Melbourne and the last day in Oz

Besides trams zipping every which way, Melbourne is pretty much like Sydney or the other cities we’ve seen. I’m sure a Melbournite or Sydneysider would gasp to hear that, but eh, we’re only here for two days. Haven’t had time to really get to know the place.

We found a light lunch at a pub, where we split an order of nachos. Note: nachos in foreign countries are not necessarily tasty. Then we walked over to the Carlton Gardens and Exhibition Hall, a pretty relic from some World’s Fair back in the nineteenth century. The Exhibition Hall itself was closed, though we did poke around the adjacent Melbourne Museum, which was having a show of unusual furniture. For dinner we had Chinese food and for the second time in three days, our waiter spilled a full glass of liquid on the table. (This time it was water, not red wine; and hit the table, not either of us. Whew.)

Sunday, we had breakfast at the café in the hotel (MB discovered she likes eggs benedict) and hopped the free circular tram around to the south side of downtown, home of Federation Square and the Australian Center for the Moving Image. It was hosting a big retrospective, “Pixar: The First 20 Years.”

Pixar is American as apple pie, but it was either that or BodyWorks, and we decided on the option that didn’t involve human corpses on display.

This was another high point of the trip. They prohibited all photography, which was like torture. The collection included everything from the first sketches of the Pixar lamp, “Luxo,” to clay models of the entire Incredibles family. You don’t realize how much effort these folks put into their movies until you see their production design: one sketch of Sully from Monsters Inc. broke down the different hair types all over his body and how each section would react to wind and water.

(Fun fact: Nemo’s anenome home in “Finding Nemo” is actually just a small bunch of Sully’s hair made thicker and more anenome-looking.)

The best part of the exhibit, I doubt I’ll be able to properly describe. It was a zoetrope, which can mean any device that displays static images rapidly enough to create animation. In this case, the zoetrope was a large circular platform, about seven feet across, with a couple of hundred Pixar “action figures” arranged in a repeating formation. The zoetrope spun up, and the whole platform began spinning around rapidly. Then they cut the lights and flicked on the strobe lights, and like frickin magic, you were looking at animated figures right in front of you. It was a mind-boggling thing. I want to buy one for the home. Maybe I can find a picture online or something.

Having gotten our Pixar fix for the day (sort of – we were tempted to go see Ratatouille), we wandered a bit through Federation Square and downtown, then headed back north to the State Library of Victoria. This impressive building has an enormous central reading room and is the proud displayer of Ned Kelly’s armor. (Ned was apparently some anti-government outlaw who gained some popularity while on the lam, and was captured wearing a ridiculous homemade suit of armor that looks straight out of Monty Python.) We also checked out a portraiture exhibit with presidents, musicians, actors, and other Aussie and US celebrities. Jonathan Ive even had a picture, for those Apple geeks in the audience.

Then we headed back to the hotel and ironed our nice clothes as best as possible for the evening’s ballet performance of “The Nutcracker.” At the Arts Centre, we experienced our biggest heart attack since losing MB’s bag in Sydney when the ticket lady couldn’t find any purchased tickets for Miller. Milliseconds before MB burst into tears, she finally found them under Whitmire. Whew.

The ballet was nice. The Nutcracker has so many famous songs (err, themes?) that it’s almost like a Greatest Hits compilation. And the dancing was good, though the rat king stepped on his own tail right during his big introductory dance and when WHAP. (He popped up and the song continued.)

Then it was time for our final dinner in Australia, which naturally would be at a big frou frou restaurant. Rockpool Melbourne, in this case. We drank sparkling wine (maybe a bit too much) and enjoyed steaks and a muy rich dessert along the water line.

We still had $60 in Australian cash, so as we walked out of the restaurant we decided to blow it at the adjacent casino. Didn’t take long. We don’t know much about roulette, maybe.

Then it was to bed for the final time on Australian soil. The trip home, as exciting as it seemed, would be something of an ordeal.

Great Ocean Road: How to spend AU$400

Surf Coast Spa, the jewel of Anglesea, was a hideous collection of purple buildings. The whole place was mid-renovation, which given its state was long overdue, but at present resulted in a construction zone-type appearance.

We missed the chance to back the car up and keep on driving. Instead we were checked into room 4, an unnecessarily large suite with a whole extra room containing three single beds.

We’d booked the “Romantic Escape Package” which includes spa treatments in the morning, breakfast delivered to the room, and champagne, chocolates, and a votive candle upon check-in. The votive candle was sitting unceremoniously on the dining table, though there was no way to light it. The untasty champagne and retail brand chocolates sat nonchalantly in the mini-fridge. Anticipating a large party, I suppose, the resort had stocked nineteen champagne glasses above the range.

