Feb 09: Mildura - a day on the fig farm

I arrived in Mildura at 7am on Saturday, having travelled all night on the bus. I was sleepy as I unloaded my bags at the station, eager to check into my new lodgings and immediately get some much-needed kip. I planned what to do later: go food-shopping, meet the people at the hostel, a few beers in the evening maybe.

The hostel looked great on the website. “Where excellent accommodation, good work and great wages go hand-in-hand”, it proudly proclaimed. I’d found it a few days ago by random, and was pleased that they could accommodate me at short notice. The manager, Vickey, told me they had grape-picking work available at one of the farms. She’d even collect me from the station soon after I arrived. Everything was going to plan!

There were a few other travellers sat in the cold waiting room waiting for lifts. I wondered if they were going to the same hostel as me. I wondered if there were other hostels. Mildura is certainly a decent-sized town, with a reputation within Australia as a major agricultural centre. The place should be swarming with backpackers looking for work, I thought, so I wouldn’t be short of friends.

Presently the phone rang. It was Vickey, due at the station any minute to collect me. She’d seemed friendly enough on the phone before and seemed to be running this place on her own. “Are you free to work today?” she asked out of the blue.

“Not really, I’ve just come on the bus from Melbourne and I want to rest, can I start tomorrow?” I said.

“Okay, well you’ve basically got two choices. You can do the fig-picking, which pays great money, or you can do grape-picking, which pays really bad money." She’d not bothered to mention the really bad money before. "If you want to do the grape-picking, you can start tomorrow, but I need people today to start the fig-picking and I’d really like to have you working there.”

After a long night with little sleep the last thing I wanted to do was put in a heavy shift on a farm, but I said I’d think it over while she drove here. The circumstances surrounding the job seemed a little strange. I decided yes, what the hell, I’d do it. I could rest in the evening. I didn’t want to miss out on the better-paying job and time was of the essence in getting my visa.

Vickey arrived in the minibus fresh from doing the morning drop-offs, and I met her for the first time. She was a woman in her late 30s with a conspicuous hearing aid that gave her the appearance of a Bond villain. I was still rather tired as she drove me to the supermarket to pick up provisions. We made a bit of small talk but she seemed keen to get me checked in and off to the fig-picking job ASAP.

As is normal she asked for the week’s rent up front, but there were numerous extras – a deposit, an ‘admin fee’ for collecting wages, and transport fees – which brought the sum up to a colossal $250. Being too tired to think straight I withdrew the wad of money and handed it to her like a trusting child, not even thinking to ask for a receipt. How I would come to regret that.

Alarm bells started to ring in my head when she talked a bit more on the way to the hostel. The 'great money' turned out to be $16 an hour, close to the minimum wage. She clearly didn’t hold any of the travellers in high esteem and made out she was waging a constant war against backpackers’ laziness and lack of gratitude. I asked her to clarify what she meant and she gravely confided, “I’m afraid the house you will be staying in is full of negative people.

“You seem like a positive person so I hope they don’t get to you. But yes, we’ve had some problems in that house. Recently there were some Canadian girls there, they caused a terrible fuss, it really gave me a negative impression of Canadian people. They’ve left now.”

She continued off on a tangent: “Living at this hostel is a challenge, but you have to embrace these challenges when you’re travelling – that’s why I enjoyed being overseas when I was in London. My dad always said I was more resourceful than my sister when it came to things like that.”

“I thought I was staying in the hostel, not a house?” I replied. Not only was it a very strange conversation but I had to shout all my questions, as she was deaf in one ear and had the hearing aid in the other. I suddenly felt stupid to place my trust in this odd woman.

It turned out the ‘hostel’ was just a couple of bungalows, supplemented by another house for overspill located on the town outskirts. I was driven to the overspill house, and it was clearly in the middle of f**king nowhere. I didn’t like the look of it; it supposedly housed ten or twelve people but was very small indeed. Still a lone voice piped up in my head: “you can do it, just a few weeks, you’ve survived in worse.”

I had just spent a month at the working hostel in Manjimup (Western Australia), and that was a bit of a hole, but it was magnificent compared to this. Now I thought about it I’d never appreciated how well-run that place was. I particularly missed Naomi – she was an absolute saint next to Vickey – and she had the added bonus of not being completely insane. My overwhelming concern was that I wouldn’t find another place to work in time and would miss out on my visa.

I lugged in my bags and my food shopping from the van, briefly checking out the house and my room. The people living here were either out at work or still asleep at this early hour. I was sharing a small bunk room with three French guys and a Chinese girl who’d also just arrived in Mildura. Like me they were standing around wondering what the f**k they had got themselves into.

Dirty plates littered the sink; the kitchen and the living room didn’t seem to have been done up since the house was built. There was one shower and one toilet that were shared by the dozen or so people living here. There was a strange ‘cocktail bar’ installation joining on to the lounge that was decked out in hideous 60s upholstery. It was a dump.

Worryingly Vickey was expecting us to work not five, not six, but seven days a week at the fig farm. Non-stop, ten-plus hours a day, week in, week out. How would we rest? Or find the time to organise future travel plans? I figured it might work out okay over a few weeks, and the total lack of any free time whatsoever would make it easier for me to save my wages.

I did a quick change into my work clothes then we set off for the fig farm, the French guys following in their beat-up 4x4. Vickey drove on through the countryside and I'm not sure if we crossed into New South Wales as the town sits right on the border. Questions were answered intermittently. She continued her bizarre monologue: “Is that a guitar I saw in your things? I love music. Do you know Chris Issac? He did a gig here at a winery recently. Oh, he was brilliant.”

I didn't like Chris Isaac but I didn’t bother questioning the wisdom of her concert-going decisions. There was already a lot happening today that bothered me. For one thing, she now had possession of my passport, as she needed a photocopy of the visa. Again, a dumb move on my part to entrust her with it, but it was the standard procedure at these places.

The farm lay on an unmarked plot of land up a dusty road, garlanded with a few rustic outbuildings and a couple of walk-in freezers. The savage early morning chill had now given way to the extreme heat of day, the sun climbing high in the sky. We could see a busy harvesting operation already in progress on the endless rows of fig plants, people swarming to and fro carrying big polystyrene boxes of fruit.

Vickey led the five of us to the farm, subjecting us to a new low in patronising ‘advice’: “As you walk on to the farm it’s very important that you lift your legs up and walk quickly. You have to demonstrate that you’re eager to work. The farmers have been through a lot of troubles and get upset very easily. And if they ask you what hostel you’re from, tell them ‘Vickey’s place’. They don’t know what Borderline Backpackers is, just say ‘Vickey’s place’.” It was all very strange.

We were left with a German girl to sign us all in. Apparently she was a supervisor but she seemed pretty new herself and didn’t know where anything was. Elsewhere in the warehouse a group of girls were busy packing the fruit into little plastic containers. They looked like they had a cushy job. We were each given a book of tickets with unique numbers in to put in our boxes, so they could check how much work we did. I was paired up with Ying, the Chinese girl.

And so the picking work began. I didn’t know much about figs, recalling them solely from the dead brown gunk you get inside fig rolls, but live in the flesh they are a difficult proposition to deal with. The apple-sized fruit bruise incredibly easily in the boxes and the trees produce a foul milky sap that burns your skin on contact. We were all kitted out with flimsy plastic gloves as protection and left to soldier on in the heat. We were expected to fill four boxes of fruit an hour.

