I have always viewed myself as a low-maintenance girl and
relatively outdoorsy. I’ve gone on school trips in the past in which we lived
in three outfits, showered minimally, ate slop food and slept in cabins. After
staying within the urban life of Melbourne for months, finally, I was going to
experience the side of Australia how I had always imagined: the outback. If the
Great Ocean Road had such a reflective, overwhelming calming effect on me, the
outback should be even more of an amazing, mind freeing, back-to-nature type of
experience, I thought. Oh, how I was wrong.
We started our fourteen-hour voyage at 6:00am. Dozens of
cranky creatures piled on to our coach bus as the sun came up. Call me crazy or
ungrateful, but I have zero appreciation for a sunrise. I love a good sunset
more than anything, but he idea of watching the sun come up makes me shudder,
and all that a “good sunrise” means to me is that I have been forced out of my
bed at an uncomfortably early hour. This small factor aside, I was soon back
asleep and the bus proceeded towards the small, desolate town of Broken Hill.
The ride wasn’t bad at all since it was split up by several stops for food and
to walk around. Along with this, our witty bus rider kept us entertained by
playing odd Australian songs with lyrics such as “Come to Australia, you might
accidentally get killed.”
We crossed over the bridge, leaving the city life and
familiar behind in our state of Victoria and soon crossed into the state of New
South Wales which our driver announced over the speaker in an eerie, foreboding
voice, while using the echoing effect on his microphone. Little did I know, his
use of this echoing effect every time he uttered the words “New South Wales”
would seem entirely appropriate by the time we would be crossing over that
bridge returning into Victoria.
During the bus ride our teacher, Rob, walked around
assigning everyone to rooms for the next three nights. Lindsey, Casey, Mase,
Sarah and I snatched up the five-person room as soon as he came to us. Upon arrival
at the dusty, mustard painted, cat-lady-smelling hostel every room was called
out one by one, given keys, and pointed down the same hallway. When our room
was called the hostel owner smiled and said, “Let me show you to ‘Flat 5’,” and
proceeded to lead us out of the hostel into an alley where there was a door to
the right which would soon be our new home. Little did we know we had several
unexpected roommates to share our “flat” with: Cockroaches. And lots of them.
Who knew those suckers were invincible? I’ve heard they can withstand a nuclear
bomb, but we fully demolished one of them three times before giving up on the
zombie-roach. Everyone was quickly losing their cool, declaring that they were
finding somewhere else to sleep, and I sensed a growing vibe of chaos and panic
amongst us. I tried to diffuse the situation,
“Guys, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay. Cockroaches come
out in the night in the dark. It’s only when you turn the lights on that they
all scatter. Let’s just sleep with the lights on. They’ll never come out in the
first place, problem solved.” Everyone looked at each other and nodded
silently, put on their pajamas, climbed into our bunk beds and left the lights
on. And this is how our sleeping conditions stayed without question for the
next three nights.
We started our first day with the “amazing race” which was a
scavenger hunt around the small historic town of Broken Hill in 90-degree dry
heat. It started off as pretty fun and competitive but three hours and seven
realizations we were lost later, everyone was suddenly drenched in sweat,
hungry, and getting increasingly bitter and agitated. Everyone also began
appreciating my off-color Deliverance
references less and less. After the amazing race, instead of having a little
lunch to balance out the tense mood swing of the group, we went to the Royal
Flying Doctors Museum which is quite possibly the most random thing you could
ever take a group of students to see. Everyone agreed our teacher sat back and
thought, “Let me see, what’s there to do in this town?” and then proceeded to
take us to each of these offered activities. A movie and museum about the
history of the medical doctors that fly to transport people to the hospital,
though entirely irrelevant to our entire trip, was quite different and
interesting and has popped up periodically since then.
After our education on pilot doctors, we soon continued on
to an old mine. Broken Hill was historically a miner’s town, built solely for
the convenience of the people working in the mines living nearby their work. It
explains why we drove for hours through nothing but empty fields before
stumbling on a town surrounded by no other form of life for miles upon miles.
At the mine we were given the history lesson before our group suited up and traveled
down into the cool, damp, dark mine where we traveled deep into the earth with
flashlights strapped to our helmets. I enjoyed this new, fun and very unusual
experience, especially for seeing my friends in this odd environment, and at
the very least it gave everyone some hilarious pictures to walk away with. 
After leaving the mine we trekked up the trail of a big hill
to see the aboriginal rock formations at the peak and watch the sun set over
the valleys while listening to music, drinking wine, and alternating between
talking and sitting peacefully in silence. Nothing but miles of green hills
dotted with trees and shrubbery laid before us and the warm syrupy-colored haze
fell over the landscape perfectly. It was picturesque and serene and the connection
with the magnificence of nature and the relaxation that ensues was exactly what
everyone needed after our long day. On the walk back down the trail, one girl
commented on the flies being pretty bad. Our teacher, sporting a fly net,
snorted, “This is nothing.”
The next day we were taken to the highest point in Broken
Hill – a huge mound created completely from mine rubbish where there is a
memorial constructed for the miners that have died throughout the years. It was
beautifully, thoughtfully and symbolically designed which surprised me a little
to find such an elaborate memorial in such a small, remote town. The memorial
progressively got smaller as you walked through it to represent the actual
structure of the mines and incorporated wooden planks which would hold up the
tunnels of the mine. The platform on which the tribute is built is in the shape
of a cross. The memorial is very solemn and thoughtful, as it has listed every
person that died in the Broken Hill mines, the youngest being only 12-years-old.
