AN INTIMATE PERFORMANCE FROM 'STAFF BENDA BILILI'

Brad, who seems to have taken the role of entertainment manager for us here, is the man who can. Totally on the pulse with whats happening in the city he's been plying us with free event and gig tickets, most of all with wristbands for the Womad festival. For which him and another friend Dave are doing some work for, driving around a Congolese band for the duration of the festival. The band 'Staff Benda Bilili' or 'Look Beyond Your Perceptions' are an inspiring group with an inspirational story, street musicians from the Congo, having suffered from polio as children they are all disabled, most in wheelchairs. They were all homeless when discovered by a couple of french documentary film makers playing at the local zoo in their home city of Kinshasa only two years previous.

Brad and Dave invite us to join them at the local wildlife reserve. We meet the group in the middle of a kangaroo and emu field, greeted by a convoy of smiling faces and welcoming waves, Jaimie does her best to recall some french phrases and I follow suite. After we stop for some lunch the group equip their instruments, which range from a an acoustic guitar to a park bench for drums, a stringed instrument fashioned from a tin can, and begin an impromptu jam. Absolutely amazing, we are all instantly mesmerised, these guys are fantastic, all of a sudden the hundred-and-one foreign species surrounding us seem obsolete, we are entranced, this is music for the soul.

After a very enthusiastic "merci beaucoup" and a "Tres Bien" from us to the band the we decide to encounter Australia's most loved animals the Kangaroo and of course the Koala. 

SA. THE FESTIVAL STATE

So we've finally rendezvoused with Chaz, who's been waiting eagerly for our arrival after a week of solitude. What better place to hook up, the city is absolutely buzzing this time of year, literally!

I won't attempt to try and list all the festivals that are happening simultaneously here, but between the Adelaide Festival, The Fringe, The Garden of Unearthly Delights, Writers Week and Womad, theres enough to keep us occupied for a couple of weeks at least!! And of course we've got the best hosts and tour guides to get the low-down from.

 Having not heard an awful lot about the city, bar the fringe before we came, we've been pleasantly surprised and impressed by Adelaide. Our friends and locals here have told us that either side of the festival season or "Mad March” as the locals call it, the current buzz dissipates and very little happens here, which is incredibly hard to imagine rite now.

ADELAIDE AT LAST

Into the city of Adelaide, we get in touch with the friends that we made in Rainbow Serpent festival. With a cold beer waiting for us and a warm welcome, we feel instantly at ease meting new and old faces. We enjoy the eve with like minded people that are so generous to take us in.

Everyone we had met at the festival a month earlier had offered us, our van and even our mate Chaz a space to camp which was lovely of them. We take Tom up on his offer and so, were camped up behind his house which is situated between two catering companies, with Chaz's tent at the rear of the van. Car park dwellers, proper gypsy style! The catering companies don't seem to mind our presence to much, even though the car park is somewhat more compact than usual. In fact yesterday they even brought us round some beautiful smoked salmon which needed eating, we saw to that!

The city has a large asian community and our first visit down town leads us into China Town which surrounds the central market, a vast indoor market dedicated to fresh fruit and vegetables and generally all things tasty and wholesome (and not-so wholesome too!). We're there on Saturday and an hour before the market closes until monday the place turns insane, pretty much everything is reduced to a dollar, “ONE DOLLAR A BAG!!”. Hectic but great for a bargain, we take advantage and hold a curry night for our hosts and friends.  

LAST LEG

The last leg of our journey to Adelaide from the Coorong national park and its isolated coast, after a morning walk through the sand dunes with the wild 'roos'. We head swiftly on and hit the road, It turns out to be the straightest road we've ever seen. Simple. Mesmerized by the driving we seem to miss the turn off and end up lost in the Adelaide hills. Windy roads with steep drops, not what you need to end your day.

So we try to cut back over to the coast, Storm navigating with a completely uninformative map, I become a rally driver, tracking corners that have drops that leave no room for error and climbing our vanny up ridiculously steep inclines. The pressure is on, almost on autopilot to the lefts and rights that I am being rapidly told. I manage the insanity of fast reactions to vehicles, signs, windy corners, directions, no directions and we make it to the coast!

Quite a feat of driving, almost 7 hours on and off by the time we reach the campsite! Ah. Fatigue! Long day, I've never felt such a wired buzz from driving and with a cool beer we slowly calm down.

GONE FISHING!

Taking advantage of our location we get ourselves equipped with a fishing rod everything I need to catch us a fish supper. The next couple of days are spent with me down the end of the jetty, I couldn't be happier, no fish but still, sat on on my own playing with my tackle, Jaimie bringing snacks and beer intermittently, what more could a man want?! Well a fish would be nice!