Supervising our section was an intimidating redneck bloke called Noel with long unkempt hair and a fearsome moustache. He seemed like a proper slave-driver and was clearly used to sacking people at the drop of a hat. He looked at me like shit for turning up in rubber boots in this heat, but as far as I’d known you always needed wellies for farm work. Vickey certainly hadn't bothered to warn me to wear trainers. I complained my clippers were rusty and he simply spat on them to ease up the joint then handed them back.

I got to speak to a few other backpackers working on the farm; most of them were staying at another hostel in town. They said it was incredibly over-crowded too; there were so many travellers booked in that people had to sleep on the floor of the TV room. One guy was sharing a single bunk-bed with his girlfriend. I don’t know how the Mildura hostels can get away with squeezing people in for extra cash; whatever safety laws are in place don’t seem to be enforced.

Ying and I filled box after box with fruit as the day wore on, but it was clear we were struggling to meet the quota. She was grafting away like there was no tomorrow but I felt like I was running on empty, struggling to comprehend the day’s strange turn of events. What was I doing here? 24 hours ago I had been strolling round St. Kilda with my parents and my best mate, on holiday. Here I was, lured into the great beyond by a wildly inaccurate website, and I didn't even know what f**king state I was in!

It was early evening when they let us clock off for the day. I was relieved the hard slog was over, but I wasn’t ready for the bombshell Noel was about to drop. Turns out Ying and I had not filled enough boxes of fruit. We were sacked on the spot. It was humiliating. I felt bad for Ying too as she was blameless.

I’d heard this happened a lot to new people; these fig farmers had a reputation for being utter bastards. The staff turnover rate was very high as they simply didn’t bother re-hiring you if you weren’t fast enough on the first day. I met the owner, and he was genuinely frightening. He ran around shouting and swearing at people if they made even slight damage to his precious fig plants. They really did talk to the workers like they were stupid.

I felt frustrated and powerless. The three French guys commiserated me while we waited for the pickup. They had done okay, despite receiving a furious bollocking from the head honcho for pulling off a leaf. They couldn’t understand why I hadn’t argued the toss and demanded another chance. But I didn’t want to face this shit again tomorrow. If I quit the hostel I’d lose the week’s rent but at least I would get my day’s wages. (Though it would subsequently take Vickey five months and repeated demands to finally cough up the money.)

Vickey was surprisingly sympathetic when she arrived in the minibus. Presumably by giving it a good go I had proven myself not to be a ‘negative’ person. She said she would “sort something out” for me but I knew this would involve doing badly-paid grape-picking.

She seemed to have taken quite a shine to me; she even asked if I wanted to accompany her to a motorbike race that evening. I said I was too tired. I had horrible visions of her trapping me in some sort of dungeon and forcing me to be her 'husband'. I felt a lot better when she handed my passport back. We were dropped off at our house. Ying was making plans to leave for Adelaide and I was in half a mind to go with her.

I met some Irish backpackers who were hanging round in the living room and explained my tale of woe. Like everyone I met that day they commiserated me; I was doing excellently on the sympathy front. I guessed these were the ‘negative’ people Vickey was talking about. I soon understood why.

They’d been stuck in Mildura for weeks, waiting for occasional crumbs of work from Vickey, and they had all run out of money. Strung along on her false promises and too skint to move on. The grape-picking wages at the vineyard were criminal – just 25 cents for each full bucket of grapes. One guy I spoke to explained you’d be lucky to make $40 a day doing this; he was forced to quit after three days due to exhaustion.

I felt sorry for them but no way was I going to let this happen to me. I got a good night’s sleep and spent the next day searching the internet for decent working hostels within a day's travel. The only ones I could find had vague information or very bad reviews. I wished I’d investigated Mildura properly before I came; the reviews for Borderline Backpackers (which tallied very closely with my experiences) showed its website up to be an utter lie. I grew more and more angry as I realised I’d been had. I had a lot to learn.

Now my savings had run out and my choices were severely limited. So I did the only thing I could do. I got out the credit card. And I booked a flight.

Feb 09 - Kings Canyon and the end of the holiday

The night after we feasted on the views of Uluru at sunset, our group got together for a big celebratory dinner at the Kings Canyon campsite. We enjoyed a meal of, oh yes, more burgers, then played some party games. It was a long time since I played any party games, other than drinking games or piling furniture on to people asleep on couches.

There was that old favourite the chicken game. We took it in turns gripping a rubber ball between our knees and trying to chicken-walk along the ground to drop it in a cup; I got an excellent video of my dad doing this. Then there was the kangaroos and emus game, which involved going outside and pretending to be, erm, kangaroos and emus; then the circle of truth, where we formed a giant circle then each person took turns to stand in the centre and perform some special feat.

I told a joke about ducks and Bill Withers, and Anthony entertained us with his vast array of barcode and US highways trivia. We’re very fun people to be around obviously. I like evenings like those – the games were pretty unimaginative but we were making our own entertainment, like they did in the old days. Finding enjoyment from the surroundings, be it playing daft games or killing things in new and inventive ways, seems like a big part of life in the bush.

After darkness fell, Nick told us (almost as an afterthought) that part of the camp was haunted by sinister tribal spirits; people waking in their sleep were sometimes panicked to feel an invisible force pinning them to the ground. I took it with a pinch of salt, as Aussies have a bit of a reputation for bullshitting visitors about made-up scary monsters. But then we got a chance to see if the myth was true, spending another night sleeping out under the stars in swag-bags! Nothing happened, though we hid our shoes from the dingoes as a precaution.

And so the next morning dawned, and we did a big hike round Kings Canyon. Epic scenery, rock formations, wind erosion, wild plants, blah blah blah. More of the same and I loved it, but there just aren’t enough words in the English language for me to describe this awesome experience without repeating words I’ve written about the Grampians National Park and Flinders Ranges, etc. We had been utterly spoilt with great scenery in the last couple of weeks.

This was the longest walk we went on during the holiday and featured some tough climbs, particularly the fearsome Heart Attack Hill that marked the beginning. I liked the way it was named; no poetry, no bullshit, just a no-nonsense encapsulation of its identity. It didn’t prove fatal for any of us but it was certainly a steep unrelenting climb.

Once our group got up Heart Attack Hill we went along on level ground for a while, with the huge valley of Kings Canyon to our right and far-away scenery to our left, then we crossed a couple of bridges; then we went down to see a massive rock pool called the Garden of Eden. It’s a popular swimming spot but travellers frequently fall ill from the dodgy water. Lonely Planet recommended it for a dip, which shows you what they know I guess.

Then we crossed the Lost City, which is a plateau with loads of mesmerising patterned rocks. Nick showed us a plant which produces the natural equivalent of MDMA. He refused to tell us how to prepare the leaves, much to our disappointment! We walked along taking lots more photos of the horizontal rock strata. After all, when would we be coming here again? Most of us had filled our memory cards with hundreds of photos on this trip. A smorgasbord of colourful pixels to dine out on for eternity back home.

After three or so hours of walking we climbed down the opposite hill and that was it, the end of the hike across Kings Canyon. We boarded the bus for the final leg of the journey to Alice Springs. More driving through nothing, then we had a lunch stop at a roadhouse that kept emus in a paddock. One last emotional lunch of burgers and salad, the food we’d survived on almost completely for the past week. Clouds of flies descended on the food, ignoring most of it and heading straight for the tuna.

