Australia day 9

5 July

This day (5 July) is Razelle's birthday.

We had a leisurely start to the morning and then I walked into town to see if I could get a chip with a map of Australia for my GPS.

No such luck so I walked back without it. I punched out some money from an ATM machine so it wasn't a wasted trip. We packed up our stuff one more time and then lugged it back down the stairs and waited for our taxi to arrive. While we waited we chatted with the young owners of the Alice Motor Inn. She's about Maayan's age and from Poland, he's about that age too and from Ireland. They are trying to run a "green establishment." Recycling, conserving electricity and water are important issues. The place needs some maintenance to bring it up to a higher standard, but the backpackers who lodged here probably liked it the way it is. There is free WiFi and free access to the kitchen, where a breakfast of cereal and milk and coffee and tea is provided, gratis. I found several different churches in Alice, but no synagogues; and yet, I found some Jewish presence here when I chatted during breakfast with an American family from the Washington DC suburbs having their cornflakes in the kitchen with us. The father is Jewish and he's related to the director of the Hillel organization in Sydney. So there you go; Jews in Alice Springs (even if we are fleeting transients of this place).

We picked up our new caravan from the Alice Springs branch of the same company as before (it's identical to the previous caravan), but the guy who helped us, named Lincoln, (his father liked to watch "The Mod Squad", so Lincoln told us) was far more informative and helpful than the person who helped us in Perth. Lincoln suggested we check into the MacDonnell Range Holiday Park. We took his advice and are very glad we did! The place is amazing (more on that later).

We drove back to the Motor Inn to collect the meat we'd inadvertently left in our room's refrigerator; we then went back into Alice Springs again to stock up for the next segment of our journey. First we went to K-mart and bought Razelle a step-stool so she won't have so much trouble climbing into the caravan. Then we moved the caravan closer to Woolworths because there were some vagrant Indigenous people hanging around our caravan in the K-mart parking lot. We went looking for a place on the Todd Mall that sells didgeridoos and gives a half-hour didgeridoo workshop at 2:30 PM each day. I tried to get the right sound but to my great frustration I could not. Too much interference from the way I blow the shofar, perhaps. There were some women and boys who got better sounds than I did. Because they were Australians, they OBVIOUSLY must have had an inherent knack for this sort of thing. I was told my moustache was not helping. Excuses, excuses, excuses . . .

Razelle and I then went looking for pizza, but the two places we found had either already closed or not yet opened. Then we found a Turkish fast food place that sold falafel – that's right, falafel in Alice! I had a zucchini fritter with a garlic yogurt topping and a shepherd's salad. Razelle had a garlic and cheese pizza (not actually a pizza, though).

That's the extent of our wonderful day in Alice Springs. The rest of our day here, Razelle's birthday, mind you, was less wonderful. I sent Razelle into Woolworths to start shopping for groceries while I stowed some of our purchases in the caravan. Then I returned to Woolworths to shop, too. I went in through an area among the cashiers rather than go through the swinging gate entrance. Razelle had set up her tripod seat on a cane by the swinging gate entrance, facing outward, so she could see me come in. We never crossed paths; I never found her pushing a cart around the store and she never found me going through the main entrance. At one point we were near each other but because she was facing outward she didn't see me, and because she was sitting low (on her tripod seat) I didn't she her. After nearly an hour of me going up and down each aisle twice, picking items off the shelves and watching for Razelle while she sat low on her cane by the entrance scanning for me to come into view – and I never did – Razelle began to lose her composure. After a third pass through the store I finally found Razelle, holding back hysteric thoughts but not holding back tears. It was one hell of a birthday and she will never forget it.

Relieved to find each other, we finished shopping and took all our booty back to our caravan park. A guided star-gazing show was about to begin there and Razelle encouraged me to go. So I got Razelle set up with the gas cooking stove then left her so as not to miss this opportunity to learn the stars and constellations of the southern hemisphere. The MacDonnell Range Holiday Park has different evening activities each day of the week, bicycle rental, a pancake and strawberries confectioner, a swimming pool, playground equipment, a general store, laundry and clothes lines, etc. Some people spend a month in their motor homes in this place. On Tuesday nights, a regional astronomer wheels out an impressive 8" reflector telescope and teaches the gathered crowd about the night sky. I loved it. I soaked up all I could. I now have a passable understanding of what's what up there.

