King suit
I've always thought it wise to carry one reasonably nice outfit while traveling. You just never know when you might need to dress up and look like something other than a dusty vagrant. One overseas journalist described it as a king suit, what you carry with you in the off chance you are invited to tea with the king of some small island nation. Or, you know, what you wear when you are hitchhiking through the Australian outback and a car with two ladies pulls up and offers you a ride and then a few hours later invites you to dinner and the opera. I can't count how many times that has happened to me. Oh, wait, yes I can: once. And it was a lot of fun, we saw the musical "Kiss Me, Kate" at the World Theater in Charter's Towers, Australia, a town of about nine thousand people. Which made it the biggest town by far I had seen in the preceeding 800 kilometers. But the theater was amazing. It could have stood proudly in any major city in the world, seating 700 people and built in Classical architectural style. In a town about the size of Alliance, Nebraska. I thought it charmingly opptomistic to say the least, but it seemed to have worked: a traveling light opera company was doing a show here and these ladies were driving 4 hours each way to see it.
Anyway, now I'm in Townsville, or rather holed up on a little island off the coast waiting for the weather to clear and hopefully get in a dive or two on the Great Barrier Reef before flying out on Sunday. But even if it doesn't clear, it is a fine place to relax and unwind for my last three days down under. I have a hammock, so all it well. In a few days I'll land in Hawaii for a quick 4 days to see the volcanoes and perhaps climb Mauna Kea, the high point for Hawaii. Then home sweet home.
Me and Uluru/Ayer's Rock at sunrise.
Uluru. Not just a big rock, a really big rock with all sorts of interesting faces and aspects.
The outback. This, and lots of it for thousands of miles. But to be fair there are 2 emus just outside the camera's field of vision. Seemingly the only signs of life in any direction...
Anyway, now I'm in Townsville, or rather holed up on a little island off the coast waiting for the weather to clear and hopefully get in a dive or two on the Great Barrier Reef before flying out on Sunday. But even if it doesn't clear, it is a fine place to relax and unwind for my last three days down under. I have a hammock, so all it well. In a few days I'll land in Hawaii for a quick 4 days to see the volcanoes and perhaps climb Mauna Kea, the high point for Hawaii. Then home sweet home.
Me and Uluru/Ayer's Rock at sunrise.
Uluru. Not just a big rock, a really big rock with all sorts of interesting faces and aspects. 
The outback. This, and lots of it for thousands of miles. But to be fair there are 2 emus just outside the camera's field of vision. Seemingly the only signs of life in any direction...posted by Jared | 5:22 PM
3 Comments:
Errrrr.... RE: the photo of the Road; from where you took the photo... are you in the driver seat/passenger seat/ standing looking in the direction of travel/or standing where you are about to be mowed down by a Mel Gibson type character going the other way, driving a homemade car, on a quest for the "juice"...?
AND, how was the climb on that really "big" rock..?
Sibbitt wouldn't do anything that foolish; Australians drive on the left side of the ride. And I think Mel Gibson's license is suspended. The Mad Max type police are very strict about drunk driving.
I was standing in the middle of the road looking at emus. No danger from oncoming traffic, you could see down the road until the curveture of the earth dropped away and if Mad Max and the like can sneak up on you when you have 90 miles of visibility on ém, well, you deserve to get pummeled. But that is the territory they favor, post apocalypitc wasteland-ish.
And no, didn't climb it. The native aborigines ask you not to, kind disrespectful, like bouldering on Vatican. I did hike around it though, longer and harder.
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