Australia (Part 2e)- Western Australia Continued, the Nullabour and South Australia

May 2001

Esperance (meaning ‘Hope’ in French), began as a seal and whale hunting ground in the 1780s. When gold was discovered north at Kalgoorlie in 1895, the hopeful, international collection of fortune seekers, piled into this port by the boatload to reach the gold fields and then it died a death when it was bypassed by the new east-west transcontinental route which was laid out 200km north.

Today, Esperance or the ‘Bay of Isles’, now 12,000 strong, is fighting back as a major tourist resort because of it’s temperate climate, magnificent coastal scenery, stunning blue water and dazzling white beaches. In 1985, it was still a sleepy backwater that housed the ‘remains’ of Skylab, which had crashed in the bush in 1979. You can still find the crumpled debris at the town’s small museum along with another weird sight – a ‘Rabbits’ Picnic’, made up of a dozen stuffed and clothed rabbits doing rabbit-like things around the picnic spread on the ground. Worth every penny this place!

To the west of town, you can drive along a new Great Ocean Road ‘scenic route’ to take in the wonderful coastal vista of low lying granite outcrop islands, white beaches and beautiful sea. But if you turn east from the town, you will eventually reach a real gem of a place.

The Cape Le Grand National Park has terrain characterised by wild coastal scenery, a chain of rugged granite/gneiss peaks and sweeping heathlands. The Great Ocean Road had some great beaches, but they paled in comparison to the beaches in this place. Lucky Bay, Hellfire Bay and Thistle Cove were flat narrow horseshoe curved stretches of brilliant snow-white sand, trapped between orange, water and wind shaped, spurs and backed by dark green heathlands.

But it was the colour of the sea that set them apart. Immaculately clean, light aqua-turquoise coloured water filled the bays that changed to a deeper blue further out. Under a clear light blue sky, with the foamy white surf of the crashing waves, they left all those heavily promoted beaches we’d visited, floundering in ordinariness. They were also completely empty!

Within the park, we also clambered up the very steep granite slope of Frenchman’s Peak to the summit at 262 metres. The advice suggested a 2-hour return trip. We reached the top in 14 minutes. It was a good workout. It was a strange rock. Originally formed 600 million years ago in Precambrian times, the sea levels rose 300 metres above their present level 40 million years ago and the peak was submerged. The top of the peak was a large cavern which had formed by the wave action that was now far below. From the top, we had a marvellous view over the National Park and the offshore islands. You can add Cape Le Grand to the ‘unmissable’ list.

A single, brown furry sea lion swam off Esperance’s old wooden pier, and bade us farewell as we made like the previous miners and headed for the gold at Kalgoorlie about 400 km north. Passing through pretty non-descript scenery and hamlets called ‘Grass Patch’ and ‘Salmon Gums’ we detoured to the famous ‘ghost town’ of Coolgarlie.

Gold was discovered here in 1892 and by 1900, 25,000 people had moved in. When the gold ran out, everyone shifted to Kalgoorlie 35km east. It has regrouped a little as a tourist attraction and 1,000 locals still reside there, so it is hardly a ghost town. But on a cold windy Saturday afternoon it was deserted. The main street is about 200ft wide and is lined by some lovely turn of the century architecture (despite being burnt down twice) including the impressive sandstone town hall. Enormous old pubs/hotels with their original iron latticework, railing and balconies seemed to hold the only evidence of life today.

There were a series of historical information boards along the main street, which told you about the town’s history with old photos. It was here that I read of a man who in 1896, claimed a world record. He had ridden his camel 600 miles across the desert to Coolgardie and the camel had never had a drop of water en route. The camel’s name, not surprisingly, was ‘Misery’.

Kalgoorlie’s gold rush took off a year after Coolgardie’s when three Irish prospectors discovered 100 ounces of gold nuggets. The gold rush that followed was staggering in size. Men came from all around the world and hundreds of mining companies were floated to speculate on the rich reefs. By 1900, the ‘Gold fields’ area was the economic and political centre of Western Australia.

