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Overlander and Billabong: Outback roadhouse/motel people are (mostly) weird
Posted by daveb on January 26th, 2009
Fact: People who work in customer serving businesses in the outback are weird.
So what is a roadhouse? Essentially, it’s a petrol station with a shop, cafe and possibly some overnight rooms situated slap-bang in the middle of nowhere. These much-needed pitstops know their worth and charge through-the-nose for everything they sell and who can blame them? The same ninety-eight cent bottle of water from our Freo supermarket just cost me five dollars, fair dinkum. City unleaded petrol fluctuates between 91-107 cents for a litre, in the Western Australian outback we’ve paid 145 cents.
With the marked exception of the keen-to-please staff at the Billabong Roadhouse (the petrol station, not the motel next door), everyone we’ve met in outback roadhouses are grumpy-as-you-like. Must be the heat and the flies — they’ve got to us too.
Example 1: The Overlander Roadhouse
As I stand at the counter about to pay for $50 of fuel, Squiffy drops a $3.50 bag of plums on the surface and a small handful of paper serviettes.
“Uh, uh, uuuuuhhheeeerrr! Too many napkins! It’s supposed to be one per person.”
After my momentary confusion, I return three of the five serviettes to the holder and the deal proceeds as before.
Example 2: The Billabong Motel
Let me clarify here that the Billabong Motel is a very different business from the Billabong Roadhouse. In fact, when I asked in the Roadhouse about our options for camping, the helpful staff told me to camp over the road in the rest area, ignoring the “no camping” sign completely. When I enquired about the camping sign that appeared to be next to her property, she went to great lengths to emphasize that the motel-with-campsite next door was a completely separate operation from hers. We soon found out why.
This was actually the second time that we had walked into the Billabong Motel. The first time is was to sample the “delicious, homestyle food served all day”. We were told that the chef had gone home. This time we needed food, drink and a pitch for our tent (we weren’t keen on sleeping in a deserted rest area in the outback).
Aside from his circular-motioned hand polishing the bar, the grey-haired man stood completely motionless, eyes transfixed on these two idiots–us–walking up to his bar.
“We’ve been told that you offer camping here?”, I offered.
“It’s too hot for camping”, he countered.
“Oh, we’ll be alright thanks, we’ve come from further up north and we know all about the heat!”, I smiled politely.
“I don’t think you do”, he said closing the matter, “it’s nine dollars a night.”
“Great, And we’d like to eat, do you have a menu?”, we moved to the next point on the agenda.
“Food’s off”, and he stared.
We muttered something about going next door to get something from the roadhouse before they close for the night. A couple of sandwiches and a cup of chips, to take away. We carried the booty back into the motel bar to order a drink to go with our food and again our host stood completely still, although this time with a open-mouthed disbelieving stare.
Momentarily, we all stood in silence (a game I love) but Squiffy curled and broke the stalemate.
“Can we order a drink?”, she asked.
“YOU CAN’T BRING THAT IN HERE!”, he bellowed, motioning to the food.
Perplexed, “why not?”, I asked.
“YOU CAN’T TAKE COAL TO NEWCASTLE!!”
It was one of those moments where, afterwards, the mind conjures up all kinds of witty retorts like “but Newcastle hasn’t got any coal!”, but at the time we could muster no better response than, “well… where should we eat it then?”
“OUTSIDE!!!”
Outside, in the heat, with one hand we munched our way through a sandwich and batted-away flies with the other. After gobbing our illegal food, we returned indoors to request some liquid refreshment. The doors were open and a large fan blew misted-water into the room. The air conditioning unit was switched off.
“Is it cool enough in here for you?”, our caring host asked.
“It’s ok”, hummed Squiffy.
“WELL DON’T EXPECT IT TO BE COOL WHEN ALL THE BLOODY DOORS ARE OPEN!”
We chose not to enquire any further about the doors and their residual positioning.
My coke, still in the can, was thouroughly pleasurable. Squiffy pushed her luck further by politely requesting a glass with some ice.
“OICE? OICE! WHAT ELSE DO YOU BLOODY WANT?!”
Spotting the Fremantle football paraphernalia, Squiffy made one last-ditch attempt to make friends.
“So you support the Dockers?”, she beamed, content at her local football-team knowledge.
“I USED TO PLAY FOR SOUTH FREMANTLE. I HATE THE DOCKERS.”
We gave up and amused ourselves at how we’d just met a distant ancestor of my friend Martin. (Hi Martin!)
Here’s a couple of photos of us waking up in his campsite the next day, for your amusement:
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Exmouth and Coral Bay: Diving and snorkelling the Ningaloo Reef
Posted by daveb on January 23rd, 2009
A few years ago, my sister bought me the Lonely Planet Bluelist
So was it worth driving three days through 45-50 degree heat and bat our hands repeatedly at the dastardly flies to dive here? Yes — but only just. We’ll be back and next time try to time our visit with the Whale Sharks, not to mention the cooler clime.
