The Breakdown

280 kilometres north of Alice Springs we broke down. Unhappily the nearest mechanic was 250 kilometres further north. Worse still, we had broken down right next to a rotting kangaroo carcass and the thousand flies it was host to, found us more interesting. Even more unhappily, we were stranded for three days while our roadside recovery people refused to come and rescue us until we had paid 500 pounds of excess. We did not know this until day two. You see, we had no reception and the only way to communicate is by stopping a car and asking them to pass on a message in the next town (a good two hour drive). We had sufficient supplies for four days and plenty of kind souls stopped to ensure we were alright.

The Road Less Travelled...

We were able to identify what was to blame: massive leak of transmission fluid from the front seal of the gearbox. Impossible to fix without a spare seal and an apprenticeship in mechanics. We were able to apprehend some transmission fluid and a few cans of stop leak on the third day and we made a very sluggish track to Tennant Creek. Tennant Creek is a small town of no significance but we made friends with some very generous natives. In essence, no mechanics were prepared to do the job as a) it was a very big job and b) they wouldn’t do it for a few weeks. The prospect of spending two weeks in a town of no significance is about as appealing as having a demented and slightly rabid ferret chew on my face. So we sent the car up to Darwin via road train (lorries three to four trailers long and they literally cause the ground to tremble) and followed it on the night bus.

So this is the moon down under. Is it true that it is the other way round up there?

So we are now in Darwin and have the car booked with a mechanic on Wednesday. The whole gear box needs to come out (it is a massive beast) and it is at least an 8 hour job. Considering we have already had to have a fuel leak fixed, a new exhaust welded and there are a plethora of other mechanical woes to be addressed, we may be backing the wrong horse. But other travellers seem to have spent more than us on their chariots, so I guess we are lucky.

Auhtor's note: You may have noticed that I have a tendancy to put up photos that do not appear to have any relevance to either the paragraph bellow or the one above. Let me assure you that, you are correct, there is no relevance at all.

Scroll down for some culinary capers ...

What on earth could make two wonderfully attractive people turn into grotesque ogres ...

Could it be the fear of imminent doom? Could it be the sight of ghastly horrors?

Could it even be a wretched and obscene odour unleashed by a hideous being? Or could it be something, much, much worse ....

Yes my friends. This is a bark filled with wiggling witchetty grubs (aka really fat worms). In times gone by, long before McDonald's, prior to the foundations of the first Starbucks being built, those that roamed the lands here ate this ungodly creatures. They look like something that would explode its white puss under the slightest pressure. They appear to wiggle away from your reluctant grasp as you fetch them. By god their very sight filled us with repulsion. But they were rather tasty and we even had seconds. So there you go.

To celebrate we went to the Sunset market in Darwin. Here, hundreds of stands sell Delicious produce on the beach. Our favorite were the Indonesian and Timor stands. The Philippino and Vietnamese ones were quite tasty too. The best part of all was the fact that the food was first rate and yet dirt cheap! The winner, though was a slow-roasted lamb shank. So we ate till our stomachs fought back...

... and we then ate some more, then more still. Then even more.


Then we wobbled our way onto the beach and enjoyed a marvellous sunset.




Don't forget to scroll down for an update on what we saw in Uluru ...

Those who know me may think of me as cynical old man who will happily find a fault in even the best laid plan. They may also think that I am hard to impress and will take any opportunity to criticise. In essence, I am a grumpy old man and I have to say that there is some truth to it.

There are but a few sights that I can honestly say I have been left wholly and most profoundly speechless by. I struggle to remember times that I have felt truly humbled. There are only a handful of moments that I have felt tears swell up in my eyes for reasons other than sadness. The first time I held my sister’s son in my arms, unwrapping my 25^th birthday present from my brother, standing beside my parents under Canterbury Cathedral on my graduation, sitting with my best man in Bwadalabougo and of course, placing a gold ring on my bride’s finger are the pick of those moments. There is now another one to add to that list: Uluru.