However, the conditions were harsh with inadequate food and water. Most people lived in hessian or canvas huts and there was no sanitation. Scurvy, Dysentry and typhoid were common. Water soon became more valuable than gold. In 1903, water shortages were so acute that a water pipeline was laid 600km east all the way from Perth. Designed by a wizard civil engineer called O’Connell, he got so much flak for his expensive project that he blew another hole in his head shortly before completion. But it was this pipe that saved the town.

After 1900, the big companies went deep underground to find the gold and the ‘Golden Mile’ appeared (the ‘richest mile in the world’). Since 1893, Kalgoorlie ore deposits have produced nearly 1,000 tons of gold, by far the most to be extracted from one source in Australia. In its heyday, it had 93 pubs, 93 brothels and 8 breweries for a population of 30,000 which remains at this size today.

As you drive into the centre you pass through a mess of modern development and industrial suburbs selling “Bloody cheap auto parts”. But downtown, the past is still conspicuous with its wide streets, and pleasant old turn of the century public buildings and pubs.

Right next to the centre is the ‘Golden Mile’, that looks as if some massive moles from hell moved in and made a home. It is just a stark terrain of ugly red/brown mountains of dirt that flanks the eastern side of town. If you visit the ‘Super Pit Lookout’ at Fimiston Mine, however, you see the real story. The staggering view you get is of a 4km long, 1.5km wide, 300 metre deep hole in the earth’s crust, which is Australia’s largest open cut goldmine. The scale was, as with Mt Isa, unimaginable.

The open mine is a dramatic set of sheer cuts into multicoloured rock. At the bottom of each of these cuts, hugging the cliff faces, which were staggered by very acute gradients, lay a series of dirt tracks that spiralled down to the bottom of the pit. These were used by the colossal sized dumper trucks, which operate 24 hours a day hauling out the exploded rock at the bottom. Against the scale of the pit they were driving in, they looked like yellow matchbox toys. The pit is a 17-year project that will burrow down to 500m. I had finally arrived at the Land of the Giants.

The ‘Museum of the Gold fields’ which lay at the edge of town next to the ‘Golden Mile’ was an excellent display of assorted treasures. Outside stood an old wooden miner’s cottage, which built in 1933 had been lived in until 1995 by a little old lady. You could walk around the rooms with all the old furniture – the dressing table made out of tea chests and see, but not use, the outside dunny (toilet) , which was a bucket in a narrow wooden shed (and probably full of little old lady shit). Next door was the old wooden WA Bank. The ‘British Arms Hotel’ was also part of the complex, supposedly the ‘narrowest pub in the world’. Inside the museum were gold field history/artefacts including a wooden bicycle (even the wheels), a completely equipped dental surgery from the 1940s and a collection of gold nuggets discovered here. A lift took you to the top of Ivanhoe Headframe to a viewing platform, to look over the city and the molehills.

Kalgoorlie also has another unique reputation called ‘Hay Street’. It is here that the brothel section was established and where the hookers sat in the windows like they do in Amsterdam. They are still there though the brothels now call themselves Bordellos. We walked past a few on a dreary Sunday afternoon when business was obviously slow. You can even do a $25 tour of Langtrees Bordello, but I don’t think they throw in a woman as part of the cost.

We stayed in Boulder, which was originally another independent town, but has since disappeared into Kalgoorlie’s suburbs. There are a few nice old buildings on it’s main street, the most famous of which is the Town Hall that contains the last remaining Goatcher Theatre piece in the world. What on earth is one of those you ask.

Philip Goatcher, an Englishman who emigrated in 1890, became the highest paid theatre scene painter in the world. He painted scenes on curtains that acted as backdrops for early Twentieth Century theatres. Over the years, his work has all been thrown out (probably due to moths), but Boulder Town Hall still has one. Painted in 1908, the vast curtain backdrop depicts a Neapolitan scene with the volcano Versuvius in the background, perhaps in recognition of the large Italian population working in the gold fields. It was a very splendid piece, whose effect was slightly offset by the display of belly dancing that was going on in front of it that morning in the Town Hall. Bellydancers in Kalgoorlie? With MY reputation?

On a wet, freezing day (ok it was 15’C but still bloody cold to us), we got ready to set out on the final leg of our Australian tour. As I backed the van out of our camping spot in pouring rain, we heard a thump, then a shattering of glass. I had reversed into a tree and the back windscreen exploded. ‘Bugger!’ was not one of the words I exclaimed that day.

