SEGMENT 13

July 9: Broken Hill was our turn-around point. From here on, we were headed back towards the east coast....

Our first destination was Wentworth, a small town located happily at the confluence of the two largest rivers of Australia, the Murray and Darling - of particular significance in such a dry continent! The two rivers provide the area with plenty of water year-round which explained the countless fields in the middle of the desert. These stand in particularly stark contrast to the nearby Perry Sand Hills, soft sand dunes that have slowly covered a huge, 500-year old gum tree up to 15 feet (5m) almost to its mighty branches. From here it was a fabulous daytrip to Mungo National Park, famous amongst archeologists for its evidence of around 50,000 years of human occupation. The park features a crescent-shaped dune of sand and clay which has yielded the remains of Mungo Man and Mungo Woman, skeletons believed to be up to 40,000 years old, throwing a puzzle to historians who can't explain how Australia could have been populated by homo sapiens this early....

Australia's indigenous people, the Aboriginals, are considered to have the longest continuous culture in the world but very little is known about it as they never wrote anything down: most is passed on in stories from one generation to the next. Some of the stories are secret and may not be shared with the uninitiated. When the Europeans started to settle in Australia, Aboriginal tribes were displaced and decimated by violence and imported diseases for which they had no immunity, and some of the ancient knowledge is now lost forever. Today, scientists cooperate with descendants of this astounding people to reconstruct some of their history from traces of their culture found in rock art and discoveries such as the Mungo skeletons.

We spent a day exploring this extraordinary park and wandered among the bizarre sand and clay formations created by wind and erosion. The surrounding area, remnants of ancient lakes, is amazingly flat and the views seemed endless (pic01). Though we kept an eye out for any bones uncovered by the wind, we weren't quite that lucky. How great would it have been to find a piece of megafauna who had roamed the earth thousands of years ago, such as that dopey-looking giant creature resembling a bear crossed with a rhino and a head so massive that most of it was filled with air (and a tiny brain) to reduce the weight; or a flightless, toothless bird much bigger than an emu that had to swallow rocks to help digest the hearty scrubs it was feeding on!

Pushing on east, we drove for hours through the flat Hay plains (pic02), so featureless that we could make out the curvature of the earth! We passed through several small towns with lovingly restored old buildings. In the area of Parkes we stopped for a brief visit of "The Dish", the huge radio telescope (pic03) mentioned in the previous segment. Then we continued to Hunter Valley, a famous winemaking area full of wineries, and sampled some of their delicious products. Singleton claims to sport the largest sundial in the world (pic04). Finally, we reached Newcastle on the coast just in time to join locals for Sunday afternoon parading along the Foreshore. It was a balmy day and everybody seemed to be out enjoying themselves.

Eventually, on August 14, we reached Sydney, almost exactly 6 months after we had arrived here by plane. We spent a day in the suburb of Bondi with its famous beach, an arresting swimming pool in prime location (pic05) and equally entertaining nightlife, and explored some of the Northern Beaches such as Manly, Dee Why and Palm Beach where we enjoyed dramatic vistas of the city and its lovely surroundings (pic06). We also hooked up with our friends Lizzie and Neil, whose B&B had taken off in the meantime and gotten very busy. For the weekend we met up with the Sydney Jeep Club (pic07) for a day of fun in the Blue Mountain area (click here for report). Over the next few days, we walked all over the city and some of its suburbs, sampling all the different flavors. At the Australian Museum, we found explanations for some of the rather unique animals we had spotted on this trip, such as the aptly named Frogmouth, a bird which looks like the unfortunate cross of a frog and an owl; and got a close (safe) look at other critters that we were lucky NOT to see in nature, like the highly venomous death adder. A treat of a different kind was a sailing outing with our friend Neil who taxied us through the magnificent Sydney Harbor on his beautifully restored wooden sailboat. Mark from the Sydney Jeep Club also spent a day touring us through some of the upscale southern neighborhoods where multi-million dollar homes enjoy a commanding view of the city and water. After safely seeing off our Jeep, we relaxed in the city for a few more days before our departure on August 30.

Please also read the summary for some general thoughts on this fabulous XXXpedition!

pic01

pic02

pic03

pic04

pic05
pic06

pic07

for more pics click here