SomewhereSouth.net

So long and thanks for all the fish!

This is going to be a rather mixed up story. Storylines are for wussies, I didn't update my diary for ages and just started 20050429, we're bloody surrounded by Dutchies (more about that later), my screen blinks at a lousy 60Hz, my keyboard SUX and the internet connection is SLOOOOOOOW! But hey, it IS my time to write some stuff now. For some odd reason still 500 people a month are somewhat interested in our writing stuff (off course a big HI to all just bumping in through Google or trying to comment-spam the lot which is still kinda effectively made impossible), for those interested have a look at our STATISTICS page (so that I can look at the statistics of the statiscics to see how many people are interested in the statistics) Off course those stats are more usefull for us than for you, not only as a measurement of interest but also and very important to measure the amount of data used by our websites so that I'm not suddenly surprised by a huge bill from our Internet Provider, IAF. (Not that I'm too afraid for that, it's a small joint and I used to work there before I left to australia and had someone else do the dirty stuff...)

Anyway, my diary starts around 80Km south of Rockhampton where Nicky updated the weblog the last time. And for some very odd reason there are only short, more or less funny, remarks on that:

• While driving through a coastal road east of Rockhampton we wanted to stay at an nice parking spot along the beach. A more or less friendly local wasn't that sure if we wouldn't get chased away there so we decided to take off again and drive a little further. After an hour or so we decided to plunge ourselves in a rest area with a clear sign "NO OVERNIGHT STAY" in front of it. Quite obvious that the other backpacker van standing there with the windows covered up was absolutely not staying there so we decided to park our van behind it, covered up and slept like a rose. Without being sent away. Next morning we looked around, aparently there where more backpackers with the same idea, not less than 3 campervans and 2 Ford Falcons stood there very clear NOT having spent te night over there. Sure...
  
• While getting petrol (unfortunately a daily thing, lucky the petrol is only half the price of back home, too bad this van sucks it twice as hard as my homecar so the price-per-Km stays the same for us) Nicky went out to pay. (Always let the girls do the hard work...) Anyway, she ran straight into a guy who told her that he wanted to move overseas. For one very good reason: The creditcards always looked so groovy and the Australia ones where just dull unless you had an upperclass CommonWealth card which was reasonably spiffy.
  
• Again while driving through the night (after we've seen The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy in the Rockhampton theatre) we where looking for a place to sleep. We found a rather dodgy place, along the hiway in a very, very small village, straight across a pub. But being officially a rest-area and containing a covered up Ford Falcon we decided to stay, parking gently ajacent to the Falcon. (Really, covered-up ancient Falcons are nearly always backpacker cars.) Afraid to be sent to a campsite the sleep was a bit nasty but aparently they where used to it so nothing happened. Well, we got woken up by a boomcar making my car-stereo at home feeling miserably miserable and while at the toilet at 5am some idiots found it neccecairy to yell and shout at eachother, fighting out their hourly on-the-road family fight but we made it. And surprise, surprise, next morning we counted not only the Falcon and our own car who, again, absolutely did NOT spent the night there. "No-Camping" signs have a reason you know...
  
• Not really special but still cool was the Rockhampton Zoo. Free for all and everyone. Not really spectaculair but finally with the chance to see casowary's, who are kinda hard to spot in the wild.
  
• Rather sad is the fact that Nicky while deleting all dull photo's on her digicam thought our platypus was a turtle and deleted the one and only evidence. And she still feels very bad about that. Poor girl.
  
• While doing something more cultural than a soo, visiting a church (still Rockhampton) we ran into a lady who was 100% convinced that we where Canadians. Again. It took her a while before she believed that we where really just Dutchies. Always nice to get those compliment, I bet that the dutchies we ran into yesterday did have absolutely NO clue that their neighbours are just living a couple of hundred Km's away from them, maybe even less. Keep it that way, we still do NOT want to talk dutch 'till we're back home. Oh, we bought some nice stickers from her with all kinds of groovy holy images on it. Nice for on my laptop. They deserved it, the church was kinda awesome. Really modern, just a mere 100 years old but with windows... Ah well, there are (analog) images from them who we might send out to anyone wanting to see 'm.
  