Considering that it was a Sunday morning and everything was closed, we were lucky to find a 24-hour windscreen repair place that had a spare back windscreen. “She’ll be right” said the fitter as he passed me a hefty bill, 50% of which was fortunately covered by the insurance without penalty. We had enough time to finish touring Kalgoorlie and Boulder before heading 200km to Norseman for the next stage of our trip.

Norseman was named after a horse called ‘Hardy Norseman’ who, scratching around in 1894, uncovered a gold nugget, which led to the discovery of a rich gold reef. Since then, over 5 million ounces of gold have been recovered from the area, making it the second richest gold field in Western Australia. There is a proud statue of the horse in the main street. Norseman is the start/end of the epic trip across the Nullabour Desert into South Australia. Adelaide lay 2000km east.

The Nullabour Plain is supposedly the world’s biggest single lump of limestone. It covers about 77,000 sq. miles (about the same size as the state of Victoria). The plain was created about 25 million years ago when it emerged from the seabed. The 50-200 feet of limestone has since been covered by about 3ft of infertile soil. Its name comes from bad Latin as in “nullus” (no) and “arbor” (trees). The Aborigines called it ‘Oondiri’ (the waterless) because the average rainfall is only 8” a year.

It is one of the most famous journeys you can make in Australia because of its complete isolation from civilisation. For the next two days, our van radio would be silent and we also lost 45 minutes off our watches on both days. A chain of scruffy roadhouses is the only source of expensive petrol, water and food. We stocked up beforehand. We would count only 500 vehicles on the road during this period, which was something to do to pass the time. In 1985, I had crossed it on a 44-hour train journey from Perth to Adelaide. Much of the time was spent in the saloon bar gazing out of the wide windows at the, er, flat barren landscape

As we joined the Eyre Highway at Norseman early in the morning, there were roadsigns indicating that camels, emus and kangaroos could leap out from the unfenced countryside in front of you, at any time. There were plenty of trees to start with, which gradually petered out. As promised, we spied a wild camel grazing with some roos and emus. Camels were used in the Nineteenth Century by the pioneers to cross it. When cars arrived, the camels were left to roam wild. They are still rounded up even now and exported to the Middle East.

The Balladonia Roadhouse was the first sign of life. It had a small museum there attempting to cash in on the 1979 ‘Skylab’, which crashed up the road. In the old newspaper clippings here, I discovered that President Jimmy Carter had personally called the roadhouse to ‘apologise’ for Skylab and offering to pay for any damages (there were none, but he could send some peanuts if he had any going spare). Miss America was in Perth at the time on a tour, and the organisers thought that it would be a good wheeze to ship the largest piece of debris over to Perth to act as a backdrop for her press conference. Unfortunately, it weighed so much, that the stage collapsed taking Miss America with it!

Any tall vegetation disappeared. Scrubland welcomed us to ’90 Mile Straight’, the longest single stretch of road in Australia and probably the world. The flat road just loomed in the distance like a straight line. With cruise control, you could have gone to sleep for an hour and leave well-balanced wheels to get you across without steering. Further north, the railway has 180 miles of the ‘Straightest railroad in the world’.

It was a long 10-hour drive that day to the Mundrabilla Roadhouse, past a scattering of Aboriginal hamlets. The roadhouse caravan park was empty and very dusty. Along with the cheapest petrol en route (47p a litre), they had a couple of pens full of animals – a pig, a goat, a miniature horse, geese, peacocks etc and an old wreck of a 1923 car which had once crossed the Nullabour. On an attempted restored, rerun in 1967 it had bitten the dust here and been abandoned. A lovely orange sunset descended over the horizon.

A second equally long day had a bit more interest. Eucla (‘the oasis in the Nullabour, overlooking the Great Australian Bight’) had been established as a telegraph station by the coast in 1877. At its peak it had 70 people, 4 streets and a long jetty. It had all gone. The sandstone remains of the telegraph station were buried in consuming dunes of white sand and would soon disappear forever.

Crossing the WA/South Australian border, the clock went forward another 45 minutes. The ‘Border Village’ had a naff 8 metre tall, fibreglass red kangaroo called ‘Rooey II’ (Rooey I must have been even worse) and an “International Sign Post’. London was 17,500 km away. We had already driven further than this on the second leg of our Australian visit.

