Nancy & Neil tour Australia's great outback

Warning!
This is a huge webpage (5 Mb) containing 155 photos of reduced size and resolution. If you try to print this webpage, it will run to many, many pages and could easily exhaust your ink cartridges. We had to delete four older pages from the website to make room for this monster. It may be easier to drag your computer-phobic loved one, with whom you may wish to share this page, kicking and screaming to your computer rather than try to print it. Yes, we're talking about Nancy's Moma.

The Great Australian Auto Tour began on March 4th from the parking lot at the Scarborough Marina, just north of Brisbane, where our boat, Active Light, is moored. We are well convinced that we are indeed two lucky old fools. In the first place, just to be here and able to take this two-month auto tour of Australia and secondly, in that we were able to find a good used car for a very reasonable price. It was a 1985 Nissan Bluebird station wagon and it carried us and all our tent camping gear over 12,000 km without a hiccup. We tent-camped from the car almost every night and we spent an average of A$100 (US$75) per day. This covered everything; gas, caravan park fees, groceries, incidentals, and the occasional dinner out and a movie. We were hoping Neil's sister, Virginia Myers, and her husband, Dave, could join us on this tour, but home construction plans got in the way of that.

We moved on to the Blue Mountains about two hours drive west of Sydney. The gum tree (eucalyptus) forests were beautiful and it was nice to get out of the huge city. The gum trees are definitely dominant, with several hundred species extant in Australia. There are blue gum trees, very good for boat decking timber, and stringy bark, and the beautiful white gum or ghost gum that is so lovely at night in the moonlight. We often enjoyed sitting around our nightly campfire and tossing eucalyptus leaves one by one into the dying coals. These leaves are so filled with oil that they explode with flame when they catch fire. One has to be very, very careful about fire in these forests, as numerous terrible burn remains show. The forests recover very quickly, but we often found burn bans in effect.
We found our way to Jenolan Caves a bit to the south and spent a long day climbing in and around these on a guided tour.

A view of the gum tree (eucalyptus) forests of the Blue Mountain region.

It was from this campsite, at Jenolan caves that we heard our first kookaburra in the late evening as we were sharing a cup of wine with a retired couple from Scotland. They seem only to call at dusk when they take to a tree for a night's roosting place, and in the early morning. We could not help but burst out laughing each time we heard this merry fellow and his absolutely raucous laugh, his call rising and the falling over the syllables, "Coo, coo, coo, cah cah, cah, caw, caw caw, caw" like some insane clown. We were always appreciative of his visits even when he woke us at dawn. We never heard one during the daylight hours and we only heard him (her?) on the southeast coast and often in Tasmania.
We will always remember Australia as the land of so many colorful birds with big bills. We saw magpies, galahs, lorikeets, parrots, ibises, and one morning on the south coast, the park manager identified the famous bell bird that Captain Cook wrote about in his ship's logbook in 1770.

Our campsite at Jenolan Caves. We were one of two campers there.

We drove on south across the lovely pastoral hills and plains of Australian bush land until we came to Canberra, the capital city of Australia. Here we went to the Museum of Fine Arts and especially enjoyed the many high quality examples of Aboriginal paintings on permanent display there. Of course, Neil had to clown around with the big bronze pears in front of the museum.

We found Canberra to be a beautiful and well-planned city, like Adelaide, in that there were many parks and open green spaces in the center of the city. A bit of data, Australia has 19 million people on a land mass roughly the size of the continental United States, where we manage to squeeze in 278 million souls. Overall, it appears to us that the quality of life may be a bit higher here due in part to the lower population density.

In a park across the street from the Australian House of Parliament were several camps set up by Aboriginal people, this one called the "Aboriginal Embassy", intended to annoy the politicians and draw attention to the needs of these people. There are some problems here concerning Aboriginals, but we feel we have no right to presume to make any judgment on the issues confronting all Australians regarding the rights of Aboriginal people.
Driving on south out of Canberra, we were treated to lovely views of the bush country. As usual we tried to pick the less traveled country roads because they always afford the best scenery and a truer impression of the country than do the major motorways. We became addicted to the Australian custom of drinking tea and looked forward each day to our noon lunch stopover complete with a "billy 'o tea and cow" (tea with milk).