I got back to Razelle after nearly two hours of guided star gazing with something special for her birthday – I had bought her a pancake and strawberries desert for her to enjoy as a birthday treat – only to find her once again in terrible distress. She was sitting in a darkened caravan, cold, hungry and miserable and feeling abandoned. It seems that the power cord that came with this vehicle is not as long as the other one had been. Where I had parked the caravan in its designated slot was just a bit too far for the power cord to reach from supply post to caravan portal. We didn't know this before I went off to the star-gazing show, so Razelle, with no power in the caravan, suffered a second traumatic episode on her birthday.

She says this is a birthday she will NEVER forget.

It ended well, though. I moved the caravan closer to the post; belatedly connected the power cord and all the caravan's appliances and lights were finally functional. Razelle ate her special birthday dessert and had to admit that she appreciated the gesture.

Australia day 8

4 July

We are now in Alice Springs.

The day began in Perth. We put all our round-the-worldly possessions into our three duffle bags, plus our two carry-on bags. We had a lot of little items we'd accumulated along the way while in the camper-van that we hadn't started out with at the beginning of this trip. Some had to be eaten (the food items, obviously) and some had to be left behind (mostly tourist literature, but also our recyclable bottles and cans, which we didn't actually expect housekeeping to recycle but we left them in a line on the room's polished countertop by the TV, just in case). Our shuttle driver came for us at 9:00 AM. She is the first female shuttle driver we've had to date. I muscled the bags into her transporter and we reached Perth's airport in under half an hour. The luggage carts cost 4 AUD so we did without. We checked in after weighing our bags on the scales provided. The process of getting all three bags to have identical weights took a special talent, which I happen to have. The woman behind the check-in counter mentioned how impressed she was that each bag was precisely at the upper weight limit and each weighed exactly the same as the other two. Razelle related to her that we went right from her school to the airport and started this round-the world trip the very day she retired. I hear this every time Razelle describes our trip. It always gets a reaction of amazement, amusement, and disarming entertainment; it's an explanation that never goes stale. Razelle and I cruised the terminal until it was time to fly because I was allowed to push the wheelchair in Perth. We finished off the last of our cheerios at the coffee bar. A plain cup of milk only cost 55 cents while everything else cost several dollars; a fact worth knowing for future use.

As in Mumbai, a special vehicle raised Razelle in her wheelchair up to the fuselage. We took off and I saw out my window the emptiest section of Australia you could possibly imagine; really stark. I didn't see any evidence of human activity during a major portion of our flight. Who knows what natural resources lie hidden out there?

The stewardess and I chatted while I waited for a toilet to become available. The amazing, amusing disarmingly entertaining story of what we are doing impressed her. As we flew above Ayre's Rock she made a point to point it out to us. We stood up to peer out the windows on the other side of the plane (we couldn't see it, but we tried). Everyone on that side of the plane turned to look out their windows, too. I don't think they were any more successful, because they looked back at us with quizzical expressions. You had to be there to appreciate this moment.

On the ground at Alice Springs, Razelle walked down the ramp to the tarmac and she and I rode in a golf cart to the terminal. It was a short ride -- we walked about as far to reach our luggage. Those in the know headed for the airport limousines. We didn't know. There would be no more arrivals this day in Alice, hence there would be no more limousines after these disappeared.

A couple from South Africa and we were the only unfortunates who had no way into Alice except by taxi. He called for a large taxi. It came and we piled in all our combined luggage and ourselves. We introduced ourselves and learned where we were from during the ride through the gap into the town of Alice Springs. That's when we learned that their Dutch-sounding accent was actually an Afrikaans accent.

Our driver perked up when we mentioned we were from Israel. He was Lebanese. Oh-oh. Our first awkward moment of the trip (actually our second; the first was when Razelle was asked by a fellow passenger on the way to the plane in Mumbai – as she told her entertainingly disarming story – why she had left out Israel in the telling, because he saw Hebrew on some of our things). The Lebanese driver asked about life in Israel and about some of the issues of the day, but without any unpleasantness. When we left his taxi, Razelle gave him a souvenir of Israel – a decorative golden hamsa refrigerator magnet. He said he definitely will put in on his refrigerator and thanked us warmly for presenting him with it.