After crossing the border, the road closely followed the coastline. This is the Great Australian Bight, a 200km unbroken natural rampart, the largest indentation on the Australian coast and said to be (inevitably by Oz tourism), the longest line of seacliffs in the world. We took in half a dozen viewpoints along the way to see the cliffs with a white base and then a layer of greyish coloured rock above them. Both are different types of limestone formed at different periods. Had we been passing a month or so later, we may have spotted breeding whales (oo-er).

When my parents had crossed the Nullabour in the same campervan, they had helped a pilot rescue his Cessna plane from a terrible storm and pushed it into a hanger. The next day, to thank them, he took them for a flight along the coastline, which, with the Southern Ocean pounding the cliffs, must have looked spectacular. Because of the lack of traffic, the pilots/Flying Doctor just use the main road as an airstrip. We would pass signs saying ‘airstrip’ while looking above us for any planes.

The Nullabour Roadhouse marked the beginning of the ‘treeless plain’, which, not surprisingly, was completely absent of trees. Low-lying scrubland took us through the Yulata Aboriginal Reserve where the Yulata Roadhouse had a huge symbolic boomerang over the petrol pumps (where did they get the wood to build boomerangs around here?).

Thankfully, the trees made a re-appearance, as did pastureland of grazing sheep - to a round of applause from me. You have no idea how interesting a sheep looks after the Nullabour. The hamlet of Penning had dozens of steel grid windmills assisting with their water supplies below.

The worst part over, we arrived in the very civilised seaside town of Ceduna (taken from the local Aboriginal dialect which meant ‘Sit down and’ – take a rest). With supermarkets and radio again, we took up the Aboriginal invitation.

Rather than continue along the final stretch to Port Augusta, (where the only sight would be the 8 metre tall ‘Big Galah’ at Kimba – not a big incentive to drive 400km), we decided to take a longer, but more scenic detour down along the Eyre Peninsula which the local tourist board called ‘a breath of fresh Eyre’.

On yet another bright sunny day, the Flinders Highway took us past some lovely sights. Smokey Bay was a small quiet seaside town where the empty beach had a flock of pelicans by the pier. Streaky Bay was just as nice, but the bay was unstreaked today (except when I took my clothes off). The attractive, undulating peninsula inland was full of sheep and lambs grazing, and empty wheat and barley fields. A further 100km detour from Streaky Bay to see the only mainland breeding colony of Australian sealions was immediately cancelled when we saw the state of the unsurfaced track.

This is Australia 10: At Streaky Bay we saw the local golf course. Because there is so little rainfall, they cannot afford to grow grass. So the fairways are just trimmed bushland and the ‘greens’ are circles of black tar. I have no idea what the handicap is on this course, but I am sure that Greg Norman never became a champion here.

‘Murphy’s Haystacks’ were a collection of ancient wind-blown granite inselbergs (look it up). The coarse, hard rock is 1500 million years old, but the unique pink granite boulders, streaked by orange and green chemicals were created by nature during the last 100,000 years. They were shaped like large hardened dollops of ‘lava lamp’ blobs sticking out of the ground.

The most spectacular view was at Cummings Memorial Lookout, where rugged bright orange and yellow sandstone coastal cliffs collapsed into the roaring waves below. In April, the local hamlet of Cummins holds the ‘World Championship Kalamazoo Classic’, when hand operated rail carts are raced along sections of the railway.

Port Lincoln, at the tip of the Peninsula was a large town of 13,000 with Boston Bay, a bay that is three times as large as Sydney Harbour and one of the world’s largest protected harbours. We had unfortunately missed the ‘Tunarama Festival’ in January, featuring ‘tuna tossing’!

I could see why increasing numbers of Aussies are spending their holidays on the Eyre Peninsula – it is a quiet, scenic, real ‘get away from it all’ place with a Mediterranean climate and excellent fishing. The backpacker circuit has yet to discover it. Not that we saw any type of tourist at this time of year in late May.

Heading north up the eastern side of the peninsula, we drove, with our headlights on, through miles of dense, early morning mist coming off the land. This eastern side had a few more bays was not as impressive.