We camped for a couple of nights in the Kosciuszko National Park. There had been a terrible fire here in December, a year ago. The trees, being predominantly eucalyptus, burned furiously, but one year later, the amount of recovery is amazing. There were a lot of "no-so-wild" kangaroos here which would come up into the camp for handouts. We were cautioned not to feed them bread because bread is not abrasive enough for their teeth and gives them "mushy mouth". The park office sold packages of pellets to feed them. Nancy loved the kangaroos and snapped perhaps 200 photos of them.

Cool evenings as the sun went down. Our blue "Collapsible Hilton" is in the background.

Most evenings we would end the day with a cup of fine box wine, vintage Chez Collapsible, rice crackers and low-fat cheese, pistachios, a campfire if allowed, and a little guitar. We worked up a two-part harmony rendition of Duke Ellington's Mood Indigo on this trip. Tough life, eh?

Driving on down out of the mountains to the plains of the Snowy River area, we found this Saint James' Anglican church sitting out in the middle of nowhere. It was surrounded by open plains and was part of the parish of Snowy River. Perhaps we are simple people and are easily impressed.

We crossed the Snowy River at the town of Dalgety and continued on towards the southern coastal road. This was lovely driving, few cars, good roads, great weather and people were so very nice to us. They love Americans!

We took in excess of 2,500 photos, with our Canon G3 digital camera, ultimately keeping approximately 1,348 of them. We had our laptop with us, (of course, Neill cannot be without his laptop), and offloaded the images each evening, enjoying a review of the day's sights. We ran both the laptop and a 12 volt fluorescent camp light off the Bluebird's cigarette lighter. Neil got a considerable amount of work done in the afternoons on a writing project.

Many cars here have "bullbars" installed on the front. These bumper guards minimize damage to the car when you hit a kangaroo. We saw hundreds and hundreds of kangaroos dead along side the roads. The problem is worst at night, dawn and dusk. This sign warns drivers to beware of roos and wombats. Possums kills are so numerous, they are not even considered worthy of notice. Koalas, and out west, the emus are also infrequent road kill victims. Speed limits are typically 100 km per hour on the highway, 60 km per hour in towns.

Melbourne impressed us with being a lot like Chicago, big, sprawling, lots of expressways and toll roads. It also has a great number of recent European immigrants and a recent wave of mafia killings not unlike New York during the 60's. There were 22 gangland style murders here last year alone. Neil felt quite safe going anywhere, however, due to the fact that Nancy holds a black belt in Shorin Ryu Karate and she is sworn to defend him in all circumstances. We took the car ferry over to Tasmania, costing A$215 for the two of us and the Bluebird. It was a ten-hour passage and a comfortable trip. Neil got eight hours work done on his laptop during the passage.

We had worked our way over to the east coast of Tasmania by this time, and began to camp in beachside parks. These were usually really good, with beautiful views from our campsite and we began somehow meeting lots of nice Australian people. Usually we would start a conversation by asking something like, "What are 'bangers and mash'?". "Oh, it's the All-Australian breakfast dish, mate, grilled sausages with mashed potatoes!" they would reply, and we were off. We really enjoyed these people. None of the caravan parks we camped in had kitchens, so one must carry a portable cook stove.

Neil's home town was Port Arthur, Texas, so we had to visit Port Arthur, Tasmania. He expected a little bigger town and a warmer reception than he received when he walked right up to several folks sitting and having a smoke outside the combination fuel station/grocery store/post office. He announced that he was born and raised in Port Arthur, . . . Texas. They were not impressed and he was so disappointed that his long-planned joke fell upon unappreciative ears. We sent postcards to several of his high school chums and family members from here.
Port Arthur (Tasmania) was a terribly severe penal colony begun back in 1832, to which England transported its worst criminal offenders. We spent most of a day exploring its old restored cells and workshops. There was a shipbuilding facility here that turned out such excellent wooden ships that local civilians petitioned to have it shut down because they could not compete with the quality nor fiscal efficiency of enforced convict labor.