Oh, but I get ahead of myself. The room itself! Pastel wall coloring. Enormous windows which in the brochure likely are advertised with a “Great Ocean Road view” but in reality look out upon a busy roundabout. If you want some privacy, you’re forced to draw the curtains, a busy floral pattern circa 1989, surrounding yourself with tacky. The furniture is wicker. The toilet seat is square.

In short, yes, this place desperately, DESPERATELY needs renovation. The construction workers across the way were accomplishing that task. In the meantime, however, we’d paid $400 for…this.

We had a tasty dinner at the local pub, apparently the only place open on a Saturday night, then headed back to our, uh, room for sleepy time.

The next morning we got the GOOD part of the $400: two one-hour spa treatments each. Kevin stuck with, you know, a massage. Normal thing. Mary Beth had to go for “candling,” wherein a paper cone is inserted in your ear, followed by a lit candle. The smoke creates a vacuum, or something like that, which draws a disturbing amount of wax out of your ear and leaves you a half-pound more clear-headed. So I have a relaxed back and Mary Beth has cleaned-out ears (feel free to joke now).

We hit the road, vowing never to speak of that hotel room again, and drove the last 100 km of the Great Ocean Road. (Part five: just a highway, no view to speak of.) The road ended ignominiously in a town called Geelong, and we drove the remaining hour into Melbourne, a busy bustling city that really really loves its public transportation: trams (aka light rail) run down almost every street, and there’s a subway network to boot.

Gratefully, we checked into the Atlantis Hotel on the western edge of downtown and I turned in my right-hand-drive Toyota Camry. I hope I never have to do that again.

Great Ocean Road: Great Ocean Road

The next morning was blue skies, brilliant sun, and as usual, a chilly wind. Our hosts brought down poached eggs, sausages, and other yumminess for breakfast, after which we wandered down to the empty beach and enjoyed the view.

Then it was off eastward for the official Great Ocean Road drive.

Now, the G.O.R. can be divided into four parts (my invention, not theirs). The first gets you from Warrnambool to the coast, and it’s essentially zigzagging country roads marked as the Great Ocean Road on the signs. You feel like you’ve been gipped at first.

Then you approach the coast, and out the corner of your eye, you suddenly spot a tremendous cliff formation with angry blue seas below. Out of nowhere, you’ve entered part two.

For 100 km or so, the G.O.R. skirts a continuous cliff that drops down to the Southern Ocean, in some parts as high as 1,000 feet above the water. There are scenic turnoffs almost every five minutes, which can make for very stop-and-go driving if you catch them all. Each one presents some strange new rock formation, all along the same theme of Land! Cliff! Water!

Almost at the end of this stretch is the viewing area for the Twelve Apostles, or the Postcard Image for the G.O.R. Actually only numbering seven or eight, they’re massive pillars of stone standing along the edge of the water, slowly being eaten away from underneath by the waves. It’s definitely the pinnacle of this part of the drive.

On to part three. The road peels away from the ocean, and begins a twisty-turny route through the pristine Ewok-looking forest along the peninsula. For an hour or more, you forget all about the ocean part of the road, and worry all about the 30 kph switchbacks you have to navigate. The views are of course impressive. I’d like to do it again in a Porsche (or at least a Mini).

Then in the distance the ocean reappears. Before proceeding to part four, we took the turnoff to Cape Otway, the southernmost point in mainland Australia (Tasmania of course is much further south), and the most well-known spot along the so-called Shipwreck Coast. The Cape Otway lighthouse has been in operation since 1848, when it was built by hand over 10 months. It’s not even at the highest point of land, but with the sharp drop to the water, it’s still 40 meters above sea level. We bought our overpriced admission tickets and walked the spiral staircase to the top. Outside the platform we got an encore of the bitter ocean wind that knocked us on our keisters back on Kangaroo Island. The ocean stretched for over 180 degrees around us.

That was fun. Part four! This is the original stretch of the G.O.R., which was conceived as a works program for World War I vets back in the 1920s. The road connects the dots from one coastal town to the next, hugging the curves of the coastline the whole way. This is maybe the most death-defying portion of the road; there’s more killer switchbacks, only this time instead of grass on either side you’ve got cliffs. We were just glad the weather was fine, and (unlike the oncoming traffic) we weren’t driving into the sun.

