Back

Sometimes, instead of rushing from sight to sight, there are alternative and less strenuous ways of getting to know a new country. When we first arrived in Australia, we decided that a stroll around the supermarket would give us a good insight of what this new continent was all about. So, on our first evening in Perth we walked into 'Coles' the local supermarket chain (a bit like 'Tesco' in Britain or 'Irma' in Denmark). You'd think that a supermarket is just a supermarket anywhere in the world, but actually a quick look down the aisles gave us quite a lot of clues about the country we had just landed in.
Firsty, an entire aisle in 'Coles' was taken up by different sorts of fly repellant: spray, lotion, roll on, smelly, very smelly, with sunscreen, with moisturiser, Jo Bloggs fly repellant, Calvin Klein fly repellant, macho man's I-don't-need-fly-repellant fly repellant. This somehow told us that Australia has a lot of flies [in case we were still in any doubt after a visit to the supermarket, there is the TV ad showing an entire family and its dog applying fly repellant].
Then, the same performance happens all over again in the sunscreen lotion aisle. There can't be many countries where an entire supermarket aisle is devoted to sunscreen. Once again they come in all flavours and strengths, from the factor 30+, a thick paste that makes you look like a Japanese Kabuki dancers once you've applied it (looks really cool on the beach), down to a more sensible factor 15, or the silly factor 2 with coconut oil, for those that don't believe in skin cancer.
Then comes an aisle of gigantic proportions that contains all the meat produce. Even before BSE, foot and mouth and vegeterianism ravaged European meat aisles, they looked pretty pathetic compared to the amazing display of meat that the Aussies put on. Once again should you be in any doubt as to where you are, the lamb and kangaroo counters will put your mind at rest. The next item will seem a bit bizarre to anyone who doesn't live in Britain, but familiar to those that do: there is an aisle dedicated to baked beans. There is more here than meets the eye. After all, you are what you eat. It is not so much a question of who is your head of state, who is the person that cuts ribbons and all that. It's more a question of whose cuisine who feel a strong allegiance to. So, next time the issue of colonial ties to Britain comes up in the Australian parliament, they should take a second look at that baked beans aisle, and vote accordingly.
Just that brief stroll in 'Coles' told us more than the guidebook about the Australian fauna (flies), climate (sunny), ethnography (white people), history (ex-British colony), economy (meat) and politics (baked beans) of the country.
If there was such a thing as an Australian stereotype, it would be a laid back sort of person going around saying things like 'G'day' and 'No worriez'. As we generally don't like to stereotype people, we came to Australia with an open mind. However, we hadn't even set foot in Australia yet, when on the Qantas flight we asked 'Can I have a glass of water?'. 'Yea, no worriez' replied the steward. We tried to ignore it. But just outside the air terminal it happened again: 'Does this bus go to Fremantle?' 'Yeah, no worriez', and again at the hostel 'Is this a nice beach?' 'Yea, no worriez', and at the car rental company 'We are planning to drive up to Exmouth' 'Yea, no worriez'. In fact the more you try not to notice it, the more people seem to use it.
Anyhow, totally free of worries, we headed north towards the Pinnacles desert, Coral Bay, the Ningaloo coral reef and our first taste of the outback. Not far out of Perth, we also got our first taste of bush flies, and a real reminder of that fly repellant aisle. We applied this repellant that claims to make you invisible to flies. In fact it makes you smell extremely foul, but seems to work.
After 3 weeks of driving in the outback, we started to think Australian: 800 km was an easy day's drive, 100 km was round the corner, 50 km was hardly worth the effort of putting your shoes on. The strangest thing about driving in the outback was the milestones: normally in Europe milestones count down to some sort of landmark like London or Rome or even a small city like Copenhagen. In the outback, milestones count down to the next petrol station, or roadhouse as it's known here. These are often 300 km or more apart, so we soon got used to stopping every time there was one. After a brief refuelling stop, we'd rejoin the highway and count down the little green milestones to the next roadhouse. They all have such exotic names - Billabong, Minilya, Payne's Find - but when you get to them they are just another roadhouse. But the 300 km in between roadhouses feels like 'the bush', and the coastline of western Australia from Shark Bay all the way to Exmouth is a feast of wildlife. We first got to a shallow, salty lagoon at a site called Hamlin pool that is home to a large population of stromatolites - blue green bacteria. Hardly wildlife, we hear you say. However, these primitive little creatures were supposedly responsible for releasing oxygen into the atmosphere billions of years ago, before any other life form was present, and they made life possible for the rest of us. They are probably regretting it by now, because we have made them almost extinct, but we felt a sense of gratitude while briefly sharing a briny pool with our old ancestors. The stromatolites share the bay with many other marine creatures. The area is actually called Shark Bay, so naturally one of the questions we asked the rangers was 'Are there many sharks here?' 'Yea, no worriez, though. If you see a fin coming towards you, and it's not doing the up and down bit like a dolphin's, it's better to get out of the water if you can'. 'No worriez, we will'. We did actually see sharks but they were only small reef sharks, who are not interested in human flesh (allegedly). One of the places in Shark Bay, known as Monkey Mia, is famous for its daily visitations and interaction with wild dolphins. We were quite keen to see them, so we asked the ranger 'Will we get to see dolphins?' 'Yea, heaps'. This answer somewhat threw us, because we were expecting the usual response. We did want to say that 'Yes, several' would be a more appropriate response in English, but by now we had come to expect anything linguistically from a bunch of ex-convicts. Several dolphins did indeed appear all through the morning and we were allowed to stand in the water with them and feed them.