We almost did not see Uluru (Ayers Rock). We, as so many do, nearly avoided it for being the most typical of tourist cliché destinations. Happily, we did drive the 500 kilometre detour to see it. No spoken language has the vocabulary, no photographer has the expertise and no writer has the talent to capture the sheer magnificence of Uluru. The reason is perfectly simple, Uluru is so overwhelmingly disarming that it strips you bare, it’s ochre bulk holds your gaze while your entire body turns to a pile of wobbly, glutinous jelly. When I first saw Uluru, my spine tingled as though a column of ferocious army ants were marching up my vertebrae, my heart beat raced as though I was on the 23^rd mile of a marathon, my lungs felt as though I was breathing through a straw and my eyes and the rock were as inseparable as two powerful magnets.

I have no faith in theology and I lack the learning of geological matters. There are religious explanations and there are scientific ones behind nature’s wonders. I’ll let those debates carry on in the background while I sit on the proverbial fence. The view is much better from there anyway. Despite that, there is an overwhelming sense of spirituality that flows from Uluru and I was certainly caught in its ebb. The sight of Uluru very nearly brought tears to my eyes and I could understand why this wonderful marvel remains so important to aboriginal culture.

As I have mentioned before, the aboriginals are a beaten people who, as far as I can see, have accepted their fate. They are a nation of warriors who have lain down to die. Their last battle may very well have been clawing Ayers Rock back from the greedy clutches of the whites to reclaim it as Uluru. Despite this, the whites continue to carve a deep and ugly abrasion into the very core of their culture. Tourists continue to rub salt into the wound and persist to climb Uluru in their thousands. This is despite very clear and particularly obvious pleas not to so by aboriginals. I do not consider myself to be naive, but I honestly thought that no one in their right mind would be so blatantly disrespectful as to climb Uluru these days. Perhaps five or ten years ago this was normal, but now the message is clear. It’s in all the guidebooks, it’s in all the posters and it’s even on the ticket stud to the park: Please don’t climb Uluru. To the aboriginal, climbing Uluru is like urinating on the cross. The sight of the tourists snaking their way to the summit caught me unprepared and left me as breathless as an uppercut to the chin.

Selfishly, I hope that I’ll soon forget the bad bit and hold on to the marvellous site of Uluru and cherish it. After all, even if all I see in Australia is Uluru, then it’s well worth flying the other side of the world for.

Prior to Uluru we made good use of the 4x4 to explore the MacDonneld Ranges and bushcamped in some splendid locations.

The weather was warm and a cool breeze made it quite pleasant. The views of the ranges and some odd rock formations were terrific, especially when the glow of a sunset or sunrise highlighted the deep ochre.

Check this out: the walliby has a little 'Joey' in his pocket. His hungry too.

It would have been perfect if it were not for our constant companions. I have finally found something infinitely more irritating than a Vietnamese shopkeeper: flies. Not just one or two, but droves of them. They seem to revel in darting into the ear drum, the wet lip, the nostril, the corner of the eye or a bald head. There is no refuge. They come from nowhere and quite simply, they don’t take no for an answer. Damn their eyes.

Tout va bien.

Pas de panique, je rassure la frangine et les copines, nous allons tres bien. Merci de vous preoccuper de nous mais surtout ne vous inquietez pas, du moment qu'on est ensemble, tous les deux, tout va bien.
En fait, meme plus que bien puisque nous sommes a Darwin, ou il fait chaud et nous restons dans une auberge de jeunesse ou il y a une piscine. Que demande le peuple?
Nous sommes arrives hier en fin d'apres midi, apres un voyage sans douleurs, de Tennant Creek a Darwin (depart a 3 heures du mat, quand meme)
Meme si je dormais bien dans le bus, j'ai ete reveillee par la lumiere du jour levant vers 6h30, et la, incroyable. J'ai ete temoin du plus beau lever de soleil que j'ai jamais vu. Des couleurs, meme pas je savais qu'elles existaient. C'etait magnifique, et rien que pour ca, je devrais dire merci a notre voiture d'etre tombee en panne, sinon, je ne l'aurais pas vu. Et merci aussi a mon cher mari qui m'a, en temps que vrai gentleman, laisse la place a cote de la fenetre.

