Aboriginal Art & Big Red Rocks

Dec 2-5, 2008:  Friends of friends from France invited me to stay with them in Alice Springs, an interesting town with a mixture of white descendants of settlers, aborigines from the Lost Generation or tribal ejection, and rich civilian contractors and military personnel from the American military base.  The base sits just outside of Alice Springs and is considered the safest place in the world, since any enemy would have to fly over something like 13000 km to reach it and then try to fly out again.  Of course, flying in from Melbourne and out to Sydney felt more like inconvenience rather than safe but reminded me how huge Australia really is. 

I was picked up for my tour early Wednesday morning for a 6 hour drive out to Ayers Rock:  6 hours, 5 tourists, 4 bottles of water, 1 guide, 2 in-training, and an ostrich in a pear tree.  Originally I thought I'd climb Ayers Rock, but when I started looking into tours, many of them suggested that tourists not climb because it is sacred land for the Anangu, the Aboriginal traditional owners.  However, the Anangu welcome tourists (well, to a certain point), but the problem with climbing Uluru is that about 35 people have died in doing so and the Anangu feel responsible for deaths and injuries on their land.  I didn't have to worry about it, though, since climbing is prohibited above temperatures of 35 ⁰C and we were already at 40⁰ or so. 

The Australian National Park of Uluru and Kata Tjuta, the Anangu names for Ayers Rock and the Olgas, was declared in 1958 by the Australian government, and in theory, the land rights were given back to the Anangu in 1976.  However, not until 1985 were the title deeds to Uluru and Kata Tjuta returned to the Anangu, who have now leased the land back to the government for 99 years.  Both entities work to preserve the sites and respect each other.  There are areas where tourists are not allowed to hike, and other areas, especially around Uluru, where tourists are asked not to take pictures.

The tour company had a hat listed among things to bring, and while I'm usually nice and obedient, I never wear a hat outdoors (now going to the opera and wearing Grandma Margaret's hats circa 1950 from Bullocks Wilshire – that's different).  Our guide Phil was very worried about me, and to illustrate his point told me that around these temperatures, the fat under the scalp of sheep will begin to boil and kill them.  But I told him that my scalp was about the only place on my body that didn't have any fat so he needn't worry.  I have to say, however, that just walking most of the way around the base of Uluru did make me feel a bit weird.  Maybe because my hair had already become lighter blonde (the real reason I don't wear hats outside).

Uluru is a monolith, having no cracks all the way through. We began the walk around its base at the Mutitjulu Waterhole.  Set against the rock wall of Uluru, the Anangu waited until the end of the day when animals would come to drink.  Only one way in and one way out made for easy kill.  There was a rock overhang near the waterhole where the Anangu most likely spent the day.  In crevices under the overhang were swallows' nests, indicating that the area was in shade all day long since their mud nests need to stay moist.  More evidence of the Anangu spending time here was on the wall:  iron red, charcoal black, ash white, and ochre.  The ochre is not found within the Uluru area, providing evidence that the Anangu had to trade other aboriginies for it.  The watering hole was a nice place to hang out, teach the kids, and hunt for food.

Often, it wasn't the parents who would teach their own children, but rather the eldest, like grandparents or older aunts and uncles.  The men had no role as fathers; after conception, the man's job was done since in their culture there is no loyalty to any single member of the tribe.  Women could have many children all from different men.  This is still traditional in the tribes, as I learned when I bought two small pieces of Aboriginal Art by two different female artists.  The storekeeper gave me each of their biographies from which I learned that they didn't have faithful or providing men.  Loyalty was to the tribe and having children was a woman's responsibility as much as finding plants for medicine and food.

The boys are taught by the men and the girls by the women in the duties they are responsible for in the society.  The teachings happen at different points in the children's lives, but they are taught only what is considered appropriate for that age.  The rituals and teachings are done apart from the group – thus the sacred spaces of the Anangu – and the teachings are not spoken of while with the rest of the tribe.