We only got a couple pictures of this portion of the trip. Shame, cause the vistas are amazing (see the banner pic at the top of the page; that’s pretty much it). But all the photo turnoffs tended to be right at the corner of the road when you had no visibility to exit and enter. So we played it safe.

Back in civilization, we had a late lunch (as before, overpriced). Around 5:30 we landed in Anglesea, where we were reserved for a Romantic Escape Package at the Surf Coast Spa and Resort.

Now, all day we’d been passing cute little B&Bs and other accommodation with killer views. So our hopes were high. Surf Coast had also been recommended by both my Lonely Planet guide book and Qantas magazine on the flight over.

We drove into the place and gasped.

Great Ocean Road: Spelunking and wine spillage

Our first day’s drive out of Adelaide was to get us down toward the start of the Great Ocean Road. Our destination was Port Fairy, where a B&B awaited.

Driving out of Adelaide took us through scenic hills and one long tunnel. We could have taken the scenic coastal highway south, but the southeast road was more direct and got us to Naracoorte National Park around lunchtime. We drove through a series of small towns with ridiculous names: Tintinara, Woolmoola, Sedgie. They weren’t much different than small Texas towns, except the football fields had Aussie-rules goalposts at each end.

Naracoorte proudly boasted on its welcome sign that it was “Australia’s Tidiest Town 1994.” What the criteria were for this we weren’t sure, but I only spotted one piece of trash as we drove through, so that’s something. But – let me repeat – the WHOLE COUNTRY’S like this.

The national park was a few km south of the town. It’s most prominently known for its series of caves, into which we were about to make our second spelunk of the trip.

For a half-hour we wandered through the underground, learning all over again about stalactites, stalagmites, columns, and straws. A few formations were really amazing, though. One ceiling collection of straws reflected perfectly in an absolutely still puddle of water, and with the provided lighting looked like a castle sitting upright. Another group of straws hung up to eight feet in length. Several of the rooms were big enough that we wondered if they were rented out for parties and weddings.

Our spelunking desires satisfied, we drove south out of Naracoorte, hitting a wine country almost as expansive as Barossa Valley. Lunch was in a town called Penola with a cute main street. Aussie prices strike again: sandwiches and potato wedges for $40. We still had enough in the piggy bank, though, for a trip to the chocolate store a few doors down. To our great surprise, they had chili chocolate for sale. To our even greater surprise, it was actually hot. Like, scalding aftertaste hot. Very nice.

As night came on, we crossed into Victoria (and moved our clocks ahead a half-hour) and approached the coastal town of Port Fairy. I emphasize “coastal town” cause up until now, we hadn’t seen one bit of ocean all day. Even five km from the town, we were trying to figure out if the ocean was just a fake tourist gimmick.

Port Fairy was your typical adorable widdle coastal town, population: tourists and people catering to tourists. It had another nice little downtown area. We drove up and down the unlit street a couple of times before finally locating our destination, Daisies by the Sea.

Daisies is a big pretty house subdivided by our hosts into living space for them and two rental units. Our hosts showed us into our room, which was about 10 times nicer than we’d been expecting, jacuzzi tub and all. Very much a pleasant surprise. They even opened the seaside door for us and sure enough, 20 feet below, there was an actual ocean.

For dindin we drove back to the city center to a place called the Victoria Hotel, with fancy restaurant attached. A fireplace crackled and a live jazz band played. The atmosphere was great. Our nice (of course) waitress brought wine for MB and Coke for me, got our dinner orders, and as she walked off with the menus,

[tip]

[spill]

[crash]

Mary Beth’s jeans were covered in red wine and her glass lay broken on the floor.

Our waitress, mortified, dropped the menu with which she’d hit the glass and got to work on cleanup. Mary Beth tiptoed her soggy leg to the bathroom, to discover that like most Australian bathrooms, there weren’t paper towels, only blow-dryers. She procured a towel from the kitchen and sopped up most of the wet. We sat by the fireplace for a few minutes to let the stained jeans dry out further.

And that, my friends, is how we ate free in Port Fairy.

Fortunately the food itself was excellent – worth paying for, even. When we got home, MB took to soaking the jeans, and got the red mostly (but not entirely) out. Since these were her favorite jeans, she’s a little disconsolate. But at least we managed to come in under budget on food for the day.

Last day in Adelaide

We genuinely wished we’d given Kangaroo Island more time. This had been expressed to us repeatedly in the travel brochures, but I guess that’s the cost of a whirlwind tour.

