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Oz and Effect1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Itinerary | Home
We headed out from Sydney, ready for anything, with six days – and 1,000 kilometres of coastline to the south – to reach our destination, Melbourne. My wife, Cathy, and I overheard Jessica, 11, and Grace, 7, discussing Sydney back in the hold of the SS Gillespie, our trusty 25-foot-long RV. “That was awesome,” said Jessica. “I loved the harbour ferry. And those joeys at the wildlife centre.” “Yeah, oh, they were so cute,” said Grace. “I loved Sydney.” She paused and looked out the window at the last of Sydney’s outer suburbs. “I don’t like Melbourne, though.” I was the thankful recipient of many memorable trips my parents took with their six children, like the time the eight of us drove from Calgary to Mexico City and back in a station wagon in the middle of winter. It taught me that over-planning can turn the family vacation into the travel equivalent of the gated community. Which is how I found myself driving this supertanker on the wrong side of the road, shifting six speeds with the wrong hand, rather than relaxing on, say, a Disney cruise. After all, do we not want grist for family lore? Adventure? Fun? Danger? I say yes. It’s the whole cloth of childhood from which adults are made. Okay, this is just a theory. Additional field research may be required. Kilometre: 147 Two hours later, in the rain forest-draped escarpment region just inland from Berry, we were inching the RV down the 10th of some 40 steep one-lane-road hairpin turns along the Kangaroo Valley Road to the Bendeela campground. It would have been tricky to walk this road, and poor Jessica had gone a pale greenish hue, not unlike the eucalyptus leaves all around us. Half an hour later, after completing our descent and gaining the valley floor, I looked in the side mirror and saw a large sign for those heading the way we’d just come. “Road Ahead,” it said bluntly, “Unsuitable for Caravans, Coaches and Large Vehicles.” “That might have been good to see at the other end too,” deadpanned Cathy. We reasoned it was simply an antipodean natural phenomenon, the driving equivalent of the toilets flushing in the opposite direction. Kilometre: 170 The sound of a wombat chewing on your fuel line is difficult to describe; imagine your dog gnawing on a rubber hose. We arrived at Bendeela as dusk was settling in, our headlights picking out one grazing wombat after another. “Look at them all,” said Jessica. “This place is Wombat Central.” The chunky marsupials are not postcard-cute – picture a small pig with dark fur. They tend to feed at dusk and dawn, not to mention most of the night, and had gravitated to the wombat buffet under our RV’s suspension. Every time they moved, the RV would sway slightly, as if a wind were playing across its three-metre-high frame, though the night was still and silent… as silent as the sound of one wombat chewing. When we awoke in the morning, Cathy stepped out of the RV and pronounced Bendeela a corner of paradise. Tendrils of light mist curled a metre above the languid Kangaroo River. White sunshine surged in shafts through the forest canopy. The air was alive with the birdsong of dozens of species. Their music was so loud, so near, and the air so still, that it seemed as if an aviary had come included with the camper. Jessica and Grace emerged from the RV to take their first glimpse of the Australian countryside in the daylight. Jessica was mesmerized. “I’ve decided,” she said firmly. “Decided what?” we asked. “I’m going to live here.” Grace rubbed her eyes. She seemed as awestruck as her sister, and so we waited for an equally definitive declaration. “Where are we?” she said, looking around. “And what’s for breakfast?” |
