2018 irresponsible cat owners road trip part 2

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2018 irresponsible cat owners road trip instalment 1

Alison and I each own half a cat. The same cat. Such a good arrangement, until you decide to go on holiday together. My work was being a shit about accommodating my recovering shoulder, Alison was in the midst of a year off work, and over a bottle of wine, we hatched a plan to jump in the car and run away up the centre. We jettisoned Mishka and our meagre efforts at responsibility to the arms of Greg and drove north, muttering about how we perhaps needed to recruit a third comother.

It was in Adelaide that I first realised that this was to be an educational holiday. Alison had filled her weekend in Adelaide with galleries. I had filled mine with hot dates. But we did both go to the Art Gallery of South Australia on the Sunday before we left and I was treated to an explanation of modern curatorial practice and lessons in art interpretation. Over the years of travelling with Douglas, Lou and Clive, I have picked up quite a lot of knowledge about birds. I expect I will have picked up a few tips about art by the end of this one. I’m not sure what wisdom I share with my fellow travellers on these journeys in return.

Our drive to the centre was fuelled by coffee and conversation. Sex, art, the environment, more sex, relationships, travels, history, even more sex. Everything meaningful there is to talk about except climbing. Fortunately for Alison, I can diversify. The trip was all fun and laughter until the first morning camping. I got up and started my well practiced morning tea ritual. Then it hit me that I had been doing that with Douglas for over 6 years. He is not a morning person, so it was always me by myself, putting water on and looking around at the morning light, early birds and probably grumbling to myself about the cold. Certainly I was complaining about the cold this time. Then I’d crawl back into the tent with tea for both of us. It was just enough of a memory to bring back those of the many road trips we had done together, and then the thought that maybe he would never be doing this again. Fortunately, Alison was up to distract me with more talk about sex before I got too miserable.

Past Port Augusta, we enter the land that white people failed to tame, and cultivated land is behind us. The desert is constantly harsh, but also varied and beautiful. Its harshness has helped it to retain most of its original form in the face of wannabe farmers. Unfortunately, its harshness hasn’t fended off a smattering of cattle stations, pest animals and weeds and the medium sized mammals of this area are all but gone.

Our deep and meaningful conversation brought us safely into Coober Pedy where we’d decided to go the cultural experience and booked an underground room. It was a cell. Twin beds in a windowless hole in the ground with a fluorescent light. We decided heading out for the other cultural experience of an underground bar was critical at this point. We ordered drinks, chatted up the bar maid, put money in the juke box – the only thing missing was a game of pool. We talked about sex instead.

Leaving the literal and figurative hole of Coober Pedy behind, the landscape is a moonscape. The slag piles are almost continuous. It’s just holes and mounds. No remnant bush. Does any of it get repaired? How is it that mining that completely destroys the land around the town get celebrated like it is? 

110 kilometres per hour is starting to feel pretty slow. People overtake us like we are standing still. We overtake RV after RV. One is called the Crusader. Why would you brand your RV after a series of religious wars? Are they going after the infidel in the Territory? Are we the infidel? We pass the territory border and cheer as we speed up to 130. We move onto psychology, food, music, comedy and what’s that other subject again? Oh yeah, sex. We get inspired to make micro videos. I realise I’ve barely done my shoulder exercises at all and work out a car physio program. I could market it to Dave. Just before Yulara, we randomly pick a side road and find ourselves the perfect camp first go and pour wine to watch the sunset on Uluru.