Only ten kilometers to Neil's hometown at 43^o 10' S, 147^o 51' E.

We drove on through the capital city of Hobart, where we shopped, hit the internet, telephoned friends and family members and camped overnight at a shoreside caravan park. The park manager here referred to Australia as Tasmania's "North Island" and was furious because someone "left Tasmania off the x@#! map on the official Sydney 2000 Olympic flag!" He was confident that the Tasmanian Tiger (the Thylacine - a carnivorous marsupial with a rear-facing pouch!) exists somewhere in the vast Gordon River Wilderness. We were later informed by a dingo wildlife specialist that this is highly probable.
We circled the Tasmanian south coast road on a beautiful Sunday morning with gorgeous views over the southern ocean, driving up into the Huon River Valley where we visited Tasmania's School for Wooden Boats. We have never seen such beautiful, rural countryside. We would love to sail our Active Light to Tasmania to spend a winter in downtown Hobart.

Campground sunset just south of Hobart.

Salamanca Street market, only one block from Hobart's municipal marina.

Andean street musicians on a Hobart market street. They were very good!

It was interesting that the only vessel under construction at the School for Wooden Boats was having her deck covered in the unusual parallel pattern. Most decks are laid with the wood pieces following the curvature of the sides of the hull, thus necessitating use of a complicated kingplank in the center. We have seen this type of parallel decking only once before on a Westsail 32, definitely not a wooden boat, in Mazatlan, Mexico. The workmanship here looked good.
By this time, we had only seven days left before our boat, the Spirit of Tasmania, was to take us back to Melbourne and we still had two important places to visit, the Gordon River and Cradle Mountain. So we moved on west from the Hobart area and camped overnight on the banks of the Derwent River in New Norfolk. This turned out to be one of our most-remembered campsites due to the fact we met so many friendly Australians there.
For our friend Paul Windust back home, who loves unusual machines and old motorcycles, we include the photo below. The bearded fellow was touring and tent-camping on this bike. When he rode in, its sound was even better than that of a Harley! The fellow standing next to him was also tent camping next to us. Neil had offered him some cooked squash the evening before. Next morning he came over and gave us a copy of his new book about the train, "Puffin' Billy", he had written and published. He was one of the few other people of our age group who camped in a tent, most older people took to caravans or hired cabins each night.

Unusual parallel-laid deck planks.

This bike is a "Vincent" and has the letters "HRD" on its petrol tank.

We drove on west into the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park. This is a World Heritage Area which is huge, encompassing nearly all of southwest Tasmania and has very few roads or even trails into its impenetrable forest thickness, a truly wild area! We passed through the mining town of Queenstown, where the open strip gold and copper mining has poisoned the surrounding area over a wide radius. The weather began "packing up on us", as the down under people say, so in the terminus town of Strahan, we chickened out and stayed for two nights in a rented caravan. It had TV and a gas stove with an oven, running cold water, and even a heater. Tasmania starts to get cold again beginning in March.
We took the tourist tour boat up the Gordon River, which included a brief sortie out through Hell's Gate into the Tasman Sea, where we were told the Waverider weather buoy recorded a 19 meter ( 62-foot) wave during the previous winter's gales.

We arrived in Cradle Mountain National Park in time to have a short tour before the rain and wind set in. Nancy got excited when she thought she found a lake named after her Aunt Lella. In between the showers, we were visited by three fearless wallabies. These little creatures look like miniature kangaroos. Wind blew and it rained all night. Inside the tent, we were fine, warm with completely dry bedding, as long as we stayed inside the tent. But as we packed up our tent in the rain the next morning, everything was full of sand and mud. We headed for the north coast without adequately exploring this popular park.

Driving away in the rain, we found that our car's defroster did not work very well, so we wasted almost an entire roll of paper towels trying to keep the windshield clear as we dropped down out of the mountains to the coastal plains. Within a couple hours drive we had driven out of the front and we enjoying clear skies again. We stayed overnight in the coastal town of Stanley, where we took a motel room, had dinner and breakfast out, and washed and dried our tent. We climbed, did not take the cable car, to the top of "The Nut", a plateau-like promontory on the tip of the peninsula, where the views were great. Here's proof positive that we do indeed often use the Columbia River foul weather hats Nancy's sister, Linda, and her husband, Gary, gave us for Christmas five years ago. Neil loaned his jacket to an elderly lady who was cold and then worried for an hour that he would ever see it again. Turns out she left it in the cable car office as she left.