After walking around the base of Uluru, we camped out, not too far from a campground – enough to not hear the noise of the tour buses, but close enough to use the toilets and showers.  Up a knoll behind our site we watched the sun set behind the Olgas and stretching red over to Uluru.  In the distance was a lightning storm – a perfect complement to the beer and conversation about hiking.  Meanwhile Phil cooked up some "kangaroo a la Bolognese", however, Paula, an Italian woman about my age, corrected him that it was simply ragout. 

Minyma, the Anangu women, have duties to gather food, plant and harvest crops according to the seasons, read animal tracks, and gather and administer medicinal plants from the bush.   The Wati, Anangu men, are responsible for finding water for the tribe, hunting, and making tools for the women and weapons for hunting.  The Anangu laws, called Tjukwipa, are the basis of their life – their relationships to people and animals and the land.  The Anangu believe the world is flat and featureless, just as the bush, but ancestral beings created it and left their spirit in what they created.  This is why Uluru and Kata Tjuta and another "rock", Mount Conner, are so sacred to them: they are anomalies to the rest of their world. 

We woke at 5am, late, but since the clouds had moved in, the sunrise over Kata Tjuta wouldn't have been much to see.  So we got to sleep in.  The clouds brought a wonderful drastic drop in temperature, absolving me of having to spend too much money ($15?) on a hat in a tourist shop.  Even without the sunrise, getting up early is important to be able to hit the trail before it closes at about 11am, when temperatures get above 35⁰C.  We hiked the "Valley of the Winds" through  Kata Tjuta which means "many heads".  There are 36 big dome-shaped rocks sticking up out of nowhere, and by big I mean 500m high (200m higher than Uluru) over a space of less than 8 miles².  Kata Tjuta is sacred to the Anangu as it is the location where many of the men's rituals and teaching is done.

Previously, Phil had asked us to consider how Uluru and Kata Tjuta were formed and gave us a few clues.  While Uluru is made of mud-sandstone, Kata Tjuta is granite and quartz.  Striations in the sandstone of Uluru are vertical, while Kata Tjuta is more diagonal.  The granite is formed closer to the earth's core than the quartz.  Green granite attracts lightning.  It is plentiful here, and Phil said that farms that have green granite in the soil have a much higher value because the granite attracts the lightning and rain and produces the best crops.  His questions and clues occupied my head during the hikes. 

After hiking the Valley of the Winds from 7-11 am, we were ready for camel burgers and the ride out to Kings Canyon, the site of the next day's hike.  This evening's camp felt more like being out in the bush, with a 3-sided toilet completed by a view of the mountains.  We were rewarded with a beautiful sunset made interesting by the clouds that had rolled along with us all day.  I picked up some charcoal from the previous camp's fire and sketched.  The charcoal was lovely: very smooth and fun to draw with, especially with the incredible lines of the scenery of the day as inspiration.

Finally my body needed attention with some beer, Phil's fabulous BBQ chicken, and my swag – a sleeping bag with a mattress and pillow in it.  It was too hot to have any covers except the stars above until unceasing rain began at 2am and drove us sleepy, sore tourists under some shelter.

The difficulties the Anangu had with the whites was not so much territorial, since they were nomadic, but a disruption to their world view and methods of survival.  As the whites brought cattle into the area, the water holes of the tribe became useless once the cattle walked into the water to drink.  The Anangu never stirred up the waters and did not even bathe in the water in order to preserve its sacredness and cleanliness for the tribe.  As a sidenote, Phil gave us an example of how the tribal society was maintained.  Not only were individual rights subservient to the tribe, but the members, especially children, were kept in line out of fear.  To keep kids away from playing by the water in order to keep it clean, the women would tell them the Waterman would blind them if they got too close.  When a child did venture too close to the watering hole, some plant extract (I forgot the name) was diluted and put on the child's eyes while he was sleeping.  Upon awakening, the child's vision was blurry and the women said the Waterman had already gotten some of his water in their eyes.  While the potency wasn't enough to permanently alter the child's vision, his respect for keeping distance from the watering holes was permanent.  This plant extract was also ingested when the tribe needed to move and find a new watering hole.  The walk could last days, and this medicine completely bound their system:  they would not sweat or salivate or eliminate, so all the body's water was conserved.  Once arriving at a new watering hole, they ingested another medicine like a laxative to re-open the body.  Phil also showed us a medicinal cactus that can be used for deep cuts because is kills all bacteria then leaves residue which seals the wound.  It protects for 2-3 days, even while swimming.  Eucalyptus is also a universal medicine, from colds to cleansing. 

