Arriving in Bald Ridge

Adelaide Botanical Gardens

My parents are both high school teachers. My dad taught a girl, Dawne, who married an Australian, Rick, and has been living here for 18 years. They offer to put me up for a bit on their ranch. I take the train from Sydney and make my way up into the Blue Mountains. There’s a bit of snow on the mountains and vast expanses of forest out the window. I had planned on getting some reading done but I just stare out the window the entire ride. I arrive in a town called Lithgow and hang around there waiting for the bus, then to Mudgee where the couple I’m staying with pick me up. We aren’t at their ranch yet. This is after all Australia, where everything is separated by an enormous amount of land. It takes us about an hour to get out there. It’s dark but we look around for some kangaroos. No luck.

I’ve been surviving for the last 2-3 weeks on lentils, apples, and bread. That wasn’t how it was in Melbourne. I gluttonously ravaged my way across the restaurants of Melbourne, not realizing that when you buy food that actually DECREASES the total amount money you have overall. Hence, the meager rations. Don’t get me wrong — I ate a lot of lentils, apples, and bread, but couple that with walking about 5 or more miles each day, I had lost 15 pounds in those weeks. I don’t have a scale to weigh myself here with the family I’m staying with, but I can only assume I’m gaining some of those pounds back. All I have to say about that is fooooooooood. Massive amounts of food, great tasting food, wine, beer, fooooooooood.

This is also the first place I try Vegemite, the dark brown, salty substance Australians swear by and at which many foreigners shudder. It’s made from yeast extract and you spread it on things like toast or sandwiches. Dawne says she’s developed a taste for it. Since I try almost anything at least once in my travels, I get a big glob of it and put it on some toast for breakfast. I salt, and after all the descriptions I’ve heard of Vegemite I figure I’ll love it. After trying it, maybe it still needs quite some time to grow on me.

We have the neighbors over one night for supper. Rob runs an organic farm next door (10 miles away) and offers to let me stay for a while there. I don’t refuse. I’ll be going there tomorrow or the next day.

For the weekend we head to Tamworth, the country music capital of Australia. It’s about 3 hours way. They have a small house there and a ranch. I sadly hear no country music there — I only walked into the town on a Sunday evening when everything is dead, but I pass by the single hostel and actually see someone I know, a Norwegian girl I met in Melbourne. She is very busy getting some beers finished before her bus ride.

We only spend a few days in Tamworth and now are back a their main ranch. I seem to bring the rain here wherever I go, which is welcome as they’ve been having a drought for the last few years. Hopefully the rain won’t follow me to Indonesia. which brings us to my next destination: Jakarta, Indonesia. I just bought a plane ticket for the 7th of July. It’s non refundable, which is my favorite because it means I have a solid plan.

There’s not much I’ve written about where I am now, I realize. I’m not meeting kooky people like I do in the cities or discussing the nuances of Brazillian sexcapades with Dutch travelers (didn’t I mention that?The details aren’t terribly interesting, and so for the sake of boredom and keeping this blog relatively less than an R rating we’ll skip it, except to say the Dutch traveler hung out with me all day in Sydney telling me about his travels. He’s a hacker turned computer security analyst in Holland), but I’m having a gently relaxing time out in the bush.