The great ocean road or the brutal reality of tourism

One of the top things I wanted to do when I got to Australia was to see and drive the great Ocean road. First of all, it’s basically just the most wonderful piece of coastline in the world, with nothing but stunning views of the beautiful ocean. And I am definitely an ocean child. Secondly, it was about driving this mythical road. The turns and turns of the asphalt, right next to cliffs, all drowning in the blue of the ocean, the salty air and the sun. I honestly can say that it was one if the best drives of my life. Ok, may be not Nullabor drive, but it was wonderful. I listened to Elvis Presley and the Beach boys (yes, I’m rather old school), sang along, had the windows pulled down and had to constantly remind myself to look at the road and not at the glory of the ocean.

That part was not disappointing. It was every bit as exhilarating as I thought it would be. The tragedy began when I started to pull over to look at the main “attractions” on the road. The arch. The 12 apostles. The grotto. That was just mass tourism at its worst.

To be fair, I just came from 4 months in the less touristy part of Australia. 3 months in Western Australia where I didn’t meet any other European but for the people I was working with. Working in deserted farms, in the middle of national parks, feeling blissfully lost in my adventures. It was all about going out of my comfort zone, getting dirty working the earth. Drinking beers with the locals, going to endless beautiful beaches where I could see only my footprints when leaving after hours of staring at the ocean and writing. I was naively unaware in those first few months to what extend Australia was touristic. I just experienced the wildest, loneliest part, and I loved every miles of it.

And suddenly, I was thrown in the area. Without so much as a warning. Without a big city to get into before, without expectations and without defenses. And then it was endless buses filled with tourists which kept on arriving at my little spot on the beach. I didn’t get a second by myself.

And it was always the same. 50 people would go down. With big hats, high  uncomfortable heels, big cameras. They would walk powerfully to where the “thing” was. Whatever that was.

Beach, ocean, rocks. The “thing” they came to see. And snap snap snap pictures pictures pictures. Some pictures of the “thing” itself, but the great majority were selfies. That’s when I discovered the selfie stick by the way. Thousands of them. And everybody was just fake smiling for the pictures. Because it wasn’t enough to prove that you made it there, to show a picture of the THING. You had to show yourself with the thing, because, after all, it’s all about you.

And it just made me SO sad. All those people. Who had traveled from so far, spent so much money to BE here, not even stopping a SECOND to just LOOK AT IT. I swear some of them didn’t even bothered. Came, took a picture of it, took a picture of themselves with it, left. Not ONCE did they pause to look at that incredible beauty right in the face and not through a screen.

And I know it makes me sound old and grumpy. “aaah all those young folks don’t know what life is anymore”. And maybe it’s true. Don’t get me wrong. I am a digital nomad. I have Instagram and Twitter accounts and I travel blog. I believe technology has a lot to offer. And yes, I am a bit of a snob. I am a traveler and not a tourist. But tourism is fine. I have nothing against tourism. It expands your horizons and broadens your mind.

But you have to give it a chance. Let yourself be amazed. Look at things. Be there, in the moment. What I witnessed there was not being there in the moment. It was business. The business of being there, of showing yourself.

It made me sad but it didn’t bring me down. I just sat there. Looking at it all. Breathing it in. And it was glorious.

If you want to know what it was like in my little car, just listen to it 🙂

 

The open road is calling. Always and forever

One of the main reasons I wanted to go to Australia was for the Outback. I wanted to taste it, to live it. Those endless roads, the red dust, the infinite blue sky. I wanted to drive for hours without seeing anyone. Be lost in a lost world. I wanted the roadhouses on the side of the dirt track where old tough drivers were drinking old tough beers.

Having arrived in Perth and bought my car there, if I wanted to continue my circle I had to drive through the desert of the Nullarbor. At the time it didn’t seem special. I didn’t understand the surprised expressions and look of worries of people around me. I didn’t get why my last boss before the long drive got me all those tools and camping equipment. Telling me to call when I made it through.

I guess it’s only from the other side, when people responded to my crossing with things like “by YOURSELF ?! in THAT car ?! oh my GOD it’s a story you’re going to be able to tell to your grandchildren” that I realized that I might have been a little reckless about it all.

But it was one of the best experiences of my life. You can’t drive through the desert at night because of all the kangaroos. They are nocturnal animals and bound to jump in front of your car in the middle of the night. Which would be as lethal for the kangaroos as for my adorable car.

So you’ve got to drive the 700 k between the last city and the only motel in the desert in daylight hours. Which means you cannot stop. Ever. You just drive. I drove 8 hours straight for 3 days. 8 hours without pausing, just for gas (and you pause EVERY TIME you see a gas station, because who KNOWS when the next one is going to be). I got so many cramps in my foot that I used the other one to push on the gas pedal. I had stages of intense deep thinking. Then almost falling asleep, so blasting the music and singing at the top of my lungs, the windows rolled down, the desert smell in my hair. I saw dingoes and kangaroos. Giant lizards making a slow crossing. You meet so few people than when you do see a car coming from the other direction, you do this awesome little salute, two fingers from your  temple and away.

