they were, like crazed stalagmites bashed into nasty shapes by the sea. Once I came on a huge overhang that had broken away and fallen and I kept away from the edge after that.  Tragedies have happened there – a six year old girl fell over not so long ago and two young men have a memorial to them on the cliff edge.  But we were told about the most appalling tragedy of all  by a couple of  fellow campers.  Aborigines will never come here because there was a massacre in the 19^th century when a group of them were driven over the cliffs into the sea.

We had a power cut last night so I cooked my scallops and boarfish by candlelight and very good they were too.

Today is Mothers’ Day and Grant cooked pancakes for breakfast and agreed to take me down a long dirt road to the only sea lion colony on Australia’s mainland after yesterday refusing to do so.  So glad I’m a mother and Australia is so soppy about Mother’s Day!  The drive was fascinating.  We saw water of a weird chemical blue, vestiges of a township called Calca with a derelict house opposite a catholic church.  Someone had daubed “NEW OWNER JESUS” on it.  I went inside the broken door and there was a mad chaos of detritis – a car steering wheel, a single boot, a surf board with peculiar holes in it and a couch devoid of covering – just horse hair or whatever.  Not an inch of the floor was clear. The beams were full of white ant tunneling and there was a ladder going up to the loft.  I didn’t go up it.  I am learning caution.  But it was a creepy place.

We went on to the seal colony.  After miles of  slippery sand and gravel we reached a viewing platform and I rushed out to see what I could see but initially it was nothing but a bleak rocky beach.  I looked more and it seemed to have some piles of slugs on it. Faintly repulsed I went and got the binoculars and there they were for all the world like they were recovering from a wild night out, flopped this way and that.  Fat and inert , some on their tummies and some on their backs.  Then one rose on his chest and humped along a bit leaving a track in the sand.  I tried to imagine what it was like to have to do that – no arms, no legs, just a whiskery face and a huge body to heave along.  I felt a moment of pity and then huge pleasure in being an efficiently adapted land animal.  I also really resolved to lose some weight.

We went back to the road and headed for Ceduna, the beginning of the Nullabor journey.  The caravan park is very full and the exchanges in the amenities block have changed from open questions to more closed ones. “Where have you come from/going to?” is now “Are you going east or west?”

Grant went out to the supermarket to get some beer and said he was asked for photo ID.  He asked why and was told there was a register of alcoholics and they were only allowed to buy one cask of wine a day.  Just as he was leaving the boy who was stacking the shelves came up to the checkout and said “That old man over there just jacketed”  “Right you are” she replied.

 On the face of it this town seems a sad and tough place but I will go exploring in a minute and see what I can see.

Finding friends and fish in Port Lincoln

It has been a beautiful and instructive day.  I walk the gorgeous coastal track into town which was peppered with slightly rusty informative panels. I learn that

“The shoreline here is composed of metamorphic gneiss with intrusions of igneous dolorite dykes”

 After that I look at the wild rocky shore there with a new and slightly nervous respect But it is all so beautiful - wild flowers  and pelicans who come to see you if you throw a stone into the water.  I guess they think it’s a fish jumping.  They are lovely mad birds which seem graceful and ungainly at the same time.

I lost the path when I came to the business part of the port  which is dominated by huge wheat silos and fuel tanks and Keep Out notices and then I drifted into the suburbs until a kind postman directed me to the town centre.  On the map it is marked Dry Zone which  refers to not being able to drink alcohol there.  As in all caravan parks the prohibited activities are indicative of what people must really want to do.  No water bombing, no use of talcum powder, no fish cleaning, no showering in wetsuits and no noise after 10pm. Both Port Augusta and here have Dry Zones.

