I! AM AN FBI AGENT

(Michelle and Stephen, at Uluru, January 25th, 2008)


The drive from Melbourne to Adelaide incorporates the ‘Great Ocean Road’, and that seems to be a big claim. Especially as the first bit we got to was so far from the ocean you couldn’t see it.

The first stop is Torquay, or Surf Central on the south coast. This is the place which hosted the birth of competition surfing, with both Rip Curl and Quiksilver calling Torquay home. Bells Beach is the venue that, in April each year, provides the waves for the Rip Curl Classic, and is of course also famous for being in the last scene in the best movie ever made, ‘Point Break’. Except the beach used to shoot the last scene was actually in Hawaii, and all they did was put a sign up saying ‘Bells Beach’, and have a Railway Station sign in the background saying ‘Torquay’. The real Bells Beach looks very different, has no railway station, and today is as flat as a pancake.

“We’ll get him when he comes back in!”
“He’s not coming back in…” (That’s for Nick from The ‘Gong!).

Anyway, we go and visit the Torquay Surfing Museum, which is really good and takes up a good lump of our day. The rest of Torquay is quickly visited as there isn’t actually much else there, and we get back on the Great Ocean Road towards our booked motel in Apollo Bay. We get an apologetic call from the booking agency telling us that our motel has had a flood, and our room is no longer available, but they have found us a cabin on a camp site nearby.

When we turn up at the site, the owners have a bag of bedding and towels for us, and point us to our cabin – which is excellent. The cricket is on, we drive into town and get some snacks from the supermarket and walk past the motel we had booked. We agree that we got the best out of that deal. It’s a dark and stormy night by the time we get back so we cozy up in the cabin, watch some tennis and have an early night.

The next morning is wet, grey, misty and quite cold. Not UK cold, but we have to put on a hoodie with our shorts. Still, such is life, eh. Chelle has read about ‘Mariners Point’, a viewing place above Apollo Bay, so we drive up a long and windy road, park and walk the last 10 minutes before getting to a field full of sheep, with a layer of clouds which seems to be hovering just over our heads, and a view over the bay which, despite the cloud cover, is as spectacular as the Wollongong mountain view.

Driving from Apollo Bay the road veers inland and upwards, and into fairly dense forest. At times it’s difficult to see much further than the front of the car, and with the rain it feels like being in the highlands of Scotland. Back to the coast and we stop and find all the other tourists in Australia have parked up to go and see the ‘12 Apostles’ – rock formations off the coast of Victoria which are slowly disappearing. In fact there are only 7 left, and I can’t help but think the tourist board have put a bit too much effort into promoting something that maybe isn’t as impressive as it thinks it is.

We get lost in Port Campbell, driving past the same signpost three times before finally taking the correct turning (you know, the one we rejected as being the wrong one in the first place) and getting to Port Fairy, where we are booked into Seacombe House which claims to be the oldest building in the town. It’s certainly got a lot of tiny corridors and un-even stairs, which are not designed for heavy awkward bags being carried by a bloke with a bad knee, and our room is no bigger than the bed that’s in it, but it has a lot of charm and there is a lounge which we decamp to for a while. I decide to catch up on some writing, and Michelle decides to go and have a look around.

By the time we get back from eating – the walk into town and back was notable only for the lack of people, or any signs of life at all – we expected a few more of the 20 or so small rooms to be occupied, but with the exception of one, all the doors were still open and the rooms empty. We try and log in to the Wi-Fi that the hostel has, but can’t. A cat appears and becomes our friend, before demanding to be let out of the front door, and we sit reading in the lounge before giving in and climbing over our bags into bed.

The next morning Chelle gets lost again while out for a run, we pack and finally get going in the misty morning weather. After a drive around Portland we stop at Nelson for lunch at the local pub and get to our booked cabin in Robe late afternoon, with the sun having broken through. We check out the Information Centre, which has free WI-FI access, and begin to sort out the last leg of our Australian Adventure, in Perth. When the centre closes, we carry on outside until it is too windy, so we move to the car. Within an hour we have booked places to stay, checked out things to do, and mailed our friends Becky, Nick and Kylie to warn them that we’re coming to visit.

We call in at the supermarket on the way home and get some food to cook in the cabin, which we eat while watching Leyton Hewitt lose to Jorkovic in the 4th round of the Australian Open. We walk over to the beach to watch the sun go down, and try and avoid kids on bikes back at the cabin site.

Chelle’s on a roll, and runs along the beach again the next morning. Luckily the running kit has had a wash. We have brekky in the cabin before throwing everything back in the car and setting off for Adelaide. Today’s drive is a long way, and consists mostly of nothing. The first 170km of road runs along the Coorong National Park, with only one gas station along the way. Chelle drives first today, because I will drive into the city later. As established, her navigating and me driving is the preferred arrangement. We see about 10 other cars for the first three hours, one of which is a Police car that follows for about 20km, before blasting past. The picnic we had packed came out near Murray Bridge, and a German bloke explains to us about the ferry that is crossing the river in front of us. Not that we’d asked him, but he seemed keen to tell us anyway.

30km down the road we come across ‘Hahndorf’, which, according to the Lonely Planet bible, is the oldest German settlement in Australia. Coincidence? I don’t think so…

Suddenly there are three lanes heading into Adelaide, but not all full of traffic. At this time on a Wednesday afternoon on the M25? 5mph, max. The road layout is so easy to follow that we pull up outside our hostel before we know it, we get our key and load into a good room across the road from the actual hostel in another building, called ‘The Guest Room’. We decide that we won’t need the car anymore, so do the usual “dropping the car off in the middle of town”, followed by the usual “Constables wander around the city taking it all in” thing, and we find ourselves with fresh juices, sitting by the river, having walked through a university campus, and realising that we are in Cambridge – or a near approximation of the UK city. The fact that it’s searingly hot brings us back to reality, and I point out that this must be a rubbish place to keep fit as we watch the umpteenth set of runners or cyclists wiz past us.

Back into the CBD (Central Business District, do keep up) we find the inevitable free bus which circles the city, get on, and stop near our lodgings at Victoria Square – also home to the temporary ‘Down Under’ cycle race village which of course, we visit. There’s not too much going on, as the race is happening elsewhere and the teams are out with the race, but we do get to look around the associated stalls in the main tent and find a pushbike made by Ducati. I’ll let you all think of your own punchline about it being the only Ducati I should be allowed near these days etc etc.

After showering and changing we walk the short distance back into the city, have some not so good cheap noodles, and after a bit of a longer walk than we had planned, find ourselves at a pub/hotel called Grace Emily’s watching the last 30 seconds of a set from a solo singer and the whole 45 minutes of a set from a 3 piece called (we think) ‘Birthglow’. I can’t help but think that John Peel would have loved them, quirky and very indie as they were, and we feel very comfortable in this place, surrounded by skinny, glasses wearing music nerds and their doting young muses. The beer was nice too.

This is one of the good hostels that offer a ‘free’ (or, included in the price as we like to think) breakfast, so we go and have some cereal and toast before sorting out a pile of stuff to send back home. Most of it seems to be clothes that I just don’t need, but there are also some CDs and books, and our presents from Kirstie and Manu. We took the stuff to the main Post Office, bought a box, packed it all, and posted it to ourselves. By sea, which of course is the cheapest way, it cost A$70, and will take up to three months. We should be there to collect it.

Across the road we caught a tram west to Glenelg, a beach suburb of Adelaide, where very attractive waitresses made ok lattes, the beach was full of teenagers making a huge racket with the girls all trying to look like Lindsay or Paris, and the boys all trying to look like 16 year old Cory Whatsisname, who has filled the news networks and radio shows with, not so much his out of control infamous party antics, but his insolence, ever since he caused $20,000 damage to his parents house in a Sydney suburb.

We waded out into the water, and it was one of those beaches which is shallow for ever, and it’s beautiful, even with the sound of a thousand teenagers all screaming at once. Actually, I was struck by the fact that all of them, to a teen, smothered themselves – and each other if they could get away with it – with sunscreen as soon as all arrived. Kids with a conscience, eh. Whatever next!

It’s also very, very hot today, and after a while we decide to head out of the rays and into some shade. The Bay Culture Centre is at the main esplanade, so we go and have a look. The old fella who is showing people around asks us where we’re from, we tell him, and he spends the next ten minutes, plus interjections over the next 30, going on about ‘the bloody poms’. This is the perfect place for him because he looks old enough to have been there at the start with Captain Cook. It’s actually a good little centre, and tells the story of South Australia and how, in a perfect bit of irony, Adelaide was the first settlement in the country that wasn’t a penal colony, but was actually set up by an ex-convict. I like the Australian ‘European’ history because it’s all so tangible, and so much has been achieved in a short space of time. So much has been destroyed, too, but I’m still reading about it all so I can’t go into detail yet (I can hear those sighs of relief from here, you know…).

We get the tram back to Adelaide, nurse our tiny bits of sunburn (stomach for me, leg for Chelle) and go over to the backpackers for their weekly BBQ, at which a UK based couple play a few songs on guitar and chello, while a photographer from the Lonely Planet guide takes pics and we stuff ourselves with quiche and salad. We get online to check our flights and get back to our room in time for the late news on the telly, where we find out about Heath Ledger’s death.

He’s a bona-fide Aussie hero, and the media is in overdrive. The next morning, and to be fair the rest of our time in Australia this is the story. He’s a Perth boy and that’s where we will be in a few days time.