melbourne v1.3

lyds and i left alice springs for the 2 day, 1,600km road trip south through the desert to adelaide. the paper just announced that alice springs will become a dry town to combat down the public safety issues. just in time too. a guy tailed me to my hostel after my last post. but back to the journey ...

1,600km. that is a lot of clicks. and one blown tire. all the way from the northern territory to south australia. the first night on the road we spent in coober pedy, the opal capital of the world. the average temperature in town is somewhere in the 50 degree zone. the nights are freezing. the topography has been compared to that of mars. to duel with the temperatures most of the town live underground. in fact, "coober pedy" is aboriginal for "white man's hole in the ground." people burrow into the dry earth with only their front doors poking out like some dirty, brown hobbiton. inside the dugouts the temperature stays around 26 degrees. no need for a/c. no need for heat. you just need an air hole for ventilation. once in town we got to tour a dugout house - let me compare it throughout time. prehistorically it would be like the flintstones, evolving into the count of monte cristo's lair, and finally into some type of "lost" bomb shelter. with the lights turned off it is completely dark, the walls still rough to the touch despite being painted with some type of sealant. we spent the night in an underground hostel. it was a new experience. the bedbugs had to come out of the rock instead.

up before the sun to continue our trip southwards through the great nothing. surrounding the town - the reason everyone is living in the ground - are thousands upon thousands of holes. for every hole there is the cone-like dune of earth beside it. as the sun came up it illuminated the thousands of cones. it resembled a vast army camp of tents. and so the kms were eaten up by our van with the occasional roo or turn sighting. both would receive about the same enthusiasm.

by 6pm we had arrived in adeliade. by 8:00pm lyds and i were in flight to melbourne where we had begun our australia adventure 3 months prior. i had already made reservations for some benches in melbourne airport's terminal 2 for the night. by 9:30am the next morning, after having been awake for the better part of 36 hours, we were on a flight to new zealand on the day our australian visas expired.

i was asleep before the plane had leveled off. note to the opposition: lotta holes in the desert.

final notes on australia:

wildlife - don't touch anything! everything is deadly. no matter where you are in australia, as night comes on bats fill the night sky. what we call a bat in canada, and australian calls a butterfly.
economics - frustratingly, nothing has a price tag on it in convenience stores. it is like playing the price is right until you get to the till.
geography - this is a huge country. larger than europe. as such, every place you want to get to is very far apart. my cottage is in my backyard in comparison.
dining - food is very expensive in australia. as such, if you did not have to order at the bar, we would not be eating at the establishment. i have had french fries as a side for more meals than i could count.
fluid dynamics - water in this country is like a good country song. vary rare. in a few years it will be a black market currency.
linguistics - this country may have been founded by those who invented english, but no one speaks it here. fair dinkum.

what a rippa.