First place prize for Most Descriptive Highway Sign.

Now we come to a part of our little narrative which will require a bit of faith on your part. The Australian duckbill platypus is a very elusive and shy egg-laying mammal. It does exist in Tasmania, although members of the British Royal Society suspected that the taxidermy example sent to them durning the 19th century was a hoax. Our cruising friends were unsuccessful in sighting one of these critters, but we were. We have actual video footage of this one as well as the still photographs. We agree that the photograph is only a bit better than those of Sasquatch, but we did see him (or her)! We were in the coastal town of Burnie, and we had walked this riverbank in the Fernglade Preserve for hours and hours looking for the little bastard. On the second trip, in the early morning, when no one else was around, we found him only by the ripples he made in the water. Our cruising friends are jealous and you will just have to take it on faith that this is indeed, a duckbill platypus (below). Really, trust us! That is him, . . . or her.

The handsome, lucky couple atop "The Nut" in Stanley.

Leaving Tasmania, we were a bit sad because we had grown attached to it. Being cruisers, we have learned that leaving places is part of the game, so we cast our thoughts ahead to the upcoming trip through the Great Outback and the challenges of that undertaking. We drove out of Melbourne along the Great Ocean Road to Adelaide and enjoyed many of the stops along this scenic drive.
We arrived in Adelaide on the afternoon before the long Easter weekend. Needing to renew our visitor's visas, we waited four full days before the consulate reopened. We enjoyed the Botanical Gardens, the Aboriginal Art Gallery, a good movie, and we were taught how to properly cook kangaroo steaks. They are delicious, half the price of beef, and have no fat. The little Bluebird was inspected by two different garages and the front wheels bearings and races were replaced. We bought extra ten liter jugs of drinking water and, hearts somewhat in our throats, set off into the outback.

"Goodbye, Tassie!" This is a view of leaving Devonport, Tasmania from the starboard side of the Spirit of Tasmania. What a lot of good memories we brought away with us.

Our little Bluebird never skipped a beat throughout the 12,000 km of our trip. Although the gas gauge was broken (!), we found we could drive over 500 km between fuel stations. This is good because sometimes there was almost that much distance between stops, even on the paved (bitumen) roads. We were warned repeatedly never to get off the paved roads. Tourists have died of thirst out here, an English woman perished just last year because she went off road, her car broke down and she tried to walk out to find help.
Our first day's campsite was at the Glendambo station which boasted of a population of 30 humans, 22,500 sheep, 2 million flies (an underestimate), and someone had added, one penguin. The first thing we did upon arriving, even before setting up our tent, was to purchase over-the-head fly screens. We now know the secret of the deft "Australian wave", a brief sweep of the hand across the face. It is to flush away the flies.
We were crossing the Great Australian Outback driving straight north out of Adelaide toward Alice Springs during mid-May. It was at the end of the rainy season, about mid-Autumn in Australia, so things were about as green as they get. The temperature, though warm in the daytime and cool at night, was never intolerable. If you ever think of attempting this trip, just be very certain your auto is very dependable and carry lots of water. With those precautions, such a drive is a very reasonable thing to do.

The Breakaways were beautiful. We had Devonshire tea here at sunset.

We began sharing the driving, alternating 100 km stretches, which practice made the trip a great deal more pleasant. It is an easy drive except for the road trains. These are tractor trailers over 50 meters long with three and sometimes four (!) trailers that roar along, weaving and swaying at 110 km per hour.
Our second day carried us to the opal mining town of Coober Pedy. We visited the underground home and gem gallery of the Hammermeisters, whose father had come here as a miner from Germany in 1917. The son is working the same fields today. We visited the beautiful Breakway Range a few kilometers north of town and saw a small portion of the famous dingo fence. Also called the "Rabbit Proof Fence", it is portrayed in the excellent Australian film of the same name. We learned a bit about opals; they come in an amazing variety of colors and there is something about the really colorful ones that is a bit hypnotizing. It is good we got out of town without spending even more money.