Uluru is one of those Australian icons we all grew up with and somehow, Alison and I had gotten through 95 years between us without seeing it. Of course, it is 435km away from Alice Springs, which is already in the middle of nowhere. It’s really quite a long way from all the other things in the Centre. Despite that isolation, it is packed. Another party seeking bush camping tell us the campground in town in full. We drive up to the park, mostly staring at the rock and going gaga. I thought was making an entertaining video of how many variations of “fuck, look at that” Alison came up with, but turns out I lack basic videography skills. It was off when I thought it was on, and I got a lovely 5 minutes of the foot well when I thought I’d turned it off. Just as we were completely entranced by the rock, we see the giant traditional indigenous faux blimp. For a moment it doesn’t quite sink in, because it is so incongruous. Who thought they’d paint a bloody great big white balloon, put it on a tether and get people to pay to go up in it??? Then we come around a corner and to a standstill. Queueing to get in to the park took nearly an hour.

Ok, so seeing Australian icons isn’t really my usual sort of holiday. But if we were ever going to see them, we were going to have to join the show, and here we are. The rock is, however, mindblowing. The colours, the textures, the features and contours, it just screams at me to touch it. Yes, I am a rock obsessive. We start the walk around it at a cracking pace with the plan to leave the hoards behind. It doesn’t work because we just catch up with more. I suppose it’s good that so many people are doing a 10km walk, but, I like my peace and quiet. We dodge bikes and sedgeways. I drool over some epic offwith corners. Steep pocketed walls. Roof cracks. Flared chimneys. Even the slabs are calling out to me, and we all know what I think of slabs. Am I ill from rockclimbing withdrawal syndrome? But the rock is featured almost like turtle back, and even though the amazing curving ridges and domes are slabs, they are stunning lines. Alison learns that I can’t diversify from climbing that much.

The other problem of Australian icons is Australian tourists. We arrive back at camp to find another party have moved in. They are ok, actually, if you try not to be too biased against certain sorts of Australians. They are friendly, polite and quiet, and we tried to ignore the incessant firewood collection and stories of destruction wrecked in the process. Or the insistence on climbing Uluru. When the indigenous people politely ask you not to do it, don’t they feel incredibly rude traipsing up that travesty of a fence line? The next lot turn up and try and blast on up the hill. They don’t make it, chuck a tanty and head cross country to get back down. Group 3 also goes the random drive across the bush as if their 4wd gives them a right to go anywhere. Over the hill, we can hear yelling and swearing from another camp. In the morning, these guys crank a generator then hoon around in their dirt bikes. Another lot settle in further back down the road, yell at their kids and put on some doof doof. It’s the sort of population that remind you why we have to regulate camping.

Kata Tjuta is a breath of wilderness in comparison to Uluru.  The track becomes rugged quite rapidly, and most people only make it to the first lookout. By the time we were walking up Valley of the Winds, we saw only the odd other party. And it is stunning. Conglomerate domes rise around you and you actually walking in and amongst them, gain height and lookout over the landscape. It’s a much more engaging walk than the one around Uluru. Besides, I love conglomerate. It’s faceclimbing without reach problems. The mishmash of pebbles and holes mean that there is always something higher to stand on, something I can reach. Blank rock doesn’t really exist in conglomerate. As I fondle the rock and blether to Alison about the joys of conglomerate, she is again realising I am a little single minded.

Driving again, it’s plastic surgery, body hair, geology. We still come back to sex. We decide we should make a pod cast. Surely we should share our witty banter with everyone? Moving onto King’s Canyon, we analyse Greg’s dance mix on my ipod. It’s a review of extremes, either omg yes, or omg, what were you thinking, Greg? Religion, ice cream and spoons. In particular, what flavour ice cream would Alison be and what sort of spoon is she looking for? If you are starting to wonder if we are going insane with each other’s company, let me correct you that this is, infact, a meeting of genius minds.

Walking up King’s Canyon, some middle aged father tries to entice his son along by imagining there’s a pole dancer at the end. We may have made some loud inappropriate comments about hot young male strippers as we walked on. Sexist males aside, King’s Canyon is lovely, but the walk is all too short. It is rife with birds and holly grevilia flowering, and red rock completely different again to Kata Tjuta and Uluru. In Kathleen Springs, we are inspired to write a children’s book by the language on the interpretive signs. They seem to be aimed at 8 year olds. “A kangaroo or emu can feed many people”.  Our book is a sex education manual for kangaroos and emus when their parents have fed many people. It’s not delirium, OK, we are fine.