Comme c'est dimanche aujourd'hui, on ne peut pas avancer au niveau de la voiture. Demain, nous ferons tout le necessaire, en esperant que les reparations ne prendront pas trop longtemps.
Meme si Darwin est une ville tres sympathique, on a du mal avec la vie citadine depuis qu'on a fait l'experience du bush et on a hate d'aller visiter le parc national de Kakadu, pour voir des crocodiles (Doucement les lezards, gentil, gentil, voila!)

La, nous sommes a la bibliotheque municipale, dans la tres jolie (et air conditionnee) Parlement House, et ce matin, nous avons visite des tunnels de la 2de guerre mondiale, qui servaient a stocker le petrole. (Devinez c'etait l'idee de qui cette visite?)
On ne savait pas (et je suis sure que peu d'entre vous le savent aussi) mais Darwin a ete bombardee par les japonais 64 fois. Le gouvernement australien, cependant, n'a pas fait part de ces bombardements au peuple de peur que celui-ci panique en s'imaginant une invasion.

Tout a l'heure, nous irons au marche nocturne (avec la chaleur, le port et le marche, on se croirait presque a Ajaccio) ou nous esperons pouvoir acheter notre repas prefere: le gosleme turc! Une espece de pate/crepe/pain fourree avec des epinards et de la feta, frit. Miam!

Nous reviendrons bientot avec le pc portable, pour pouvoir publier quelques unes de nos photos (dont Uluru, quel spectacle!)
en attendant, bisous a tout le monde,
et ne vous inquietez pas pour deux touristes qui se font bronzer au bord de la piscine en sirotant une biere fraiche. Ca serait le monde a l'envers.

And the motor stops turning...

Good day to you all.

Short blog entry today I'm afraid. Since our last update we have been wondering around Uluru and a few neighbouring national parks. We'll write more about that and post some pics when we reach Darwin.

In short, we have spent three days broken down 15 Km north of Barrow Creek. This aint the best spot for a backpacker to breakdown in but lots of people stopped by to make sure we were alright. Ju even got a ride with the police!

In essence, the front seal has gone on the gear box and it was bleeding transmission fluid at 3 litres for 30kms of distance. We were hundreds of kms from any town and we were being quoted 500 pounds for towing (despite our roadside assistance insurance). So we found ways to drive it kicking and screaming to Tennant Creek.

It's a massive job to fix and they wouldn't be able to do it here until next week. So we are sending the car on a road train to Dawrin and we'll catch a bus up there tonight. We'll have it fixed then, but as I said, it is a big job and we'll be up there for quite some time so we'll write more up there.

But we were always safe, had plenty of water, food, shade and the passing traffic were very kind to us.

Speak to you later. Philip and Ju

Alice Springs and beyond

Nous voila a Alice Springs, la ville en plein milieu du désert rouge. On a du mal a croire qu’il y a des gens qui habitent ici, car avant d’arriver dans cette ville, c’est des centaines et des centaines de kilomètres de néant ! La ville a été fondée il y a même pas 100 ans pendant que les blancs créaient une station de télégraphe qui joindrait Darwin, a Adelaide. Communication ici est un vrai challenge que les Australiens arrivent a défier de manière ingénieuse. Hier, on a visité The School of the Air (a vous de deviner ce que cela peut bien être…) Non, ce n’est pas une école de pilotage, c’est en fait une école primaire pour les enfants qui vivent trop loin de la civilisation pour se présenter physiquement dans une vraie salle de classe. Alors, leurs leçons sont broadcasté (je me souviens plus du mot français, help) par la radio. L’élève le plus éloigné habite à 1000 kms d’Alice. Vous imaginez une salle de classe la taille de la France!