The left photo above is an off-road view of Australia's famous "Dog Fence" at sunset. This fence, in excellent repair, runs for 2,400 km through the Outback, separating cattle and sheep from the dingoes. Without this fence, the Australian ranchers claim there would be no Australian livestock business. Continuing our drive north next morning on the bitumen-sealed road Stuart Highway that runs from Adelaide on the south coast to Darwin on the north for over 3,000 km, the right photo shows where the Dog Fence crosses the road. The road is in excellent condition and allows a light vehicle such as our poor overladen little 1985 Bluebird to travel easily at 100 km per hour.

One of our big objectives of this trip was to see Ayers Rock, called Uluru by the Aboriginals. This necessitated a 250 km diversion to the west off the main highway and we were glad we took it. Although we were, let's see, what is the most appropriate word, . . . we were grateful for the performance of our little Nissan Bluebird, in Uluru camp we saw the ultimate outback vehicle, the Oka. We include a photo of it for our friend in Poulsbo, Jim Haskins. Only 450 of these desert machines were made, in Western Australia. This was a 1993 model with a 4 liter diesel turbo engine. It has, of course, four wheel drive, carries 210 liters of diesel, 150 liters of water, two 140 watt solar panels, a 240V inverter, a 73 liter fridge, and a 4 burner gas stove with oven. It has a permanently mounted double bed, a roof rack which carried two spare tires and was for sale for A$72,000. We asked the owners if they wanted to trade cars but they declined.

Evening shadows just beginning to creep up Ayers Rock at sunset.

Climbing Ayers Rock presented a couple of problems. First, the Aboriginal people request visitors not to climb because they consider it to be a sacred site. Most Australians climb it anyway, weather permitting. Neil decided to climb it while watching the sunset at the rock one evening as tour guide helicopters came buzzing around it. His thoughts were that if the Aboriginal administrators of this national treasure condoned the use of those noisy nuisances to over fly the site, just climbing the monolith was far less disruptive. We really dislike the use of tourist-carrying helicopters in National Parks. The second problem was with his rubbery legs after driving 2,000 km across the desert. But after a few days of training and a good carbo-loading of sweet potatoes for supper the night before and for breakfast, he went up in one hour and 5 minutes, back down in 45, leaving neither scuff-mark nor gum wrapper. He was so proud of being able to do this steep climb at the tender age of 61 and it was pretty exhilarating to see the views from the top.

On our second day at Ayers Rock, we took the morning to walk completely around the rock. It was a 10 km hike. In the month of April, the weather was not too hot, so we were fairly comfortable the entire trip. We drank copious amounts of bottled water and rested frequently. These photos cannot describe how awesome and beautiful this monolith is up close. One gets a similar feeling sitting outside England's Salisbury Cathedral at night just gazing at the edifice, impressive because its great size. April comes right at the tail end of the rainy season in the Northern Territory, so we were surprised at how much greenery we saw. There were even pools of water runoff from the rock. Some of these pools are full year round and are quite attractive to a variety of wildlife in the area. Walking around Ayers Rock, there are many locations where signs ask you not to trespass nor even take photos from a distance. An Aboriginal belief is that a photo captures something of the spirit of the place and thereby diminishes its memory, and we respected this belief and abstained from so desecrating these vistas by not taking photographs. Another form of this belief system is that the names of the deceased members of the tribe should not be spoken nor written.
Our next objective was to visit the well known outback settlement of Alice Springs, where we hoped to buy a didgeridoo or two, Lou. There we were to see quite another, a less wonderful, side of Aboriginal culture. It was a long 750 km drive to Alice, and on the way we saw feral camels, several wild emus, one emu that was penned up, birds, birds, birds, and of course, lots of kangaroos.

This poor fellow was well fed, but did not look happy penned up.