So to protect their water and ancestral spirits, the Anangu began spearing the cattle of the white settlers.  The police retaliated by shooting any aborigine they saw.  So began the Displacement of the aboriginies.  The settlers didn't particularly take land away from them, but ruined their sources of water and places of learning.  The whites didn't understand how the Anangu related to their land since it is quite different to how we relate to it.  It was equivalent to taking their places of worship – churches, temples, mosques – away from them.  To this day, aborigines in the cities may fight each other, as they have different beliefs coming from different tribes, but they immediately unite against the white police.  And those who are in the cities in the first place are usually those who were ejected from their tribes for irresponsible behavior – usually alcoholism – which doesn't exactly improve race relations in the cities.

Aside from Displacement, the relations between whites and aboriginies were made even worse by the good intentions of the whites.  In order for the Anangu to survive, individual rights are completely irrelevant.  They are a nomadic tribe, therefore any sick or crippled member threatened the survival of the whole tribe.  It was normal for the weak member to just walk away from the tribe – to walkabout – into the bush, which meant suicide.  As children were rejected from the tribe due to illness or crippling or being disciplined in order for the tribe to survive, they were rescued, usually by missionaries from the Lutheran Church, and brought to the coasts and into white society.  This is the Lost Generation, or Intervention, which, like Displacement, broke the Anangu society.

On our way to Kings Canyon, we stopped at a lookout point several miles away from Mount Conner, a flat plateau which looked to be about the height of Uluru and rising just as mysteriously from the flat bush.  On the other side of the lookout were salt flats – evidence of an ancient ocean.  The aboriginals, with their "primitive" knowledge, related the geographical history of thousands of years ago.  Their story explains this with more drama, however, than a geography textbook.  An ice man (not the Top Gun kind) of salty water ran north to chase invaders off his land but ran so far north that the heat began to melt him.  With exhaustion, he sat down on Mount Conner (which is named by the Anangu as "Ice Man").  Finally acknowledging that he wasn't going to make it back south to the cold, he kicked out the sides of the mountain in anger.  His death by melting created the ancient sea where the salt remained.  Mount Conner is actually more geologically impressive than Uluru, but the aboriginals have kept this land to themselves, and no tourists can get close.

Now for the textbook version, though no less dramatic.  Australia was covered by 2km-deep sea about 600M years ago (the dinosaurs were around 50-60M years ago).  Australia is the oldest landmass in the world and also has the youngest population/settlement – only 230 years, compared to 2000-5000 years for most of the rest of the world.  Mt Conner used to be 4 times the height of Everest but is now only about 1000 feet.  It is sinking as Australia moves apart and expands, and the continent also moves 2cm/year in a northwest direction.

Sandstone is white, and Uluru is actually grey, but gases rich in iron came out thru volcanic activity, met with the oxygen in the atmosphere and rusted.  This is why the whole continent is red, but it wasn't the original colour.  The inclusions in Uluru are caused by internal water exiting and eroding, while for Kata Tjuta the inclusions are caused by lightning strikes to pieces of green granite in the formations.  The granite was like mortar in volcanic interactions under intense heat.  The black vertical marks are caused by water eroding the iron rust and exposing the true granite colour.  The striations on Uluru are vertical:  the layers formed horizontally as layer upon layer of sediment was laid down at the bottom of the sea.  But then all of Uluru was turned on its side when the ocean swept over Australia to carve out the rest of the features of the continent.  Uluru is 350m high but is being eroded ~1m/year.  However, relative to the surrounding land Uluru is actually growing as sediment around it washes away.  Uluru goes down 6-7 km, and the story is that two boys were bored after hunting, so they started piling up mud by the side of the watering hole.  They continued until they were on top, and the vertical striations are their fingernail marks as they slid down.  I asked Phil if it was a happy ending, and he just smiled. 