The major port of Whyalla marked the end/start of the peninsula. As you drive through the town, you suddenly pass a bloody great big green coloured ship that is dry docked and looks like a beached whale. ‘The Whyalla’ is an ex-World War II, 650 tonne corvette which now rests permanently at the Maritime Museum. 2km from the actual sea (the skipper must have been pissed!), it is the largest permanently landlocked ship in Australia. Not that there are probably many other places who’d bother to compete. Whyalla also calls itself the ‘Cuttlefish Capital of the World’ (give me a break) because millions of cuttlefish gather to spawn up the coast.

Port Augusta, the ‘Crossroads of Australia’ marked the end of the epic crossing. It was familiar territory. We had passed through here in early February on our way north to Alice Springs during the first leg of our Australian visit.

The Flinders Ranges, 150km north east was our next destination. These had been my Achilles’ heel when I lived in Adelaide in 1985. Two weekend trips in rented cars had proved disastrous and I’d never seen them properly.

Episode 1: Leaving Adelaide, on a Friday night with Andy, my old English hometown mate, we were headed for the Arkaroola Reserve in the Northern Flinders, a mere 700km north of Adelaide (it seemed like a good idea to get 1500km of money’s worth from the rental in a couple of days). En route, I noticed that our rented car fuel gauge stayed at full and we never knew how much petrol we had. On top of this, Andy had forgotten his wallet. I had only brought enough cash for me and back then, credit cards were unknown in the Outback. It was cash or nothing. By Sunday morning, we had completed our tour of Arkaroola and had begun the long 700km-journey home. We estimated that we had half a tank of gas. I had 7 dollars left which would get us back to Port Augusta where we could use a credit card. Wrong!

Mid afternoon, in sweltering heat, we ground to a halt on a deserted road, about 20 minutes drive from the last roadhouse that we had passed. I would have to hitch back and get some petrol. A packed car came by and squeezed me in. Andy stayed with the car and for the next hour did not see another vehicle heading north. At the roadhouse, I explained our predicament. The owner, drove me with my $7 worth of petrol back to the car. “You’ll never get to Port Augusta with that” he said and suggested that we drove back to the roadhouse, fill up and send him the money the next day. This act of extreme kindness saved the day and we reached Augusta waving my credit card around for more gas. I sent the man the money with a healthy tip for his trouble and continued to slap Andy around for forgetting his wallet.

Episode Two: This time, I set off with Dawn, the English girl who’d joined me in Adelaide. We had a brand new Suzuki Swift with 6km on the clock, a fuel gauge that worked and plenty of cash. On the Friday night I got a speeding ticket in the middle of nowhere. On Saturday morning, while driving around a bend, along an unsurfaced road, the car slid off the track and into a shallow ditch which had a hidden metal barrier with long prongs sticking out. Along with a smashed headlight, and cracked windscreen, one of the prongs had punctured the radiator. There was a loud hiss of steam.

We got the car out of the ditch and returned to Quorn. It was midday and the only garage there was just closing. “We can have a radiator here by Tuesday” they said. Calling the rental company, they suggested that we drive back to the Port Augusta office and get a replacement car. So we drove our now rather dented new car, 42km with no water in the radiator to find the car rental office closed. “Get the radiator fixed and we’ll reimburse you”, the Adelaide office told us. So we did, but we lost most of the day dealing with the sorry tale.

Cut to Sunday afternoon. With no time to go walking, we had resorted to just take in the Flinders Ranges on the unsealed roads (nothing was sealed in those days). It was the end of the rainy season and some of the rivers had to be forded along riverbeds of boulders. We watched a couple of cars get over one, but when we tried, our car was too light and got stuck on some boulders in the middle of the ford. A couple of guys helped me build a rock platform with planks of wood to give the car’s backwheels some traction to get over the rocks.

Nothing else can go wrong now I thought. Wrong! We crossed another ford, but part of it was deeper than the rest and the water poured in through the two doors as we drove through.

