Living on the edge
Australia, part 6: In which I learn to drive amidst kangaroos, and more such exciting matters...
Well, g'day everyone. Long time no see. I gather some of you were getting a bit worried about me because of the lack of updates, but as you can see, I have neither been eaten alive by dingoes nor been abducted by one of Australia's ubiquitous serial killers. I've merely been busy finishing my translation (yes, it's done), seeing beautiful things (and then some) and snogging locals. The latter is a mildly amusing story featuring not one but two policemen (and a policewoman, too), but this is not the place to tell that story -- at least, not until someone sends me a good many virtual gin-and-tonics. And even then you'll probably get nothing but the watered-down version of the story, so you might as well spare yourself the trouble, really.
Now I'm aware I promised you all (or "youse", as they say here) a list of Aussie superlatives -- a list of the best/funniest/oddest/most shocking/most surprising things I'd done/seen/heard/come across here. However, I don't have enough time for that at the moment, seeing as I'm about to skip town in an about hour or so and probably won't come across any affordable Internet cafes for some time. So the superlatives will have to wait until the end of my holiday, which is probably a much better time for them, anyway -- more appropriate and all that.
As for what I've been up to lately, apart from snogging locals and all that... Well, first of all I've seen kangaroos in the wild. Twenty-one of them so far (yes, I've counted), with many more to come. I suppose they should by now be old hat to me, but strangely enough, they're not; I keep feeling as excited as a little girl whenever I see one, particularly when they start hopping. I'm telling you, nothing is quite so exciting as the sight of a mob of hopping kangaroos, bouncing across the red soil. They're so Australian they make me giddy with joy. So giddy, in fact, that the thought of eating them now strikes me as somewhat cruel. I will probably try roo steak at some point (I have actually come across it on a menu by now, in a lovely restaurant in Brisbane, but gave it a miss since it was served with beetroot), but not until I've grown heartily sick of seeing these nice-looking beasties stare at me from beside the road, which won't happen any time soon.
A few other things I've done since I last updated:
-- flying over the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef in a small aeroplane and landing on a gorgeous beach, right next to a giant turtle (seriously, life doesn't get much better than that);
-- swimming in some of the most beautiful lakes in the world (those would be Lake McKenzie, Lake Birrabeen and Lake Wabby on Fraser Island -- I look forward to showing you my pictures of those!);
-- telling packs of inquisitive dingoes to bugger off (in Dutch, naturally, the language most suited to such enterprises);
-- holding a gun (no comment);
-- wishing I had said gun with me to force the bus driver to stop on my trip from Dubbo to Broken Hill, during which I saw some astonishingly photogenic sights of which, damn it, I couldn't take any photos as we were driving by too fast; and last but not least (brace yourselves)
-- learning how to drive.
Now I know the latter will come as a bit of a surprise to those of you who know me well, as I've always said I'd never learn to drive. I didn't exactly come to Australia with the intention to learn to drive, although I did regret not having a driving licence when I came here, as public transport is so woefully inadequate in large chunks of the country. But then my friend Conan offered me a driving lesson; he even went so far as to borrow his parents' automatic car for this purpose as this would be easier to get used to than his own manual car. So one beautiful Sunday morning, he took me out of Brisbane into the beautiful Glass House Mountains, where I had my first ever driving lesson. I was crap at it, but it was a surprising lot of fun. And it won't stop there. See, I'm about to embark on a hire-car journey with someone who doesn't seem too averse to teaching me, either. Yesterday morning I met a lovely Swiss lady named Nicole, who told me she was planning to hire a car in Adelaide and drive all the way to Alice Springs, smack in the middle of the outback. When I looked slightly envious at the mention of private transport (as I have a tendency to do when travelling in places like Australia), she invited me along for the ride. This meant I had to drop a few other places on my itinerary, including a few to which I'd been really looking forward, but the thought of a one-week trip across the desert (with the possibility to stop whenever I came across something photogenic) was so tempting that I decided to take Nicole up on the offer. So last night we took a bus from Broken Hill to Adelaide, and now we're about to pick up our hire car and commence the long drive to Alice Springs, via the beautiful Flinders Ranges, the opal-mining town of Coober Pedy and the triple tourist whammy of Ayers Rock, King's Canyon and the Olgas. Needless to say, Nicole will do most of the driving, but she's planning to give me some time behind the steering wheel as well, in exchange for (get this) Chinese lessons. She's going to China in a few months, and since she'd like to be able to say more than just "Hello" and "Thank you", I'll be teaching her some practical Chinese, such as the ever-useful phrase, "Could you lower that price somewhat, please?" I always knew my Chinese would come in handy some day, but seriously, who knew it would lead to free driving lessons on the other side of the planet? Life's just full of surprises...
Anyhow, yeah, I'll be doing some driving on this trip. In a country where they drive on the wrong side of the road, on a road which is allegedly full of kangaroos. A road, moreover, which apparently doesn't have any speed limits (other than crossing kangaroos, that is). I have to admit I'm getting a bit of a kick out of the latter fact, so perhaps there's hope for me yet. I may yet turn into the kind of speed devil I was born to be, what with a father and a brother who love their fast cars. At the very least I'll leave Australia a better driver than I entered it, which has to be worth something. And I'll be seeing kangaroos while learning to drive, which I'm sure not many of you can say. So, yay for scenic driving lessons!
To be continued (provided I don't get hit by a roadtrain or a big kangaroo during my next driving lesson...)