The End Of The Road

Today we officially took our first steps in good ole' Boston in over 16 months. We almost had to follow the freedom trail in order to find our way around.

If you've spent most of the past year and a half wondering where we were, you're not alone. This collage should help a bit; it's all the places we've slept on our journey. Or at least all the places we remembered to take a photo.


We can't say thank you enough to all the people who have opened up their homes (and pantries) to us in every country - our current hosts included!. We love our tent Gusty, but it is good to get a shower occasionally. (If your house isn't in the collage, it means we were too bleary eyed when we left to get a photo and you need to send us one!)

We did a rough count of how many times we stayed in different locations:
Our tent (Gusty): 74 different sites (100+ nights)
Houses of friends and family: 28
Motels/hotels/B&Bs/hostels: 16
Huts: 15
Train: 1 (overnight from Sydney to Adelaide)
Boat: 1 (on Doubtful Sound)
Car: 1 (Under a bridge, down by a river. I'm not kidding, it was late, we were tired, and we didn't want to camp next to train tracks for another night.)

Not to fear though, being back in Boston does not mean we will stop having adventures. Stay tuned for more, maybe we'll even fill in some of the gaps while we're at it, you never know.

Australia? Did we go there?

Well, 3841 Australia pictures have now been reduced down to the much more easily consumed (and uploaded) number of 290. Mekayla still thinks that is too many. (As if you have something better to do than live vicariously through us. HA!) So we have also created a Top 40 list showing the best of the best.

Of course you have probably seen many of the top 40 on the blog, but now you can also download full resolution versions of them and use them as you see fit. Who doesn't want a desktop background of me sitting in a tent, or me looking at a termite mound. The possibilities for plastering my picture on every facet of your computer experience are endless. So dive on in:

Australia Photos

If you are unsure of where places are, take a look at our journey map of Australia.

Within each of the albums you can also start a slideshow of the photos by clicking on this icon on the top left of the page:

The slideshow does a good job of loading the other pictures in the background while you are looking at one. Unfortunately our site is not quite as user friendly as it should be, so most people probably never realize that the slideshow feature is there.

Speaking of updating the site, I updated the main page: www.saltypoint.com. Not that this actually makes any real difference in anyone's lives, but I've been having fun with web programming recently, and thought I would share.

Anyway, enjoy Australia. We need a bit of a break before trying to tackle New Zealand photos, but hopefully they will get up in early February. Of course the number of NZ photos keeps increasing too. I took 400 photos of seals over the weekend! Cheers!

More kangaroos

I said before that we were going to stop taking pictures of the squirrels. But then a clan of kangaroos showed up and our resolution broke down entirely.

Lastly, for all of the golf fans, we have the golf course in Anglesea, Victoria where a mob of kangaroos lounge on the golf course relatively oblivious to the golfers.

The Great Ocean Road

The Great Ocean Road was built to be similar to the Pacific Highway in California, but I would have to say it is a fair bit more spectacular.

And at sunset the red colors of the rocks really starts to stand out.

We were also blessed with stormy weather. I decided not to bore you with twenty pictures of rainbows. Why are there so many pictures of rainbows? Possibly it is because we saw eight in one day. It alternated between rain and sunshine every half hour or so.

Well, this one has a rainbow in it, but that is really incidental. There is also a dog!

It is rare that we end up with any pictures of the two of us these days and since there are parents reading this blog I will throw some red meat to the wolves in this post.

A Far Too Fast Tour of South Australia

Our whirlwind tour of South Australia took us from Adelaide up to the Flinders Ranges and back down through the vineyards of the Barossa Valley. The drives in between entertained us with open country of yellow fields of canola starting to flower, sheep as red as the dust in which they were grazing, and lonely, broken homes left behind by failed settlers.

We were lucky enough to have timed our arrival in South Australia with the beginning of spring. The wildflowers had just started flowering when we reached the Flinders Ranges for a few nights of camping. We also hiked over twenty-two kilometers of spectacular, rugged terrain.

The day before we got to watch some Aussies try and conquer a hill with their 4WD. They got a pretty good running start, but when they were halfway up the 60-degree slope the wheels spun in the dirt until the engine stalled out from the dust. They then meekly turned around and drove away. It is quite entertaining what you get to see just while sitting at your campsite.

We spent only one day tasting wine in the Barossa Valley.