Luckily, it rained off and on all day in King's Canyon.  Except for the extremely fit 65-year-old, we were all getting worn out by the successive days of strenuous hiking and high temperatures.  Even one of the guides-in-training opted to stay back with the truck at the trailhead.  One of the other girls was debating doing the same, but we didn't come for chit-chat in a parking lot.  Phil said that he's hiked King's Canyon over 300 times and it's never rained.  I felt blessed since I'm quite sure I wouldn't have made it, especially in my fashionable Geox that I bought in Italy:  silver-white sport shoes with no support which are now permanently tinted red.

I picked up some green granite during the hike of Kata Tjuta – I thought it would match my little collection of many coloured rocks, most from a river bed in Peru (but that's another love story).  When Phil found out, he said that everyone who's taken green granite has had bad luck, and many have mailed the granite back to him because they believed it was the cause.  I have a different God, but I decided that I shouldn't have taken a souvenir out of a national park.  I asked Phil to put it back next time he was at KT, but he wouldn't touch it, so I chucked it during the King's Canyon hike.

Then there's the aboriginal art.  On our drive out to Uluru, we stopped a few times for refreshments, and most of the stores and cafes had art for sale.  One was very well-stocked and of higher quality, and I held up the whole tour to look through the gallery for ½ hour or so.  I wanted to buy two medium-sized paintings but then decided not to.  However, the images stayed with me during the 3 days in the outback, so I bought them on the way back to Alice.  The perspective of the art is looking down, like on a map.  Horseshoe shapes signify a person, since that's the impression a person leaves in the sand after sitting down.  A woman is a horseshoe beside a basket and digging stick.  A man is a horseshoe shape between his fighting stick, arrow, and boomerang.  A waterhole is several concentric circles, and a digging hole (to find honey ants and other things to eat) is two concentric circles.  The paintings can be very elaborate, with symbols for animal tracks, rain, running water, travelling, ceremonial dress, and all kinds of plants and animals basic to Anangu life.

 

 

Running to Stand Still

(this should have been posted a LONG time ago, like Dec-08, but here it is anyway…)

My flight to Auckland was great.  National airlines, being subsidized, are rarely booked, so I had room to spread out and play with my coloured pens in my new sketchbook.  Friends of my parents, Heather & Tony, were very sweet to pick me up from the airport, keep my two big red suitcases for the 3 ½ weeks I’d be in Australia and New Zealand, and drive me around Auckland a bit to see the highlights.  I saw the Pacific for first time in 8 months!  I had a great hotel – the Quadrant:   nice and anonymous (well, I suppose that could be taken the wrong way, which I probably would’ve never even thought about except that I was just in Singapore where everything has a double meaning).  Anyway, it had a great view of the ocean, although I’m not sure now whether it was the Pacific or Tasman, but no one really cares and neither did I as I fell asleep.

By 10am the next day, I was cruising around Melbourne in my rental car on the wrong side of the street.  First stop was to buy a $100 camera to replace my $160 camera that was assaulted by Stella.  Next was the groovy part of Melbourne, near the university.  I had a great lunch, and after asking the 2 couples sitting next to me about tipping protocol, they told me I was brave to be traveling alone.  Never thought of myself as brave – escapist and non-committal and not attached to much in this world are better descriptions, but I figured they didn’t want to hear all about it.  The galleries and contemporary art museum are closed on Mondays, as in most cities, so unfortunately I didn’t get to see the Up-and-Coming Center of Art in the Southern Hemisphere.  There are also beautiful parks in Melbourne, and I could’ve used a walk after logging so many hours in a plane and car, but I was tired and more enticed by the drive through the dry plains in the direction of the surfing mecca of Australia.  Torquay is where Rip Curl started and now hosts the World Surfing Championship each Easter at Bells Beach.  After checking into the B&B and being sidetracked by a real estate office (US$250-400k for new modern-looking 3+2 houses near the beach, many with views!!!  And annual taxes only $1000/year!), I finally got my walk.    