• I should say something about the Town Of 1770 and Agness Waters but apart from that they looked small, we had a nice lunch at the boat ramp and that they're somewhere on the east-coast of Australia I really don't know what to tell about them.
  
• Having a couple of films ready and wanting to have some dupes of our underwater pictures (who worked out quite well) we went to a shopping mall with a bookstore and a 1-hour photoshop. The photoshop to develop the images, the bookstore to kill some time and find some more to read as we where both kinda running out off reading material. (Not really but we like to believe that lie so that we have a nice excuse to buy more books.) After a while an annoying beep came from the Target (a cheap, big, clothing store). Seemed like a burglar alarm but no-one managed to turn the bloody thing off. After another while suddenly the fire-alarm went on. Up to every shop to close immediatly and anybody leaving the mall straight away. Turned out to be false alarm but still a strange thing to happen. Nonetheless the damage was not too big, we got 1 photo unprinted and 2 doubled. The bookstore was very happy with us, we kindly left the store with 6 books, worth just over $50,- as all but one of 'm where labelled 50% off. Nice catch! (BTW Murf ran out with "Bravo Two Zero", "The Real Bravo 2 Zero", "The Street" and "The Street 2", Nicky with 2 parodies on the LOTR, The Bored Off The Rings and .?.?.)
  
• As The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy (THHGTTG) was finally out in the theatre and both read the book (almost, I finished it just a day after the movie, the full version that is) we decided to go and prepared for a bit dissapointment. Well, to be honest, it IS a Disney and it goes quite heavily off the book halfway the movie it think it still is worth it. The voice of Marvin is really well chosen, the Vogons are as they should be, the voice-over with parts of the REAL HHGTTG are absolutely nicely done and how they are on Earth V2 is pretty neat. It's not big-budged SCIFI nor completely analogous to the book but it is definetely not bad. BTW and I did got to magage to get a movie poster. That's one of the cool things here, there are always lots of spare movie posters you can get for $5,- or so, even from movies just out 1 day in the theatre like THHTTG. I even got a full-size banner of Constantine. Impossible to send home but we'll find a way and it's awesome to have such stuff.
  

And from here it's storytime again. After leaving Rockhampton we went south to Bundaberg to have a look at the place they create the world-famous Bundy Rum. We arrived somewhere in the afternoon, sped to the coast for a campsite, ran into a caravan park who was just about to close (at 4:30pm, bit early if you ask me) but managed to stay, pay and get a key for the toilets. That's how they keep their site clean of unpaying customers, just lock the toilets and showers and hand over a key to every paying customer. Very smart. The only reason why we go to those sites is because we want a shower, a relaxed night and a decent toilet. So it really makes us pay and probably we're not the only ones...

Next day we went to the Bundaberg distillery. Cool tour. Free coke and stupid talking so-called hyper-modern lockers where you had to leave everything with a battery in it because it might spark. Safety. They'd already burned down the factory years ago. We stared with tasting the melasses. That's the sugary stuff where everything starts and it tastes pretty much like: Dutch Licorice! Oh holy. No-one liked it and we where yelling that it was soo good and where we could buy a tube of the stuff. They must've thought we where joking and that the joke was not really funny but we where completely honest and serious at that point. As true Dutchies it REALLY tasted awfully good and better than all that horrible aussie licorice. But hey, that's something in a duthcman's genes I presume. They have "drop" flowing through their veines. The rest of the tour was good though a bit set-up (the guides fully trained in their pre-made jokes, making them ALMOST sound original, almost) and because half the factory was shut down because it was a saturday there wasn't much activity. What I found a bit remarkable is that I suddenly realized that it doesn't really matter which spirit or even beer you make. The main process is basically the same. You mix some stuff with yeast, filter it a couple of times, let it rest, filter it more, destillate it a couple of times and put it on a big vat for a certain amount of time. Funny that they used american oak there, the same as one of my favourite whisky's was matured on. But the taste of this rum is absolutely nowhere near a single-malt whisky which they said it should compete with. Nor was it as sweet as Jamaican Rum. So sorry, if I want rum I'll go for the sweet Jamaican stuff, if I want something for in my coke it'll be the cheapest 40%+ booz available and if I want something like whisky I'll grab a bottle of 12yo+ coming straight out of the distilleries of Schotland. Nonetheless, the tour was OK.

