The drive down from the mountains with Victoria was an encouraging reminder of the beauty of life. I was blessed with amazing generosity of my friends at the Cafe before I left, ensuring that my presence would be missed and that I certainly had a home to come back to. Victoria and I set off about midday with her sweet pup Effie, delicious and wholesome foodies and a static connection of all we had in common for endless discussion and contemplation. The drive itself was fun and was a lot like cruisin from the Bay Area to Ashland on Highway 5 in many parts of it. I think my favorite part of the drive was when the road was absolutely covered with tumbleweeds! They were flooding the lane and I wasn't sure whether I needed to drive around but ended up going right through! They flew up like bubbles and it was absolutely fantastical! We also just barely missed driving over a couple brown snakes; the second most deadly in the world apparently. It was awesome to get to drive with Victoria, she was quite patient with my discovery of nurturing a manual through the very small towns we did pass through and stop in. Wonderful to get that experience too, because wouldn't you know it, my next ride share is also a manual car.
Vic and I stopped to camp about half way in a teeeny little town called Goulgowi. (I had a discussion with some Aussies about how many of the Dr. Seussish sounding names here are probably the English simply phonetically translating the aboriginal language to name cities and streets. I suppose it's certainly better than the heritage being completely left behind but sometimes the disregard for the culture resulted in false translations like Parramatta is actually the land of the Baramatta Tribe. Of course there are other examples as well but it is quite interesting to learn about the culture, language and heritage of the Australian Aboriginal People and their struggle to both sustain their history and integrate into today's society.) In Goulgowi we stayed at a "caravan park" (patch of lawn on the side of the road with toilets and electricity.) Some of the locals there offered us a job in the wheat harvest but we explained we were amidst much adventure and would have to pass this time! We had a lovely picnic and slept soundly beneath a massive starry sky.
The drive into Victoria and then South Australia was incredibly flat and wonderfully vast. We rarely saw another car and the towns are extremely far apart. The Hay Plain is unbelievable; yellow grassland is all I could see in every direction! It was amazing. Not a hill in sight, and actually, in looking at the horizon, there was a mirage just beneath the last bit of land on the horizon making it look like there was levitating land at the end of the world. There were amazing salt pans in some areas where amongst the growing grains and bush land we would see a lake of brilliantly white salt. It's incredible the things earth produces and sometimes so unexpectedly. As far as I know, coastland was ages away from there and yet, there's salt and sand. I'm continually fascinated by this ancient world of ours.
The other "traffic" on the road was mostly semi trucks (or road trains.) At one point when I was driving, we were coming up to a railroad crossing and parallel to the tracks there was a semi rolling along toward the intersection though it looked as though it were on the tracks! My understanding in the world is that you always give way to things moving down the railroad track, and yet we were approaching at 110k's and I wasn't sure whether to stop or not! It was a quite exhilarating to just trust that the truck was going to stop and keep sailing through! (He did.) Our other crazy road experience was when we were on a bit of a dusty road and all of a sudden on the right side of the road out of the dust came a huge truck roaring towards us! It was like a ghost semi truck of the harvest season! We laughed at how much it frightened us and sighed once it had passed.
Amongst the randomness we saw in the great outback there were also some really endearing things. (Of course I spotted them during my drive so I couldn't take pictures.) Behind the bridge that crosses from New South Wales to Victoria there was a small house beside the river with the sign, "Bridge keeper's Cottage." I found it to be a better alternative to the troll who usually patrols those places. We also drove under Peppermint Lane and Honeypot Road. How cute is that!? It was like playing candy land only, in a car! There was also the nostalgia of seeing cotton on the side of the road, blown off from trucks transporting it as well as bales out in the fields. Victoria gathered a fluffy bunch of it for her car collection of nature.
Adaide has some very interesting ways. There's a whole section of highway that at different times of the day changes it's direction. For example the the whole thing becomes a southbound highway during certain parts of the day and northbound during others. The locals never seem to know which it will be and it's a matter of chance once you get there! The public transit in the city is decent and the layout of the place is easy enough to navigate which is good for someone who has only a few hours to tackle the place! When I got on the bus I listened to the ding, ding, ding of locals scanning their prepaid metro cards and laughed out loud (then apologized) when one woman's card made the machine go: boink! The driver let her on anyway.
It seems to me that a city is a collection of attractions for tourists and locals alike amongst a working society of busy bees. The attractions to choose from in most cities are: markets, restaurants, cafes and all kinds of food, architecture, libraries, churches (Adelaide is the "city of churches") parks, gardens, buskers, galleries, museums, Unis, pubs, zoos, traffic, friendly locals, hidden cafes and holes-in-the-wall that you won't find in a tour book. With one day to explore the city I had to choose only a few. (That's how I found myself in the shade by the river.) While eating lunch with Yuon tei (my ride share connection) Victoria meandered over to the restaurant we were at- her favorite in Adelaide apparently! We shared a couple sticky rice puddings which were very strange to look at but delicious! It was awesome to connect with her again. Yuon tai was amazed that we'd only met a few days before because we "look like lifelong friends," she's just awesome like that. So I ended up getting a local's tour to some of the best shops where I bought things like a cup of strawberries covered in dark chocolate, bulk snacks from Goodies and Grains, and avocados and kombucha from Wilson's for the next couple days of travel. I kept offering Serhat (our other ride share partner) bits of food that I was nibbling on in the car on the way to Melbourne. I thought his response was really cute: "You have many things in your bag. You are like a super market... Your nutrition is very healthy."
In Adelaide I decided with only a few hours to spend what I wanted most was to explore the botanical gardens. I wandered beneath my favorite jacaranda trees to the Garden of Health. It had signs with some interesting history of health and the medicinal uses of plants and how much more prominent they've been since we've realized we need to go back to nature to nurture ourselves! I enjoyed many beautiful moments watching the happy rainbow lorikeets bathe in the fountain in the center of the garden. It is a gorgeously green area safe from the business of city life. We could all use more gardens in our lives I think.
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