Just after leaving Broken Hill I see a sign saying NO PETROL NEXT 200 KILOMETRES. I've got about three quarters of a tank. A quick calculation tells me I could probably shave it in but ... I head back to town. This is a part of the world I would definitely not like being stranded in. Only a few giant cacti with their arms raised to the sun would be needed to truly mark this landscape as the "badlands" of American westerns.
Again the stench of dead kangaroos scattered and decomposing by the roadside is as constant as the turbulence that buffets me. Often, up ahead, I see black clusters on the road. As I approach, the clusters fly apart, carrion birds interrupted in their feeding on the grisly road-kill. It's not something I'd be keen on doing anyway bu I've been warned to avoid running over the remains plastered on the bitumen. The shards of bone they contain can cause punctures.
The absolute dryness of the air has already caused my lips to feel as though scales have grown on them. Applying lip balm simply coats a slippery film over the roughness.
I've covered roughly one hundred kilometres from Broken Hill without, apart from the odd vehicle travelling in the opposite direction, seeing any sign of life human life. Then, in the distance, I can make out one solitary, lonely building that appears slightly dilapidated as I approach. It's a hotel - out here in the literal middle of nowhere. Naturally I'm not going to pass it up. Besides I'm deadly thirsty. I pull up carefully on the loose gravel, park my bike and go inside. The joint is empty of course - except for a middle-aged woman standing patiently behind the bar waiting to take my order. The word "surreal" doesn't cut it. For all I know, she could have been standing there like that for days waiting for a customer. I almost expect to see at least a few wisps of cobwebs attached to her clothing.
"What'll it be?" she asks. The perfunctory question sounds exactly as I've heard it asked in crowded pubs where it might have been the hundredth time that same night it had been asked. I tell her that cold soda water right now would be more welcome than the finest Champagne.
"Coming right up." The prosaic reality of the situation begins to disperse the crazy illusion I've walked into. She'd obviously been somewhere else in the pub on hearing my bike pull up and then gone to man her station behind the bar.
The monotony of the landscape is cheerily broken by a sign bidding me welcome to South Australia. It looks remarkably like New South Wales. But the geography at last begins to change in the reverse of how it did on my approach to the outback: the dirt hugged by patches of bush that look to be, along with cockroaches, capable of surviving a nuclear attack, begin to be accompanied by bush that is trying to stand up. Then growths that could be exageratedly described as trees begin to appear. More and more welcoming the country becomes until I'm near Peterborough, a hub of wheat country with its gently swaying fields of man's ancient staple food since he first learnt to settle down.
Somewhere just south of Petersborough, rolling, lion coloured hills tell me I'm within striking range of the southern coast. Actual trees are growing in profusion. I'm beginning to feel more at home.
It's a long time since I've been to Adelaide. It seems bigger now - a bigger small city. The approach into the ever increasing density seems to be taking as long as the entry into a decent sized city. It's been a long day's haul, almost five hundred kilometres through dry, hot desolation. But then again, there wasn't much for which to stop.
I find a cheap joint within the city proper to stay and a safe place to store my bike. A shower and a feed and I'm up for some exploration. I feel the familiar thrill of being in a strange city - well almost strange. I'm reminded of just how charming this city is. It's definitely grown since my last visit but I'm tickled that you can still see green, country hills from the centre of a city. Planned from the beginning, a little like Canberra but with a soul included, the grid system of the streets causes difficulty in getting lost, even for someone like me with an internal compass seemingly perpetually confused by a battery of magnets. But to the primary task at hand: observing the population. I want to know how far Adelaide has walked the plank of multiracialism.