The bus picked us up at the Hideaway (thank you, Rex and Michelle!) and we hopped on the ferry back to the mainland, where giant windmills spun to greet us. We again enjoyed the hills and valleys for the ride back up the peninsula, through the interminable ugly outer suburbs of Adelaide and into the picturesque city center. Then it was time for a treat: we walked right across the street and into the Adelaide Hilton, for our “fancy” hotel stay.

The Hilton is a funny place. The staff is friendly to a fault (THANK you for the half-dozen recommendations, now go away). The room looks like a Pottery Barn catalog, and the shower is of course awesome. There’s a damn pillow menu sitting on the nightstand, where you can call room service and order (free of charge) any of ten different pillow types to be delivered.

And yet, local calls cost $1.

We dropped our bags in the tenth-floor room with the amazing view of the central park, and walked down to the so-called Central Market, where 250 shops and food stands congregate under a single roof. It was a little manic for me, but we did find a souvenir or two and some sandwiches.

Then I walked three blocks to the local Hertz outlet and picked up the second of our rentals, this one for the exciting trip down the Great Ocean Road to Melbourne. Our conveyance is a big improvement: a brand-new silver Camry, with automatic and only 19,000 km on the odometer. High style, I tells ya.

Our afternoon’s activity was a visit to one more winery, a historic place called Penfolds. This vineyard was first established in 1844, only 8 years after South Australia was even established as a state, on 500 acres well outside of Adelaide. Over the years, Adelaide of course grew to surround the winery, which sold off pieces of land and is now reduced to a single 50-acre parcel surrounded by expensive homes. It’s the only central business district winery in the world and is “heritage-listed” to be forbidden from further development.

We sampled some wines and gawked at the $525 bottles of “Grange” in their locked refrigerator. Then we got a tour of the place – no one else showed, so it was just us and the guide – and we learned how wines are made, saw the contraptions they use to squeeze grape skins and so forth, and went 15 meters underground to where the barrels and bottles are stored.

One gigantic barrel, over 10,000 gallons in size, was nicknamed the Helen Keller. Apparently Helen once visited the winery, and in some kind of publicity stunt, she used only her hands and an abacus (not her eyes, of course) to measure the gigantic barrel and calculate its volume to within two gallons. You go, girl.

Mary Beth and I contemplated the logistics of stealing one of the Grange barrels (each contained about $200,000 worth of wine) but we finally settled on a much more manageable Reserve Pinot Noir for $42.

Our bad luck came back when it was time for dinner; the Penfolds restaurant, “Best Restaurant in SA” according to some official source, was booked out for the evening. Instead, we drove back to the hotel (roundabouts are muy scary) and ate at the downstairs restaurant, where our waitress was from California and I had the T-bone. Felt like I was back home.

Finally, tired though we were, we drove back up into North Adelaide, directly across the street from the amazing Indian restaurant, and saw “Stardust” at the historic movie theater. I thought it was kind of ridiculous, but cute. MB loved the wuv story. So, one thumb up, one thumb down.

And that brings us to the conclusion of our Adelaide portion of the trip. The next morning it was up and at ‘em for our trip down the Great Ocean Road.

Kangaroo Island Part the Second

On Thursday we had some yummy Multi-Grain Cheerios for breakfast (in Oz it’s just “Cheerios”) and were picked up by a Sealink tour bus for a day-long tour of Kangaroo Island.

Now, the island is bigger than you think, even after you establish that it’s big. About 100 km long, it would comfortably wrap around the greater Austin area, so it’s a good hour’s drive from one corner to another, even with barren roads. The population, maybe 10,000ish, is scattered far and wide. The island is pleasantly devoid of hyper tourist joints like, say, Cairns.

The weather was, I think the word is, “wild.” It jumped from sunny to windy to pouring rain in mere minutes. The guide used the old cliché, “If you don’t like the weather on Kangaroo Island, just wait five minutes.” I’ve heard this said many times about Texas. Thing is, on K.I., it’s true.

Our first stop was a tour of a eucalyptus distillery, where they produce eucalyptus oil. (This was about as exciting as you might think it’d be.) The highlight was Roxy, an eight-month-old orphan kangaroo who lounged in her basket and happily chewed on eucalyptus leaves we gave her.

Next: the Kelly Hill Caves, so-named after either a person or a horse (depending on whom you believe) that discovered them in the 1880s by falling to their death. We waited a few cold impatient minutes at the entrance to the cave before our cheerful tour guide showed up, unlocked the door, and allowed us down the steep metal stairs into the limestone cavern.