Our room at the Alice Motor Inn was up a flight of stairs. We managed to get all our stuff up and in. Lots of little light switches all over the room. We had to try them all to find out which one went with which lights.

I went in search of food for Razelle and ended up exploring Alice Springs after dark. There is an IGA grocery store a few blocks away. That's where I met my first groups of "Indigenous Australians". Some were loitering outside; others were doing their family shopping inside. They were shoeless, with perhaps a few exceptions. I didn't know quite how to behave around them – whether eye contact was polite or rude; whether to make small talk in English or just nod and smile – or not to smile too broadly – and just go about my shopping. I looked for clues among the non-indigenous but didn't find any.

I searched Alice Springs for their commercial center with a map in hand and got to know the place a little. There is a K-mart here! Much of the town closes by 5:30 or 6:00 PM but K-mart stays open until 9:00 PM. Lots of good prices in there; but we'll wait till we get to the States before we add any more weight of our luggage. The intriguing Indigenous were all over town. I will have to learn more about them as we spend time in this region.

Being the Fourth of July, somewhere in the distance I heard someone shoot off a fireworks rocket. I recognized the sound of the starburst, but didn't actually see it. I realized that somewhere in Alice there were some American expats commemorating Independence Day their way.

Australia day 7

3 July

This is the day we were to say goodbye to our camper. Everything was organized and ready as far as possible for our flight to Alice Springs tomorrow. All we needed to do was find a way to leave this serendipitous safe-haven by the sea at Ledge Point. Leaving Razelle at the caravan park as collateral, I went in search of the petrol station and found it was open as advertised. The tank was topped up, and the camper was once again ready to go. Razelle and I traveled back to Perth and marveled at how much better this road was. I had precise directions this time for the Kosher Food Centre. We followed our own reckoning back to Perth and made the GPS conform to us instead of vice versa. Only at the last did we deign to let the GPS direct us.

In all honesty, the KFC (as the Kosher Food Centre likes to call itself, with a wink and a nod to Colonel Sanders) was just as important a destination for us as any of the other must-see tourist destinations we have on our round the world itinerary. As we patronized this place, we found meat (salami) we can take with us, plus chicken soup bullion cubes and freshly baked bagels! We also found the owners to be endearing. We told them where we'd spent Shabbat. They said it was a pity we didn't spend it with them instead. We'd have found a more vibrant community and a better welcome. We didn't mind the welcome we received where we'd been. Next time we are in Perth (if ever) we will have to try out this other community. Isn't it typical that two Jewish communities will each think the other is the lesser of them? We had to smile at the thought of that.

We next set out to find a place to sleep for the night near Perth's airport and near the camper van rental place. It took a little doing because the first was too Spartan, the second was too full, the third was too costly and the fourth was just right. All of these are within walking distance of the rental agency.

The camper was returned without any problems, and we settled into our hotel room at the Comfort Inn. Down the road is a petrol station with a store attached. I went there to investigate SIM cards for use with the smartphone I already own. The clerk there, a swarthy indigenous man, was very very helpful. He sells SIM cards and has one just like the ones he sells. He put his SIM card in my phone and called the store. The store phone rang. All right! I bought the SIM card on the spot and now I can call any number in Australia for 89 cents a minute (is that even a bargain, I wonder?). So now I can call ahead to speak to potential hosts and hotels and tourist destinations if I need to, and I have a WiFi modem I bought yesterday so I can surf from most every location within Australia without having to resort to McDonald's anymore.

It has been a relaxed afternoon and evening. We've needed a day like this after all our travels. Razelle has arranged for a free shuttle from here to the airport tomorrow. The day after we reach Alice Springs we are scheduled to rent another camper, just like the last one. Should be fun . . . now that I'm getting good at driving one.