Important fact: 20050430 Murf finished THHGTTG! (And is now reading The Salmon Of Doubt and The Street simultaneously. The first from Adams, the second about a Melbourne copper, perfect toilet-reading stuff.)

Next stop after Bundy was Hervey Bay. As we really wanted to cut our expenses we stopped just outside Hervey. (They reall pronounce it here as HArvey insted of HErvey, strange ozzies.) Next to a petrol station on an empty lot ajacent to 2 main hiways with nothing more than a truck-trailer standing 30 meters away from us. Bit fuzzy there but away from the street and hidden behind the bushes still a quite nice backpacker place. Next door, straight next to the petrol-station we found another car, next morning... Parked absolutely more rudely than we. We spend the day on the marina, next to the boat-ramp, observing zillions of people rigging their boats. We wanted to go to THE island, X-mas, erhm, shit, what was it again? Nicky: Fraser Island. Thnx. So we went to a booking office with internet. Send some email there (why not, we had nothing to do anyway) and book the trip. We ended the day at a caravan park next-door as the bloke in the shop was surprised that we didn't get caught on our free spot. Later we discovered a covered van straight next-door to the shop on a really clearly marked NO CAMPING site. Sleeping??? No, just f*cking probably. Sure.

Lunch was another story. Really wanting to cut on our budget we went to Woolies (a giant supermarket) instead of Subways (a sandwich store) and came out with 2 giant French breads, some fetta cheese, a capsicum (I still don't understand why it's called capsicum instead of paprika like we do at home, it's the same bloody thing.), an Hungarian salami, some olives, lettuce and all, worth a shivvering $17,- total. Seemd a lot but really, after having our with the most-stuffed sandwich I've ever had we where so stuffed that we didn't went for dinner at all and saved the rest for the next morning. Good work Nicky, you really DO know how to make massive sandwiches. And next morning we had it as breakfast, me eating just half of it on the boat to Fraser because I and it was soooo stuffed.

By now I wanted to ask Nicky to put down the Fraser story so that I could work on my email but nah, I'm here anyway and she'll live a couple of hours in the park next-door with a book. Have to develop 3 rolls of film anyway, it goes FAST on Fraser. Not that there is really much to say about Fraser, it's really a very big sand island. Bit like Terschelling but just a bit bigger and absolutely NO sealed roads. Not even gravel. Just sand tracks. We took a bustour as we both didn't want to drive ourselves over the island for a couple of reasons. We liked to have some company, a tour guide and the 100% chance of getting bogged a couple of times are all reasons to do it this way. And so we went off. A bit 4x4 truck picked us up at the bus stop next door to the booking office, our car nicely parked behind it. An hour ferry to the other side, and we where on the island. We started with a big ride and a small 20 minute walk through the rainforest ending by an introduction round where luckily the only thing you had to tell was your name and country. Me absolutely hating those kinda rounds hid behind a tree straight away in an attempt not to draw attention to myself, too late realizing that just that action put ALL the attention to me. OOPS! Anyway, we shared the bus with a group of oldie germans (one guy annoyingly really with his videocam glued to his eye), a couple of ozzies (Adelaide), a large group of backpacking UK chicks and a guy, a couple of UK blokes, and a couple of young germans. Kinda allright group. Next stop was then Lake Wabby. Funny because not only the bus was called Wabby but Wabby is also the name of Nicky's cuddle rabbit which she carries all around her trip. (And now she tells me that I should say that the cuddle Wabby was almost dead so she did some surgery on it, saving his leg from amputation. Well, here you go, I said it. ;-P) Lake Wabby was good. Jumping out of the bus the German girl approached Nicky as she saw that she was wearing a New-Zealand necklace and broke the ice for the rest of the trip that way. Smart move!
After a 2Km walk through the forest and over a sandpitch we got to the greenish lake and made ready for a swim. Off course I absolutely HATE natural water but after diving a lot of times I'm getting over it. Hessitated to go deeper than my toe (it was COLD) I suddenly jumped in looking at some english chick who was too afraid to go in. "Hey, I'm way less chicken than that" I thought and with a big SPLASH I was in. Swam to the other side, did some float-exercises (after 27 years of not being able to float I suddenly managed to do it, strange), swam a little more and went back doing some headrolls and other foolish stuff. And then the clouds came in so we had to get out and back to the van. 2Km walking, really trying to do it fast as the clouds got darker and darker. We managed to get to the bus, being not too wet.