The caves were formed only about 500,000 years ago, making them rather young and small by cave standards. Still, we made our way about 20 meters underground, snapping blurry pictures of pointy stalactites the whole way. Our guide was a genuine cave geek, and asked us each where we were from, immediately naming caves in the area. (Closest she could get to Texas was Carlsbad Caverns; I’ll give her credit.) The cave did a good job not going with chintzy lighting. Weirdest thing we saw was a six-inch-long stalactite that impossibly curved back UP partway, against the laws of gravity. Even the guide had no idea how it was made.

After 45 minutes of cave-wandering, we climbed up and out of the caves and got a mediocre barbecue lunch, then headed into Flinder’s Chase National Park.

Fully a third of Kangaroo Island is a protected park or wildlife area of some sort. The biggest chunk is Flinder’s Chase. We headed past the visitor’s center toward the southwestern coast of the island, home of the Remarkable Rocks.

More on those in a second. A sad side story was the fire that had recently – like, last week – gutted this corner of the island. An attempt at a controlled burn of 50-100 acres got out of control and destroyed 1,500 acres, killing much of the scenery and leveling the local ecosystem for the next 20 years or so. So as we hopped off the bus at a scenic vantage point to see the Remarkable Rocks in the distance, we were just as amazed at the hillside full of blackened shrubs stretching into the distance.

Back to these rocks. Remarkable Rocks is a natural formation of granite (formerly liquid hot MAG-MA) tacked onto the island, which is mostly limestone. The top part of the granite dome has over zillions of years been eaten away by water and wind to make a really really odd Stonehenge-looking bunch of rocks perched on the edge of the Southern Ocean, with nothing between us and Antarctica to the south.

The bus parked and we followed a boardwalk out toward the rocks. Several signs warned us about the danger of straying off the edge of the dome and into the water (two tourists were killed, trying to rescue another jackass tourist who fell, only three years ago). The warnings seemed especially pertinent given the wind. Our driver called it “a little sea breeze” – in this case gusting over 50 km per hour. We could literally hop in place and get pushed an inch or two forward. It was a perfect demonstration of how the wind could have caused these rocks to get formed like this; it could have stripped paint.

We snapped pictures with the other tourists for 15 minutes, rather difficult when we couldn’t even hold the camera straight. The waves crashed angrily at the base of the dome, reminding us of the certain death below. I felt like I was a million miles from home. “Exhilarating” is the word.

After 20 minutes, with our faces frozen in place and our ears falling off, we ran back to the bus. Then it was time for our fourth stop of the day: Cape du Couedic, at the very southwestern tip of the island, where we’d find a natural formation called Admiral’s Arch.

Our driver noted as we drove past the scenic lighthouse that whereas Remarkable Rocks had a little sea breeze, Cape du Couedic had a “stiff wind.” Hoo boy.

Sure enough, gusts upwards of 60 km per hour greeted us as we walked down THIS boardwalk toward the ocean. You coulda told me it was 500 kph and I woulda believed you. The seas roiled like there was a hurricane afoot and crashed violently against the shores and the smaller island just across the way. Waves wrapped around what should have been a protected cove, so we were getting sea spray from all sides. While facing into the wind to take pictures, I literally had trouble breathing.

The boardwalk led down and behind the rocks. Below us, we spotted a colony of about 50 New Zealand fur seals lounging on the rocks and soaking up the sun. The water below them was churned so much, it looked like a latté being made.

As we followed the boardwalk back around, we saw what we had just unwittingly walked over: Admiral’s Arch, a tremendous span with odd stalactite-looking formations hanging down. I hadn’t been that impressed by the arch when I’d seen pictures, mostly cause they fail to convey how big it is, or how angry the sea is behind it. The wind that buffeted us above shot through the arch like a wind tunnel. Seriously. They could have tested jet fighters there.

We shot as many pictures as possible, hoping that some of them would capture the craziness all around us, until our faces and ears were again frozen. Then raced back to the bus, exhilarated all over again.

That was very much a high point of our trip. We drove back to the Flinder’s Chase visitor center for gift-buying. Our final stop of the afternoon couldn’t help but be a let-down, but was still fun: Island Pure Sheep Dairy, where we saw sheep being milked and tasted some dee-licious cheese and honey yoghurt. (They spell it with an H down here.)

The sun set beautifully behind us as the bus took us back to Penneshaw around 6:30. Mary Beth made seven-layer dip and marinated chicken, and we watched Mythbusters on TV (a distinct improvement over the normal options of news, kiddie shows, or rugby) and an awesome show called “The Chaser: War on Everything” which is kind of Colbert Report meets Trigger Happy TV.