Australia day 6

2 July

We awoke in the synagogue parking lot this morning. Bouts of intense rain awakened us several times during the night, just enough for us to be aware of them, then we returned to our slumbers. We were in the synagogue building ahead of the arrival of the first of the congregation's officers. Services began precisely at 9:00 AM, but a minyan of men only materialized a half hour later. All together, the number of congregants this Saturday morning reached about two dozen (with three or four of them women). The venerated rabbi from the night before was a no-show. It was a special Shabbat, Rosh Hodesh Tammuz, so all kinds of extras were included in the service. I was given the first aliyah (Levi bimkom Cohen) and had the chance to ask for a blessing for my mother and sister's health. The rabbi gave a short explanation before each aliyah, rather than a full sermon. I found this a refreshing alternative I'd like to suggest when we return to our own synagogue in Beer Sheva. After services we had an opportunity to chat with some of the congregants and learned that 90% of them are South African transplants. We found them to be warm and affable and we're very glad that this was the congregation that was suggested to us by our contact in Singapore. We parted from them with a wonderfully positive impression, and with the taste of cholent on our palates, from an old-time favorite recipe passed down to a South-African congregant from his Eastern European ancestors. Razelle loved it and had seconds. (I had thirds!)

Our destination for the afternoon was a natural wonder called "The Pinnacles". The official name is Nambung National Park, near Cervantes. It took us about three hours to get there. The scenery along the first part of our journey was comprised of plantations of trees that honestly looked like Christmas trees (spruce?, fir?, pine?). We passed them too quickly for me to tell what kind of tree they were, but knowing Australia, I would assume they were an indigenous equivalent of the species I mentioned above, rather than one of those introduced species. We also saw orchards of neatly pruned fruit trees. I didn't have a clue what kind of fruit they would bear during Australia's summer or autumn. The more remote half of our journey took us past a wilder natural landscape of tangled shrubs. Our turnoff toward Cervantes took us past a wind farm of tall whirling windmills. I thought that there was some poetic value in placing windmills so near to Cervantes.

Another turn and we found ourselves on a far better highway than we'd arrived on. Our GPS took us along the scenic route rather than the more direct coastal road from Perth. Serves us right for relying on our GPS!

The pinnacles were stunning. We took turns posing among them with our monkey mascot (the stuffed toy that has accompanied us all the way from Amman). Our timing couldn't have been better. With the long shadows cast by the low sun and the hues of an imminent sunset, we caught these mysterious pillars of stone at their most photogenic time of day.

We left the park at dusk shortly after 5:00 PM with less than half a tank of fuel but expecting to find petrol stations along the way back to Perth, as there had been on our way up. Our GPS was entirely confused as to why we were on a road it wasn't aware existed. As my fuel gage reached one quarter full I realized I might not reach the northern outskirts of Perth before I ran out of fuel. I didn't even know if I'd be able to make it to any supply of fuel before I ran dry. In the gathering darkness I found a caravan park in Ledge Point (a place too small to appear on some maps). I pulled in to ask where the next filling station might be. On a Saturday night, I was informed, nothing would be open after 6:00 PM (it was now 6:30 PM). Ledge Point had a petrol station that would open the following morning at 7:00 AM. All the logic in the world told us that we should go no further. Since our campsite the night before cost us nothing (at the synagogue), we decided to splurge and get a room for the night here instead of sleeping in the camper. This gave us the chance to haul all our possessions into the room, organize it according to suitcase, take out dirty clothes over to the washers and dryer and take hot showers in our room. This oasis in the night was the perfect solution on so many levels that we were more than content with our decision to stay here. Once again we were serenaded during the night by heavy rain and stormy winds while we slept indoors. Razelle said that the camper was more conducive to sleeping during such a storm than the room had been for her.

Australia day 5

1 July

The distance we planned to cover today to get all the way back to Perth in time to visit the Kosher Food Centre before we imagined it would close meant we'd have to leave quite early. We didn't have much to go on except some phone numbers I'd managed to glean from the Internet and the name of a suburb on the north side of Perth where the kosher shop is located. I did have an address for the Northern Suburbs Hebrew Congregation in another nearby [obvious by its name] "northern suburb". Trying to gain more information this morning from the Internet was futile with no way to access it, so we set off for Perth with our GPS programmed for a fuzzy destination on the north side of Perth.