Those three days were intense and exhausting. Exhilarating and delirious. It was the purest form of life on the infinite, open road. It was endless possibilities, the feeling of going somewhere and being nowhere at the same time. It was moving as fast as I could and standing still because the road would never end. It was dangerous and amazing. And I loved every second of it.

More travel pictures on my Instagram

Adapting to the new rules

I had very few moments in my life on the road where I wanted SOMEONE to come and FIX IT all for me. That night in my wooden house in the middle of my national park was one of them.

The night started normal enough. Taking my torch to go one last time to the bathroom outside the house, meeting a few large kangaroos passively chewing while watching me, hearing the bats flying around, going to bed in the deafening silence of the forest. But THEN, in the middle of the night, something woke me up from under my bed. It already took me a good 10 minutes to sum up the courage to put that foot on the floor, get up and turn on the light. That’s when I saw SOMETHING jump behind the curtains of the widow.

What the HECK was that ?! no mouse could jump that far. No iguana was that fast. Grabbing the curtain and going up and down. What if it was something dangerous ? what if it could kill me ? No way I could just choose to go back to sleep. But what if it stung ? bit ? Breathed fire ? I couldn’t just pull that curtain.

In the middle of the forest, alone in my little wooden house, no one was there to help me. I then spent about an hour throwing shoes, t shirts, socks at the curtain in a desperate attempt to at least SEE what I was dealing with. Clearly the problem was the unknown. And I was tired. And annoyed. And felt inadequate. I didn’t know what to do. And SOMEONE needed to come RIGHT NOW to my rescue and fix everything so I could go to sleep.  I was on the verge of tears when suddenly, the little mouse came out from under the curtain. Australian mice are like tiny kangaroos. They can JUMP pretty high.

As soon as I saw that it wasn’t lethal, my whole body and mind relaxed. I put a cookie on the floor to apologize to my new roommate for all the shoes throwing and went straight to bed. THAT is the amazing power of adaptability of human beings. Back in Europe, NO WAY I would ever have been ok sleeping with a mouse creeping around my stuff and person. There, the rule was, if it couldn’t kill me, I didn’t give a damn.

Little did I know how MUCH I would adapt during my time on the road. That was one of my first stop. 10 months later I would be sleeping in a tiny little metal house in the bush where I would wake up with mice on my pillow smelling my hair … Oh well. If it can’t kill me.

Bonus pictures on Instagram

A thousand lives : My time as a Camel farmer in Alice Springs

As soon as I arrived in Australia, Alice Spring was always on my mind. And yes, it seemed impossible to get there. And yes, it was at least 2 to 3 days of driving no matter where you started from. And then 2 or 3 days no matter where you wanted to go. It was in the middle of the red dust, forgotten by the Gods, lonely under the endless blue sky. It was the very heart of the Outback and it was for me. When I finally got there I got a job in a camel farm. Yes, Camels. It didn’t sound very Australian to me but apparently a lot of them are out there in the wild, from that time when they moved things with camels. Massive trucks ended up replacing them, and they were set free.

Alice Springs, Australia

It was the Outback at its purest. My boss was a camel rider who always wore a messed up cow boy hat, spoke with that lazy crackling accent, moved in this careful wary way, and talked about the rest of the world like we just didn’t get IT.

I got this tiny metal house in the back of the garden, were mice would climb on my bed every night and I would wake up when they were smelling (or eating ?) my hair. I was sharing my bathroom with the tourists and the camel guys, and was always showering while singing loudly because there was no lock and I was letting everybody know that the bathroom was indeed occupied. My jobs were marvelous. I would wake up every morning and put a shitload of camel poo in a wheelbarrow, push it to the chickens and put that in there. I would then spend my mornings in a personal combat with the dry, nasty and inflexible outback earth, trying to dig up the weeds that were conquering everything. In the afternoon I was weaving smelly camel hair. And then for my all-time favorite : the douchebag bird. It was this 70 years old white cockatoo. The sweetest possible bird when the owner was around. Just loving and purring like a cat and snuggling under her arm and being adorable. As soon as the owner was gone though, that bird was just plain vicious. If I opened the cage to feed him, he would go for my feet and try to bite me. He always watched me in a careful way, looking where he could attack, going for the fingers if he was close enough, circling his food bowl, daring me to go in. By the end of my stay I would just throw the seeds through the bars and pour the water from the outside, insulting him under my breath while he was just giving me his satisfied smile.

But the camel farm gave me some serious Outback credit. Ridding a camel in the red sand at sunset, callused hands from working the shovel so hard, endless talks with Marcus about their aboriginal friends, red dust over all of my clothes that will never ever leave. For a split second, I was part of that forgotten rough world, and it felt powerful.

 

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