A couple of days later, in Coral Bay, we joined a boat trip out to the bay to see manta rays. You can probably guess the skipper's answer when we asked him whether we would see manta rays. The skipper also thought that nouns were verbs and verbs were adjectives, and he used them rather strangely in his sentences, but he wasn't at all worried about it. He was right about the manta rays though, and we got to snorkel with them. If there ever was a creature that was designed to look like an alien, the manta ray must be it, with its strange saucer-like body, and the two protrusions from its mouth, gliding gracefully through the water, gently flapping its wings.
Probably the most unforgettable day we had was in Cape Range near the town of Exmouth. We sat on a deserted beach (deserted by humans, that is), and noticed that a wallaby seemed totally undisturbed by our presence and carried on feeding right next to us. In the meantime, a manta ray was feeding in the water close to the shore, and it was soon joined by a reef shark and a green turtle. Later on that evening, at around midnight, we returned to the beach to look for nesting turtles, as we had heard from the park rangers that the nesting season had started. We didn't expect to see any, and besides we had looked for them the night before and had been quite unsuccessful. We had no idea what turtle tracks looked like, and on a dark moonless night without a torch, we had mistook every bush for a turtle, and every mark on the ground for a turtle footprint. On the second night we were equally clueless, but we had seen many turtles swimming close to the shore at around sunset, so like budding Attenboroughs we decided that that evening was promising. When the park rangers explain to you in a complicated leaflet how to look for turtle tracks on a dark night, they forget to mention that they look like a mini bulldozer has dug a small canal on the beach. When we did eventually stumble across a set of tracks we were in no doubt as to what they were, and at the end of them a green turtle was busy digging a hole in the sand. As instructed by the leaflet, we stood behind it and watched it quietly dig and lay its eggs before making a second set of tracks back to the sea. As if the sight of the turtle wasn't enough, at that moment the Southern Cross rose in the horizon followed by a large half moon. We were so excited that night, it was difficult to keep our eyes on the road and the hundreds of kangaroos and wallabies that seemed particularly active at that time of night.
About 400 km inland from Exmouth is a well-kept secret, Karijini National Park. The area is in true mining country, with a mountain being scoured away daily for iron ore, a ghost town where blue asbestos used to be mined, a jasper mine, and plenty of evidence left from the gold diggers' rush, like rowdy pubs called 'Diggers' Rest' and the 'Golden Pick', where the only dress code is an obligatory tatoo. Hardly a natural beauty spot - in fact we were expecting something between a coal-mining town in Yorkshire and a Siberian salt mine. We were wrong, even though it still didn't look like anything too special from the road, apart from the bright red soil and the spectacularly folded mountains. But, Karijini National Park is a place of stunning natural beauty and of great spiritual significance to the Aboriginal people. It was only when we started wading through the water-filled canyons and natural coves and pools that we fell under its spell. Here and there were freshwater pools with cascades of ferns, reeds and trees, and the canyon floor around them looked like a landscaped garden. By the end of two days, as we were swimming in one of those pools, we admitted that it was probably one of the most beautiful places we had ever seen.
Towards the end of our stay in Western Australia, we reached the town of Denmark, so that Kristian could use his well-rehearsed response to 'Where are you from?': 'Denmark [short pause], Europe'. A load of Danes had had the same idea, so the joke had sort of worn off a bit on the locals. Denmark itself is on the mouth of a deep saltwater inlet, or fjord as the Scandinavians like to call it, and with all that sound of Danish around, you could almost fool yourself... But the gum trees and the hilly countryside, as well as the warm sunshine in mid-December gave the deception away. For the Danes among you, the town is named after an English sea captain, and has nothing much to do with Denmark.
Speaking of warmth in mid-December, we arrived in Sydney about a week ago, to find all the Christmas preparations in full swing. Fluffy Santas and snowy trees appear in stores next to the season's latest fashion in surfing and swimming gear, and every magazine has articles on how to appear on the beach in a bikini the day after the Christmas food orgy. To Australians, it must seem all normal, but we feel like we are trapped in some strange time warp. Right now we are in a mountain lodge in the beautiful Blue mountains, where the temperature is a cool 25oC, but we are thinking of going back down to Sydney for the New Year's Eve bash if we can find a square inch to pitch our tent on. There is another obstacle: all the roads are closed because of some terrible bushfires in the area, so currently we are stranded in our mountain retreat. There is no sign of insanity yet, but when we catch somebody typing on the computer "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", it's time to hide the pick axes and run.
We hope you are all having a great Christmas and we wish you the best for the New Year. A lot of you will soon be saying goodbye to the drachma, franc, lira, mark, peseta, punt, guilder and schilling in the week to come, and saying hello to the euro. A euro here in Australia is a type of kangaroo, but most Australians don't seem to be disturbed by the prospect of Europeans discarding their respective currencies in exchange for a fluffy, bouncy animal. Prices in supermarkets quoted in kangaroos? Why not? No worriez.

Happy 2002!
Lots of love
Markella & Kristian

Back