We ran into the backyard with candles (no flashlights available) when I heard funny bird-type sounds emanating from the back yard. Penguins? Finally? We isolated the squawking to a certain bush, but the candles didn’t show us who the guilty party was. Oh well.

That was it for the day. Our windswept selves landed in bed.

Kangaroo Island Part the First

We were up at 6 dang o’clock in the morning to catch the 6:20 shuttle to Kangaroo Island. Already we ran into a problem. Apparently here in Australia, whether by land or air, when they say 6:20, they mean “The bus/plane is pulling away at 6:18 whether or not you’re there.” We’ve seen this several times already. If you mean 6:15, SAY 6:15. Stupid Australians.

But on its second loop around we caught the bus and headed south down the so-called Fleurieu Peninsula in the direction of Kangaroo Island.

It was a two hour drive along the coast through amazing terrain, with vineyards and sheep right and left. Mary Beth slept through most of it and I snapped fuzzy pictures through the window.

Finally at the tip of the peninsula, next to the lighthouse and the wind farm, the bus stopped and we transferred to a gigantic car-and-person ferry to make the 45-minute trip to K.I., visible in the hazy distance.

Our stop was Penneshaw, a sleepy town of a few hundred (they don’t even have a police station) right where the ferry let out. We were met by Rex, owner of the beach house where we were staying, who gave us and our wine-heavy bags a lift the 1.5 km to the house, near a picturesque inlet called Christmas Cove. The house itself was a cute little number overlooking the sea with three bedrooms and (the exciting part) a full kitchen. We were promised that fairy penguins were nesting in the back yard, though we weren’t to see any.

Nothing else was planned for the day, giving us a nice lazy time watching the waves crash against the rocks a few feet below the front yard (and eating the cookies Rex brought). We walked up the hill to the local supermarket and bought groceries for the next couple of days. Now, we’re used to Aussies being friendly, but the checkout lady almost broke our brains when she offered to DELIVER the groceries to us at the house when she headed home for lunch in half an hour. We happily accepted, though not without mind-boggled expressions on our faces.

Aussies are FRIENDLY.

We searched in vain for penguins in the back yard. Unsuccessful, we watched TV instead, waves crashing a few feet out the door. Tacos were for dinner, thanks to tortillas from Old El Paso, and we went to bed proud of our lack of productivity for the day.

Barossa Valley: The All-Blacks are scary

About two in the morning, a noise woke me up. I rolled over. Mary Beth was sitting up in bed, MacBook open on her lap, “Deadwood” playing on the screen.

“What are you doing?”

“I can’t sleep.”

My sleepy butt rolled over and went back to sleep.

The next morning, the truth was revealed: by “can’t sleep,” Mary Beth meant to say “can’t sleep unless I watch more Deadwood.” As I slept, she had watched more episodes. A lot more episodes. The WHOLE REST OF SEASON TWO.

I was less than sympathetic when she complained about being tired the whole next day.

About 8:00, we headed out onto the street and were picked up by the bus for Groovy Grape Wine Tours. With about 15 other tourists from all over the world, the bus drove north out of the city, through the tacky middle suburbs with car lots and pawn shops (think North Burnet Rd), and quite suddenly into a very hilly, very scenic countryside with an increasing number of vineyards.

The Barossa Valley, maybe an hour north of Adelaide, is one of Australia’s biggest and best-known wine producing regions. Groovy Grape was going to escort us to four of them throughout the day, with a barbecue (’scuse us, “barbie”) lunch in the middle. The weather was ridiculously nice: cool and sunny with passing clouds.

First we swung by a little gift shop for tea and coffee, best known as the home of the 10-meter-tall World’s Largest Rocking Horse (cause they wanted to, that’s why). Stupidly, it didn’t even rock. Thumbs down. They did have parrots, though.

Then we toodled up and down the hills on the narrow two-lane roads to the first and biggest of our wineries, Jacob’s Creek. It was depressing to read the five-generation history of this native Australian winery, then find out it was today owned by the French. But the wines were good regardless.

Next was our favorite, VineCrest, a boutique winery using only on-site grapes. The sommelier (I had to ask MB about the correct title) was the most enthusiastic and well-informed, and did a good job laying out the differences between the wines and so forth. The dessert port was way too sweet for me but MB dug it. Afterwards Col, the winery’s resident border collie, chewed on my hand and showed a great enthusiasm for chasing pieces of bark that I threw.

Stop #3 featured absolutely beautiful scenery and totally forgettable wines. Maybe we were just all wined out by that point. But we did have a great barbie lunch with our Berlin-born tour guide and fellow tourists. Two that we talked to had been in-country from Canada for seven months, and just finished spending two months on a cattle station north of Alice Springs.