The Indian Pacific Railway

Our train ride from Sydney to Adelaide was a beautiful experience. Traveling by train allowed us the luxury of reading while the 1400 kilometers sped effortlessly past the windows. We left Sydney in the afternoon and watched the sun set upon the Blue Mountains. When the sun rose again we were greeted by kangaroos racing along beside the train and vast stretches of flat, scrubby outback.

Near the outback town of Broken Hill a recorded announcement described the largest freshwater lake in Australia and that we were about to pass it. Immediately after the recording, the conductor came on and explained that the large expanse of scrubby trees to our left was what used to be the lake. The drought (or climate change) in Australia has completely dried the lake up. Where before we would have been looking out on boats fishing, there were now trees and bushes.

As we crossed over into the state of South Australia the emptiness of the outback began to be replaced with farmlands and sheep and cattle pastures. The brown, scruffy country turned to green, manicured farms. Both are beautiful in their own ways.

I guess the only problem with the train is the rather poor sleeping accommodations in the cheap seats. (Have I mentioned yet that I got bored of shaving)

Alas, We've Run Out of Time

Our last day in Australia. We have a date with some penguins tonight, and then tomorrow morning we get on our flight to New Zealand. I'm hoping to use the flight to catch up on writing a few more blog posts to finish telling some stories about Australia, so there will probably be one more splattering of Australia posts to come.

We're definitely looking forward to being in one place for longer than a few days, but are going to miss all the camping and driving around we've been able to do.

The past few days have been great though because we've been staying just outside of Melbourne with some new friends we met while camping up in Queensland. They showed us footy (Australian Rules Football), fed us kangaroo, and made a last valiant attempt to get us to eat Vegemite.

Snorkelling and Other Sea Life

In Cairns and the Whitsundays we did a bit of snorkeling which was absolutely beautiful. I’m still not very proficient at underwater photography, but with some editing of the pictures some came out ok.

Anyway, here are our two intrepid snorkelers. Mekayla’s picture came out with a bit of a modernist twist that I rather like.

This picture of the coral does mostly capture the colors correctly, but it is impossible to capture the experience when it is just a few feet from your face.

The schools of fish that seem as interested in us as we are in them are in my opinion one of the coolest parts of snorkeling. And it is amazing how many fish you see in just two or three feet of water.

While I’m on the subject of sea life I might as well sneak in a few pictures from the whale watch. Not much different from New England whale watching in my opinion except that the sea is an incredible blue.

See ya!

The Elusive Platypus

Given the amount of time we spent trying to photo a platypus and because Mekayla went and shaped her birthday cake as one, I cannot skip out on writing a blog post about trying to observe them.

They are as cute as you think they are, but much smaller and rarer than you can imagine. The first time we went looking for them we sat quietly by the side of a pool where it was said they came out and expected it would be rather obvious when one showed up. After over an hour we gave up. We saw our first one from 60 yards away when we noticed other people pointing off into the water.

It was a barely visible hump that was really only distinguishable because when it was on the surface for 10 seconds at a time it swam around. Then the platypus would arch its back and disappear into the black river. They would then stay under water for a couple of minutes before briefly resurfacing.

We probably spent 3 hours trying to find and take pictures of them that day, and then we got up at daybreak to pursue them again the next day as well. We certainly did see many and with patience got to watch them for quite some time. But taking good pictures of them was very difficult because they were so shy. The few times that they did surface near me I was rarely able to focus on them and take the picture before they submerged again. This is what I got most of the time:

But there were a few decent shots in the end as well. This one does a pretty good job of showing their size.

On the Road

The roads in Australia certainly deserve their own post. They are a very different experience from the interstate highway system in the United States. Occasionally we have actually come across divided highways with overpasses and separate passing lanes. But far more often we have seen one long stretch of two lanes, one in each direction.

Passing (called overtaking here) is always an adventure, and of course there are the previously mentioned road trains. More exciting still was the many miles of the Kennedy Highway and Gregory Developmental Road (there is probably a bad joke in that which only my Mother would find funny) where the two lanes in either direction converged to a single lane, in both directions. The speed limit is 100 km/h.

When cars come in the other direction you each slow down and drive with half your wheels in the dirt and the other half on the pavement. When a road train comes you pull over off of the pavement. They don’t get out of your way. Fortunately a helpful gas station owner gave me a lengthy rundown of what to expect on these roads. There were signs, but having someone hit you over the head before the insanity starts is quite helpful.

Along the Kennedy highway we also saw someone who was putting our adventure to shame: a lone biker heading out into the outback. When we passed him, he probably had over a hundred kilometers before the next town. His bike was weighed down by what was mostly water and food.

