Having been chased from the Sunshine Coast by yet more rain storms and flooding, we took shelter, once again, at our friends' house in Ipswich, just outside Brisbane. The lovely Jody and Gavin looked after us so well for three thoroughly relaxing nights in their warm, dry home - a real bed never felt so good - 'I feel like I'm floating,' I kept saying to Rosie, the pair of us realising that the foam mattress cushions in the van might not be as comfy as we'd first thought. We were shown the sights of (rainy) Brisbane, entertained with television (a rare treat for us), Xbox games and their excitable dogs, Baxter and Flo, while being fed and watered thoroughly, before they released us back into the world and onto the road.
After our disappointingly soggy visit to the Sunshine Coast (one of Australia's top beach destinations), we were excited to be heading down to the Gold Coast (another area for world class beaches), leaving flood warnings and torrential downpours behind us. Having driven beneath blue skies for several hours, a warm sunny day was just ending as we rolled along the coast road and through the area's picturesque seaside towns. We arrived at our campsite, pulled out the table and chairs and sat in the bronze glow of the late afternoon sun with a glass of red wine each. 'This is more like it,' I said to Rosie, picturing nothing ahead but a week of sun, sand and surf. What followed was three days of uninterrupted, never-ending, skin-wrinkling, ground squelching, everything's-wet-and-nothing-will-dry, hammering on the van roof 'til we go mad...RAIN...with 100% air humidity levels included. It began that night and did not stop. While the radio issued yet more severe weather and flood warnings (just a month after the same coastline suffered the worst floods on record), we were forgetting what sun and blue sky looked like. Scrap the itinerary, scrap the plans for surfing, forget the beach-side barbecuing, put the sunscreen away, and let's get the hell out of here. And so we drove. South. Back to Sydney, a city we didn't think we'd see again until the morning of our flight out of Australia when we'd planned to simply drop the van off and leave.
With the plans for our final week in Australia sinking to the bottom of a flooded campsite in Queensland, we hopped over the border into New South Wales, onto the Pacific Highway, and followed the signs for Sydney. As we drove, vast swathes of flooded landscape passed by. Still pools of flood waters covered the earth like giant shards of a mirror scattered beneath a heavy sky. After putting 500km of rain battered tarmac behind us, we left the highway in search of one of Australia's most famous watering holes, the Taylor's Arm Hotel. Sitting at the end of 30km of dirt road, this place was made famous by the song, The Pub With No Beer, a ditty based on a poem written by a local when the place was cut off by flood waters. With the offer of free overnight camping in the car park and a four course meal served with four accompanying craft beers, we could not refuse. Unfortunately, and in line with our string of bad luck, on the day of our visit, the place was, of course, cut off by flood waters, with all routes in ending abruptly at wide sweeping torrents of overflowing rivers. Trees, sign posts, bridges, and the all important dirt road, devoured.
'Pub with no beer, g'day,' said the cheery man at the other end of the telephone.
'Is there any way of getting to you?' I asked, my mouth parched, desperate for a well earned beer.
'Not unless you've got a boat I'm afraid.'
At this point it wasn't even raining and still the weather was taking it's toll on us, ruining even our backup plans and pushing us to the edge of desperation. We drove on, unsure of what to do or where we'd spend the night.
100km later, and with the glare of a full moon following us through slowly dissipating rain clouds, we slumped into a service station beside the highway, filled up our empty tanks with a KFC variety bucket, and spent the night in the car park alongside campers, truckers and even a few folk asleep in their cars. All of us, it seemed, delayed, obstructed or diverted by the floods.
After a heavy downpour over night, we awoke to another drizzly morning. Would it ever end? Our plan was simple, camp as close to Sydney as possible and spend the final week of our tour in and around the city, where we would surely find more to do than sit in the van while watching the rain. Our first visit, over a month ago, was very short and very wet, leaving us with glancing, rain sodden memories of a potentially beautiful slice of cosmopolitan Australia.
In the few hours it took to get ourselves to Mona Vale, just north of Manly and a stones throw from Sydney, a miracle happened. Starting with just a few patches of blue, a few scattered rays of light, the Australian sunshine slowly broke through and devoured the entire lid of grey above us. Having lived beneath rain clouds for several weeks, the sight was truly uplifting. By the time we arrived at our uber luxurious campsite (we splashed out, figuring that even if our luck ended and the rain returned, we'd at least have mains electricity, wifi and a comfortable camp kitchen), the sky was flawless - a brilliant blue canopy against the deep greens of the trees around us and the warm golden sand of the beach opposite - yes, we even have a sea view.
So here we are, a few days later, still in the sun, enjoying a glass of red wine after an entire day at the beach where I finally got the chance to surf - something I'd wanted to do since we arrived at the end of January. I had an eight-foot-two board, a cloudless sky, 26 degree water and the entire beach to myself.
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| After an eight year break, he surfeth once more. |
Yesterday we spent the day in a warm, dry Sydney, taking in all of the sights and getting all of the necessary photographs sans the deluges that forced us to keep the camera wrapped up in the rucksack on our first visit all those weeks ago. After a picnic lunch in front of the opera house (a take-away cottage pie, no less), we stopped off at a few historic sights, wandered around the modern art museum, explored The Rocks (a cute, old-fashioned part of town from which the rest of Sydney grew) and enjoyed a classic Australian brew in Sydney's oldest pub. The rest of the afternoon was spent admiring colonial Victorian architecture while hopping from bar to bar, sampling various craft beers in the early autumn sunshine which poured down from between the sky scrapers and threw long shadows of rushing commuters across the sidewalk. Tossing our daily budget completely into the air (it has been a long, wet month), Rosie ended the day by suddenly dragging me into a darkened doorway, down a dim stairway lined with fake grass, mounted deer's heads and fairy lights, and into a secret, late-night cocktail bar set in the brick lined basement of a guitar shop.
So, it has been an interesting six weeks, lots of fun and lots of rain, but being able to leave Australia on such a high has been a huge relief. In two days time we will be in Los Angeles...
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