As with every night so far, it had rained during the night on and off, and was raining as we set off. We topped up the tank in Albany and set off, leaving Albany behind in the rearview mirror by 8:00AM. Albany seemed like a place we should have spent more time exploring, but Shabbat in Perth beckoned.

The road to Perth traversed a different territory than we'd seen so far. We passed pastures and vineyards and rolling hillsides with groves of trees. At times we were bathed in sunlight with large white clouds adorning wide open skies. The ground was covered with a fine felt of newly sprouted green grass. Streams ran freely through this pastoral setting. Sheep and beef cattle grazed on either side of the highway in vast acres of well-tended agricultural land. Knots of population were far apart.

I needed a break by the time we'd been on the road about two hours. We stopped in a small rural center called Kojonup. It had an IGA grocery store where we bought a few needed items. Up the street we saw a post office displaying the "Telstra" logo. I'd been told that Telstra sold pre-paid disposable cell phones that would enable me to make calls to numbers in Australia. I went inside and the postmistress explained how this works and offered me a few choices. She also suggested that I could surf the Internet by buying a WiFi modem, called a "Dodo", that I can plug directly into my laptop computer. In the end I bought the Dodo and forwent the phone. She spoke with an accent that seemed to have a strong American influence. Turns out she was originally from Vermont. I wonder what led her to a life in this remote location. She also detected my American accent but sensed the influence of some other language. I told her I've lived in Israel the past 30+ years. Both of us were far from our origins and both of us were at home in our adopted countries.

The post office was at the corner of George and Harrison. Razelle noticed this. The street names were purely coincidental, the postmistress said.

The rest of the drive to Perth required one other rest stop. The petrol station/restaurant had a pair of alpacas in the back. Passing patrons were encouraged to feed them pellets that could be purchased for two dollars. I watched a couple of women gush over the feel of the alpacas' pelts as this foursome met at the fence.

Perth came upon us after five hours of driving. Traffic became intense and so did the rain. I'd had several days of driving experience before returning to the scene of my first baneful attempt at driving. I was led onto an expressway and off again by my GPS. My driving was not too shabby – far from polished, but far, far better than when I'd lost my lunch in Perth less than a week earlier.

We reached the GPS destination but found ourselves in a neighborhood with Catholic girls and boys walking home in their school uniforms. No kosher food store in sight. I reprogrammed the GPS for the synagogue address and we found it. It was locked up. Reasoning that we'd arrived about an hour or so before services, we drove to a nearby shopping mall for vegetarian pizza.

When we saw that the sun was about ready to set we went back to the synagogue. The rabbi was in. He told us we could park our camper van in the back and heartily welcomed us to join his congregation for Shabbat services. Razelle and I took turns in the back of the van getting out of our touring clothes and putting on our synagogue-appropriate finery. We had to wait for another cloudburst to pass before we could egress from our cocoon in our "shabbos" raiments.

Services began at 6:00PM. After all the touring we'd done, it was nice to be among landzmen. The head of the congregation explained how we could get into the synagogue after hours and Razelle and I met the security team that patrolled the several synagogues of Perth. We had a guaranteed safe place to spend the night in our camper and access to the synagogue's bathrooms and a bit of kosher food in its kitchen if we wanted. We'd hoped for a higher degree of hospitality than that, but no one knew to expect us and it really was more convenient to stay with our camper.

The sermon that evening was delivered by a venerated elder from a yeshiva in Israel. He delivered it in English, with a very strong Yiddish accent, citing references from Hebrew and Aramaic sources spoken with an Ashkenazi pronunciation. I struggled to follow his deliverance. I heard others whisper among themselves that it was a great sermon, no doubt, but they didn't understand a word of it. Ah, to be in Australia for Shabbos, experiencing a universally Jewish experience. I had to remind myself that I was in Australia, particularly because everyone in this synagogue spoke English with a definite South African accent.

Razelle and I stayed inside the synagogue until the Shabbat clock shut off all the lights. We returned to our camper, crawled under our bedding in the cold as more rain pounded on its roof, and eventually fell asleep.