We turned Don, our car, around and pointed him back towards Fremantle, stopping along the way at Coral Bay for an hour’s snorkel at the other side of Ningaloo Reef allowing us to get a couple of silly underwater photos from our beach snorkel. If you’re not a diver, just know that you can’t really compare a snorkel with a scuba dive. The latter will likely provide you with a much richer experience and much more eye candy — it’s a shame that our camera won’t go more than a metre or two underwater, to demonstrate the difference. The scuba diving in Coral Bay is supposedly very good also, but we couldn’t stand the heat, flies and cost any more and just wanted to ride our bullet-car back to civilisation.
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Monkey Mia, Shark Bay: Dolphins up close
Posted by Squiffy on January 22nd, 2009
My ice cream has melted before I’ve opened it… the car is like an oven… and the tent is unbearable. We’re braving the 46-48 degree heat to come and visit some of Western Australia’s most famous residents: the wild dolphins at Monkey Mia. On our way up to Exmouth we’ve ‘called-in’ at the resort, a 150km detour off the main highway, to join the other tourists in rising early in the morning and paddling up to our knees, to see these magical creatures being fed by rangers at the dolphin research centre.
At 7:30am we gather along the beach, to watch around five female dolphins and their calves appear, as they have done for the past few decades, for their breakfast. Many years ago, fisherman, then the general public, began hand feeding the dolphins around Monkey Mia. Eventually this caused many problems as the animals were being overfed and forgot how to hunt for themselves. The research centre now regulates breakfast time, and the dolphins are only given a small proportion of their daily requirements.
The mothers and their calves came in really close and we got a great view of one or two of the dolphins. Whilst I was disappointed that we couldn’t swim with them, and the experience did feel very touristy, it was a unique opportunity to see the creatures up (very) close and watch them as they watched us. The resort is a cool place too, right on the beach with views of the ocean. Due to the heat, Dave and I spent the remainder of the day dipping in and out of the pool and the sea, the latter of which was a beautiful temperature even if there was a minor shark risk (being in Shark Bay and all).
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Western Australia: The Sparselands
Posted by daveb on January 21st, 2009
We’re two days into our roadtrip and I’m beginning to fear that this blog is about to become uninteresting and quite sparse — already, there’s really very little here to write about. We’re starting slowly, to put the car through its paces and confirm that it’s up to the job and so we’ve only covered about 600km. One thing’s for sure, I now know why the locals call it “the bush”: contrary to my expectations of a barren wasteland devoid of greenery, the country land here is covered in flora, mostly in the form of bushes.
Before we set-out north, the people of Perth and Fremantle warned us about the heat and the flies. Most of them said we were mad. Whilst I’ve not yet been bothered too much by the flies, I can confirm that the heat is extreme. I’ve felt nothing like it in my existence. Sure, we’re been to some hot, not to mention, humid places on our travels, but the Western Australian sun is like nothing I’ve ever felt. I burnt my neck over a week ago and, regardless of wearing the highest factor sunscreen by day and purest aloe-vera gel by night, the heat rash with which I’m left just won’t shift. Being fair-skinned and [more-or-less] care-free in my younger days, I’m no stranger to the sensations of sunburn. Just not like this. It’s brutal.
As for camping, we’re doing OK but I must admit that we’re both finding it hard. A couple of days ago, we had a beautiful air-conditioned studio apartment in Fremantle, and now we’re either being driven to argument over pitching a tent in the oppressive heat, or sleeping in the back of an estate car (which, in fairness, is fairly comfortable as car-sleeping goes). After enjoying the pleasure of a quality kitchen, it seems a little hard to cope with a two-ring outdoor gas burner in the wind and a weather-warmed cool box, in which the ice-blocks melt before the morning’s out. (Oh DaveB, it’s not all bad. We are on an exciting road trip chuck – Squiffy) (Yeah Squiffy, I’ll remind you of that next time you’re screaming at the gas burner again when it blows out in the wind – DaveB).
Here’s hoping that we acclimatise to both the heat and our new tentlife quickly.
***STOP PRESS: It’s confirmed: the flies are hideous too. They’re persistent little blighters and think nothing about their repeated attempts to enter our bodies through our ears, mouths and nostrils. Urgh!
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Perth: The Trots
Posted by daveb on January 20th, 2009
We both just spent our last night in Perth with the Trots; or harness racing as it’s more easily recognisable.