As usual I was after fish, and Grant was reading a thesis back at the camp site. I was turning the map this way and that working out how to get to “The Fish Place”  when  a weathered looking man called out from the pub “You lost?” (Dry Zone only applies to feral drinking in the streets and parks.)  He was having a beer with his mate who added, rather unnecessarily I thought, “We won’t eat you”  The long and short of it was I bought myself a drink and joined them and we introduced ourselves and they offered to drive me to the fish market.  They bought butterfish and I bought prawns and a red fish with a strange name as well as scallops.  We’d become friends by then.  Both had lived in Alice Springs and were not working.  Rodney was an electrician who said his body was all worn out and Steve was building himself a house.  They told me a lot about Port Lincoln including the story of  heroic 12 year old Frank Hawson who died defending  the womenfolk in his family from aborigines in 1840.  There was a lot of tension when farmers began grazing  traditional aboriginal hunting grounds and attempts were made by farmers to placate the natives by giving them food when they came to the shepherds huts.  One day a group arrived at the Hawsons’ place when the menfolk were away and something went wrong.  Young Frank drove off the aborigines and protected his mother, grandmother  and sisters but was speared himself and died.  The curious thing is  that nothing much was made of the incident until 1911 when a memorial was set up in a little park.  We tracked this down with the help of the kind staff of a primary school who were intrigued by the story too. Hardly anyone local knows about it now. We stayed by the monument and mused a little on the muddle and unfairness of cross cultural dealings in those days, and in these days too I suppose.

Rodney and Steve also told me about how Port Augusta used to be a ghastly drunken place but a female Mayor “who was worse than Margaret Thatcher” sorted it all out and now it was nice tidy town.  Not like Alice Springs, Rodney added darkly.

I waved goodby to my friends at the caravan park and Grant and I sat down and worked out how long we had left and realized we’d have to get a move on if we were going to make Perth on time.  I had a hankering to swim with seals and dolphins so we headed for a place called Venus Bay.  Unfortunately I am the only person who wants to do this, it being  cold and windy and so no boats are going out. I’ve settled for shore walking instead and its probably for the best.  Grant says this place is bleak and horrible but I love it.  Pelicans everywhere who clap their beaks when given fish scraps and weird Alice in Wonderland looking birds called Mollyhawks whose beaks are the shape of a snarl.  Black swans too.

There are various groups of friendly old people here who apparently come for long stretches every year and fish for the exquisite whiting in the Bay They are all plump and brown and a lot of the men have white beards.  They seem very happy.

We have a lovely dinner planned for tonight.  Grant is making paella with all sorts of seafood bought in another fish market on the way out of  Port Lincoln.  One item  is called Boarfish.

I am looking forward to dinner.

Going to Gumeracha Fair, visiting the Killies and thoughts on my final home

We did go to the Medieval Fair and I had a good consultation with a herb crone who gave me a bit of licorice from her garden and told me mugwort was good for premature ejaculation (not, I hasten to add, because I asked).  I also had a long conversation with a spinster who dyed her own wool like me but using only plants and rough and ready methods. “None of this boiling and sieving – just sling the lot in and whack the hell out of it like this and the seeds fall out.”  Her wool was so beautiful – soft purple and pink, lime green and palest of browns.  No blue.  That was the royal colour, she said and needed indigo. 

The whole fair had the relaxed feel of something that had been happening for years.  Families wandering around in their costumes, a weary looking fellow on stilts.  “I’m looking for somewhere suitable to sit down “ he said”and get my gear off”’.A couple of matrons with wreaths in their hair settled on the grass listening to the lute music.

 A lot of bikies had been sharing the road with us for a couple of days.  Or not sharing.  Once, when we wanted to get petrol they had swarmed the petrol station all higgledy piggledy round the pumps.  No room for our hulking van.  “The toads” said Gramt although he didn’t use the word toad but a worse word.  “Shush” I said.  They looked rather menacing.  But here they were all dressed up in leather with swords and shields battling it out in the arena and lying very convincingly dead when beaten by rules I couldn’t understand.

And all this in the beautiful Adelaide Hills still with traces of a bush fire which must have been beyond scary.  Now the burnt tree trunks sport little green branches in the amazing way they do.