The bus carried on up the highway, passing an interesting turn off that led to a covert US military base. I was fascinated by all these secret goings-on in the desert. Apparently there are thousands of US personnel housed on this base – God knows why – and they get all their food flown in direct from America. Word is that they are all designated with menial job titles such as ‘gardener’ to hide their true identities. But if anyone asks, I didn’t tell you that. (I’m not dissing gardeners by the way, I’ve already got the CIA on my back after writing that.)

Soon afterwards the beginnings of a town appeared over the horizon. We had reached Alice Springs! The Stuart Highway, that friendly stork guiding us through the treacherous desert, was flying on to pastures anew – and sadly we would have to say adios. On the outskirts of town, the road bent through 90 degrees for the first time in a thousand miles. We stopped at a pair of traffic lights; again, the first we’d seen in a thousand miles. And suddenly we were back in civilisation, shops and houses and streets crowding all around us.

Nick did the drop-offs at the hostels round town; me, Anthony and my parents were almost the last off the bus. Esther was still sat there at the end, grumbling about some perceived slight from Nick. Some of the other guys would regroup later for a tour up to Darwin, but the four of us were glad of a rest from the constant activity, and also had two nights to look forward to in a big hotel.

After a quick shower everyone got together for a farewell party at Annie’s backpacker bar. There were about twenty of us who did the trip and we all sat at a long table and got uproariously drunk together one last time. Email addresses were exchanged. Verbal commitments were made to add one another on Facebook and tag each other in our travel photos. After tonight we would most likely never see each other again.

Nick came too and had some beers with us. He didn’t hold back either, he had the next day off and was evidently very happy to have a break from driving. The last I saw of my group, I was getting in a taxi and he was getting ready to lead them off to a casino! In my experience the point in a night out when your mates decide to go to a casino is the point where you should go home.

Anthony stayed out with them till the wee small hours, partying like the behemoth of high living that he is. Later he had to get the porter to let him into the room. I was passed out on my bed like a proper lightweight and didn’t hear him repeatedly phoning me. That night was a big blow to my confidence in my drinking abilities.

The next day it was just the four of us again. We lived it up in style, nursing our hangovers by the hotel pool. My parents went shopping in Alice Springs and my dad bought a fancy hat made of kangaroo leather. The hotel was really posh – it was the kind of place where you suddenly feel attractive and interesting because the staff are smiling at you, then you realise they have to smile at the guests in these sorts of places.

I went for a wander round Alice Springs with Anthony. There is a dried-up riverbed running through the town centre, the Todd River. Every year they hold a pretend yacht race on it, teams of runners carrying boats along the ‘river’ as a laugh. Like I said, in the outback you have to make your own entertainment. There were lots of Aboriginal people hanging round in the town centre. Having spent all this time in Australia it was the first time I’d seen them in any number.

The next day we flew out from Alice Springs’ tiny airport, to Sydney. We got the standard safety demonstration on how to use the life-jacket, despite the fact we didn’t pass over water at any point during the flight! We spent three days sight-seeing; checking out bare essentials like the harbour bridge, the opera house, the ferry to Manly etc. I’d been there before but it was worth the four of us paying a visit so my parents and Anthony could see the amazing cityscape and the unending panorama of harbours and coves surrounding it. We didn’t get the greatest weather, in fact it pissed it down nearly every day we were there.

Walking round Circular Quay we had a chance reunion with Matteo, the Italian guy from our tour, who was going about his mysterious business in Sydney. A man like Matteo, you don’t ask too many questions. Then the weather brightened up so we did a boat trip round the harbour. The trip was notable not so much for the views as for the tour guide’s strange obsession with Nicole Kidman and camp showbiz trivia. It was quite a good trip though – there are miles of dramatic views around the harbour.

Next we caught a long-distance train down to Melbourne and spent a few days by the sea in St. Kilda. We had literally come full-circle – by a weird quirk of fate our hotel was just over the road from the pick-up point on the Great Ocean Road tour. That adventure on Dave’s bus was now a distant memory from a fortnight ago. I was starting to realise that the holiday was nearly over; soon I would have to go back to farm work in the country.

St. Kilda had a strangely familiar atmosphere; due to its southerly location and colonial buildings it is probably the closest thing you will find in Australia to a British seaside town. Despite that it was enjoyable and relaxing. There was a harbour and a fun park and all the other stuff you get at the seaside. The streets were lined with endless cafes and restaurants, the maddening diversity of choice that is Melbourne’s trademark. The trams flocked here, bringing people to and from the city centre. We pottered round looking at trams and boats mostly, with my dad taking photo after photo.

We wanted more sight-seeing so we went on a winery trip round the Yarra Valley; a day of fine wines, haute cuisine and the painful experience of making small talk with posh strangers. Our guide, an enthusiastic wine buff named Orson, explained how the countryside was marred with bush-fires. Many of the vineyards were bravely staying open for business despite being in high-risk areas. The recent tragedies certainly took the fun out of the occasion.

And so we spent the afternoon going from winery to winery, sipping chilled chardonnay and staring at the massive plumes of smoke on the horizon. It’s easy to forget how massive the bush-fires were, and many people living rural Victoria were affected. I detected an atmosphere of forced jollity among our group. A flowery Canadian tourist named Darcy held court over the table, rapturously praising a hit new musical based on the life of Shane Warne. His passions in life seemed to be the theatre and fancy restaurants. It was interesting to finally get to meet the coach party brigade, but I still harbour a Trotskyite mistrust of them.

That night, relatively sober despite all the wine, we went back to the city and met our friend Seana for dinner and drinks. We ended up in a karaoke bar, an abrupt return to working-class life after all the folly of the wineries. It was the final evening of our holiday and we had a few beers to commemorate this, followed by a few more. Anthony put in a rare appearance on the karaoke, singing Elton John’s ‘Your song’. I was not looking forward to this holiday ending.

The day after it was all over; time to pack up and check out of the hotel. We spent a long day hanging round in St. Kilda with our bags, drinking tea in cafes and watching the hours creep by with sad eyes. My parents took me shopping for new trainers in Melbourne – after all these years I can only be forced to buy footwear with the application of an electric cattle prod or parental shame. This was the last they’d see of me in a long time and they wanted me all turned out in shiny new school clothes.

That evening we got a cab to the city and enjoyed dinner by the river one last time. My parents and Anthony talked excitedly of the flight home; it would be my last ‘posh’ meal for some time and I savoured every mouthful. I felt a mixture of happiness and sadness that I was continuing my strange wandering life while these familiar faces departed home. I felt a bit lonely to be honest, and not for the first time I inwardly wondered what the hell it was I was hoping to achieve from this trip.

We said our goodbyes outside Southern Cross station, a massive transport hub crouching under a giant freakish canopy of twisting metal. We exchanged hugs and then they were out of my life in a flash, speeding away in a yellow taxi, quickly lost in the sea of rear headlights. I headed to the coach stop, humming upbeat tunes and looking forward to my next adventure. I could hack this travel lark; loved ones coming and going did not distract me in the slightest. Probably.

While Anthony and my parents were spending a mind-numbing 24 hours on a plane back to the UK, I was going on a long journey of my own. A crowded bus took me on an overnight journey up to Mildura, a country town in Victoria that sits on the border with New South Wales. I was low on money and needed to get more farm work for my visa. That meant another stay on a working hostel and some serious hard graft!

Feb 09 - Uluru and Fooluru

The next morning we woke very early and ate packed breakfasts in our cave hotel rooms at Coober Pedy. Then it was time to rendezvous with the rest of the group at the cave hostel and board our bus. Today we had yet another epic drive in store, further up through the central deserts of Australia.