Just east of Bells Beach is a marine preserve, so I walked there for a while since it was low tide.  I felt like I was at the end of the world – just the waves and cliffs above me (more anonymity) which at high tide would be joined.  Considering it’s just early summer, the water is so warm:  a beautiful green and turquoise fading to purple at the horizon to Antarctica.  Walking this narrow corridor between cliffs and strong currents, I finally got spooked enough to turn back, but I kept walking, past Bells Beach, with one more beach after another stretching out.  I saw a few surfers wrestling with the thick waves, choppy now with wind and high tide rolling in.  Otherwise, I saw only 2 people during my walk.  For a couple hours I walked with my heart dancing at the desertedness.  Finally, even the Committee (the 26 members that sit and argue in my head) was lulled speechless by the rhythm of my footsteps and the waves.   The sand under my feet felt so wonderful, and natural, unlike the streets in Singapore that were so clean that I was constantly slipping on them in the rain.

My home in Torquay was a cute little cottage – also anonymous, even though it was a B&B – just up from Bells Beach.  So high tide was at 1pm and a session at 10am would’ve been perfect – except that I slept until 2!!  15 HOURS!!!  My friends in Singapore (plus the flights) completely wore me out – although I didn’t feel so bad when Christian replied that he slept for 72 hours after seeing me off at the airport.  So one more late afternoon of walking, then finally getting a board rented and down to the beach.  I was pretty pathetic since I’m so out of shape, but the good thing is that I’ll just have to come back again, ready to surf and maybe buy a house, too.

Disappointed as I was with my surfing performance, I was excited leaving Torquay because of the long, beautiful coast road ahead of me.  The Great Coast Road is a bit like Pacific Coast Highway, Route 1, in California.  But of course the Great Coast Road has its own beauty and peculiarities.  Ancient rainforests, with ferns and beech trees, overlook the blue-green water from red cliffs which then open out to picturesque farm country and little towns having at least one coffee house serving flat whites. 

So yes, this is me, in the most beautiful place in the world –me and my Committee driving on down the wrong side of the road.  Just as on my Bells Beach walk, we were awestruck by the beauty changing around each corner, and the tranquility!  No one else was on the road, and I was driving slowly just because, well, I was savoring this.  I checked the rearview often, but as always, just empty.  It was a great feeling to be lost like this:  being alone, no one knowing where I am, no schedule (not even a B&B reservation yet).  The air was fresh and the oceans and skies so clean and clear.  The change of scenery and temperature was my entertainment while my playlist furnished the perfect score with some great Australian folksongs:  Devil Went Down to Georgia;  Girl, You’ll Be a Woman, Soon;  LA Song;  You Light Up My Life;  Espérer;  Bailamos;  Top Gun Anthem;  Rien Ne S’arrête;  Running to Stand Still.

Fresh fish and flat whites kept me fueled.  I took my time and stopped at deserted trailheads along the road to hike into the rainforest among the giant ferns and waterfalls.  However, the Australians have taken a bit of advantage of the incredulous evolutionary history of the area and have made some touristy places to learn more.  Now, these weren’t “touristy” by any nominal standard, but each time I was around more than 10 people, I left feeling irritated.  (Now I’m scaring myself, picturing a hermit in the hills eating locusts and honey.)

First I went to the Otaway Fly, a huge walkway of swinging steel cable bridges high above the rainforest canopy, as well as at lower levels where less light and more moisture support entirely different plant and animal species.  Ferns of all kinds rule the “understories” while the Mountain Ash is the dominant tree as well as the world’s tallest flowering plant.  Even birds stick to their favorite altitude, with the Golden Whistler high in the canopy, the White Brown Scrubwren down low, and the Grey Fantail inbetween.  Colour is provided by Rose Robins, Crimson Rosellas, and White Throated Tree Creepers.  The Fly was fun to walk, with a 47-meter-high tower (and great views) to a 33-meter-high cantilevered bridge (which the guidebook reassured us could hold 14 elephants and is supposed to sway…).  The Fly was built in order to provide education and experience in the rainforest while not impacting the delicate ecosystem.