We finally make the hard decision to carry on with our journey, heading out of Robe into the Coorong national park. The Coorong is a spectacular landscape, essentially a long series of lagoons separated from the Southern Ocean by about a 100 km of sand dunes which form the Younghusband Peninsula. Theres wildlife everywhere, we spot what I believe to be a 'stubby tailed lizard' waiting to cross the road so we stop and investigate, they're pretty common and not dangerous. Its nice to see local inhabitants alive as unfortunately whilst driving most of the stuff you see is roadkill, still theres enough birdlife to keep our attention. Pelicans are most common here and we see a lot flying overhead, none up close yet but I'm sure it wont be long.

ROBE

Next stop is Mt Gambier which main attraction is its famous blue lake, formed in the basin of an inactive old volcano. No swimming unfortunately as its the towns main water supply. Not a bad spot for a bit of lunch though!

Eager to get some miles behind us whilst its cool, we leave Mt Gambier and head on up the coast through the Canunda national park stopping at Beachport, a bland little town which repeats the recipe of each town before it, with less charm. However, we head into the park to find a spot set up for the evening, being rite on the edge of the huge salt water Lake George we look for a place at the waters edge, no water to be found. We find ourselves in the strangest of landscapes, like a flat desert of salt dust. We are completely alone for what looks like miles around accompanied only by dry, tangly weed and a decaying kangaroo carcass. Interesting as it is, we don't fancy spending the night here, seclusion and privacy is nice for sure, but theres also something reassuring and comforting in at least being able to see other campers.

So we continue on to the next little town on the coast, Robe. Finally a place with some charm, the town centre is small, quaint with some colourful, quirky shops. We have a little drive around and find the towns lighthouse, less of a light house really and more of a pyramidal structure painted red and white, good photo opportunity. We drive on and down a remote dirt track, just down the coast from the towns little port we stumble upon the old jetty, secluded and sheltered from the wind its a beautiful spot and we instantly decide we'd like to stay here for a day or so. So we park rite there, privileged as we are, theres no excuse not to have a room with a view every night and we get just that. Taking a walk down the jetty that evening, chatting to a couple who are fishing (successfully, well they are German!) a seal pops his head out of the water and begins to show us his dandiest tricks, we'd never seen one so close, (I'd never seen one at all in person), so privileged to have such an intimate, private performance, no doubt he's learnt to play up for the fisher men to be rewarded with a piece of their bait!

LONDON BRIDGE

We awake in yet another beautiful camping ground in the national park (Otways). Were really lucky that along the Great Ocean Road throughout Victoria, free camping spaces are provided for travellers. Once over the boarder into South Australia however the camping is not free, it is dirt cheap though within the national parks. Most of the sites are 'trust sites', unmanned relying on the campers to place they're fee in provided boxes. The fee is generally around twelve dollars for the night (for both of us and the van). So cheap when you consider the location and facilities, it's both amazing and ridiculous when you think what you might pay in the somewhere in the UK. 

We sat outside the van all of the evening just passed, just after sun set when we saw shadows moving in the dark a few meters away, a dog? No Kangaroos, three of them! It's hard to make them out properly but enough to get us excited, just so strange to see something the size of a small person hopping around in the dark, exciting and a little unnerving.

A cooler day finally, thank god! We continue up the coast to Warnambool, stopping to see more limestone, cliff formations. This time a particular arch named London Bridge, once upon a time two large arches spanning out into the ocean, until one collapsed so now just a singular arch. Spectacular but nothing like the london bridge, more just a bridge. We hit Warnambool, no national park camping here so we check into a back packers which has a small garden at the back. 12 dollars each, bit steeper than the night before but bearable. Warnambool seems quite pleasant, again an old fishing town with the port at its centre. Every place we stop along the coast is an old fishing / shipping town, thats what it 'was', now these places would't really be anything if not for the constant travellers passing through, it feels a little odd really to think that these little towns are kept alive by people just passing through on their way to somewhere else, just stopping for necessity, not choice. In each of these places you'll find an information shop, ready to tell you everything to see and do, typically its walks, lookouts, sites of historic ship wrecks. Seemingly lots to keep you busy, a little repetitive after a while though, admittedly we haven't taken on so many of the walks thus far, soon though!   

TOO HOT FOR TWO BEANS

From Johanna beach in the Melba Gully national park, sandwiched by the Otways, we drive east toward the Twelve Apostles. On the way I navigate Jaimie toward Wreck Beach, famous for its scattered ship wreck remains for a spot of lunch, bare in mind its 35ºc in the middle of the day and we've already been driving for an hour. We take the turn off and the road turns from tarmac to dust and gravel.

Here, if the roads are untreated the dirt has the tendency to become corrugated, making for an extremely bumpy ride, down a steep hillside, on a very narrow track! Finally the road ends and we arrive at an arid, desolate car park 'somewhere'. Its then I happen to catch a sign which reads “366 steps to Wreck Beach”, nice work Storm! Jaimie's knee is fixing well but even just the drivings still causing some swelling, so we'll probably give the steps a miss!