As we left town the sunrise cast long ghostly shadows over the unearthly terrain. The surrounding landscape was strewn with piles of rubble from the opal mines. Soon the mines petered out and we were heading through the great nothingness of the Stuart Highway again. The vegetation was much sparser, the horizon utterly featureless.

Our destination was Uluru, the world-famous landmark known in times gone by as Ayer’s Rock. Uluru means different things to different cultures – to the Aborigines, a sacred worship site; to tourists and travellers, a big fun rock to climb on. As you might imagine this has caused a little bit of tension between the two parties down the years. Climbing the rock is now officially discouraged, but not forbidden.

“What colour is your urine?” demanded a sympathetic sign at the next roadhouse. Pale yellow is good; your body’s fully hydrated. Deep yellow is cause for concern – drink more water straight away. If it’s orange then you’re f**ked, no two ways about it. Drink water immediately and seek medical attention. It wasn’t as hot as it had been in Adelaide, but here in the red centre it can reach an amazing 60˚C in the summer, so drinking enough water is crucial.

Soon we left South Australia and crossed into the Northern Territory. The clocks went back an hour. The Northern Territory doesn’t do daylight savings time it seems. Working out the time in Australia when it’s summer gets a bit difficult; half the states put their clocks forward, the rest don’t bother. The same weekend the clocks go back for winter in Europe, they go forward for summer in Australia, and vice versa. Depending on which state you’re in and what time of year it is, you could be anything between 7 and 11 hours ahead of the UK.

Eventually the giant monolith appeared on the horizon; not Uluru, but Mount Conner, an Uluru-shaped mountain that was plainly just put there to confuse people. Mount Conner is nicknamed ‘Fooluru’ due to its resemblance. Fifty miles past Mount Conner, we glimpsed the real Uluru, shimmering majestically in the desert mist.

At the end of the day, yes, it’s just a rock, but it’s a bloody impressive one. Uluru dwarfs the landscape around it, measuring a good two or three miles from end to end. It is set in bushland in the midst of a giant national park. There used to be a resort complex next to the rock itself but this got bulldozed years ago so the area could return to its natural state. Over time the local Aboriginal communities have gradually been able to assert their control over this spiritual site, though it is still a bit of a tug-of-war between them and the government at present.

We began our pilgrimage to the mighty rock by checking into a permanent campsite at nearby Yulara. Here there were water taps, barbeques and washrooms in a basic but clean environment. There were a few different tour groups knocking around in the high season. It became apparent there were two strata of tourists doing this trip through the desert: us, the backpackers, travelling on a budget; and the coach tours full of the elderly and wealthy, waited on hand and foot by phalanxes of guides.

Making the most of the daylight, we did a brief walk past one side of Uluru, going along a path through some trees to a water-hole. The rock towered over us, reflecting beautiful orange light all through the glade. I shot a few videos on my camera, trying to capture its immense scale close up. My mum and Anthony missed the rendezvous back on the bus because they followed someone who was wandering about confused. Esther flew into a panic, convinced some terrible fate had befallen my mother, but eventually they found their way back safe and happy in time for the sunset.

Nick drove us round to a great vantage point where the sun was setting behind us, bathing the entire rock in light. It was a magnificent sight – I’d not been so awed since I visited the Taj Mahal in India. Slowly the sun dipped below the horizon and the colour of the rock changed from deep orange to dirty brown. The daylight was fading and darkness would not be far behind.

Lower down the hill, a massive group of people from the coach parties had been enjoying some sort of exquisite dinner served on long plastic tables with tablecloths. Meanwhile we munched boxes of crackers and drank Asti Spumante from plastic mugs. And I was perfectly happy with that. We were living on the edge, experiencing the raw thrill of the outback. The toffs from the bus were floating along on a cloud of luxury, out of touch with reality; none of them would get to climb the hill and eat our crackers, and it was their loss.

Afterwards we went back to the camp at Yulara and laid all the swag-bags out in the open. Swag-bags are outdoors sleeping bags, traditionally used by bushmen and wandering travellers in place of a tent. We hid our shoes inside the swags so dingoes wouldn’t steal them, and then slept out under the stars, the bushland lit by brilliant moonlight. It was amazing. Quiet was all around, save a bit of muffled snoring, and the weather was perfectly still. I dreamt more vividly than I have since childhood, strange dreams, dark dreams, my brain dazzled by the light from the sky.

We got up in time to witness sunrise at Uluru. Not much I can say about it except the rock turned from brown back to bright orange, so it’s exactly like the sunset in reverse. We began a long hike all the way round the rock, an exhilarating two-hour journey on foot wearing our hats and fly-nets. The flies were everywhere.

Up close the rock has a lot of detailed features where bits have eroded; once again, a geologist’s wet dream. Certain sections of the walk cannot be photographed, as the features on the rock carry spiritual significance to Aborigines. There was a stiff $5,000 fine for taking pictures in these bits and we all nervously followed it to the letter.

It was quite a hot day, though not as hot as the heatwave down in Adelaide. Over in Victoria the bushfires were now raging. We’d hear the apocalyptic news reports every time we passed a TV on the fuel stops. Meanwhile up in Queensland there were tropical rainstorms and flooding. This country is so huge it can have any number of weather-related emergencies happening around it all at once. And I’m buggered if I can understand all that meteorological gubbins, but the rule seems to be there is no rule.

After several miles we’d done the full circle round Uluru; what an epic journey. Next, a short journey to Walpa Gorge in the Kata Tjuta national park and another hike for those that could be arsed doing more walking. My dad and I joined the group exploring the area while my mum and Anthony stayed back to rest their aching feet.

We’d glimpsed the Kata Tjuta hills on the horizon the previous evening; they are a series of dome-shaped rock formations (always with the rock formations) that have significance in the Aboriginal Creation Time stories. Walpa gorge was a narrow pathway running through a very steep rock valley – the sky shrank to a narrow band of blue up above as we walked through. It wasn't quite as impressive as Uluru but still pretty memorable.

Nick told us another grim story about how hundreds of Aborigines had been slaughtered in this gauge by ruthless farmers; as they weren’t classed as people in the olden days, legally it had been seen more as a ‘cull’ than a massacre, abhorrent as that sounds. Next thing we know Esther starts chipping in and he got into heated debate with her about whether the old Christian missions were a good thing. She believed they were, but he pointed out they had been partially responsible for destroying the Aborigines’ traditions and culture. Thankfully somebody interrupted with another question, otherwise it could have turned ugly!

After the standard lunch of burgers and salad at the campsite in Yulara, it was time to pack up and leave. Then another long drive, back out on to the Stuart Highway and up to King’s Canyon. Another campsite settlement awaited us there. The time had really flown by since we left Adelaide, and tomorrow would be last day of the trip (not the last day of our holiday though).

I think all four of us really enjoyed doing the backpacker trips – there was a good mix of people, the sight-seeing was interesting and the guides had both been great. Anthony and my mum and dad got a great introduction to Australia, and it added immeasurably to my experience of the country; prior to this I’d travelled plenty but seen very little of what it has to offer.