That evening, I look up from writing this to find a dingo sniffing at Alison’s water bottle a metre in front of me. It’s a bit like camping in bear country in the US and Canada, where there are warning signs everywhere, but after a while of not seeing them, you become complacent. Then you turn around cooking dinner one day and a bear is helping itself to your loaf of bread beside you.  I nearly jumped out of the chair, but the dingo just pottered along. In search of a baby I guess. There have been a lot of bad taste dingo and baby jokes so far. I’ll try not to offend you with them.

The rim walk at Kings Canyon turned out to be one of the best touristy walks I have done. I am a complete offtrack walking snob. I love being away from other people, the process of navigating and exploring, discovering magical places. One of the reasons the rim walk is so good is because it provides magical places and exploring that you don’t expect when you leave the car park. The country above the rim is stunning, convoluted with micros gorges and mini peaks, it explores the upper canyon and provides stunning views of the surrounding country. Then when you get back to the car park, Parks NT provides free wifi for you to post your photos on facebook. I guess it’s effective promotion. There is no mobile reception for hundreds of kilometres in any direction.

The road to Hermansburg from here is soft 4wd, but it’s the first 4wding Alison has taken her new car on. I get told off for calling it an SUV. She even threatened to leave me on the side of the road if I called it an SUV again. It’s an AWD wagon. I suppose SUVs are only what rich Melbournites drop their kids at school in.

The road isn’t really 4wd. I could get the little red car across it, but it has some major corrugations. The road looked like grade 3 rapids at times there. Vibration therapy we called it. You know those infomercials trying to sell you those things you put your feet on whilst watching TV and it miraculously vibrates away tonnes of fat? We lost like 5 kg each on that road.

The road into Palm Valley is delightful in comparison. Alison got to cross her first river beds (we didn’t need a snorkel), in fact, you basically drive down the Finke River at times. And at the end, we have a beautiful campsite on the Finke and it has not-hot showers and free gas cookers. For $6.60 per person. The Victorian government should have a chat with the NT government. We walked the last 5 km into the Valley as there was really no convincing the not-SUV that it was a high clearance 4wd. It turns out that walking is barely slower than 4wding. We jumped in and out of the river bed as we went whenever it looked more appealing than the road. The rock around the valley is soft, dark red sandstone, forming landscape almost reminiscent of Utah towers. Maybe an older version of them. Cabbage palms and cycads line the creek bed. It’s gorgeous, but it’s becoming incredibly windy. Our tents were sails when we pitched them, I nearly took off with mine as a paraglider and only held it down with double pegs and rocks in the soft sand. Worse than rigging on a glacier. The red dust has infiltrated Alison’s tent when we get back to camp. It’s fine enough to get through the no see um mesh of her tent inner and a red powder was layered over everything.

Alison is nothing if not enthusiastic and the next day we pack up, go for a 2k walk to the lookout, drive to Hermansberg, get fuel and shopping, faff on the internet, go to the historical precinct where I feel terribly like a voyeuristic white person, I get more art lessons, then we find they have real coffee and strudel. Lunch consisted of coffee, cheezels and strudel. I’m discovering all these things Alison has a weakness for that I would never have expected. She’s also a terrible influence on my drinking. We’re on holiday, she tells me.  We do more internetting, drive to Albert Namatjira’s house then drive over to Redbank Gorge, set up camp, pack for the walk up Mt Sonder tomorrow and Alison still wants to walk up to the gorge. Are you exhausted yet? I was. We compromise with driving up to the gorge and just doing the 2.4k from there. Alison admits it was a little more work than she was expecting, but late afternoon turns out to be a great time to walk up the gorge as everybody was on the way out and we had the place to ourselves. Us and the duckies. Or maybe they were grebes. I needed a Douglas to help me out. Birds make me miss Douglas. Whenever a cool bird event happens, my first urge is to tell Douglas about it. And of course, he has the bird app. It was like a thrid person in our relationship. Without the bird app, I have no hope of identifying anything.