We had lunch at the operator's resort and went on to the north part still being chased by the rain. The main hiway is on the east-side on the beach. Fun track, driving 80Km/h over a beach in a quite large 4x4 truck. Went passed some of the more interesting parts like Indian Head, passed the Maheno Shipwreck (that's for the next day) and up north to our sleeping spot for the night. Dinnertime. Got a couple of tents to sleep in and got a nice BBQ as dinner. Had some talks with the germans and ozzies, had a couple of drinks (well, I had a couple of drinks) and went to bed. Night was nasty cold, raining all over the place and a group next-door singing very loud. But we survived the night and I got up TOO early. As Nicky forgot to pack both diaries and something to read I dumped myself in the shed to wake up with a mug of coffee. Breakfast, departure at 8:30am and off to the Indian Head in the north part of the island. Climbed the hill, had a nice view over the island and got down again. Next stop: Maheno Shipwreck. Finally without rain so a nice place to take a couple of shots. Back in the bus, down south to the second lake off the tour after a view of a sandformation which showed all the different colours of sand of the island.

Lunch at their resort again, wraps this time, everyone really looking very sleepy and the english girl behaving stupidly hysterical.
As Nicky told they hid themselves with 3 in a toilet, one to go whatever she had to do on the toilet, one to keep the door closed (it really seems to get kinky here) and the 3rd one... To look for SPIDERS!
For g*d sake, if you go to Australia you WILL run into spiders and other nasty creatures. No one really likes them, Nicky is kinda fobic about them as well and even I don't really want to shake hands with them but this was ridicoulous. Ah well, they where not really used to anything at all aparently, even the best looking girl (looking a bit like a combination of my sister and Kirsten, *YUMMIE!*) changed her clothes a bloody 4 times a day or so. On a camping trip.

The second lake was turtle-lake with sweet little fresh-water turtles. No-one wanted to go for a swim, all tired and the weather wasn't great but it was a nice rest. And then back in the bus to go back to the boat again. A big 1,5 hour drive across the island to the west beach, Moon Point. The boat trip was a bit bumpy (though nothing compared to what we had on the reef) but nice. Specially because suddenly we saw some dolphins swimming accross the boat. The whole boat yelled, off course as it is not something you see daily. Great sight, must 've been a family of around 4-6. Sweeeeeeeet!

On the boat the german couple invited us to go bowling that night, as we had a quite good contact with them during the trip we agreed. So 8pm @ Woolies it was. The bowling center however just closed their doors so up 2 ad-hoc plan B, movie. Triple-X 2. The Hitch is Disney and the german bloke really wanted to see Triple-X being one of the better action movies. And it was. I mean, the story was shitty but that's not what it's about. It's about megalomanic sound, blistering explosions and heavy fireworks. And it was good. I don't like the scary parts they always have to put in but as soon as the action started I was happy. We would've gone to McDonalds afterwards but it was too late. Pointed them at our website (this one, nicely written in the dirt onto the back of our car) and off we went, all our own ways again, probably and hopefully with an email when they have internet and in the mood to write. (Hi guys!)

And that was it. Here we are, in the internet joint annex booking office 1Km from our campsite. Silently waking up and knowing that we won't leave within a couple of hours as I have some serous mail to wade through. Though I forgot to tell about a small story at the campsite. About Dutchies and their rudeness. Really, it's funny but after being around lots of non-dutchies you suddenly realize dutchies have a certain rudeness over them, specially when on holidays.

We came at the campsite and got #69. Drove to the spot and to our surprise it was already half-taken by some rental car. So we opened the window and asked the people kindly to move their car as that was our place. They did, fast. And they came to my window. To tell in a bit too clear dutch accent that the supervisor of the place would leave in 30 minutes anyway so that we could basically stand wherever we liked, as they did and even could steal electricity. 10 minutes later the car was parked next to our van again. Really, no nasty words whatsoever but this is tipically dutch and I am NOT proud of it. Poor bastards probably didn't know that we could've been neighbours. If even Canadians think your Canadian, how could a dutchie notice by your accent that you're dutch...

Murf | 04 May 2005 (Wed), 04:47 @ story