Follow the Yellow Brick Road...: May 2008

So a few weeks ago in April (maybe 2 weeks after the Broome trip) I got to spend a weekend in rural Australia. My friend Sara took me home with her to the town of Kojonup. I was excited to see this side of Australia, as so far I've only been in the city and outlying suburbs like Fremantle; after all, only 4 australian cities have 1 million people or more so most aussies live in non city-settings. It is common for young australians to move to the city after graduating from their country high school to go to uni or work, which is what she did. So Friday late afternoon i caught a bus out to her apartment in Como (a suburb between Freo and Perth) and we loaded up her car and set off. Unfortunately we were leaving during rush hour so we got stuck in the Perth traffic and then we had to put gas in the tires (or "tyres" as they're spelled here). So after the 4 hour or so drive we didnt get to her old house until 9 or 10. Her mom made us some fried steak and salad and we watched footy on tv for a little while until bedtime. We also had Milo (like hot chocolate) and Tim-tams (quintessential aussie chocolate wafer cookies). The first difference i noticed between the Perth area and Kojonup was the temperature. Koj is in the southwest of WA, which means its further away from the equator and thus closer to antarctic, so it made sense that it was colder. Also, as its going into Fall in australia now so that factors in. There were big blankets on the beds and they had an old-fashioned wood fired stove that pumped heat into all the rooms through vents like central heating.
Anyways we got up fairly early saturday morning to get our day started. It was pretty chilly compared to even the night before, i had to wear jeans and a hoodie for the first time this whole trip... haha terrible, right?... my buddies who were in europe can relate to that... After breakfast of eggs and aussie bacon (its much thicker and wider than US bacon, but also less crispy) I finally got to see where the heck i was since we had driven there in the dark. The house was on a bunch of farmland (called a paddock) and we looked around at everything for a little bit. There was a red-backed spider in her garage, which is one of the most poisonous spiders in all of australia which is really saying something cuz they have some dangerous things over here. So that was neat to see, bc i had read about them before i came. Then Sara drove me around the little town center, I got to see what Kojonup was all about; definitely a farming town, there were sheep everywhere. Wool is one of Australia's biggest "crops", and has a lot of historical significance in the forging of Australia's national identity and economy. For those readers that have read In a Sunburned Country, you might recall the part about all the big tacky statue things, and appropriately, Kojonup has a massive wool-wagon. We also checked out the fresh water spring that originally drew white settlers to the region. So then we came back to the house and set off with her mom and her mom's boyfriend on our big adventure of the day. We drove further into the southwest, stopping at a bunch of little towns along the way such as Bridgetown (where we saw the old "gaol" the old time spelling of "jail"), Pemberton, Denmark, and Manjimup. There was a bunch of driving between each place, 1 to sometimes 2 hours with nothing but farmland in between. It made me realize how big australia is... our 1-2 hour drives to columbus and cincinnati would be no sweat to an aussie. Along the way we got to see lots of natural wonders too. From town to town when not in farmland we were traveling through several national parks and our first such attraction was the Diamond Tree. A huge karri eucalyptus tree, you can climb up rungs driven into the trunk of the tree in a spiral all the way to a tree-house type lookout at the very top. It was awesome to climb all the way up... it was like a bigger version of the fire lookouts in the Smokey Mountains, except on top of a tree! And that's exactly what it was used for too in the past, a fire lookout. The top was chilly and windy and it was cloudy and sprinkling a bit but the view was amazing. We later went to the Gloucester Tree, which was the same deal in a different location but it was too crowded with annoying little kids and I didnt want to hold us up so we didn't climb that one. I did get to see a bunch of bright green parakeet-type birds there, they looked like something from a pet store in the US but apparently are a nuisance to the locals and Sara and her mom laughed at me for taking pictures. I guess it would be like watching someone take pictures of sparrows... weird. We next went to the Giant Tingle Tree. Tingle trees are another type of giant eucalyptus trees, and the one in question was hollow at the bottom and large enough to drive a car through. It is closed off to cars now, so we hiked down a short trail to it. Along the way i got to see a fantastic forest.. granted it was only in the upper 50s but it had just rained so it was all wet and there were lush ferns and huge trees everywhere, it was probably the closest to a rainforest that i'll ever be. I was reminded of the temperate rainforest in the US's pacific northwest (or at least pictures of it). Silly as it may seem, that walk was one of my favorite parts of the trip. Our last stop was the famous Tree-Top walk but unfortunately it was closed by the time we got there. Silly, it was only 4:45 too... everything closes soo early here. But it was ok, b/c the Diamond Tree was good enough for me, and cooler too from what i've heard. It was a pretty long drive back to Kojonup, prolly another 2 hours, as we had driven fairly far south. I got to see lots of kangaroos, though, which is always fun. It seems like they are very similar to deer in that aspect, coming out of the forest into the fields at dusk.
It was night by the time we got back to the house, and after dinner we again watched australian rules footbal on tv. Can i just say now that i love footy! both games we watched were really exciting, coming down to the final minute and all teams scored over 100 points. it also helped that the Rowe's had an HD tv... ok dad, now it's your turn. after that Sara and I watched Transformers (also superb in HD) before turning in fairly early; we were pretty exhausted from all the driving.
Sunday we headed out to Sara's aunt and uncle's farm. Formerly run by her Grandpa and Grandma, her aunt and uncle took it over when they retired. They are a wool farm with what seemed like hundreds of acres. we had a real aussie barbeque with lamb chops, sausages, and onions on the barby. while everything was cooking sara and i poked around the farm and checked out the shearing shed and the "chooks" (chickens) among other things. after lunch her uncle took Sara, her mom, myself, and the two little cousins out to the dams to check for koonack. Now i'm sure you all are wondering what the heck i'm talking about so let me explain. Every single aussie paddock (pasture) we passed while driving had a "dam", which is are square man-made ponds. whether used as a watering hole for animals or just water reservoirs i'm not sure but they all had them. Many farmers stock them with koonacks, which are big crawdads. We checked all the traps and got a big haul to take back so everyone could eat them later. that was pretty much the end of our trip to the farm, but Sara drove me out to a big lake they used to go camping and boating on, lake towerrinning. it was interesting to see such a large body of water in such a dry place. but it was still pretty chilly so we couldn't get in. That was pretty much it for our trip, we had to leave sunday afternoon to get back to the city since I had early class monday and she had to go to work. All in all it was a really nice trip, relaxing and nice to get out of the city and see a part of Australia that I had not experienced yet.

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