For the record, kangaroo is very tender and yummy. It’s the Aussie version of bison meat, I think, advertised for its lean meat and low cholesterol compared to beef. Mary Beth was long opposed to eating kangaroo for reasons of cuteness, but finally tried some and conceded that it was good.

Stop #4 was at the top of a gorgeous hill that presented a stunning vista of the Barossa Valley below. We bought a bottle of Grenache, though I had long-since lost my ability to distinguish wines by then. (Mary Beth’s got the palate.) She briefly considered giving up a nice dinner in exchange for buying a $70 bottle of wine, but finally relented and stuck with the $16 Grenache.

Then it was back to Adelaide. I’d been very much looking forward to visiting the Whispering Wall on our trip – it’s an elliptical-shaped dam in the Barossa Valley that allows you to whisper conversations to a buddy 140 meters away! – but sadly it was closed for repairs.

Upon our return we found a nice Italian place to split an entree at. I didn’t realize how dehydrated all the wine had made me until I downed half a carafe of water in one gulp. We were very pleased to receive excellent service, for once, so we left a (gasp) 20% tip for our ravioli.

One more awesome tidbit from the day: back at the hotel, we turned on the TV and watched a bit of the Rugby World Cup that was going on. The New Zealand All-Blacks were about to beat the crap out of Tonga or some other little country. But before that, they engaged in what we’ve learned is a ninety-year-old tradition: the team “haka,” or Maori chant.

The All-Blacks line up on one side of the field. The competitors, apparently required by law to be psyched out, line up on the other. And the All-Blacks engage in some seriously scary screaming, stomping, and chest-pounding. The whole affair ends with a not-so-subtle slashing motion across the throat. The opposing team, presumably, wets their pants and runs screaming for the locker room. It’s what I’d do, anyway.

Enough with the descriptions. Check the action:

Adelaide: Deadwood is a good show

Down south we flew, into greener lands and cooler temperatures. We landed in Adelaide in the early afternoon and grabbed a bus into downtown.

Adelaide’s a planned city just like Austin, and the CBD is laid out in a perfect grid shape. It’s got plenty of old buildings, densely packed, with cool touches like a light rail under construction. The residential areas that we saw were packed with neat houses like in Hyde Park back home. The botanical gardens were awesome. Before too long, we were sorry we hadn’t planned more time for this city.

On the other hand, it was also the dirtiest place we’ve been; graffiti in many places, trash on the streets, homeless folks wandering around, and some kind of smell. The rest of Australia is frickin Disney Land. So, this was a weird contrast.

We checked into Quest on King William, serviced apartments pretty well-situated in the middle of town. They were our best accommodations since Sydney for sure.

A block up from the hotel, four blocks of the street had been permanently shut down and converted to a high-rent super-trendy pedestrian shopping area called Rundle Mall. Part of the afternoon was spent wandering through and checking out shop windows and odd street art:

We also stopped at Woolworth’s (yes, they still have Woolworth’s) and grabbed groceries for the next couple of days.

With no other plans for the day, we grabbed some brochures and picked out “the best Indian restaurant in Southern Australia” (yeah, I know) for dinner. A $10 cab ride got us to Beyond India in North Adelaide. Man, this place was good. We’d say it’s on par with Clay Pit, for you Austinites.

I’d like to report that we spent the evening exploring this interesting new city after our delicious Indian food. But, the excellently paired wine that we enjoyed kinda sorta precluded this. So it was a rather early night for Kevin and Mary Beth.

The next morning, a truly unprecedented thing happened in the history of our relationship:

Mary Beth woke Kevin up.

Weird, I know. Especially weird since we had nothing whatsoever on the agenda; this was the one day on our trip to do absolutely nothing. And do nothing we absolutely did.

For breakfast, we walked back to hyper-trendy Rundle Mall and ate in an enclosed outdoor café. Shopped a bit for gifts and postcards up and down the street, then went back to the hotel and continued our marathon viewing of the first season of “Deadwood.” (If I haven’t said so yet: thank you sincerely, Erica, for recommending it.) An alarming thing happened halfway through the afternoon – we finished season one. Egads! This show is great! How to obtain season two?

…Say, wasn’t there a DVD shop back on Rundle Mall?

We ran back to Rundle Mall and grabbed season two. Only AUS$65, a lot cheaper than in the US. The amusing catch is that these were Region 4 DVDs, which mean we won’t be able to play them on our player back in the US; it’ll probably go right on Ebay.