We went on to visit Ruth’s parents in their new house – huge by our standards with a large shade place for orchids.  A select few of their thousands had come from the old house.   They were so pleased to be in this place.  I got the woman’s tour from Ros while Grant was initiated into the mysteries of the vast tool shed.  Ros said the last few months had taken years off her life but it didn’t look like that to me.  For all the world they were like a young couple nesting.  And they’d bought a couple of dozen rose bushes in Gawler that morning.  “And I’m going to get some more” Ros confided.  We rang Ruth to tell her we’d made it to her parents and handed the phone to Ros.  Whatever Ruth said  Ros answered “But they look really clean.” Huh!

Ros lent us a broom to  get the fortnioght’s worth of crumbs out of the van and presented us with a dustpan and brush with a picture of a redback spider on it and Iain hustled us off to get safely to our night’s site before nightfall and we were so pleased we stopped in.

Our Gawler  caravan site was a mix of residents and passers through like us.  Grant got into conversation with a 92 year old who lived there.  “I wouldn’t live anywhere else” she said “There’s always new people to talk to and there’s six other van residents  here to keep me company” The rent is $193 a week for a van. And that includes power and use of the amenities block. Apparently the park owners often buy vans of people who die and built up their stock that way.  If it comes to that I think I would quite like to end my days in a caravan park.

Port Augusta

We moved on to Port Augusta yesterday without any high expectations but I immediately took to the place.  It is modern in a small scale way and for the first time in my life I heard a group of aboriginal people talking an aboriginal language.  It was a bubbling sound. 

 I had a small medical problem that needed antibiotics and so we went to the Information Centre to enquire about doctors and we got directions to one which we found easily, and we lumbered to a stop in front of it.  Grant decided to turn the van around for some reason but I, being preoccupied with my quest, didn’t notice.  I leapt out of the van and entered the nearest sliding doors – not exactly like a doctors office but then. I thought, this is South Australia.  A nice young man came up to the counter. “I rang earlier” I said.  “Oh” he said “Who did you speak to” “I’m travelling,” I said “I think it was a Scottish name.”  He looked bemused and by this time I could see everyone behind the counter was looking at me too.  “We don’t have anyone Scottish here” he said and as an afterthought “This is the Centre for Corrective Services” When I explained myself he pointed over the road to the Ghan Medical Centre.  I apologised profusely and thanked him and said I was obviously in need of a bit of correction anyway and left them all chortling in there.  The doctor as it happened wasn’t Scottish anyway but Indian and very nice to me.  And that has been the way in this town, not wealthy but kind and helpful, including the library which has helped me send off this blog.

You get into town by way of a bridge over a generous sprawling waterway called Spencer Gulf.  And the centre of town clusters round a green square with a bandstand in it. There is an Outback Centre with a museum and a video on how Gondwana broke up into continents.  There's a video of Dreamtime stories too, enacted by aboriginal actors which usually end up with people flying into the sky to be stars. I do like this place.

There is a sort of forthrightness about the signs here.  One sign says the police will be called if children hang about the shops when they should be in school.  There is a sign for a Lingerie bar with a professional bra fitter.  I think I might look in.  Grant says it's probably a nightclub but I don't think so as it mentions Mother's Day.

We stop in a cabin in the caravan park as I am slightly under the weather and it is amazing how one appreciates space after living in a little van.  I curl up in the proper bed while G goes to do the laundry.  He comes back with a pensive look on his face. "I met a big black American in there. He asked me where I was heading and I told him and asked him about himself and he said he was working here. He didn't want to say what he was doing. Military? I asked and he nodded.  Don't tell me any more I said or you'll have to kill me won't you.  He didn't laugh."

Today we are off to Port Lincoln where the fish is meant to be nice.  I shall be sad to leave here.

The Coorong and Cudlee Creek

We have arrived in the Adelaide Hills to a simple and muddy little caravan park  with clumps of tent campers round fires wearing lots of jumpers and clutching beverages.  I think how much nicer they look than us in our hulking great van.   We got in late last  night and caused a disturbance because the publican who runs this place said site eleven and he meant seven.  I flitted about with a torch and Grant lumbered menacingly after me in the van and all the little camp circles went quiet.