A significant number of Asians are visible. On my last visit here, albeit many years ago, I can't remember there being any. However, from my cursory survey, it seems a manageable minority, not really much greater than to add an exotic dash of spice, much as Sydney's Chinatown did before it burst its walls. Whether Adelaide's host population is concerned about the Asian presence, I don't know. I suspect not, generally speaking. Like the people of Sydney once were, I fear they are frogs in a pot of slowly heating water and cannot extrapolate from the present to see where it's leading. One thing I'm fairly sure of though is that if a white inhabitant of Adelaide were to visit Sydney for the first time, he would be shocked and horrified by what he saw in spite of what he'd heard.
I spot and hear a few loud blacks in the city's pleasant hub of Rundle Mall - not ours but the imported kind. The not so dark from the sub-continent are also evident here, but again, not enough to inspire the fear of one's own racial death that one constantly lives with in Sydney. Strolling about the inner city is probably not the most efficacious way to take a city's multicultural pulse but it's reasonably reliable and besides, it's the only method of which I'm capable. All in all, I feel I'm walking about in what is still an Australian city.
Sadly noticeable though is a proportional number of white bums and beggars camping in prime locations, effectively giving the finger to everyone else and expecting money and sympathy in return. I for one, who have seen the most horrific of third world poverty and want, have no sympathy.
I've somehow become aware of the city's Museum of Immigration. The next day, being the eternal glutton for punishment I am, I steal myself, bite the bullet and enter what I anticipate to be the devil's showroom. However, causing me to slowly relax, it is not the blast of propaganda I've been hardened by. Notwithstanding the de rigueur featuring of the outrageous treatment and displacement of the local Aborigines and the not so gentle persuasion to accept European laws in place of tribal ones - who would have known for example that whites took umbrage at the sight of Aborigines wandering about the early town stark naked? - the treatment of the theme is surprisingly even handed. In fact it is conceded that a great deal of concern was shown for the Aborigines' well-being and ways and means for their protection was a primary issue.
Most surprisingly, the exhibition dedicated to the white Australia policy treats the policy as a product of its time (although still a monumental mistake) and not something deliberately evil - the way it is usually presented via the historiographical crime of attempting to impose contemporary values and attitudes onto a bygone era.
I have to concede that the assembly and construction of the exhibits here have been very well done although at least some trumpet blowing is evident in the proud claim that South Australian was the only free state, meaning no penal colony ever existed here and no convict labour was ever used.
Of most interest to me personally is the information provided on the actual founding of the city. I marvel at how men from the other side of the world (which in those days was more akin to the other side of the moon) had the fortitude and vision to decide to generate here in a most alien and inhospitable land what would become an impressive city.
I have to admit I'm a sucker for painstakingly constructed models of sailing ship so it's hoped the reader will indulge me in my standing for some time before a glass case containing a superb model of a ship aboard which John Hindmarsh, the first governor of the colony of South Australia, arrived in Adelaide from Britain.
I mull over the odd name for a sailing ship - Buffalo.
From Adelaide I plan to hug the coast all the way to Jervis Bay, the jumping off point for Kangaroo Island. This route takes me via Glenelg, Adelaide's answer to Bondi perched on Holdfast Bay in the Gulf of Saint Vincent. Naturally, it's also a long time since I've been here. I remember the sand, salt air and seagulls but not much else apart from it's lack of noteworthiness. What I see now comes as a shock. The development here is breath-taking. Towering apartment blocks are reminiscent of Surfers Paradise - but in a nice way.
My luck is holding with the weather. A radiant, sunny day accentuates the beauty of the area. As I scan the wide-open green park-lands, I spy - could my travel-strained eyes be playing tricks on me? - a sailing ship in a kind of dry-dock. Naturally I'm drawn to it like a dog to a butcher's shop. I'm a little giddy. I don't believe it. It's the Buffalo. I take a few snaps from various angles, marvelling at the craftsmanship involved in the building of these wooden ships capable of sailing around the world. The technology involved is, to say the least, outdated, but for its day it was the best man's ingenuity could provide. And it's in remarkable good condition. Obviously a great deal of loving restorative work has gone into it. It's not until sometime later that I discover that the ship I have swooned over is actually a replica ... but still.
To be continued
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