Over here, New Year’s Day is celebrated in style with the majority of the town dressing up and spending a day drinking, dining and gambling at the Perth Cup horse races. Not us: at over AUD$200 to acquire so-called “Tentland” tickets to afford us air-conditioning, else spend our time in the heat of day, wearing suits, we decided to give it a miss.
My Welsh Godfather, Uncle Pad and his wife, Milica, are in town visiting his brother, Terry, who lives just north of Perth. They kindly offered to take us to the Trots; and the private members’ lounge, no less. Over the phone, Uncle Pad warned me that I’d “need a pair of slacks” and so Squiffy and I set about the local Salvos (Salvation Army charity shop — it really is officially called the Salvos over here, you know). AUD$27 (under £12) later and I found myself sporting not only navy “slacks”, black shoes, chequed shirt and–wait for it–a black a white, woollen sports jacket! With even less money down, Squiffy kitted herself out with a smart, pink cocktail dress and black low-heels (the only colour shoe that fitted). In fairness, both Uncle Pad and Terry warned me that my sports jacket wouldn’t be necessary: it wasn’t. Still, I wanted to shock my mother my looking smart in at least one of my blog photos!
We all had a lovely time at the races, even though nobody won a sausage from their bets. In fact, Squiffy momentarily lost her budget-conscious head and happily gambled-away all that she could get her hands on. One to watch in the future, methinks (Squiffy adds: oh, $1 per race, that’s a whole fiver. How much money did you pour down your throat in the form of beer DaveB ;o). The members-only lounge was quite an eye-opening venue: for all it’s appearances of a local town social club, it turns out that many of the patrons are secret millionaires in their later years. From Hazel, who would routinely drop AUD$100 on a bet because “you can do that when you get to my age” to Calton, a former race winning horse-owner who would clutch a hand of four betting tickets for each race. And then there was the Australian gent who complained that because of his long-standing patronage “if anyone in here should get a free feed, it’s me”, who turned out to be one of Western Australia’s wealthiest farmers — a multi-millionaire! Nice to meet you all, and good on you!
Thanks very much to Uncle Pad, Milica and especially Terry who, without knowing us beforehand, offered us a place to stay without asking for references first! Your hospitality is unmatched, sir.
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Fremantle: Roadtrip preparation
Posted by daveb on January 19th, 2009
We’re preparing for our roadtrip and we’re getting jolly excited. We’ve had the tent up for a spot of indoor camping. Good job too — the first one was badly stitched and had to go back. In contrast to the miniature five dollar tent that sheltered us in Africa, this time we’ve plumped for a larger four-person canvas in which we’ll be able to sit and stand. I wanted to get a bigger one in case the sun and flies are as bad as everyone tells us they are — if they are, at least we can sit inside our zipped-down, SPF 50+ tent and be all grumpy about it.
Last night, we tested out the chairs and the cool box–over here they’re called ‘Eskies’–and the flask. The two-burner stove and gas canister have no discernible leaks and produce a roaring-blue flame. Sick of perpetual sunburn, I’ve bought two litres of suntan cream and after sun lotion.
Don, our supersized station wagon car, is running well and has been given the all-clear by our mechanic for a fry-an-egg-on-the-bonnet roadtrip. The car developed an annoying fast-paced ticking sounds a few days ago, which was related to the cabin air system. Thankfully, it’s disappeared again now–probably a leaf in the cabin fan–but we’ll be listening out for it.
We even squeezed in a couple of rounds of our new board game, “Getaway” which is an Australian-themed Trivial Pursuit with only questions on Sport, Australia, Cricket, Sport, Entertainment, Cricket or Sport. In two games, Squiffy’s answered only one question correctly and I’m still waiting to get out of the starter blocks. Thankfully, it’s also possible to collect ‘free’ chips every so often with the roll of the 8-sided die. And so, in our hands, this knowledge-based game of skill has pretty becomes a matter of luck: who can throw the die to display ‘free chip’ more than the other player wins, we laugh our way through the arcane questions as we go. Examples:
How many tests did Allan Border play for Australia?
- In what year did Big Brother premiere on Australian TV?
- Which short-lived NSW fire service drama lasted only one season on the ABC?
- What was Merv Hughes’ highest score in a test match?
- Which 3 players tied for the Brownlow Medal in 2003?
- In which year did Melbourne Storm join the NRL?
- What does the acronym CAMS stand for?
- What invention is Mervyn Richardson famous for?
- Which Victorian seaside town is famous for its whale watching?
- Who or what is the Fremantle Doctor? (Squiffy answered this one correctly)
Answers in the comments section below please! Winner gets brandished a smarty pants…
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Escape the City published weekdays
Posted by daveb on January 17th, 2009
Now that this blog has almost caught-up with reality, we’re reverting the publishing schedule back to normal: five days a week, Monday to Friday, between 8am and 9am (UK).