The “Deadwood” marathon continued!

Dinner time came around, and we made a brilliant game-time decision: we wanted McDonald’s. A half-block away, we ordered value meals, extra Chicken McNuggets, apple pies, and a chocolate shake. Even with the “Super Size Me”-style splurge, it was still the cheapest dinner we’ve had the whole trip. We sat our fat butts on the hotel couch, watched a vulgar HBO western, and ate greasy American food. It was one of the best nights of the whole trip.

About five episodes into season two, I began to conk out and headed to sleep, followed by a reluctant Mary Beth. For all I knew, it was sleepy time for us both.

Ayers Rock 2: The breakfast buffet is $27

The plan for the next morning was to wake up bright and early for the 6:30 AM sunrise over Ayers Rock.

Thanks to the generous food and wine portions offered by the Sounds of Silence dinner, this didn’t exactly happen.

But I did roll out of bed not TOO far past sunrise, and stumbled to the top of the campground lookout to see Ayers Rock in the morning light.

Okay, finally, a word about Ayers Rock. It’s not as red as you’ve seen in pictures. Any dramatic cherry-red poster you’ve seen has had some Photoshop work done on it. I wasn’t blown away by the sight, and I’m not sure the relative distance had anything to do with it.

I took advantage of the campground’s Internet kiosk ($25 for four hours’ usage! A steal!) while MB did her last couple hours of sleep. Then we made use of the local breakfast buffet ($54 for two people! A steal!) before heading into Uluru/Kata Tjuta National Park.

Alright, so like I said earlier, it’s hard to get any scale on Ayers Rock or the Olgas, which sit 50 km apart in the wide, wide open desert. You drive into the national park and Ayers Rock seems to fill the horizon, then you pass a sign and realize it’s still 10 km away. The road also curves around the rock as it gets closer, and Ayers Rock changes appearance from various angles. It’s much more mottled than you’d thought, and much more irregular in shape.

The weather was frickin perfect. We parked at several designated lots and walked several different trails up to and along the rock itself.

It goes against all logical sense in the world that this rock formed on the earth through any natural process whatsoever. It’s like a meteorite without a crater. Mary Beth and I both agreed that whatever cock-eyed explanation the geologists had for this thing, the aboriginal story of the spirit-gods making it for the Great Wallaby or whatever is far, far more plausible.

From every angle the thing produced new shapes and crevices. It had shallow little caves made by water or what have you. Various places were marked clearly: “SACRED SITE – DO NOT ENTER OR PHOTOGRAPH.” I’d bet a coin that the aborigines would just as soon not have the rock itself photographed, but, are picking their battles.

We weren’t cut out for the entire walk around the thing, since the day did EVENTUALLY get hot. But we drove around the opposite side to grab a picture or two, then headed back to the resort for another overpriced meal with below-average service. (Not having to tip is nice, until you realize the waiter has no incentive to actually provide decent service.)

After a lazy siesta period, it was back into the park for our trip to the Olgas, 50 km distant. Now, the Olgas are something different. Ayers Rock is known for being a singular monolith, all by its lonesome in the vastness of the continent. The Olgas, meanwhile, are a cluster of enormous round rocks, of a different shape than Ayers Rock (Kata Tjuta means “many heads”). It’s a different kind of impressive, but it’s impressive just the same. And, just like Ayers Rock, they get massiver and massiver as they approach across the empty flat desert.

Finally we were there. I promise ya, they’re just as impressive as Ayers Rock itself. I managed to con MB into taking one of the walking tracks into the maze of rocks, so we got a close-up look at the things, then headed back for the sunset view.

Again, even though everyone makes such a hubbub over sunrise and sunset, the fading sun shining off the rocks wasn’t half as stunning as the rocks themselves. No supernatural red hue appeared. As soon as they were gone to grey, we got a jump on the crowds and drove the 50 km back to camp.

And that concluded our brief foray to far as we could possibly get from proper civilization (without involving parka jackets and penguins, that is). We skipped the 5:30 sunrise wakeup call the following morning too, and in fact slept in close to 9:00 before we headed out for our 10:05 flight outta there.

Then it was a brief stopover at Alice Springs, an airport that only looks impressive when you’ve flown there from Ayers Rock, and the plane turned south toward cooler weather and the pretty city of Adelaide.

But I’ll keep up my pattern and write about Adelaide as soon as we leave, for Kangaroo Island in this case, tomorrow morning. And that’s a 6:20 pickup. So I’ll hit the hay.

Ayers Rock pics coming soon, check back…

-K & MB