Back in Adelaide around midnight, I hit a car wash and attempted to spray off the mud/dust-covered car with a high-pressurised steam gun.. Inside, it stunk of old river water. Apart from a smashed headlight, cracked windscreen, a punctured radiator, a groaning engine and a few dents, it didn’t look too bad in the dark. Actually it looked and sounded like World War Three. As a final insult, I forgot to turn off the headlights and the battery ran flat overnight!

The rental company had to come and jump-start it the next morning while I was back at work. Fortunately, the insurance covered all damages and I even got the radiator repair payment back. I was too embarrassed to ever rent another Budget car. The only damage was from Dawn who slapped me around for giving her such a dreadful weekend.

Episode 2 Epilogue: After I had been right around Australia and returned to Adelaide months later, I decided to pay the $75 speeding fine which had arrived in the post in my absence and was now past the payment date. When I visited the local police station to ask how I did it, I explained that I was finally leaving Australia for New Zealand in two weeks. “Well, if you’re leaving, just bugger off and forget about it”, the desk jockey suggested. “I just had my holiday in San Francisco and I got a ticket. Do you think I paid it?” So I buggered off.

While in New Zealand, Linda my old flatmate would sent on any mail. A number of reminder letters from the South Australian authorities were sent, then a summons to court for failure to pay, then a letter to say that due to my non appearance at court, I was now eligible for five days in prison. That was 16 years ago. I was still an outlaw on the run in the state of South Australia, but since records were not computerised in those days, I assumed my case has disappeared without trace.

So it was a bit of a surprise, while driving towards the Flinders Ranges in May 2001, to get stopped by a police car and immediately arrested. I was now due to spend 5 years in a South Australian prison for non-payment of a speeding ticket. It was that same helpful policeman. (a joke!).

The 600 million-year-old Flinders Range is one of the oldest landscapes on earth. The Aborigines believe that the ancient serpents and giants of ‘Dreamtime’ shaped it. The 95,000-hectare Flinders Ranges National Park has Wilpena Pound as its focal point. This natural amphitheatre of awesome proportions is shaped like a giant-cupped hand, and ringed by its red ramparts and towering saw-tooth peaks which are visible 30km away.

The main roads are all sealed now, but, true to form, we still nearly came a cropper. We had just viewed the ruins of the Kanyaka Homestead, one of Australia’s great sheep runs in the early days. We spotted a couple of kangaroos on a small hill by the side of the road. They were close enough to take close up photos and would hop along the bank and stop. As we set off, a 4WD came towards us and suddenly the two roos hopped across the road. We braked so they missed us, but I’ll never understand how they ever got across without being flattened by the 4WD. They were a split second from becoming fresh road kill. Kangaroos - cute, but really dumb critters. At our rural campsite, which had a backdrop of the Wilpena Pound mountains, sheep nibbled on the sparse vegetation around the campervan.

Finally, I got to walk Wilpena Pound and I was not disappointed. The longest walk was a 17km loop from the Visitors Centre, up to St Mary’s Peak, the tallest one of about a thousand metres, and back down through the Pound. There was only one slight problem. A tourist had recently fallen off the track near the summit and the path had been closed for “improvement”.

We set off along a lovely dusty trail through gum tree woodland, and the green and orange autumnal colours of the bush vegetation. A well-marked trail led us up a steep rocky ascent to the ‘Saddle’ at 830m. From here, given the chance, we would have ascended to St Mary’s Peak, whose summit was clearly visible. From the Saddle, under clear blue sunny skies, we still had a fine panorama of the peaks surrounding the Pound. Then we dropped down into the Pound, through more gum tree forests back to the start. It was an excellent day’s walk.

All other roads around the ranges were still unsurfaced, corrugated jobs and having learnt my lesson, we stayed off them in the van. On the way back to the campsite, I decided to avoid the $8 charge for firewood, and collect some by a dried river creek. I filled the van with a good supply, which burnt very well, for the outside BBQ, only to discover later, that collecting firewood in the National Park was illegal with a fine of $1000. Oops. I guess I’m still an outlaw in these parts.

Horse riding was on offer, so we booked to have a half day’s proper riding where, with just a guide, we would be able to canter and gallop around the area, with none of that beginner stuff we’d had in Queensland. The following morning, we awoke to a thunderstorm that did not quit. The wind howled and it bucketed down. We turned up to the stables, a little sheepish, thinking ‘what happened to yesterday’s brilliant weather’ and ‘do we really want to go riding in this weather?’. Fortunately, the guide didn’t want to go either, so we bowed out gracefully and left the Flinders to its storm from hell.