We spent three days in Alice Springs. The caravan park we stayed in sponsored free concerts each night. We heard singer Geoff O'Mallee and we met Andrew Langford, a well-known didgeridoo artist. In Alice Springs we took didgeridoo lessons and tried our best to personally revive the economy of this settlement by purchasing not one, but two didgeridoos and one Aboriginal painting. They will miss us. It took hours of testing each didgeridoo to finally settle on ones that we liked. We bought a beautiful baritone model pitched in B^b for Neil and a painted tenor instrument in D for Nancy. Aboriginal belief maintains that women who play this instrument become pregnant. Since many religions have immaculate conception beliefs, we'll see what happens. Nancy says that would be a real miracle!
We filled the Bluebird with gas, water, ice, and food and headed north, thinking the trip was over and all we had to do was survive, automotively speaking, the 3,000 km run back to Brisbane.

But life has a way of giving you surprises. As Forrest Gump's mother said, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get." We were driving north toward Tennant Creek, 500 km away. There is only one stop midway on this stretch with any gas, water, or food at Barrow Creek, where we stopped for steak pies and a beer at this classic outback roadhouse and bar. Aboriginal people were not allowed in the bar with the whites, but came to a walkup window to place and pickup their orders. Driving on, we had just crested the only (!) slight rise in the highway for hundreds of kilometers where the road crossed the railroad tracks, pausing for photographs. The road disappeared into shimmering heat waves, straight as an arrow to the north ahead and behind directly south. We had driven only a couple of kilometers beyond this point, not a car in in sight, when we passed this brave soul pedaling a bike and towing three (3) wagons. We did a quick U-turn as Nancy rolled her window down and asked if we could take a photo. "Yes" was the reply, so we pulled over and met Christina. Turns out Christina has been pedaling through this rugged desert terrain all the way from Darwin, over 1,500 km to the north. Christina was making about 30 km per day and was completely self-sufficient for outback travel, the three wagons simulating a motorized road train. One wagon was devoted to cooking needs, another to water and supplies, the first wagon contained a tent and sleeping gear. In the handlebar basket rode Blackie, a well-behaved little dog, beneath a sun shade. Christina avowed to be a transsexual who was riding to Canberra, the Australian capital, thousands of kilometers away, to protest the high price of the operation needed to effect a sex change. This enormous physical challenge made us feel our efforts to simply motor across the Australian continent and sail across the Pacific ocean paled in comparison. Christina also declared this heroic undertaking to be a protest against the roadkilling of animals all over Australia. This declaration confused us a bit, because we are quite certain that neither the animals nor the motorists enjoy being involved in a roadkill incident. At any rate, after a brief chat, handshake, and a couple of photos, we sped off to the north, while Christina pedaled southward at a walking pace. Though we relate this chance encounter with Christina in a less than subtle attempt at tongue-in-cheek humor, we wish also to express our respect and admiration for this brave soul and recognize the tremendous personal and physical challenges involved, . . . and we do so without once employing a single gender-designating possessive pronoun.

At Tennant Creek, one turns right to head back east to Brisbane. We had been looking for a good photo of an Australian outback road train to show you, but they come roaring by at high speed, and when they do pass you by, your thoughts are concerned with getting safely off the road onto the narrow, rocky shoulder, not focusing a camera. Just as we had made the turn to the east, we spied this road train coming toward us at very low speed. It had blown one if its seventy (70) tires and was limping into Tennant Creek for a repair. We quickly pulled over and captured this wounded beast of the outback in slow motion. The driver was not happy. At high speed, the slightest steering change to avoid a rock or whatever sets the whole train to oscillating like a snake.
We went on to drive our daily 500 km to the town of Camoweel, where we had a pleasant and uneventful overnight stay. The terrain was beginning to show more tree-like vegetation, the white "ghost" gum being one of our favorites.

Some of them were four units and 53.5 meters long.