As I'm preparing lunch Jamie goes to take a leak in the bush, when randomly a police man walks out of the shrubs rite where Jaimie is about to pee, ha ha hilarious! A little weird, he introduces himself and informs us that he's doing a routine inspection of remote areas, which makes sense, you could really imagine this guy spending large amounts of time in remote areas. He says he's looking out for arsonists and tells us with an intense briefing that theres a 'total fire ban in place', the name says it all, the bans occur when its been extremely hot and dry for a couple of days and theres fast moving wind. On days like this a bush fire can travel as fast as the blowing winds, a scary thought when thats forty miles an hour. “If a fire breaks out, your best bet is to head for the ocean” he says, great except for the half a mile of rugged bush land between here and there, so its either hobble down 366 steps towards the ocean or rally back up the hillside amidst a burning forest, not great odds. He gives us a card with a number to ring if we see anyone suspicious around (“suspicious like you?” we wonder). Strange to think someone would cause such carnage for a laugh though, the officer tells us 'a laugh' is the least of it, and implies he's caught people in some pretty perverted acts whilst admiring the destruction they've caused, bizarre.

We get back on the road (Great Ocean Road or the B100) and carry on toward the Twelve Apostles. By now its mid afternoon and the sun is central in the sky, the road in the horizon has that effect of a gassy heat blur over it, its scorching, too hot to be driving. Were very hot and very bothered, easy to become agitated in these conditions. When we begin to see the Apostles on the coast were in no mood to stop and play tourist, however spectacular they look, even from a distance. So we carry on up the coast to Port Cambell as we've spotted on the map that theres a swimming beach there, until now theres not actually been a lot of swimming. Of course theres constantly been the ocean at our side but its so rugged that the beaches are often unreachable and the waters treacherous with long, sweeping and endless bays which would quickly have you swept out into the deep, next stop Antarctica! There are news reports daily of swimmers loosing they're life's here. Luckily Port Cambell has what we need, a tiny little port town, with swimming in the old harbour, sheltered from the open sea by a lengthy narrow cove, the water is absolutely freezing but we don't mind after so long traveling in the sweltering conditions.

It finally begins to cool down around six o'clock so we decide to go back and see what all the fuss is about, The Twelve Apostles. Gigantic stacks of lime stone standing hundreds of feet proud from the ocean below, remains of a once present cliff front, formed over the last six hundred years, amazing!

 Its easy along this coast to feel like a tourist sheep, part of a much larger pack of tourist sheep, being herded from one 'Kodac' picture point to the next. Especially when the french people you shared an overnight camping spot with on your first night seem to be everywhere you are, as if we've formed a euro convoy! Easy to let such feelings detract from your experience, here however any thoughts of this kind are instantly eradicated by the sight of these stones, they're presence mesmerises as you are instantly dwarfed, no longer sheep but ants. 

We leave just before sun set, just as people are flooding in to see the stones as they light up deep red with the setting sun on a clear evening. Maybe next time, rite now we'd like to get set up somewhere before dark.

THE GREAT OCEAN ROAD

Waking up not knowing exactly where you are is like a dream to us. After parking in the dark of the night we wake eager to see our surroundings. Just a small walk through some sand dunes and we hit a vast sweeping beach and a never ending ocean. The ocean air so rich it makes you sleepy. we are vanners, explorers and happy.

A morning in Apollo Bay which is defiantly enough for anyone, as it seems like a charmless version of Lorne, and we head for more remote scenery. We head for the great Otways lighthouse in the Otway national researve. Through dense forrest and windy roads we loose ourselves to the charm only to be thrown by a bunch of cars just stopped in the road, what are they doing? No Storm they're not doggers, confused by the comotion we park up and have a look. KOALAS IN THE TREES! WOWZA. What a sight for our first full day on the road. Unthinkable. we carried on to the lighthouse to find that they charged admission, even just to look from the outside, to tell the truth we didn't even care aftter our sighting.

We headed on and to a free camping site, which are provided in the national parks on the Great Ocean Road, a site at Johanna bay. Getting there by early evening we head straight for the beach wanting a well deserved cool down from the hot drive. What unravelled was, to our amazement, a dream like haze wraped around an epic rolling sea, that in a slowmotion curl, thundered onto the land. swimming? definatly not, so we walked the length of the beach. luckily coming apon an outcrop of rock that had formed into pools. So rockpool bathing it was to be!

To our outright suprize a heron came and joined us and fished only a pool away catching small witing or such. Real wildlife unfased by humans. A gem.

Dinner prepared by the master chef, Storm and a bottle of red- picked up by our knowlagable wine man Ross.  And yes we had our romantic table setting inside our van.