The area between Port Augusta and the Flinders had been originally opened up because of the copper mining and wheat growing. A train line had been run out to there. In the town of Hawker, the old railway station was now a restaurant. In 1884, it had burnt down in daytime temperatures of 110’F in the shade. The inquest decided that the women were to blame. The blinds in the women’s waiting area had been left up and the sun ignited some paper inside through the window. Typical Aussies: when in doubt, blame the women. No chance of that happening today with the thunderstorm around us.

Quorn hadn’t changed much. With a few imposing old outback hotels, the garage where I had tried to get the radiator fixed was still closed on this wet Saturday morning. Quorn is the terminal for the Pichi Richi steam train that still plies the old railroad at weekends for the tourists. It had just left town to meander along a twisty route through the hills. We overtook it by road and stopped to take photos and wave at the driver as it passed. I think he said “You silly sods. What are you doing there standing in the rain?” as he tooted the steam horn.

It finally stopped raining when we reached the Clare Valley. Lying just north of the more famous Barossa Valley, it is another one of Australia’s important wine producing regions. The grapes had been harvested and now the vines were endless fields of golden brown leaves. The hamlet of Mintaro (est. 1849) was a splendid place where the lovely old one story sandstone and wood outback architecture (such as the ‘Magpie & Stump’ pub) was set against the rich autumnal colours of red and gold vineyards now drying out in the bright sunshine.

We spent a Sunday afternoon in a crowded Adelaide centre where every family seemed to be walking through the streets. Having lived there for four months, I didn’t feel the need to spend much time here. Unlike most state capitals in Australia, it was never a convict town. It was designed and planned as a new town in the 1830’s. Consequently, the centre is full of wide grid like streets, imposing sandstone buildings and attractive pubs with three story wooden verandas. The centre is surrounded by a greenbelt of parks and nestles the River Torrens.

It is so well laid out, that the streets were used for the First Australian Grand Prix in 1985. I had also run the Adelaide marathon around them. It started at 7am to avoid the heat. Outside the centre, however, a sprawl of nondescript new developments and suburbs are squeezed between the Adelaide hills and the coastline and the population is now well over a million people. Somewhere in the suburbs is apparently the ‘World’s Largest Cinema Complex’ where 30 screens seat 5700 people at any one time. Sorry Mel Gibson, I missed your latest blockbuster because I couldn’t be bothered to find it.

Adelaide (‘the Festival City’), as the capital of South Australia, likes to think of itself as ‘cultured’ with a civilised air about it, and the annual Adelaide Festival is a major attraction. We concentrated on the South Australian Art Gallery, where an excellent free 90 minute tour took us around an impressive collection of Australian colonial pieces right through to modern art. Next door, the SA Museum was run amok by ‘kid’s day’. Here, there was an equally impressive collection of Aboriginal artefacts as well as huge copies of dinosaur skeletons.

The State Library houses a new museum – the ‘Donald Bradman Collection’. He was Australia’s most famous and popular cricketer who had donated his cricket souvenirs to the city. I know nothing about cricket, but in the 1930s and 1940s, he scored more international test runs than anyone else in history. Ironically, in his last test match ever, against England, he only had to score 4 runs to end a career with a 100 run average per test. He was bowled out for a duck. (0). I bet he was gutted. Seen as the perfect gentleman of cricket, his reputation remained untarnished and when he had died at a ripe old age, a few weeks before my visit, the entire nation had gone into mourning at the loss of “the greatest batsman in the history of cricket”.

The Adelaide Hills form a barrier between Adelaide and the east. Settled in 1839 by immigrants from Northern Germany, Hahndorf is Australia’s ‘oldest surviving German settlement’ (well it wouldn’t be Italians would it?). The oldest inhabitants were farmers and the young German women would pack eggs, butter and vegetables and walk 25km through the night to sell their produce in the growing city below. Meanwhile, no doubt, their husbands went to the pub and got rat-arsed while the wives were away. Today, Hahndorf is a major tourist magnet and the German tourists getting drunk have replaced the farmers.