Along one of the back roads before we left the Atherton Tablelands we also met the largest snake we have ever seen. Its body was only halfway onto the road and yet it was taking up the entire lane and had its head 2 feet up in the air looking at us as we drove past. Since seeing it I have lamented not stopping to take a picture, but at the time all I could think was “big snake, must go faster.”

We figured out afterwards that it was actually a python, completely nonpoisonous and not dangerous at all. Since seeing it though there have been numerous other sightings: snake shaped branch, snake shaped bark, snake shaped leaf, etc. Maybe one of these days we will again see an actual snake. In the meantime our travels will occasionally be delayed by detritus in the road.

Oh, and this is me fording my first creek in Eungella National Park.

And here is me testing the depth before going across another one. We were actually kind of frightened by this one, but it all worked out.

Trying to Catch Up

We’ve now reached the state of Victoria and have only a few days left in Australia. There seem to be a ton of blog posts I have partially completed, so I think I will have to resort to summarizing in some of them and using more pictures than words. The route map is also now updated and a couple of thousand kilometers have passed by since the last update including a 1400 kilometer train ride.

Mekayla’s Birthday Cake: Not Just a Dessert, an Experience

The real reason we rented a cottage for a few days in the Blue Mountains was so that we would have an oven in which to bake a cake.

For those who are unaware, Mekayla has a birthday tradition of creating a differently shaped cake every year. This year she chose a platypus. And as if sculpting a cake into a platypus wasn’t difficult enough she also decided that the “cake” should be a chocolate bread pudding since we are partaking in a fair bit of British inspired culture these days.

Of course, neither of us has ever made a bread pudding before (though we did eat one our Servas hosts made up in Queensland). Our kitchen also turned out to be lacking in a few areas: a rather deficient baking pan, metric measurements in the recipe but nothing to measure them with, an oven in Celcius which didn’t measure temperature correctly anyways. Oh, and this being a recipe of Mekayla’s obviously meant we had to find a way to add fruit to it.

It turned out pretty well despite the limitations. In the end we think that there was not enough pudding for the amount of bread we ended up using. The top layer of bread was much too dry. On the second day we just started removing the top layer and eating the bottom layers of fruit and bread. These were quite delicious.

At some point we need to find some willing soul who really knows how to make bread pudding and is willing to teach us. Also chocolate bread pudding seems like it might be some bastardization of a real bread pudding. The real thing seems like it should not have any chocolate in it, but for a birthday cake I think the chocolate is very necessary.

Happy 28th Birthday

We spent Mekayla’s birthday yesterday the way all good birthdays should be spent: camping! We started off the camping season camping on Cape Cod for my birthday, and now we’ve gotten rather adept at it after having camped about 23 of the past 30 nights. Pretty good start to our year in the wild.

Although my posts are still a bit behind the times we’re now down on the outskirts of the Blue Mountains about 250 km west of Sydney. We stayed at Dunn’s Swamp which despite the name is an amazingly beautiful area where an ancient river carved deep troughs into the surrounding sandstone.

We had gotten a little worried before we got here that it was going to be rather cold (after one night where it dropped down to freezing). But the weather has actually improved as we went more south and spring is beginning to show us some of the great Australian wildflowers that we have read about. And never fear parents, our sleeping bags and tent are holding up exceptionally well in the weather.

Today we are heading up into the Blue Mountains where we have rented a cottage for a more extended celebration of Mekayla’s birthday for the next four days. Then it will be on to Sydney and on the 19^th we are taking a train ride to Adelaide.

I guess the way to end this post is to finish off with some pictures of the birthday girl.

We had pancakes with chocolate melted on them for breakfast.

Australian Squirrels

In Boston occasionally you see tourists spending time taking pictures of squirrels and chipmunks. Certainly I too have been guilty of this as well, but for the most part we all get over it by the age of 12 or so. And by 18 after having seem dozens jump out in front of your car they have become a cute but mild nuisance.

We think we are taking pictures of Australian "squirrels". But they certainly are cute. Wallabies and kangaroos seem to be just about everywhere. In areas where they have been around humans they are really not that bothered by us. And the roads are certainly littered with their carcasses.

Since they are so adorable, here are some more kangaroos. Eventually we might get tired of it, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Servas: Atherton Tablelands

We stayed with our first Servas hosts on August 20^th. Servas is an international peace organization that has a network of host families willing to take in wayward travelers for a few nights. For the hosts they get to “travel” without leaving home, and for travelers you get to actually meet and talk with some locals.