Australia day 4

30 June

We woke up late this morning, meaning later than sunrise. By 8:30 AM we still hadn't seen much activity in the caravan park. We went about a routine Razelle and I are settling into and by nearly 10:00 we were heading for Albany, the paragon of civilization because they have a McDonald's (with free Internet access)!

We drove through the Valley of the Giants again to get there and to marvel at the immensity of these trees. We've seen so many of these by now, but I know we won't see anything like this again in Australia (even if the Blue Mountains above Sydney have forests like these the trees there won't be this massive). We reached Albany by midday and scanned the horizon for those golden arches. Albany looks like a very attractive historic place well worth spending time exploring. We found McDonald's and spent an hour and a half connected to the Internet. I accomplished a lot in that time, including making on-line reservations for a hotel in Alice Springs and getting addresses and phone numbers for Jewish institutions in Perth in preparation for our weekend there. Of course I checked my email and Razelle checked hers and, naturally, I posted to the blog. In this day and age, it seems a shame that so much vacation time needs to be spent looking for and sucking on an Internet feed. The time it took to do this (multi-tasking with five screens open at once, no less) is too much. By early afternoon, with an early winter sunset not very many hours away, we went looking for Whale World.

Until 1978, Albany had been a major whaling port. No whaling takes place here anymore, so the whale oil rendering plant has been turned into a tourist attraction. Razelle and I got there just as the last tour was scheduled to leave. I raced around the camper locking it up while Razelle got tickets. When I caught up with her we found that the entire group was just us two. Our guide was happy to show us the works and to accommodate Razelle's limited physical abilities. We learned a lot about whaling. You had to have a strong stomach for this kind of work. The information on whale biology and behavior was more appealing than the description of how whales were dismembered and which anatomical chunk when into which cooker. They had a 3-D movie on the life of whales and a separate presentation on sharks. A pigmy blue whale (kind of an oxymoron, no?) beached itself in Albany in 1975. It skeleton is on display.

It began to rain hard as we left there in the last waning hour of daylight. Our final must-see destination was the memorial to the light-horsemen of Australia and New Zealand who fought in WWI and left for war from this port for battles that included the capture of Beer Sheva, and some of whom are buried in the cemetery near the Beit Yatziv youth hostel in Beer Sheva. We arrived as the last rays of sunlight colored the parting rainclouds with shades of orange and red.

The path was too steep for Razelle so I climbed it alone. I tried to photograph the monument but the light got poorer by the minute. It saddened me that I couldn't do more to document my visit here. The hiatus in rainfall was short-lived, only long enough really for the few pictures I took. Cold rain began to fall again so I descended in the rain to our camper in the parking lot. 

Back in Albany once again, we stopped at a Hungry Jack's (Australia's name for Burger King) for veggie burgers. There were a lot of teenagers there, acting the way you'd expect teenagers to behave. Razelle and I had to remark about how much rowdier they were (read "more normal") than the same groups of teenagers were in Singapore. It also amazed us that Singapore, and Mumbai for that matter, seemed like places we'd visited long ago instead of only during the past week and a half.

The caravan park at Emu Point on the eastern edge of Albany looked like a good place to settle for the night. Finding it was no easy task. I eventually programmed the GPS we have to get us there. Without it, we'd never have found the place. It is the most neatly organized caravan park we've stayed at yet. We pulled in and set up like we've been doing this forever (has it only been four nights?).

Australia day 3

29 June

The proprietor passed by this morning as I was admiring the setting we called "home for the night." We had a warm and friendly chat while standing out in the cold as the sun began to rise. Dew glistened from every surface. He said the temperature had reached minus 1 Celsius. It certainly felt close to freezing, but Razelle and I had enough bedding to be comfortable in the camper. I learned the name of the black-and-white crow-like bird that watched me with anticipation as I ate a bowl of cheerios and milk outside. This is a magpie. He had a big black beak and beady black eyes that watched me expectantly for a hint of compassion. Under my breath I said I hoped he had no thoughts of larceny and he must have understood because he flew away. These magpies have a distinctive call we heard all morning, along with other bird calls that intrigued me because I couldn't match them with their source. I finally got to hear a kookaburra. As they "laugh" they sound like excited howler monkeys, I guess.