We next stopped overnight at the tiny town of Mckinley because it was here that the bar room scenes for the movie Crocodile Dundee were filmed. We found a tight-lipped, diminutive Paul Hogan look-alike bartender and a campground that was filled with flies for the exorbitant fee of A$16. Some campground management genius had made a cost-saving decision to locate a horse corral within the caravan park confines to save a bit of money on fencing. This brilliant move made it necessary to wear our fly screens even while eating. If your ever drive through McKinley, don't stop. It ain't worth it.
We had driven 500 km per day for four consecutive days, entering the vast cattle-ranching grassland of western Queensland. When we got to Longreach, we looked at each other and said, "We need a break!" We found a good caravan park just outside town where the kangaroos came right up into the camp. That night a badly-needed rainstorm came through and left us slipping and sliding out of our tent next morning. We made it to the car, kicked the inch-thick mud off our sandals, and drove into town for breakfast, internet, lunch, haircuts, and a long writing session at the Longreach library. Returning to camp in the late afternoon, we relocated to a drier spot and passed another comfortable night. Our REI tent is remarkably dry in a rainstorm.
We were within three days drive of Brisbane by now, and Neil was feeling a bit sad that the long trip was almost over. Nancy is quite good, however, at poring through guide books while he drives, dreaming up yet more adventures. She wasn't quite through with him yet!

Flies can be strained from the tea through your teeth.

The guide books convinced Nancy she wanted to go "fossicking" for gems and she chose the small town of Anakie for this adventure. The only caravan park there turned out to be an especially good one, so we stayed for two nights. The shady grounds held loads of colorful lorikeets, parrots, cockatoos, galahs, and on and on. She took about a hundred photos of these birds. They seem to be eating, drinking, or doing the pecking-order dance all the time. We met Jake, who, for a fee, would take you out to his fossicking grounds and show you the ropes. Neil was reluctant and skeptical at first, but we both had a good time and we actually found some sapphires. The rich dirt is scraped and shoveled from veins in the soil, especially out of gullies, then washed through a sieve in a rain barrel. The water had to be packed into the worksite. We were in a gemfield where some pretty interesting guys actually supported themselves with this work. The critical items here seem to be (1) the use of water to wash the dirt away, (2) the need to move a lot of material, and (3) have a good eye for spotting the gem in the rough. They are not easy to spot. We found one good but small sapphire and several very small stones. We were given a huge flawed "bum" sapphire as well as a handful of a lesser-precious yellow gems.

Another day's drive, 450 km, and we found a good caravan park in Monto, Queensland. The owner of this park seemed to be an authority on the Australian dingo. He was invited to the USA to help in a study on wolves and to Tasmania for an investigation into the existence of the Tasmanian Tiger. He claimed there exists a photo of the unmistakable hindquarters of this critter (the Thylacine) taken by an Indian researcher in the late 1980's. He truly believes they still exist. At any rate, this fellow was most erudite, talkative, and a real interesting character. We enjoyed our last night out in his caravan park. Another long day's drive brought us back to the Scarborough Marina where began our journey, two months earlier.
Our overall impressions of Australia are that we were so very fortunate to have been able to make this trip. It is a wonderful country, full of interesting and colorful people with a wealth of unique history and folklore, full of unpretentious people who are not afraid to dress, act, and live without caring too much about what the rest of us think. The east coast and the large cities present an environment not so different from that found in the USA, people here are mostly concerned with making a lot of money, . . . and they are! The Australian economy is doing really well these days. But the real Australia waits in the rural and outback regions, in the small country towns, and in Tasmania. We love this part of Australia and almost have tears in our eyes at the thought of leaving it. People were so nice to us everywhere, sharing stories and information about their unique and dynamic history and life style. We feel so lucky to have had this little glimpse of this BIG continent.

The "bottle tree", indigenous to the area around Monto.

We have a departure saying as we leave any port. It takes one half day's work preparing Active Light for sea for each week we have been in port. In port for two weeks, . . . it will take an entire day's work on the boat to get ready to go. This rule we call the Active Light axiom. It is inflexible. We have been in the Scarborough Marina for over six months. We have already been working; provisioning, storing, repairing, for two weeks. We will work our way north along the Great Barrier Reef to Cape York at the top of Australia, then west to Darwin, anchoring almost every night to rest and enjoy the area. We should be ready to depart Darwin on or around August 1st for Indonesia, Bali, then Malaysia, Singapore, and Phuket, Thailand. That's our plan and we may not stick with it.

Neil and Nancy Sirman
s/v Active Light
Scarborough Marina, north of Brisbane, Australia