At the southern-most point of the Great Ocean Road is the Cape Otaway Lighthouse, one of the oldest (and most needed for navigation of the coast back in the 1800s when the area was settled).  I’m not a history buff or fan of lighthouses (unless I could live in one), but I was sidetracked to the lighthouse by a beautiful narrow road under arches of eucalyptus trees.  The lighthouse had closed for the day, but I walked a bit on the trail of the Great Ocean Walk.  Just as I was ready to turn around, I walked by a low pine tree with a sleeping koala bear snuggled in the branches at my eye level.  I was so excited!  I grabbed my camera, and the koala looked at me sleepily but made no attempt to move.  As my pictures became more and more redundant, I retraced my footprints with so much excitement that I just had to share.  “I just saw my first koala!” I exclaimed to some poor guy walking the other way.  He gave me a weird look and polite smile and kept walking.  My talents obviously remain in being a hermit.

Back on the Great Ocean Road, the next big camera-clicker is the Twelve Apostles and other fabulous sculptures on the beaches and in the shallow waves and coves.  The coastal cliffs have a high limestone composition so the constant water forces carve out various fascinating outcroppings.  Again, “lots” of tourists at the 12 Apostles, which are columns of rock in the sea just off the coast.  It was cool and windy and the end of the day, though, and the crowd thinned out as I continued down the road to be impressed by many more formations: Razorback, London Bridge, the Martyrs, and Loch Ard Gorge, named after a shipwreck where the only survivors, a 16-year-old socialite and an 18-year-old crew member, found refuge for a few days until they were rescued.  Sounds like another Titanic screenplay…

About 9pm, just at dusk, I pulled into a B&B where I’d reserved a cute room in a refurbished train car.  I realized that it was more romantic on the internet than inside, but the honeymooners in the next compartment didn’t seem to share my disappointment.  After disembarking the train the next morning, I headed further west down the Great Ocean Road to Portland, the furthest I would drive on this trip, though the GOR continues to Adelaide.   First I stopped at a little lavender farm to try all kinds of smelly stuff, from lotion to a heat wrap, then pathetically chased the ducks through the lavender fields to get their portraits with my cheap camera.  I’d heard something about seeing seals, so I checked into the tourist center and got myself scheduled for a boat tour, then drove on out of town over the sand dunes that connected to a volcanic island, now called Cape Bridgewater.  As I rounded the last corner, the scraggly purplish-black cliffs came into view on the horizon above an incredible beach 4 km long with a quaint café and low-key surf club on the sand.  The water had me mesmerized, the blues and greens and whites as well as the lines and shape and symmetry.  I stopped into the café for a flat white, then walked along the beach and up the volcanic cliff of the Cape and finally back down to a tiny boat shack and dock.  Along with a family of 8, I strapped on a life vest and climbed into the big raft with an outboard motor – what they called a boat.  And for 45 minutes I couldn’t stop smiling.  We sailed over waves, some that reminded me of the final scenes of The Perfect Storm, and rounded the Cape to a huge colony of 600 fur seals.  After the fun of jumping waves, our guide cut the motor and we just rocked up and down with the incoming waves against the cliffs and very close to the seals’ sunbathing rocks.  Some couldn’t be bothered by us, but the extroverts dipped and dived and rolled over around our boat, with everyone trying to get a timely click of the camera shutter.  The waves eventually pushed us into a huge cave where other seals were hiding – I think I would’ve been claustrophobic if I hadn’t been so thrilled to be rocking on the water!  We cruised on back to the jetty, again with some fantastic wave-sailing, and as I walked back to the café and my car, I noticed a cottage just up the hillside with a “For Rent” sign out front.

Up the road a bit, to the other side of the “island”, I visited the Blowholes.  The purple and black volcanic terrain is formed of basalt and scoria, the latter being more easily eroded by the sea.  As the scoria dissolves, tunnels and channels and holes form in the basalt.  With the sea swell crashing against the rock, sprays of saltwater shoot into the air and come raining back down onto the rock with a pitter-patter.  I wanted to watch for hours, but I was getting hungry for lunch and a bit cold on the windy cliffs. 

Before heading back to town, though, I walked further along the cliffs to a “petrified forest”.  There actually is no wood there, but the theory is that a grove of Moonah trees were covered by a sand dune, and over time the tree trunks were encrusted by sediment.  As the organic interior dissolved, the acids carved the hardened sediment out from the inside and also leaked through the surface.  You know those sand castles we used to build on the beach with turrets capped in wet sand that was drizzled over them?  That’s what I was reminded of by these formations.