Etant enseignante, j’ai bien sur trouvé ca passionnant, mais aussi déconcertant. Les élèves de cette école de l’air sont tous blancs, enfants de fermiers (la ferme la plus grande ici fait la taille de la Belgique ; on a pas les mêmes valeurs) et de garde-forestiers, mais pas d’aborigènes. Et pourtant, eux aussi habitent loin. Leur statut est presque inexistant, et leur pauvreté se rapproche de la pauvreté que j’ai vu au Vietnam. Philip et moi avons vraiment été choqués par ca, on en reste encore déconcertés, et déçu par les blancs australiens qui n’ont pas vraiment l’air d’être surpris ou gênés.

Sur une note plus positive, mais toujours sur cette école de l’air, on a vu une vidéo des visiteurs célèbres. Et qui plus que les Wiggles pourraient faire plaisir aux élèves ? Max et Benjy (leurs plus grands fans, outre-Pacifique) auraient tout fous!
Sur notre chemin, a Coward Springs, nous avons fait la connaissance d’un couple d’allemands. Nous avons fait un bout de route ensemble, ils étaient uber sympatische. Malheureusement, nos chemins se sont séparés (c’est le vie) mais nous avons bien profité de pouvoir faire du 4x4 sur des routes désertiques (parfois inexistantes) avec eux (au cas ou quelque chose nous arrivait).

Et grâce a eux, nous avons découvert le toaster de camping ! Une invention qui mérite un prix Nobel d’ingéniosité ! Je prendrai une photo plus tard pour vous le montrer plus tard. Nous pouvons enfin manger des toasts au petit dej. Presque comme a Home Sweet Home.

Viele Gluck, Kirstien und Jens!
Sur le chemin, nous avons aussi bien sur découvert quelques nouveaux animaux. Des émus (dommage, on a pas dégainé l’appareil photo assez rapidement !), un lézard du désert (que nous avons observe en train de chasser et manger une chenille)

Des aigles. Pareil, pas assez rapide a dégainer. L’envergure de leurs ailes est plus large que le pare-brise de notre engin. Les oiseaux de proie que nous avons vu en Ecosse (et dont on était tout fier) nous font penser a des moineaux-pygmées a coté de ces aigles.
D’ailleurs, tout est disproportionné ici : des fermes la taille d’un pays, une barrière de barbelé pour empêcher les dingos de manger les moutons de plus de 5000 kms de long, et ces escargots…
Quelques photos de notre aventure….

Pour finir, voici une photo de Philip qui vient de réaliser a quel point il est loin de son neveu !

Nous partons demain pour quelques jours dans les parcs nationaux aux alentours d’Alice Springs, et bien sur, Uluru. Notre prochaine escale-internet risque d’être dans plus d’une semaine, en attendant, bisous a tous, et merci de suivre nos aventures.
Bisou spécial a Yvonne et Claude, nos 2 dernières recrues. Bienvenue a vous deux et bisous a Cécile, Cédric et sa petite famille.

Adelaide, not much to say about this place other than it was wet and we had a particularly mouth-watering Thai curry that was fresh, vibrant and full of sharp flavours. We then went on to pay a visit to Australia’s premium wine valley, The Barossa. It is described as being a charming place filled with wineries, butcher shops, bakeries and vineyards. If this description of a place was not enough to entice me, then nothing would. In reality, the bakeries were plain, the butcher shops industrial and the wineries harsh on the pallet. But we did rent a couple of bikes to glide blissfully from vineyard to vineyard.

Conscious that we had been living a life of relative ease and tranquillity, my wife and I decided to head off the beaten track, drive away from the common tourist route and make damn good use of our four wheel drive and undergo a journey of a thousand kilometres off any form of sealed road.

First stop: The magnificent Flanders Ranges. A giant asteroid crater, possibly the size of Canterbury, accessible only by 4x4. We marvelled at rock formations 400 million years old and were dazzled by deep reds and bright yellows while driving along dried up gorges. I made a roaring fire that left blistering embers for Ju to fry some particularly moist and flavoursome eggy bread over.