The main street had some fine restored historical buildings such as the 1839 German Arms Hotel, which looked like a real German pub had been built in the outback. The main street was flanked by 100-year-old elm and plane trees, which during our autumn visit, were golden in colour. But it was a little too ‘twinky’ for me and I didn’t need to pause at the German restaurants, ‘cuckoo-clock’ shop, and other assorted crappy souvenir offerings. It is somewhere for the Adelaide Sunday drivers to visit.

Heading northeast for the Barossa Valley, beautiful scenery was dominated by woodlands and horses grazing in the fields. There were signs outside farms selling ‘Pony Poo’ and ‘Pigeon Poo’ (eh?). Gumeracha’s toy factory possessed ‘The Big Rocking Horse’. At 20m high and almost as wide, it is, you guessed it, “the World’s biggest blah blah”. Not that it rocked (cheats!). It was made of a steel frame covered in corrugated iron. The horse was painted white and the non-moving rockers in red. You can climb up the horse’s back for a wonderfully tacky experience. Fun for all the family. Not!

The Barossa Valley is Australia’s richest and best-known viticulture and winemaking region. Like Hahndorf, it was settled in the late 1830s by dissident German Lutherans and English free settlers who established their own separate farming communities. A combined influence of hard working German peasant farmers, artisans, businessmen and professionals and the middle class English settlers who (naturally) aspired to a ‘country gentleman’s lifestyle’, created an interwoven Barossa culture. But the English were missing their booze, so they used the wealth of the English gentry to sponsor the development of a commercial wine industry in the 1850s. It really took off in the 1880s, and the region has never looked back since (it couldn’t, it was too drunk).

There are now (I personally counted them by individual visits) over 50 wineries in the region from small family enterprises crushing up to 50 tonnes to national companies crushing over 10,000 tonnes of grapes annually. As the largest single wine-processing region in Australia, it is internationally known for its Riesling, Semillon, Chardonnay, Shiraz and Cabernet. The real pleasure of visiting the area which is a beautiful undulating spread of vineyards as far as the eye can see, is to pop into a winery, sample a few brews and purchase them at a lower cost to the bottle shops. We dropped in on two (as you do).

Yaldara Wines at Lyndoch, was a major winery, which had a lovely sandstone mansion and flowering gardens. We skipped the tour and went straight to the booze. By the state of the Japanese tourists staggering out to their bus, they had beaten us to it. We walked away with a few bottles and a wonderful 16 year old bottle of port for £6. Bargain!

Orlando Wines up the road at Rowland Flats was the home of the popular Jacob’s Creek wines. ‘Australia’s Top Drop’ is the most successful brand internationally in the UK, Ireland, Scandinavia, Asia and New Zealand. Established in 1847 by a German immigrant called Joseph Gramp, the Jacob’s Creek brand did not appear until 1976. We sampled a few sparkling wines and after carrying Jo out, inspected the real Jacob’s Creek, which was just a tiny trail of water. The Barossa is an area you can visit at anytime of the year. On my visits from Adelaide, I had seen the vineyards covered in grapes.

Australia ‘s longest river, the Murray springs from the Snowy Mountains in southeastern Australia and meanders all the way through Victoria and South Australia. It’s 2,400-km path created the border between New South Wales and Victoria. It provides the water for all cities, towns and farm and vineyard irrigation schemes along the way. Recently, an Australian woman had just finished swimming it to claim a new world record. Obviously, not all at once. She swam sections of it over a period of weeks.

In 1879, Murray Bridge, south east of the Barossa Valley, had the first bridge built across the Murray River, which by this point is a wide sluggish greeny brown movement of water. Murray Bridge also claims to have ‘the smallest cathedral in the world’, which was a little rich. It was just a plain sandstone church that had wangled ‘cathedral’ status in the 1880s. And it was closed. When do Cathedrals close?

A long, mostly tedious drive through farmlands, took us southeast to the Victorian border. The farming communities were surrounded by empty wheat fields and dominated by large towering concrete wheat storage silos.

At Bordertown, we saw our first white kangaroos, which was a first. These albino specimens had been bred there since 1980 and looked rather unnatural with their scruffy white fur. Llama and ostrich farms also made regular appearances.