As we headed into the West Macdonnells, Gosse Bluff arises as another massive red monolith. This region really knows how to produce big red rocks. The roads are windy for the first time in 1000s of kilometres. Apache comes on the stereo. We have been pulling out all the clichés. Treaty took us into uluru. Beds are Burning into Kata Tjuta. But the titty bar music is my favourite. Dusty Springfield got us started on the trip, and she makes a regular reappearence.

When I wake up in Redbank Gorge, it’s cold, but the nights have all been pretty cold and I begin my morning tea making ritual. The water freezes as it hits the bottom of the pan. I go to refill my water bottle from the large container and discover the tap is frozen over. Alison stays in bed in disbelief that I can survive out here. I entice her out of bed by making coffee, but we quickly retire to the car in the hope that body heat and steam might warm the space up. 

It’s still cold when we start up Mt Sonder. You can tell that when I do the whole climb in my thermal, jumper and leg warmers. We bump into people coming down who had started walking at 3 am in order to catch the sunrise from the summit. And here we were complaining about the cold this morning. The wind along the ridge was icy, and the ridge undulated along for 5 km. The walk back was already looking very long. Alison started having olfactory hallucinations. She swore she could smell lamb chops. She though it was altitude. I thought it was fatigue. The ridge ends in a sudden drop off with stunning views and following the natural instinct of short people everywhere to reach the highest position, I climb up onto the cairn on the summit to get the best viewpoint. When we got back to camp and Alison updated her journal of what we had done since leaving Natimuk, she thought perhaps we really had done a lot and maybe a rest was in order.

After Glen Helen, Ormiston Gorge, Ellery Big Hole (which is effectively an outdoor swimming pool for families), we have Tourist Fatigue. Tourist Infrastructure Fatigue. I feel like a bit of a grump, but there is really only so much of this tourist stuff I can do. This really is the family road trip itinery that we are on. Even more so than the grey nomads. We are rare amongst the families, and even rarer amongst the serious 4wds and camper trailers. We could count the amount of other people in cars and tents we’ve seen on one hand. Families yelling at their children are getting tedious. Alison suggested we could put on some music. I thought about that for a moment and ask if I could put Too Drunk Too Fuck on really loud? She wouldn’t let me.

Fortunately, when we go to do the Ormiston Pound loop, there is no one else there. It is also a varied and beautiful walk. We were expecting to just slog up and over the ridge, across the flat of the pound and back through a short gorge. It turns out to be a delightful climb up valleys and ridges to a stunning view over the pound, the flat walk in the pound only brief, with multiple crossings of the creek and into the gorge, with 2.5k of boulder hopping and 300m walls. It’s pretty good really. Only when we got to the carpark end did we encounter the tedious hoards. Of course, the up side of the tedious hoards and infrastructure is coffee. There is a café at the gorge car park. So we had coffee and cake and settled in for a leisurely afternoon.

Since leaving Natimuk 2 weeks ago, we have driven 4000km. Walked 100km. Moved camp 9 times. Taken 347, 680, 201 photos (give or take) and a few less silly videos. Had precisely 0 hot showers since Adelaide, no phone reception for 10 days and have no wine left. We are tired. Hell, we even have a bit of Gorge Fatigue. Because after 20 or so gorges, they start to be a little anticlimactic. Tomorrow morning, we are making a beeline directly for a café in Alice. Good coffee and hot breakfast and finding ourselves a hotel to spoil ourselves with for the weekend. And maybe some hot dates. Because one thing we haven’t fatigued from is talking about sex. Then we will try and find ourselves some real wilderness and head further north.