9th Feb 09 – Coober Pedy and the Stuart Highway

Day 3 of the trip presented us with our first seriously long drive. We were packed up and out of Quorn by daybreak. Half an hour later we passed through Port Augusta, notable as the place where two very very long roads branch out in opposite directions. One of these is the Eyre Highway, spreading across the Nullarbor Plain into Western Australia. The other is the Stuart Highway; not so much a road as a heroic feat of civil engineering that stretches all the way up through the central deserts to Darwin on the north coast. In between the two roads lie millions of square kilometres of nothing. Bugger all. Truly this was the crossroads of Australia.

And so we began our odyssey up the Stuart Highway. The road was named after John McDouall Stuart, an intrepid Victorian explorer who was the first to cross Australia from south to north. He was a key figure in the development of this route and spent half his life exploring the great bugger all (as it is known) and naming ranges of hills after him and his mates. Alongside the highway runs the Ghan, a long-distance train that puffs arthritically through the desert, pulling up to two kilometres of freight wagons behind it.

As we travelled, the immense empty landscape was bathed in rays of morning sun. Our guide Nick drew our attention to the Ghan – a vast, slow-moving metal snake passing us the other way. He kept himself awake with beef jerky and a wide array of other snack foods on the long drive while the rest of us dozed in the back and played games. There was quite a lot of vegetation around the road as there had been recent rainfall. The steady showers – no more than a couple of days of rain – equated to two years’ annual rainfall for this region.

We stopped at the tiny settlement of Pimba to buy supplies and refuel the bus. Nick asked us all to exit the bus when he put petrol in it, due to some safety requirement or other. I guess heat plus petrol can have nasty consequences. After a few hours cooped up inside we’d be mad not to want to stretch our legs anyway.

The fuel station was called Spud’s Roadhouse, and featured a restaurant, motel and pub. All the basic needs of humanity, grub, bed and booze, rolled into one at this remote outpost. The shop sold car stickers declaring “Where the bloody hell is Pimba, South Australia?” Wherever it was, we were there, happily acknowledging its existence.

After another spell on the highway, a giant sea of white loomed into view far on our left. We were entering an area of natural salt lakes, left over from a giant inland sea that dried up in prehistoric times (according to the boffins and such). We spent an hour sightseeing on Lake Hart, walking across the rough gravelly salt, marvelling in the beautiful crystalline light that surrounded everything for miles around. It was a bloody huge salt lake, measuring maybe twenty miles in length.

Then there were the trick photos. Being perfectly white, the salt lake gives no impression of distance, so you can walk far off from the camera, pose in line with your mate who’s in the foreground, and it looks like you’re a little pixie standing on their shoulder (or booting them playfully in the head if you move your legs). We spent ages setting up these photos for each other; posing, positioning, gesturing to the far-away people to move a little bit this way, a little bit that way. Good times. Only when you’re on holiday can you truly f**k around like this.

After the wonderment of the salt lake, Nick brought us back down to earth with some grim facts about the area. The British used the desert in South Australia for nuclear tests back in the 1950s. The bombs killed thousands of Aborigines dwelling in the bush and left a wide swathe of land contaminated with radiation. The military chose this spot as it was among the most isolated in the world, but were totally ignorant about the damage it would have on the environment and people.

Nick also told us Aborigines were still classed as ‘flora and fauna’ by law until 1968, and didn’t even acquire the legal status of humans till then. I found this amazing. The brutalities the colony was first built upon are far from a thing of the past. He wasn’t pulling any punches in giving us the secret history of the land. We were passing through a stretch of the Stuart Highway where the radiation levels are still so high you’re not permitted to go off the side of the road.

Safely through the fallout zone, we took a rest stop in Glendambo, billed as having a population of 30. This sparse pit stop was like a scene out of Crocodile Dundee; a single street, clouds of dust, and one of those big metal windmills on a giant stalk. Obviously there was a pub too.

We did all the usual toilet/shop/walk around gubbins, then there was a comedy 'old lady moment' as we pulled out on to the highway. Esther suddenly declared she’d left her wallet behind, so Nick turned the bus round and headed back to the fuel stop, only for her to find it safe and sound in her handbag just after he’d executed a perilous U-turn on the highway.

We were starting to see a fair few road trains – massive American-style trucks pulling multiple trailers, transporting goods up and down the highway in clouds of dust. Often Nick would give them some kind of ‘convoy’ salute as we passed them on the road. Maybe it was a greeting, maybe a plea not to flatten us under their wheels? Places like Glendambo survive on the deliveries from road trains; all the food in the shops is marked up by a dollar or two to cover the transport costs.

Our destination was Coober Pedy, a remote mining town that produces some of the world’s finest opals. The precious stones were first discovered there about a hundred years ago – the name Coober Pedy is taken from the local Aboriginal phrase for ‘white man down a hole’. Sadly the white man down a hole turned nasty at some point and told the Aborigines to bugger off.

A makeshift town has sprung up around the mines, people digging underground homes in the bedrock to escape the heat above. The surrounding desert is a sprawling moonscape of holes and rubble. Anyone can come here and get rich, but the going is sweaty and dangerous. Opals are worth a surprising amount of money – the finest unpolished stones can fetch up to a quarter of a million dollars.

We arrived there mid-afternoon, having covered nearly 400 miles in one day. It’s far from a large town, with only two or three streets, purely functional in design. One way or another, the whole place revolves around the opal trade. It lacks a lot of basic amenities – people often go on ‘fast food runs’ down to Adelaide, a seven-hour drive each way, providing a thriving black market in frozen burgers and fries around the town. Amazingly, McDonalds hasn’t thought to set up shop here.

Coober Pedy has featured in a fair few films down the years. A yard near our hotel proudly displayed the full-size spacecraft model used in filming the Vin Diesel movie Pitch Black. I am sure there are people out there who consider Vin Diesel to be the world’s greatest actor, but most of us reacted indifferently to this fabled artefact.

After checking into our accommodation (all built underground in amazing hollowed-out caverns) we went to look at the town’s underground church. This quirky innovation, a rudimentary chapel dug into the side of a hill, delivers religion and sedate organ music at consistent low temperatures all year round. ‘SEEK THE LORD WHILE HE MAY BE FOUND’ declared a sign on the wall. The altar was basically a bunch of logs nailed together, biblical in its primitive design.

Then we had a look round the opal museum, which was built on a former mine. This included a tour round an underground show-home and several of the mine tunnels, followed by the obligatory gift shop. Unique local laws forbid big mining companies from moving in and the mines are all small operations, funded on people’s retirement savings and the like.

A group of us went to an abandoned patch of ground where the public is free to noodle for opals (sifting through giant mounds of rubble looking for precious stones). Despite my gung-ho optimism every speck of dirt on the mine seemed to have been sifted by a thousand hands before and I found precisely bugger all. I was bored of opals after that.

Our party got together for dinner, enjoying pizza at the imaginatively-titled “John’s Pizza Bar”, then drinks in the underground hotel bar. Coober Pedy was an interesting world and I enjoyed seeing it, but I was relieved I’d not experienced a lucky find that might persuade me to stay here and take up the noodling life.

Feb 09 - Outback Nick and Wolf Creek

When we got to Adelaide we discovered the tour company had booked us a basic dorm room in a backpackers, which was alright for me and Anthony, but my parents hated it. Somehow all four of us had failed to spot the tell-tale words “overnight dorm accommodation included” on the invoice. We decided to upgrade our accommodation to hotels for the rest of the trip. Whack it on the plastic and to hell with it. I certainly wasn’t going to complain about a bit of extra luxury!