Although waking up at 9am and having a great hot B&B breakfast at 10 is a perfect vacation schedule, finding something decent to eat at 4 or 5pm is not.  Portland seemed shut down, just when I was craving some fresh catch, or at least some hot clam chowder.  I settled for fish & chips in an ice-cream/candy parlour with floor-to-ceiling shelves of lollipops and bonbons and a view of Portland’s harbor:  a toss-up as to which was more coulourful.

Although I thought I couldn’t be impressed anymore after seals and blowholes, boats and bonbons, I’d been recommended one more round-trip drive near Portland to Cape Nelson.  There was a red and white lighthouse which I duly photographed, and several hikes to take.  Feeling a bit ready to head back to my train lodging, I also thought I should at least take a short walk into the Enchanted Forest.  Bent-over Moonah trees created a tunnel and canopy while vines draped themselves over the branches.  With no other cars in the parking lot at the trail head and feeling cocooned by the greenery and evening light, I kept walking.  I could hear the ocean pounding the cliffs just below but couldn’t get within sight of it.  An overgrown track in the direction of the water caught my eye, and I found that it was a steep path down to a huge flat rock (creatively named Flat Rock).  I finally did get to sit for over an hour meditating on spouting blowholes and crashing waves on the rocks.  The tour book expressed it exactly:  “West of the Cape, where the sun sets over the sea, is a realm of liberating isolation:  entire beaches free of footprints and a national park where you can walk or paddle a boat for days without seeing a soul.”  I, however, saw my soul quite clearly.

Making my way back towards Melbourne on the faster highway via the highlands, I stopped for two hours in Port Fairy, which was a letdown after yesterday in Portland.  I didn’t get up early enough to go to church, which I actually was hoping to do since I haven’t gone for a month, but the Anglican Church was hosting the annual Strawberry Fête, so I checked it out.  The pastor was pretty hilarious as he quite successfully auctioned off junk as fundraisers.  But it was a church fundraiser/luncheon thing just like any other church thing anywhere else in the world.  I took an hour’s walk around a nearby island.  Snapping pictures of the lighthouse and the green and white beach lined by large black lava boulders, I found myself getting agitated.  This was a beautiful island, but not as thrilling of a coastline as Cape Nelson or Bells Beach, and there were so many people!  I mean, I must have passed 10 or 15 during the hour!!  I am quite the charming dramatist sometimes. 

Anyway, the Committee and I were arguing and I was tired of being a prima donna, so I headed inland to see volcano creations.  There are many lakes, although many that are now dry, in the round craters left by the volcanoes.  Some are huge and others look like a giant raindrop fell into dust.  I ate lunch at Cheese World and even got a two-dollar discount since the lady didn’t have change.  But I still just felt irritated.  I went to checkout a B&B on the shore of Lake Colac, but the lake was so dry that the water was at least ¼ mile out and the whole sight just depressed me.  Looking at the map for my options for the next two days as I made my way back to Melbourne, I saw that Lorne, on the GOR between Torquay and Apollo Bay, was only an hour away!  My spirits soared the closer I got to the ocean.  I was on another empty road, winding up to the crest of the hills, surrounded by eucalyptus trees again!  The air was wonderful, and I felt that I was already smelling the coast, though that was impossible at that distance.  Maybe I was just making up some psychological scent because the Committee had gone home for the night and I felt at peace.  The scent was beautiful and strong and tangible – then I saw jasmine blooming between the eucalyptus.  Of course!  It’s spring here, which I keep forgetting.  So the scent of eucalyptus and jasmine escorted me to the blue-green water.  I turned off at the first B&B sign in Lorne and found a beautiful peaceful room looking out to the ocean and a reservation for one at the BaBaLu Club for paella night.

Before I drove back to Melbourne for my flight to Ayers Rock, my brother and I had a video chat and caught up on family gossip from Thanksgiving.  Of course the real star (as I’m sure my brother is well aware) is my gorgeous niece Allie, eating her lunch of arroz con Cheerios.  I got to see their Christmas tree, and feeling nostalgic as I drove toward Melbourne on the Road of Eucalyptus and Jasmine, I realized that today is the 1^st of December.  19 days to LA...