Latitude: 27°S, 153°E
Weather: 9°C to 21°C
Time: GMT +10 hours
So here I am in Brisbane, 2 weeks into my studies, 7 weeks from Darwin and 25 weeks away from Christmas. The Captain has arrived. New moorings. I’m ready to check out the harbour and the locals.
Three Ways - corner of Stuart and Barkly Highways
Let’s do a bit of calculation beforehand.
Firstly, 3,700kms across the dusty dry inland of Australia, many kilometres on the Stuart Highway south through Northern Territory and east through Queensland, travelling in my truly well stocked outback vehicle, the trusty 2WD Honda Civic, with 200 or so kilometres of deviations. Secondly, add to that 5,116kms flying, return trip, Brisbane to Dunedin, the university town on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand. There the temperature goes from 8°C to 11°C – yes, cold, cold and more cold, gloves and hat all the time.
Paused there amongst those near vertical, 90° inclines they call city streets for a couple of weeks to visit offspring, and waited while a big black cloud dispersed, not the rainy grey rain clouds that hang over Dunedin all the time, but the Chilean volcanic ash cloud that drifted across the Southern Ocean from South America, disrupting flights in and out of the Land of the Long White Cloud.
Milford Sound
Plus thirdly – are you still with me? – a side trip while in NZ over a slow, winding road to Te Aneu and Milford Sound on the west coast to see a magnificent fjord. That’s another say 1,000kms. BTW: I’d go back to Milford any time, well when it’s a bit warmer, it’s never going to get any less wet as it rains over 6 metres a year, and next time I’d walk the 4 days, 3 nights along the Milford Track, slapping at sandflies at every step, or paddle on one of their glorious lakes.
In all, kilometres travelled were in the vicinity of 9,816kms (May-June). That doesn’t also take into account an additional deviation around Easter time, just prior to leaving Darwin in April, which included a 4WD to the mining service town of Kununurra (WA) and Lake Argyle (blissful – you must go there!) plus a boat trip up the Victoria River (NT) to see crocs, jabirus and you guessed it, another glorious sunset.
Lake Argyle and the Kimberleys
What are we up to now, checking the calculator . . . that’s 855kms Darwin to Kununurra, and back, which equals 1,710kms, excluding river travel and side trips, added to the Darwin-Brisbane-NZ jaunting, that means over the last few months, approximately 16,226kms. (I hope my maths friends are impressed with my sudden interest in numbers.) It’s all a bit more than the usual 5kms I used to travel to and from work each day in Darwin, and it beats watching TV.
So how is my climate/cultural coping gauge going? Going from the dry season and the tropics of Darwin, to the arid inland of Australia, to the miserable cold sub-Antarctic weather of Dunedin, to the sublime alpine icebox of Milford, and back to the mild, clear, sub-tropical winter of Brisbane – am I confused? Yes always. But more so than usual after this little Sunday outing – I don’t know if I’m cold or hot, whether I should put on mittens or shorts, and should I look for a café (Oz) or a dairy (NZ) for that mid-morning latte? But I still miss the Territory. It clearly has not finished with me. Once you’ve been there you are changed. ‘They’ say that, and you know it. The changes are probably much to the horror of my southern friends, but carpe diem!