After the Great Ocean Road trip we had a free day in Adelaide. I did laundry while my parents went with Anthony to find him a dentist for his toothache. It is a small city, easy to explore on foot, but our sight-seeing was curtailed by scorching 43˚C temperatures. That’s a heatwave even by Australian standards. Stepping outdoors was like walking into a furnace. We smeared ourselves with as much suncream as possible and went out to do some shopping. Then we sat out in one of the parks, which was deserted. Anyone with any sense was sheltering indoors. My mum got a bit ill due to the heat, but she recovered once we sat down in a cafe and gave her some water.

Later on we had dinner and a few drinks with Seana, a Scottish girl we met on the trip. Everyone had an early night. I was suffering from a profusion of inflamed mosquito bites all over my back and shoulders, due to sleeping next to an open window in Halls Gap. Much as I was grateful for the holiday I was tired of living out of a rucksack and starting to feel like I was losing my grip. Every day I’d pack; then unpack; then pack again; then unpack; living in a permanent state of travel.

The day after, it was time to start the next leg of our journey, an epic six day trip through the desert that would bring us to Alice Springs. No more coastal rock formations for us now. We were joined with some of the people from the last trip and a few new people, including a cantankerous old lady called Esther who seemed decidedly out of place. Other than that the group was mostly young travellers in their twenties. It was a big group; the pavement was strewn with backpacks and mounds of luggage as we loaded up the van’s massive trailer unit.

Our guide was Nick, a burly man of the outback who dressed in khaki shorts like Steve Irwin and carried a fearsome Bowie knife. He had a different style to Dave (the last guide), much more serious in tone and less extrovert. However he too was a bloody good guide and turned out to be a right laugh once we got to know him.

On the first morning we stopped in a country town for breakfast, passing through the last set of traffic lights we would see in a very long time. The road north into the desert was long, straight and lonely. South Australia was the only colony in Australia to be settled exclusively by free men, not convicts, and they always make a big thing of this. It’s hardly a populous state, made up mostly of farming country and arid desert plains. Most of the farmlands inhabited in the 1800s soon dried up, leaving a trail of abandoned settlements stretching north.

Much of our time was to be spent on travel; be it on the road, packing up the trailer unit or unpacking it. Nick organised us with military precision. This was by necessity, as the distances we covered were huge and the places we would visit were unimaginably remote (from start to finish the road journey from Adelaide to Alice Springs measured about a thousand miles). Everybody pitched in preparing the meals – we mostly survived on burgers and salad, those staples of Aussie food. Flies were just extra protein. All of the supplies and cutlery were carried in two or three big cooler boxes in the trailer and had to be carefully looked after.

Our first stop was at the Kanyaka homestead, a cluster of stone ruins dating from the 19th Century. The farm was abandoned long ago when the lands dried up, and it presented quite a ghostly spectacle. The weather was once again scorching hot, topping 40˚C. Nick warned us gravely that it would get even hotter as we travelled farther north. For now I felt safely protected with a hat and sunscreen. We’d all bought fly-nets too – an essential item of headgear for keeping out the marauding waves of flies.

We travelled on into the hills of the Flinders Ranges, and went to look at some Aboriginal rock paintings in Yourambulla Caves. Nick explained all about the local indigenous cultures, and it was clear he held them in high respect and wanted to give us a comprehensive education on them. He told us lots about the native wildlife too. The paintings were simple groupings of animal pictures and symbols and apparently date back to 5,000 years ago. Up until the 20th century the caves are thought to have been used as a school for the Aboriginal children.

Once again we did the introductions over the bus’s mic but this was halted by a technical malfunction and never finished. That made learning the names of the new people a bit harder, but soon everyone was chatting away and having a good time. It was a bit of a mystery why Esther had chose to come on the tour – she wandered round muttering under her breath constantly and was appalled by the fact the dorms were mixed. She would probably have been better off going on a luxury coach tour but she seemed intent on saving money.

Our first overnight stop was in a country town with the odd name of Quorn. This was once a railway outpost and agricultural centre but now the town mostly revolved around tourism. It had nothing to do with quorn whatsoever. We stayed at an old mill that had been turned into a restaurant and motel development. Down the road was the grand-sounding Transcontinental Hotel which in reality was a redneck pub.

Now the four of us had upgraded our accommodation we were spared another dorm and given our own room with a fridge and en-suite bathroom. Cold drinks were bought and placed in the fridge by us ready for early-morning consumption. Say what you like about Anthony – he knows how to plan drinks refrigeration for maximum enjoyment.

We all sat out in the long summer evening, enjoying an eclectic barbeque of emu burgers, kangaroo steaks and camel sausages. Vegans must have such a shit time when they come to Australia – it is a country of staunch meat-eaters. Anthony got chatting to a Scottish couple who knew Blackpool well and had even been to Popeye’s, the takeaway round the corner from our house. We were joined by Matteo, an Italian guy from our last trip, and Franco, another Italian.

With some prompting, Nick told us the tough story of his life – orphaned at a young age, he had been left to raise his sister alone. Now his sister, grown up, had run off to join a religious cult in England and severed all ties with him. He’d got back in touch with her eventually but relations were strained – any attempt he made to talk her out of it was met with fresh hostility, and there seemed to be nothing he could do to change the situation. Much like Abdul in Manjimup, he was bravely ploughing a lone furrow in life and not looking back.

The wake-up times on this trip were extremely early, ranging from 4am to 6am each day depending on how much travelling needed to be done. As the sun rose the next morning, we went on a hike to Warren Gorge to observe the rare and timid yellow-footed rock wallaby in its natural habitat. Wallabies are native marsupials that resemble small kangaroos. We saw a few of them watching us tentatively from a distance, and they would disappear into the undergrowth at the slightest movement or noise. They had rather endearing yellow-and-grey striped tails.

The hot weather meant some of the itinerary changed – the more demanding hikes were out of the question in this heat. But we still did a lot of strenuous bushwalking, which I was glad of. The next odyssey we went on was through Wilpena Pound, a huge circle of mountains that resemble a giant meteor crater from the air. After a barbeque lunch we spent the afternoon walking through the woods in the hollow.

Several of us took the more ambitious option of climbing to the top of Mount Ohlssen Bagge, a huge, steep climb. Some of the others made it all the way to the top and saw the splendid views of the surrounding mountains. I got about two-thirds of the way up but couldn’t finish it – the levels of heat were insane and I would have got ill if I’d gone much further. I was gutted I missed out, but everyone has a limit in these circumstances.

Somehow on the way down from the hill Matteo and I got separated from the rest of the group. We ended up waiting in a car park, the wrong car park entirely as it turned out. However this gave me a thrilling close-up encounter with some wallabies skulking in the bushes, and I got some great photos of these strange, shy creatures while I was looking for somewhere to throw away my Calippo wrapper.

Back on the bus, with zero fatalities from the death hike, we left Wilpena Pound. Next off was a stop at Huck’s Lookout, a scenic roadside stop, followed by a visit to the roadside location used in the Wolf Creek movie poster (much of the movie was filmed in South Australia). Everyone was keen to get a photo of this, and Nick posed in the road clutching his bowie knife, looking every inch a psycho outback farmer. He did various comedy poses of ‘murdering’ people too.

We stayed at the mill in Quorn a second night and enjoyed another barbeque. For after-dinner entertainment we of course watched Wolf Creek on DVD. Nick dropped a few hints that he would play a prank on us when the movie reached a scary point – something along the lines of bursting into the room waving his knife – but he didn’t. Sometimes the rough Aussie humour doesn’t translate to us delicate foreign souls, and maybe he knew this. My dad and I watched about an hour of the movie then went to bed. No disrespect to the Australian film industry, but it is a bloody terrible film.