It also details how every miner died which varied anywhere from electrocution
to diseases caused by the mines to being crushed to death. 
Following the memorial, we were then lucky enough to
complete a bucket list activity of mine: we rode camels! It was comical yet a
little insulting to hear the loud belts of grumbles and moans that sounded like
straight complaining filtering from the mouth of every camel as they lifted us
so much higher into the air than you’d ever expect. I’m not quite sure how camels
were ever used as a form of transportation because it is an extremely bumping
and full-body jostling experience. It was during our camel rides that we first
began to notice the serious pick up in the previously noted fly situation.
Rob, for some reason, took us to see an aboriginal sheep
shearing after our camel rides. I was interested since I had never seen
anything like it and also because a local boy approached us in Broken Hill’s
one watering hole solely to tell us his kiwi cousin “holds the world record for
sheep shearing – 850 in one hour.” However, after approximately five minutes, I
was one of about 15 people that left in tears from the traumatizing and brutal
sheep shearing. I became a vegetarian moments later. Probably equally as
upsetting as witnessing a sheep hop three fences to escape while his buddy is
bleeding out and being dragged around by his hind legs, though, was the fact
that Rob wasn’t kidding; the flies the night before really weren’t anything.
I don’t think I have ever felt more tormented in my entire
life than when we started our trek through a swampy path to some mystery
surprise destination. From head to toe every single one of us was covered in
flies constantly. We all carried branches, smacking them on either sides of our
neck in a continuous rhythm to try and keep the flies away from our faces. It
was something you’ve seen at some point in a documentary on tribes in
developing countries or maybe even on Survivor.
These flies were not content with landing on your shirt, no; they felt the need
to fly into your eyes, nose, mouth, and most annoyingly, your ears. You could
feel them running all over your legs and arms at any given moment like a long
hair attached to a limb you can’t quite find but you can feel its constant presence.
By the end of our walk, no one was speaking. It was ninety
degrees and I felt like the flies had become some sick form of torture. We were
all expecting this long walk to open up to some huge beautiful waterfall or
something that made our endured agony worthwhile but instead, the grand finale
was half of a stone wall. I wanted to punch someone, especially looking at our
teacher grinning from behind his fly net. Why wasn’t a fly net on the
“recommended things to pack” list he provided us with?
The worst part about our swamp walk was knowing we had to
turn around and do it all over again. Once we exited our swamp excursion, we
were then pointed up a huge hill – no, more like a small mountain – to where we
were promised the most unbelievable sunset of our lives. As we marched through
thigh-high dead grass towards our uphill climb, we never once halted our branch
swatting. If you continued the motion you could keep the flies away from your
face enough. Rob, who was sitting this round out in the air conditioned dining
area at the base, shouted after us to make sure we keep a constant eye out for
any snakes because they would be Eastern Brown Snakes, the second most
deadliest snake in the world, and we should do nothing but run if we see one.
Thank you for your words of wisdom, Rob, see you in a few.
With the fly prevention technique working relatively well
and no sightings of lethal snakes, everything was finally beginning to look up.
Suddenly, however, there was the sound of tumbling rocks and a thud behind me
followed by a string of swearing. I looked back to see Mase on the ground
clutching her shin. My EMT training completely took over as I hurried over to
her to investigate her injuries. Mase was already in tears and I grimaced when
I saw the very deep gash in her shin. I called over to Casey and Kathleen to go
run and grab the other chaperone, Dave, because we were in need of first aid.
I didn’t want to scare Mase so I kept telling her that it
was totally fine, but I was pretty sure I could see bone. Someone call the
Royal Flying Doctors, this was a serious wound and I was fairly certain Mase
was in need of stitches. I continued keeping calm and telling Mase it was okay
and wasn’t that bad at all. And maybe it wouldn’t have been that bad if Dave
was certified in first aid, or possibly even just common sense, but he had
experience in neither of these areas evidently and handed me one finger
band-aid. The worst and most disturbing part of the injury was the fact that
the flies immediately swarmed to the blood like a dead body. I needed multiple
hands acting as a fan around Mase’s wound while I cleaned the cut and made a
makeshift bandage from what our first aid kit had to offer. If anyone stopped
fanning the wound at any point, it was instantly filled with one straight sheet
of flies. This aside, our impromptu mountain hospital session was a success and
would do until we returned back to the base.
Our mini crisis had been diverted just in time to see a
truly amazing sunset. It was nothing less than remarkable and easily captured
first place in most extraordinary sunset I’ve ever seen. We could look down the
mountain over a wide range of what everyone has always imagined the outback to
look like. The sky was on fire with a golden mix of oranges, yellows and reds
which was casted all over the mountain, the valley below and on each of us.
Suddenly the flies, cockroaches, heat, and battle scars seemed petty and small
and the splendor of the deep, dirty outback unleashed its fullest potential of
natural beauty.
We spent the remainder of the night huddled around a
campfire and gazing up at the most stars I’ve ever seen in my entire life. In
the morning we again partook in a bucket list activity and spent the day in the
desert, but the newly uplifted tone had been set for the remainder of the trip.
We left the outback, hopefully forever, but we will always look back and laugh
at the progression of seemingly disastrous circumstances to the deeper
appreciation of the natural essence of Australia and we’ll know it was nothing
short of an experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment