1995/11 Australia trip - Bus to Adelaide |
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When the taxi dropped us off at the bus station, it had that eerie quietness that occurs after the bus has left. Which it had. Although the tickets said 11.15, the bus had gone at 10.15. Somebody somewhere in the bus ticket agency did not know that the Northern Territory does not celebrate Daylight Savings time. Luckily, there was another bus in the afternoon, so we were switched to that.
We now had a few hours to kill in Alice Springs on foot. The parks were out, partly because it was very hot again, and partly because they are full of aboriginal families, mostly sitting in groups, but some stretched out unconscious. They still maintain some of their traditional ways, eating off the land, so the welfare cheques go largely on booze and drugs. There seem to be some that successfully make the transition to our way of life, others that keep the traditional ways of life going, and a lot more that just give up, and those are a similar problem to America’s Indians.
We ended up at Henk Guth’s panorama, which one of the taxi drivers had recommended. He’s a Dutch artist who paints the local people and the scenery. Mostly a little too photographic for my taste, but he’s built his own gallery, complete with a 360° panorama of many of the places we had visited, so it made for an interesting few hours.
We found that the carry-on space on the bus was very shallow, so we had to sit with our breakables and stealables under our feet, which didn’t bode too well for a 20 hour bus ride. But, it’s a non-smoking bus, so the driver found an excuse to stop every hour or so for a smoke, so we were able to get out and stretch. The scheduled stops at the beginning were just at road stations, one with an attached camel pen, and it was several hundred miles before we saw a town. The desert was barer once we got past Erldunda, but we had a combination of a rainstorm and a dust storm to keep the view interesting. After dark we had in-flight movies to watch. Willie Nelson music and Danny De Vito movie. Whatever happened to Australian kulcher?
At Maala, we stopped for a meal, and watched a fight going on amongst a group of Aborigines. Lots of pushing and shoving and dirt throwing. I even recognised a few words from the shows, those to do with killing kangaroos. The women seemed to be winning as they’re much heavier than the men. I asked the bus driver if any were going to be passengers. He said “Yes. I think we get to take the winners to Adelaide.” He shuffled the passengers around so the Abos could sit together at the end of the bus. They staggered aboard in a haze of BO and alcohol, collapsed in a heap, and fell asleep, so they were no trouble as long as you were upwind.
Coober Pedy is the opal mining town built almost entirely underground to avoid the heat. With the later bus we got there in the early hours of Wednesday, so Sandie didn’t get to see either the mines or the opals. We also passed through the middle of the Woomera missile testing range in the middle of the night. When it did get light we were close to Port Augusta in South Australia, traveling through wheat fields and scenery similar to Saskatchewan, including the occasional salt lake. Then, we got some views of the ocean as we made our way to Adelaide.
One of our guide books had said “Do not drive the Stuart Highway”. The guide book was obviously out-of-date as the road was OK if a bit long. So we could have driven it and saved some money, but it would have been 20 hours of driving instead of 20 hours cooped up in the bus, so we’d probably have got a lot more tired.
We were dropped off at the bus station in the middle of town, and grabbed a taxi out to the suburb of Hilton to the NQ depot. On the way, we passed the Hilton Hotel - no not the American chain, but an Australian original, named after the suburb. Apparently, the chain tried to force them to change the name, but lost as the local Hilton hotel had the name first. I think the Hilton chain’s main problem was that the local Hilton is well known as a brothel, and it spoils the Hilton image!