Feb 09: Meet the family

At the end of January I left Manjimup. My parents were flying into Melbourne from the UK, and I was going over to meet them. Also coming from home was my good mate Anthony, known variously to our friends as Josiah, Safe Anthony and Silverback. I’d not seen any of them in a year and was both excited and – after all this time – a bit apprehensive.

I should explain something at this point: us northerners aren’t a rich people. International air travel is something exotic to us. None of my family or Anthony had ever been to Australia before, and with me being here, they decided to pawn various family heirlooms and bodily organs in the hope of joining me on holiday. The grand plan was coming to fruition.

My dad had meticulously organised a three-week trip round Australia for the four of us. We would go in a clockwise circle west to Adelaide, north to Alice Springs, over to Sydney and back down to Melbourne, taking in all the popular tourist gubbins on the way. I’d been in Australia nine months and not yet seen any of the famous sights like Uluru or the Great Ocean Road. It was a travesty. Thankfully my dad had killed two birds with one stone – not literally, he wasn’t into hunting or anything.

At that stage I thought I’d never set foot in Manjimup again. Our fling had run its course. I left on the Friday morning, and one bus and train later I was back in Perth, the state capital. After seeing nothing but trees for weeks on end I was back in the midst of skyscrapers and traffic, and it felt intoxicating. I stayed with friends in the city that evening and flew to Melbourne the next day. Similarly, I thought this would be the last time I’d be in West Australia, but I was to be proved horrifically wrong.

This was my first visit to Melbourne and I was keen to see the city. All and sundry in Australia rave about Melbourne. “You’re going to Melbourne?” they’d say. “Oh, you’ll love it, it’s brilliant.” I heard this so many times. For the uninitiated Melbourne is basically just a massive city, cold and wet and expensive. A bit like London. But I didn’t know that then, and was anticipating streets paved with gold and circus jugglers performing cartwheels on every street corner. Bondy’s verdict: thumbs down plus.

Fortunate scheduling meant my cross-country flight landed a mere hour before my mum and dad and Anthony touched down at the same airport. I didn't have too long to wait in Arrivals before the long snake of bleary-eyed people came out off the plane, and right at the back I recognised my parents and Anthony!

I waved frantically through the crowds. My mum saw me and ran over to give me a big hug but my dad and Anthony carried on, oblivious to the straggly-haired sun-bleached ocker standing before them. Eventually they recognised me and came over to shake my hand rather gingerly. We’d got a lot of catching up to do.

And after that it was just like old times; like I’d never been away from them at all. After a year immersed in unfamiliar places around totally new people, it was good to have a bit of familiarity back. We got a cab into the city centre, with my dad firmly in charge of the itinerary, and checked in at the swanky Pensione Hotel. This was one of those mid-range ‘boutique’ hotels, with fittings straight out of Ikea, en-suite bathrooms and flatscreen TVs in the bedrooms. No more bunk beds or communal showers for me. Brilliant!

Me and Anthony shared a room and caught up on old times. We’re not a couple or anything, don’t get the wrong idea. Anyway, the next day, once they’d recovered from jetlag, off we went sight-seeing round Melbourne. It seemed quite nice. It has a lot of bridges. The river Yarra features prominently. Endless processions of trams buzz up and down the city streets like big metal pigeons. My dad was enjoying the trams and the architecture. He is what is known as a ‘transport nut’ and enjoys seeing trams thrive in urban surroundings.

We went on a cruise up and down the river seeing some of the famous landmarks. The skyline looks impressive from the river; the old Flinders Street station contrasts very nicely with the jungle of skyscrapers rising behind it like mutant concrete palms. In the evening we dined out at a fancy restaurant, setting a precedent of high living which would take us through numerous culinary spheres and leave me with next to no savings by the end of the holiday.

Initially we planned to do a self-drive holiday, but after checking the logistics we decided it was simpler to go on a couple of backpacker tours, for slightly extra cost. My mum and dad were up for the adventure and so were Anthony and I. So after another day in Melbourne it was time to start our travels along the Great Ocean Road, with Dave and his merry Oz Experience bus.

Dave was an energetic curly-haired fellow who was constantly cracking jokes in a Butlins redcoat stylee. I was initially dubious, but he turned out to be a fantastic guide and a proper good bloke. There were about twelve of us on the trip: us four, and a mix of other European travellers in their twenties.

As we left Melbourne on the first morning, Dave forced us all to get up at the front of the bus and introduce ourselves over the mic. Despite being able to sing confidently on stage, I hate public speaking and really phoned it in, with none of my trademark witticisms. But it was good to hear everybody else’s story and this was a great tactic to kick off the getting-to-know-each-other process.

On the first day we visited Bell’s Beach, which is, erm, a beach. Then we carried on along the Great Ocean Road. Bit of history for you: this sprawling coastal highway was built in the 1930s to provide employment to out-of-work war veterans. It was a great journey, twisting and turning along the scenic coast, heading up and down misty hills and through lush valleys. Dave played a medley of Beach Boys tunes on the stereo to complement the amazing views. From that moment on I realised he was a dude.

Next we stopped at a koala sanctuary and fed some colourful parrots. They were very excited around people and kept jumping on our heads. After lunch in Apollo Bay we headed inland to the Otway Fly treetop walk. This was a series of massive trees spanned by metal walkways a hundred feet up in the air. There was a display of plastic dinosaurs too, for some reason. After months and months of working and saving and trying to live like a local I really enjoyed being a slack-jawed tourist again.

That evening we went to see sunset at the Twelve Apostles, a coastal rock formation that provides some amazing photo opportunities as the sun goes down. This was a memorable experience, though it was packed with travellers, and I must have taken over a hundred photos that day. We stayed overnight at the tiny country settlement of Princetown, which numbered literally four or five buildings. The backpacker tours always stopped off at the hostel there, which was wittily named the Thirteenth Apostle.

The next day we went to look at the Twelve Apostles again from Gibson’s Steps (a nearby lookout point) and by helicopter. The helicopter trip cost $70 – nearly a day’s wages with Abdul – but I was very keen to try it as I hadn’t flown in one before. And yes, it was quite good. Basically the Apostles are tall needles of rock which have been eroded away from the coast by the sea winds. And there aren’t even twelve of them so it’s a bit of a con. It was decided in the 19th Century to rename them to attract tourists – formerly they were known as the Sow and Piglets. How someone looked at lumps of rock and thought to name them after pigs I don’t know, but those were very farming-oriented times.

We travelled further along the coast, pausing to appreciate more limestone formations. This trip would be a geologist’s wet dream, it really would. Loch Ard Gorge was the site of a shipwreck in the 1890s, and London Bridge was a peninsula of rock with naturally-formed archways passing underneath it that made it look a bit like a bridge. A few years ago one of the archways collapsed into the sea without warning, leaving two day-trippers stranded.

There was a famous story (possibly untrue) that the trapped people were a man and a woman from the city who were having a secret affair. Being cut off from the land by the sudden rockfall, they were forced to shout for help from passers-by, and before they knew it the police were called. Soon the Channel 7 news helicopter was buzzing around filming the scene and it was being broadcast live on TV! They were rescued after that, but unsurprisingly it kind of blew the lid on their relationship. Dave related this story to us by drawing an amusing marker-pen diagram on the bus windscreen, a good use of props.