Second Stop: The Oodnadatta Trail. A dirt track several hundred kilometres long that crosses sun scorched earth, snakes around rainless deserts, descends into rivers in drought and avoids any form of animal life. The heat was intense, the air was dry and out here dust is king. We camped out in Coward’s Spring, which is a natural oasis in the middle of this desiccated land. The natural spring was cool enough to be refreshing and yet warm enough to untie the knots of the bumpy road. To make a fire, we chopped up some old railway sleepers (from the famous disused Ghan railway track, linking Darwin, up north, to Adelaide, down south) and they burned magnificently.

While I was busy chopping up the wood, a filthy backpacker approached me. I could smell his insulting stench before I could see him. I had the misfortune of being downwind. His hair was long and greasy, platted by dirt and dust. His skin had either been darkened by the sun or browned by weeks of soap dodging. His top was torn and stained with dark patches of grease and food stains. His trousers hung loosely and he scratched away at his belly like a rabid, diseased dog as he spoke to me. His companions were not far away and I was keen to finish the task at hand before they too came to offend my senses. I quickened the pace, smashing giant sleepers, showering the fellow with splinters, but he was not put off by this. I could hear sounds coming from his lips, I tried not to listen but what I did hear left me in utter disgust. I gently placed my axe on the dusty floor, I straightened up, look him right into the eye and in a firm and uncompromising tone, asked him to repeat himself. In his thick and crass French accent, he repeated exactly what I thought he said, “perhaps you come wiz me and we av some beer and some green’”. Clearly, he had totally misjudged my character. I don’t know what made him think why a clean shaven Englishman, in a pressed white shirt, who was clearly more sophisticated and had significantly greater knowledge of Virgil and Homer, would possibly be interested in ‘green’ is beyond me. I politely declined his offer, gathered my wood and left without hesitation.

Third Stop: Lake Eyre. Australia’s lowest point at a rather unimpressive 16 metres below sea level and home to a huge salt lake that has only been filled up three times in a hundred years. We were in the driest part of the driest state of the driest country on the driest continent on earth. The drive there was long and tedious but otherwise straightforward. We enjoyed a marvellous sunset, had our breath taken away by vivid and intense star constellations and woke early to enjoy the cool air before the sun rose to once more further punish the dust underfoot.

Fourth Stop and back on the road: Coober Peddy. A large opal mining community where the locals live underground because the heat is so intense. It seemed to me that the aboriginals are left to bake and boil in the blistering, dry and unforgiving heat above. Here, it appears as though the aboriginals live like dogs. While they no longer have their children removed to live with whites and be taken to church, while it is now illegal to kill them for sport and the new government is making massive efforts to right wrongs, they still feel the acute pain of having white supremacists rape their culture and obliterate any chance they have to break out of their fenced enclosures. The only aboriginals we spoke to were begging for money. Incidentally, the aboriginal communities make up only 3% of the entire population. I for one, never realised how numerically insignificant and how perilously close they are to being made extinct in their own lands. They live in special, fenced communities where large signs advise the aboriginals that ‘Alcohol and Pornography’ are not permitted. Despite what I read in the newspapers, what I hear the politicians say and what I am told by white Australians, what I see at the moment is a subclass of humans that live in abject poverty. The Australian Tourist Office is quick to play on Aborignal culture but is seems as though they paint an ideal rather than the reality that confronts them.

Happy Birthday Sis!

Nous sommes a Coober Peddy, la ville de chercheurs d'opal.

Tu es passee par ici lors de ton voyage en Australie, soeur cherie, et tu m'en as ramene un pendentif en opal rose. J'etais tellement fiere de mon opal australien que tu m'avais ramene de l'autre cote de la terre!

Je l'ai toujours et il m'apporte toujours autant de plaisir quand je le mets.

Il me rappelle quelle soeur sensible, genereuse, a l'ecoute, attendrie et protectrice tu es.

Merci d'etre tout ce qu'une petite soeur peut demander d'une grande soeur.

Tu es geniale.

Joyeux anniversaire, ma soeur adoree.

Ta petite soeur (aka Timoune)

PS: Photo prise lors de ta petite visite a Edimbourg. Tu te souviens, c'etait shopping, tea, toasts, Cats at the Playhouse et papotage a volonte. Genial.

PPS: Tu me manques.