Our first hosts were a retired geologist and a psychologist (doing work with Australian Vietnam vets) living on 100 acres in the Atherton Tablelands. Not really a farm, but they were impressively self sufficient with various fruit trees (grapefruit, mandarins, lemons, plums), 3 one megaliter tanks for storing rainwater, a wood-burning stove for cooking and heating, and solar panels were just starting to be installed.

David had also just recently gotten a horse who seemed to serve as both transportation and lawnmower.

To the untrained (American) eye these are chickens, but in reality they are chooks (shockingly this word is also in my spell checker’s dictionary).

Over the two days we had lots of discussions about geology, some politics, non-violence movements, and climate change. There is too much to summarize here, but definitely a great experience.

Map of Our Progress

We've added a map of our progress on the right hand side of the blog page with our itinerary.

You can also see it here: Map of Progress.

We've now entered New South Wales! It is still raining.

Rain, cows, and goats

Well, we find ourselves a bit behind in keeping up with blogging. Lots of stories percolating, but this one will have to do for now. Currently we are in Airlie Beach and on our way to Eungalla National Park hopefully to finally see some platypuses (I prefer to call them platapi).

We spent about forty-eight hours camping in the rainforest a few hours from Cairns. For thirty-six of those hours it rained. At least the forest delivers on its promises. Everything was green and beautiful.

Following the highway a bit further we suddenly burst from dense rainforest to the most rolling, majestic cow pastures I have ever seen. Did Massachusetts look like this before it regrew all of the forests?

This led us to some of the best cheeses (and cheese cake) we’ve ever had. Some of the locals though were a bit crass and rude about letting us use their roads:

Eventually we snuck by him, but somehow I think those horns are for more than show, because he definitely wasn’t concerned about our car.

Spew

The night before snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef, we went to a slide show summarizing the life on the reef and what to look for. Near the end of the presentation the instructor talked about some fish that like to follow along beside boats hoping for someone to vomit (spew) and provide them with a “hot lunch”. She then casually mentioned that there would be high winds the next few days and everyone should take some harsh motion sickness pills (not the wimpy, feel good ginger tablets that don’t really work).

After the slide show about half the class lined up in a nearby 24 hour pharmacy to buy some motion sickness pills. Boy was that a good idea.

Mekayla and I had an incredible day of snorkeling. The sea was a bit rough, but it was still beautiful and there was not a hint of seasickness. Many of our fellow travelers were not so lucky. I think half of them were sick within 5 minutes of leaving the dock. At about 10 AM as we reached our first snorkeling spot I overheard one passenger ask a crewmember when they would be getting onto land. The answer was 5PM. Some people had a very long day.

Now we are off to camp again. It looks like we will be pitching the tent at night and in the rain. Just the way we like it. Now off to get used to driving a manual transmission with my left hand. Later.

Fishing, Flooded Roads, and Crocs

The East Alligator River crossing (poorly named by some crazy British explorer, there are no alligators here) between Kakadu National Park and Arnhem Land is about 70km upstream from the ocean. At low tide the river is flowing normally, and the crossing has about 10 centimeters of water running over it. It can easily be crossed in a four wheel drive vehicle. As the tide comes in, the water starts flowing back in the opposite direction until the crossing is covered by over half a meter of water. The area attracts four things: drivers crossing the river, fishermen, crocs, and gawkers (us).

We also didn’t see anybody get his car overturned while doing the crossing, but every time one drove across all the fishermen stopped to watch.

From what we heard, a truck overturns here once a year. At high tide there were more than a few trucks that approached the edge of the crossing, paused for a little bit, and then started quickly backing away. Discretion is the better part of valor.

The other entertainment for the fishermen was playing find the croc. This one was maybe 40 yards away from where most of them were fishing.

And then a guy in a boat showed up to fish. And he tied up his boat 6 feet from where a crocodile just submerged. The croc was almost as big as the boat, Mekayla said I might finally get some scale for taking pictures of the croc.

Now I know that these guys have probably been fishing croc infested waters all their lives so maybe it isn’t a big deal, but one of the fishermen on the bank yelled out “You do know that there is a croc there don’t you?” and the guy just went on starting to fish. We weren’t sure if he hadn’t heard, or had seen it and didn’t care, or if he was just crazy.

So let’s review: trucks fording through river, fishermen on the banks, crazy boat fishermen, Aussie bravado, and salt water crocodiles. This is the most entertaining spot on the planet. We returned here many times.