Razelle read in the literature that in Pemberton there is a tram ride through the forest that sounded worth doing. If we didn't waste time we could get there before the tram left the station. The road to Pemberton from Nannup is again through national forest areas with scenic side roads to spectacular groves of superlative trees. We rapidly passed them all as I drove at or above the speed limit, to reach Pemberton and the tram with 8 minutes to spare. Two days earlier I wouldn't have imagined I could handle this vehicle do adeptly. Now look it me rocketing along! It helped that practically no one else was on these roads in daylight, just as there hadn't been anyone on them during the previous night. I don't know how to interpret this. Perhaps this is an empty land, perhaps traffic prefers heavily travels roads instead of these scenic byways, and perhaps its just off-season and people are not traveling, period.

Along the way we saw our first kangaroo, loping across the road at a safe distance. It was of moderate size. Our second kangaroo of the day came later. It was road-kill by the time we happened upon it, the poor hapless hopper.

The tram ride was very educational. It took us through the same forest we had just driven through. The driver had a wealth of information to impart and I enjoyed it immensely. Razelle, not so much. She wasn't dressed as warmly as she should have been, the topic was not as fascinating to her as it was to me, and when we stopped to see a set of rapids (called a cataract here) or a tree hollowed out by lightening, Razelle couldn't safely negotiate the trail. The tram returned the same way it had come so there was no narration. I took this opportunity to talk with the driver all the way back about all kinds of scientific topics. He was as knowledgeable -- if not more so -- as the woman I'd spoken to yesterday. From these two sources of knowledge I have gained a more complete understanding of what I see here on this strange continent than I might have otherwise if I had had to look it up myself.

We left Pemberton and headed for Walpole. We saw more trees of superlative size. After the tram ride I appreciated them even more. While we drove toward Walpole it started to rain again, though not torrentially this time. Ahead of us we saw the base of a very intense rainbow. It was worth taking a picture of. As we rounded a corner, the other half of the rainbow came into view. Then farther up the road we saw a double rainbow. I've never before experienced what came next. The base of the inner and more intense of the double rainbows was right on the road ahead as we rounded a curve. It remained right there as we approached it and as we literally drove right through its curtain of colors. I expected it to dissipate as we approached but it remained exactly as it was as we drove through it. I had to remark to Razelle that this was where the pot of gold should have been. We should have bumped into it and knocked it over, but alas, it was not there.

We drove through Walpole and headed for the Valley of the Giants. In this forest there is a tree-top walk that everyone we know who'd been here ahead of us told us was an experience NOT to be missed. Once again we found ourselves competing with the clock. Our literature said that we had until 4:15 PM to see this today. Razelle wanted to save it for tomorrow, but I insisted that it was worth driving to today, just to see what it was about, even if we had to come back tomorrow.

We got there with a half hour to spare, we thought, but we were told that 4:15 PM was the latest admission time; however, 4:45 PM was when the concession actually closed. We had a full hour to experience it and we had the park almost exclusively to ourselves. We toured it and enjoyed it very much.

 

  

                  

Dusk was falling as we left. We stopped at the first caravan park we came to right outside the park, but now we were picky. We didn't like the layout and we didn't like the price so we moved on. The next one we came to was so much more appealing AND cheaper because the van rental company has a deal with this group AND they threw in a free cap with their name on it for me to wear. Can't argue about that deal!

We got a site then went into Walpole for food. Razelle was keen on having a nice fresh salad. It was passed 6:00 PM and pitch dark by now and nothing seemed to be open. We found two grocery stores. The omnipresent IGA was dark inside, but its independent competitor was still open. "I stay open late, until 7" the gentle giant proprietor told us. We bought a fistfull of snow peas and a couple of tomatoes and some tartar sauce packets. (He also threw in a freebee – yesterday's newspaper. Razelle was starving for news.) Back at our campsite these ingredients (not the newspaper) went together with a can of tuna to make a salad Razelle enjoyed throwing together herself, almost as much as if she'd been served one in a restaurant. The snow peas were a delightfully sweet and crunchy touch. They really were a treat to have. Little things like that make "roughing it" interesting.

We went through the nighty night routine more efficiently than previously. Camping ain't so bad.