The best for you to stay up-to-date with our articles is to have them delivered to you: either with e-mail updates or by using our RSS feed for Escape the City – both are free. The BBC has a simple explanation on how to use RSS feeds (they sometimes call them news feeds).
Please leave us a comment to let us know what else you’d think could be improved on the site.
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Fremantle: New Year’s Eve
Posted by daveb on January 16th, 2009
Given just how hopelessly unexcitable the locals appeared to be about Christmas (we saw only two houses with Christmas lights in and around Perth/Freo), we hoped that something might be going-off for New Year’s instead. After all, Sydney has one of the best fireworks displays in the world on this day, so maybe Perth will pull something out of the hat as well?
We headed off towards Perth in the hope of finding a free spot on the opposite side of the river from Gloucester Park, where the AUD$25 a head fireworks display was due to go off. Earlier in the evening, I had identified a point on the map from which we’d be able to park up and get a good view. Apparently, we’re not the only skinflints in town; the secluded spot was teeming with scores of other freeloaders who had sat back into their cheap sets on this poor side of town to watch things in the sky go pop and boom. We munched our banana sandwiches and the cheese-sticks that I had made (“How’d you make those?!” … “I cut some cheese into sticks…”) and teased each other for leaving our flask of coffee back at the apartment.
In fairness to Perth, they put on quite a display. I certainly can’t quibble at the price we paid. I just feel a bit sorry for the two young couples who piled-up out of their taxi and were gutted to learn that they’d arrived about three minutes after the last rocket had gone up in smoke.
Happy New Year everyone. Even though it might seem impossible right now, here’s wishing you a prosperous one. Remember: Impossible is Nothing.
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Perth: Have boat, will sail (finally)
Posted by Squiffy on January 15th, 2009
With access to both a beautiful river and the Indian Ocean, I’m not suprised by the number of sailing clubs, nor the plethora of boats that abound in Perth and Fremantle. Getting to go on one of these boats however, is surprisingly difficult. As we’ve toured the world I’ve taken any opportunity to get out on the water and was really looking forward to making the most of Fremantle’s afternoon sea breeze by hiring a sailing dinghy. But as with most places, we found the boat clubs to be very snooty institutions who won’t even consider hiring out one of their craft to anyone not paying the horrenous membership fees – it’s criminal, all those boats sat on their moorings, bobbing about aimlessly and little me wanting an hour on the water.
But the story ends well. After many enquiries we were directed to a boat hire shack on the Swan River in South Perth. We took the relaxing coffee cruise from Fremantle to Perth, where we happily rented a Funcat for an hour with minimal fuss. Alas, the wind was flakey that day and we alternated between zipping along and floating around in the middle of the river, desperately trying to avoid the ferry channel. Dave took the helm when I got frustrated and skippered very well, taking us in to shore for a perfect landing.
Despite the scorching sun and lack of wind, I was pleased to be out on the water again and it was a great way to view Perth city and it’s skyline. Thanks to the not-at-all-snooty hire guys who allowed to me partake in my number one pursuit for an hour.
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Fremantle: Scary spider moment
Posted by daveb on January 14th, 2009
We want to come home. It’s too hot and we just had our first scary spider moment. As we were getting ready for bed, I came across this hairy monster clinging to the wall next to my side of the bed.
Squiffy flipped out and passed me her flip-flip with which to pick a fight with this thing. After pep-talking myself for a wee while I took a swing and the fast thing broke into a sprint. Two more missed-swings and it had scampered downstairs, to hide under our ladder. I chased it downstairs and then lost my bottle. Squiffy, not-quite hysteric, implored me to do something and a debate over who should do what ensued, with nothing in particular being done. I realised that this spider was likely to be a Huntsman: big, scary-looking and able to defend with a bite, albeit a not-lethal one. Still, if looks could kill, I wouldn’t be here typing this now.
Eventually, and after further self pep-talking, the spider met the end of the garden broom and then received a complimentary whack with the sole of Squiffy’s shoe (the treads are too deep in my shoes, it might have survived) and was then unceremoniously flicked into the garden by means of a dustpan and brush. I had a cold shudder (and in recalling this episode, just got another one).
Lately, Squiffy has channelled her energies into researching and scaring herself silly at all of the deadly spiders indigenous to this part of the world — including learning how Huntsmen spiders commonly hide under car sun visors and fall on your lap as you reach for the shade whilst driving. It goes without saying that we now have a policy of leaving the visor down and inspecting the cockpit for spiders before turning the ignition key. Worryingly, it was only yesterday that I brushed off a few cobwebs from under the bonnet…
Oh and she’s fashioned a new portable spider-catching device to assist in any future arachnidic incidents. Wish us luck with that one!
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