"Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Australia..."
Ok, thats not how John Denver's "Country Roads" originally goes but thats how I feel now. 6h from now I will be in Indian Pacific train heading towards Kalgoorlie, Western Australia through Nullabor Plains. Journey is scheduled to last 26h. Let's hope there are no hiccups since there is absolutely nothing in Nullabor Plains, no towns, no villages, no gas stations, no water sources,...nothing.
I arrived to Adelaide last monday evening. On tuesday I didn't do much, walked around the town which is funny how artificially it has been created. Central city is one mile long and wide square with parks surrounding the square. In center running from south to north is King William Street. All streets running west-east(or east-west) direction end at this street...because nobody is allowed to cross the King, for real! So if street starts from east end it ends at King William Street and on opposite side it gets new street name. Center of all is Victoria square.
Ok, enough about Adelaide, its not really that interesting city. Wednesday morning I headed to Kangaroo Island - third biggest island in Oz - , which is located 15km of the shore about 2h drive from Adelaide. This was to be my last multi-day tour in Australia(most likely) and it was just awesome! Definetly one of the better tours I have had on this trip.
First of all we had only 5 people - myself included - in our tour which I always consider bonus. It's nice to share things with people, but not with 20+ other travelers. Less is better. Second, our guide was fantastic. From all the tour guides I have seen, our guide - Pete - was propably the best. He was fairly young(25) and had lived in Kangaroo Island quite a while so he knew lot of hidden gems in Island that no one else knew about. Third, Kangaroo Island was awesome place. I was expecting lot more developed and populated island, but as it turned out, Kangaroo Island is very sparsely populated with lot of natural wildlife everywhere.
So on our first day it was hot, really hot. Temperature got to +36 in some of the places(and that was in shade!). Heat didn't really bother me, I prefer extreme heat to extreme cold anytime. Basically we drove southern side of the island all day stopping at Australian Sea Lion colony to watch some surfing seals:
They were literally surfing! Check out the boy at the backround in that pic. No wonder they are called "Australian Sea Lions". I jokingly said that next step in their evolution is that male Sea Lions start to bleach their hair...to which Pete replied: "Actually males have white spot on top of their head already". True aussies :-DD
Next stop was also pretty cool, sandboarding at place called Little Sahara. I already did this once in NZ but this time we got boards instead stupid slow sledges so it was lot more fun. Check out this vid of me riding down :-)
After sandboarding and all the sand in our hair and body it was time for refreshing swim at islands gorgeous beaches.
...where I again displayed my amazing acrobatics skills. 32...bah, age is only a number :-)
After swimming in nice subtropical +18 temperature water, we headed to our nightstop in farm. We did night walk around the farm to see some wildlife and hoping to catch some Kangaroo Boxing.
I guess I need to explain a bit...you see male kangaroos basically fight their entire life. Kangaroo is pack animal and in the pack there is always only one dominant male. This dominant male is only one who can mate with the girls. Naturally other kangaroos are not too happy about it, they want to get jiggy with girls as well. Only way for them to get laid is to become dominant male and quoting to words of Ric Flair: "To be the Man, you gotta beat the Man". So males constantly practice their fighting skills through their life. Most the time their boxing match is just practice but looks authentic to anyone watching. They practice and practice until some day they challenge the dominant male.
Well, we didn't see any boxing. Propably because one of the farm's wheat silos had broken and all the wheat was on the ground which ment it was feast time for kangaroos.
Next morning we woke up early. Plan was to head to Kangaroo Island's most famous sight, Remarkable Rocks, at sunrise before any other tourist buses. On way there we suffered minor hiccup...
...but Pete did amazingly fast job and after 25 minutes we were driving again. Even though we missed sunrise we were still easily the first people to see the rocks and were able to spend a good hour or so photographing the place. I was told that after about 10am and up till sunset place has constantly 50-200 tourists which makes taking photos impossible cause all you see is tourists everywhere. Place was actually lot cooler than expected, thanks to Pete again who not only showed me how to climb the rocks...
...but also showed how to take some silly and funny photos around them.
But yes, it was great to be there first and have chance to take pictures of the rocks without anyone spoiling the view.
So the day moved on after that and we went to see some New Zealand Fur Seals...
...Koalas...
...Freaks...
...Pelicans...
...and more beaches...
...until finally we had to say goodbye to each other and head back to boring Adelaide. Where we arrived exhausted at 23:00 in the evening. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow that night.
Next day I headed to walk around town and planned to finish at National Wine Center of Australia. It's only natural that when walking in small town such as Adelaide(800,000 people), that I bump into only person I know in town. So I ran into Anna, british girl from Kangaroo Island tour and we headed together to taste some wines and cheese in wine centre.
Evening I headed out to town and had plans to find nice pub and watch local team Crows battle St Kilda Saints in AFL. Unfortunately friday was some sort of University pub crawl night and town was filled with overly drunk teenagers vomiting left and right...not too appealing so I just went back to hostel and watched the game there, saved me some money though.
I had huge hopes of saturday, it was my Barossa Valley day. Barossa Valley is after all most famous and respected wine region in Australia if not even southern hemisphere. So when wines turned out to be medicore at best, I was disappointed big time. It seems like Barossa Valley is more about quantity and not quality. They produce massive amount of wine and that tends to make them more or less boring. I am sure that there would be nice top quality boutique wineries, but then again in Marlborough New Zealand there wasn't single bad winery. Every single winery there was top notch. Also, I am used to fact that wine regions are usually beautiful areas but not this time. Barossa Valley is just overly dry, lot of abandoned unmaintained buildings and trash all over. Big disappointment, won't be buying any Barossa Valley wines again.
Adelaide. Where does Adelaide rank in my list of capital cities in Oz: Darwin, Perth, Sydney, Hobart, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Canberra. Hehe, so not very well. I really wanted to like this city cause it's just the right size, not too small and not too big either. But...it is just boring and medicore in every standard. Atleast Melbourne had MCG...Adelaide has nothing interesting. Everything is just medicore. Here are some pics I took which in my opinion are very...medicore.
Now I'm off to Western Australia...can't wait to spend some quality time in my favourite State. Next 3 days I'll spend in Kalgoorlie after which I head down to southwest coast and to Esperance where I will spend entire Easter enjoying beaches during day and footy during evenings. :-)
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