We had a humble spag bollo for dinner – a comedown after last night’s lobster I have to say but it was good to be still at last.  It was a long day’s drive but oh so beautiful.  Grey green stretches of water and white salt pans and hardly any other cars passing.  Eagles and pelicans in the sky.  We stopped for lunch at Salt Creek in the very middle of the Coorong and I went for a walk in the bush. I have never been alone in a place that was so full of living things.  An echidna strolled by rolling its prickles.  There were black swans with signets in the creek .  The plants were strange with fleshy pink stems topped with white flowers.  They sprang out of the salty ground in little crowds and looked like aliens.  Then I got a bit lost and one bit of mallee scrub began to look exactly like another.  I sensibly took note of a weird tree with bleached bark dripping off its branches and rang Grant on my mobile phone.  “I’m just a bit lost” I said.  “Have you got water?” he said. “No, but I just need some advice.  Could you ask the man in the café?”  His offsider came to the phone but just then I caught a glimpse of the creek and was oriented again.  I thought what a shame it was that Burke and Wills didn’t have a mobile.   

The lone café where Grant was waiting was  called Dove’s place.  It had stuffed deers’ heads with antlers on the walls and a rack of the longest fishing rods in the world.  I had a Coorong mullet burger and very good it was too.  There were provisions for sale including packets of jerky called Road Kill.  Apparently this particular spot is famous for two things – the discovery of oil and a murderer called Malachi Martin who got away with his first murder but was caught the second time.  A certain Washpool Creek commemorates him because he allegedly rinsed his blood soaked self there.

The afternoon drive was a bit tense because of my getting lost and making us late..  We needed to get to Adelaide before dark so we could visit Ruth’s parents, the Kilpatricks, on Sunday and we also had to find a caravan site. Then I was amazed at Grant speaking into his mobile phone to Siri the robot  helper “Find a caravan park near here” A little squeak and a list sprang on to the screen.

 And so we found our way here to Cudlee Creek Caravan Park over hilly hairbendy roads.  It is a place full of surprises.  Just now I went to the rather grotty Ladies and there were three magnificent costumed women there dominating the mirrors, tweaking their wigs and adjusting their lovely gowns.  They are on their way to the Medieval Fair in Gumeracha  ten minutes down the road.  I asked if scruffy campers could go and they said ” Yes you can be peasants, not meaning to be insulting.” I think we will.

Ripples,Riptide and Ticketty Boo

We are in a South Australian town called Robe.  It is the first place we have stopped in that I have not been able to relate to, although the coastline here is as beautiful as any I have ever seen.  The place has a fascinating history though.  Fifteen thousand Chinese would be gold diggers disembarked here in South Australia to avoid the ten pound tax imposed by nearby Victoria on gold miners. Since the fare from China was ten pounds it must have seemed a bit unreasonable to them. They would arrive and be guided over the unpatrolled state border.  Ships set out from here too with bales of wool for England. On one occasion there was a mishap and the cargo fell into the sea. Undeterred the merchants rinsed the lot of it in the lake and sent it off. It got top price in England and so all the wool after that was rinsed in the lake. A few old buildings live on a testament to more bustling times.

But now the little town is just a holiday and retirement place full of accommodation and palatial modern houses with names like Ripples, Riptide, Ticketty Boo and No Wurries. Every bit of grass is manicured and nobody walks anywhere.  I cannot imagine what life in retirement would be like in such a place.  Why would one get up in the morning.

I was a fish pilgrim today as Robe is famous for seafood and crayfish in particular. There is even a special boiler in our caravan park.  I wanted something special to cook in the van. I went down to the quay where fishermen were weighing their catch and asked to buy but no - they were not allowed to sell off the boat.  I pleaded with a fish and chip shop but his only came grilled or battered.  Finally I set off for the industrial area - a long long walk past beautiful empty houses and plodded back with a cooked lobster's antenna tearing its way through my plastic bag.  I stopped to read a free copy of "Senior" newspaper that I picked up in the Information centre and learnt about the importance of discussing end of life decisions with your loved ones.  Maybe tonight over our lobster will be the time.

I am probably being unfair. It is probably quite different in the high season and perhaps what I picked up from most of the places I stopped at was the jaded indifference of shop people who have had too many crass  tourists through a long hot summer. Or maybe it was my pommy accent.