We were a long way from Melbourne now, and it was time to kiss the coast (and all those rock formations) goodbye. We went for a long hike through the Grampians National Park, and started a lung-busting climb up a steep hill to a lookout called the Pinnacle. The heat was intense, but after a month of wrestling with grapevines my fitness levels were pretty good and I rocketed to the top. There is a photo of me at the summit, plastered with sweat and grinning a shit-eating grin. The views were amazing at the top and you could see for miles around. We all rested in the shade of a rock, passing round snacks, then we began the trek back down.

Dave saluted our climbing exploits by playing ‘We are the Champions’ on the bus home. And verily, we were champions. Well I say ‘home’, it was actually somewhere we’d never been. We stayed overnight at the town of Halls Gap, sharing accommodation with another group coming the other way from Adelaide. Everyone pitched in to cook a giant communal pot of spag bol and it was very nice. I remember being extremely hungry and going back for seconds twice, like a fat bastard.

There was a blonde woman with the other group who looked vaguely familiar. Turns out it was Terri Irwin, widow of Steve Irwin! She was travelling with the group to do tourism research, finding out what the company’s guides taught about ecology. This might be to do with that theme park they've got up in Queensland. None of us twigged who she was until much later though.

We rose very early the next morning to begin the final leg of the trip to Adelaide. As everyone was sat eating breakfast a monstrous bang came from outside; the bus’s engine had backfired. That was a bit worrying but Dave checked the engine and it seemed okay. We had just swapped buses with the other group as this one needed to be taken back to Adelaide for maintenance. Little did we know that it was the Bus of Death.

As we arrived at the Balconies Lookout it played another trick on us; one of the side windows suddenly exploded, showering the car park with beads of glass. I've never seen a window explode like that before. It was a strange, unexplained event, witnessed by the people on another bus who imagined someone had smashed it from the inside. A girl had actually been sleeping against the window at the time – amazingly she wasn't hurt. Dave made sure she was alright and taped up the hole with a bin liner, then put in a call to Adelaide to order a replacement window!

From the high vantage point of the Balconies Lookout we watched the sunrise over the Grampians, and it was pretty special. There was an old fire lookout tower there which we took photos from. Then we went hiking to a colossal waterfall, MacKenzie falls, and did the obligatory group photo in front of the water. Terri was there, posing with her group.

Next it was time to hit the road and cross into South Australia, turning our watches back half an hour as we crossed the state border. We stopped for lunch in the border town of erm, Bordertown, which had some public toilets cunningly installed in an old town jail. This was a famous spot in the gold rushes of the 19th Century. Also we had a look at some rare white kangaroos in a nature reserve.

Then it was time for a long uninterrupted drive to Adelaide in the Bus of Death. The bin liner on the window flapped noisily in the wind but there were to be no more freak accidents. We arrived in the city safe and sound, around 6pm, in glorious late afternoon sunshine.

In three days we’d seen and done a hell of a lot, but now it was time to bid a sorry farewell to Dave and many of our group. And so the Bus of Death went off to the abattoir to be put out of its misery.

Dec 08/Jan 09: Trunk-rubbing and other activities

At 6am on Boxing Day I was inducted into the world of Abdul. All the newcomers, I’d been told, worked for Abdul. Over time, you’d work your way up the hostel’s pecking order and land a job with another farm, some of them very good, but everyone had to do the hard slog for Abdul first. Whoever he was and whatever it was he did I didn’t know, but he always seemed to need a lot of people. There were about a dozen of us waiting out there in the car park that day for the morning pickup.

Turns out we were doing a job called wire-lifting, working on a vineyard. Abdul was in the labour hire business, supplying temporary workers to vast vineyard estates when they needed work doing on the vines. The vineyards liked it because they didn’t need to keep permanent people on the payroll (and probably because they wouldn’t pay our insurance if we were mangled in a horrific tractor accident, but that’s just me hypothesising).

This hostel was Abdul’s main source of labour, providing a fresh pool of bored, caged-in lost souls badly in need of paid employment. He took care of our transport and essentials like water and work tools. A dour yet humble Afghanistani man, he had fled the Taliban in his home country, emigrating to Australia and building up his own business here in Manjimup.

I don’t know what brought him to this part of the country but clearly it was an inspired move. Since arriving he had sent for his family and worked his way up from vineyard labourer to shift leader to finally now, several years later, running his own company. A pillar of the local community, he worked with tireless energy in building his empire. He deserved a lot of credit for his achievements.

Every day Abdul would turn up at the hostel in a big white bus and drive us to a different vineyard. Often they were very far away, miles out in the countryside, down long unidentified dirt roads. On the way we’d pass through indigenous forests, seeing kangaroos and emus bound across the bus's path in the dawn mist. Recognisable landmarks were sparse. The wilderness was big, green, remote and all-encompassing. The only insight into his mysterious former life would be the exotic Afghan bhangra music he listened to as he drove.

Our crew did three kinds of work. Firstly there was the wire-lifting, adjusting wires on the grapevines to make the vines grow higher and harvest better. Then there was grape picking, which happened later in the year. And finally there was trunk-rubbing, which not only had a dodgy-sounding name, but was the toughest job of the lot. Working as fast as possible, you had to get down on your hands and knees and work along the grapevine, pruning the trunks of excess shoots. After a morning of trunk-rubbing I had the arthritic joints of an eighty year-old.

I’d got what I was after – days ticked off against my working visa. For the next month, I worked nearly every day with Abdul and his crew. The work itself was simple enough and I couldn’t complain about the pay or the hours. But what made the job tough were the heat and the sun. We worked from 7am well into the afternoon, and this being the summer, temperatures climbed above 30˚C most days.

We worked hard. By 4pm our crew of Koreans, Taiwanese and Europeans would collapse exhausted into the minibus and we’d be on our way back to the hostel. There was drinking water on the bus, and sometimes even a beer at the end of our shift, courtesy of Abdul and his voluminous cooler. We’d sleep on the drive home, recuperating ready for the day to come.

The evenings at the hostel passed slowly, alcohol medicating the perpetual cycle of work and sleep. People hung out in groups, playing pool, watching TV, listening to music. Over time you’d fall into the routine, early to rise, early to bed. From 5am each day the kitchens would stir into a flurry of activity as everybody made their breakfasts and lunches ready for the morning pickup.

There were eighty or so travellers staying there in peak season. Backpackers came and stayed for months on end, working and saving. There was much partying. Days off were a blessing and a curse; the opportunity to rest, but the vexing question of what to do out here? There was literally nothing unless you had a car at your disposal. I have to say though that this was the best working hostel I’ve stayed at. Naomi ran it on honest principles and didn't promise what she couldn't deliver.

2008 soon became 2009. The hostel organised a trip to Pemberton for the occasion, sparking more drunken revelry. Several days later, a personal milestone: I’d been travelling for one year. All that time I spent in Asia and elsewhere seemed like a distant memory. My old life at home was a fabled dream, and I began to relish the connectedness and luxury I’d always taken for granted.

Now and then I’d remonstrate with Naomi to let me in the office so I could fire off an email or two to update my friends. Mostly I was too tired from working to be bothered communicating or stringing together the requisite words to describe my situation. Every day felt the same. I was becoming lost within myself. I was like Alex Garland’s character in The Beach, struggling to find my personal Vietnam, but confused about what it was I was actually looking for.

Luckily all that was about to change. I was buggering off again. On holiday!