Part 7 - Going Home
March 28 - 30, 2008
Friday, March 28th: Wilpena Pound to Adelaide
When I woke up, I realized that I'd left my GPS on all night. That shouldn't be a big deal, but somehow overnight, it lost all of the Australia maps, so it was no good for navigation anymore, and there was no way to transfer maps to the device with the Garmin software on my Mac at the time. (I think, though I'm not sure, that the problem was just that the memory card had come unseated, but between the tooth and the Vicodin and everything else, I probably wasn't thinking very clearly at this point in the trip.)
We packed up the bags, loaded up the car, and prepared to get on the road for a leisurely drive back to Adelaide. When I went to unplug the power cord for my GPS (since it wasn't useful anymore), the power cable basically exploded and scattered parts all over the car. I guess somehow the end of it had come unscrewed, and the spring-loaded fuse in the cigarette lighter plug just flung parts everywhere. So I fished all the parts out from under the seats, put the cable back together, and checked out of the hotel, with today starting out with the same "fail" theme as the day before.
We drove to the Youramboola Caves to see some more rock paintings. The trail started out through a rocky field (seriously, this place was rocky). The first site was easy to find, and had some cool stair-ladder things to get up to a fenced-in rock overhang with lots of clear cave paintings. The view back down to the car illustrated how desolate the area was. The trail continued to two more sites, but it was hard to follow and we took a wrong turn. I asked a kangaroo for directions (what can I say, Vicodin), but it was no help. Eventually we found the real trail and the other paintings, which were a little different but not quite as good as those we'd already seen. We also saw a little rock arch. There was an unofficial shortcut trail back to the car, but I'm a rule-follower, so we backtracked on the real trail to the car.
Our next stop was the Kanyaka Homestead, with ruins of an old sheep farm including a main building, several smaller buildings, a sheep shearing shed, and more stick figures in peril. The intriguingly-named Death Rock was supposedly in the area, but we didn't find it at the homestead. We drove on and saw a trailhead sign for Death Rock. The trail lead to the Kanyaka water hole, but there was no explanation for what Death Rock was, and we saw several candidate rocks. I posed with a sign and called it good. We also saw an embankment that used to be part of the old Ghan railroad line, which ran from Port Augusta to Alice Springs.
We had lunch in a quiet town called Quorn, where I seriously thought about trying to find a dentist, but instead just filled up the car. We saw in a tabloid that the woman whose baby carriage rolled into the river in Adelaide (weirdness right up there with "a dingo took my baby") was pregnant again. After lunch, we drove through the town of Wilmington to the opposite side of Mt. Remarkable National Park from where we'd visited a few days earlier. My tooth was killing me, so we walked a couple of short trails to Alligator Gorge lookouts, but skipped the actual trail into the gorge.
The rest of the day was driving. We drove forever to get to the town of Clare, the start of the Clare Valley wine region. Then we drove forever and ever through a bunch of very quaint small towns, vineyards, and sheep farms in the Clare and Barossa valleys that I probably would have enjoyed if I wasn't so miserable. Eventually I couldn't take it anymore and after one last scenic overlook, we picked out a direct route into Adelaide. We stopped in Gawler, a reasonable-sized town, for dinner, but everything was either closed or takeout-only. We ended up eating at Subway, and I was so out of it that I didn't care. When we finally made it to Adelaide, we thankfully found our hotel without much trouble, checked in, and crashed for the night.
Saturday, March 29th: Adelaide to Brisbane
For our last full day in the country, we got up super early to get to the airport for a flight to Brisbane. We topped off the car with gas and paid for a car wash (the car was filthy after all the dirt roads we'd driven on) even though it started pouring rain while we were at the gas station. The end result was that the car ended up slightly less dirty. My tooth had settled down a little - it hurt like a normal toothache rather than a super toothache, and was only excruciating when I chewed on it.
At the airport, we stuffed our carry-on bags to get the weight down in our checked bags, but this time the clerk didn't care - he didn't charge us the bag fee, and didn't check Julie's ID at all. I bought a sweater (souvenir for my dad), and then we finally got something for free - Internet access at the Adelaide airport. Small victories.
Our flight was uneventful, but we did learn that the time difference is weird between South Australia and Queensland, like 1.5 hours different. We picked up our rental car from Avis, which was a much simpler process (with no terrifying deductable lecture beforehand) than we'd been getting from other agencies.
Without much of a plan, we drove back down to the Gold Coast (the Florida-like area we'd first visited about 3 weeks earlier) to visit the Pacific Fair mall again. It was nice enough, but nothing too exciting. I found a few overpriced Star Wars action figures and some Australian Kit Kats, and Julie bought some small souvenirs for her friends. We had lunch at a decent restaurant, where I had a pretty good burrito that I had a heck of a time chewing (and it had tomatoes and carrots in it, which was not ideal). We wandered around the mall for a while until we got tired. I was completely exhausted by this point, too tired to do anything else, and really ready to go home. I didn't even take a single photo on this last day of the trip.
On the way back to Brisbane, we stopped at one other shopping centre. It was closing at 5 PM, which was bad enough, but most everything was already closed at 4:30. We drove on, found our hotel, and checked in. I had to verify for the front desk that, no, we hadn't already paid for our room through Expedia. Lucky for them I'm so honest. We got our bags set for the flight home, got all our customs declaration information in order, and then drove out for dinner. We found a good, busy, local Italian place and had the best meal out of the whole 3 week trip on the last evening.
Sunday, March 30th: Travel Home
On Sunday morning, we were finally headed home. Only most of a day on airplanes stood between us and the comforts (and dentistry) of home. We returned the rental car without any hassles and got into the airport a little less than 2 hours before our flight. The check-in lines were a disaster - they were apparently trying to check in two big international flights at the same time, with only about half the counters open. It took us about an hour to get checked in, and my stress level was rising. The immigration line wasn't bad, but the security line was moving slow even though it was short. People around us were starting to freak out about missing the flight, and eventually they started letting people on the LA flight (like us) go through the flight crew security line. The gate was a long way off, and then there was a massive line to board the plane when we got there. I got randomly frisked as I entered the gate area; Australia was getting in some final shots on the way out.
Our seats were pretty terrible - a window and a middle seat, with a sleeping stranger in the aisle seat, keeping us trapped for most of the flight. I couldn't sleep on this flight, but the first 9 hours of the flight went by pretty quickly. I watched a lot of TV (Simpsons, Family Guy, Curious Tribe, Are You Being Served, Top Gear, and even the first time I'd ever seen The Blues Brothers). The last 3 hours were tougher, after I got too tired and bored to watch any more TV.
Once we got to LA, it took a while to get off the plane, but we breezed through immigration, claiming our bags, and clearing customs. We walked a couple of terminals over (I may have mentioned that LAX is terrible) to check in for our Delta flight, and it was a disaster, even in the Medallion line. The bag screening was also backed up, so we just had to abandon our bags in a big pile at the screening station and hope for the best. We had to walk to yet another terminal to get to our gate (did I mention that LAX is terrible?). The ID check for security was moving really slowly, so they randomly sent a bunch of us upstairs in an elevator to be checked. A pushy couple cut in front of us, but I was too tired to argue. Good for them that they got to the terminal to sit around and kill time 32 seconds faster than we did. The plane was late departing because the flight attendants were late arriving. The flight was miserable, because I was too tired to read or watch TV or do crosswords, but too uncomfortable in the middle seat to sleep.
In one last switcheroo, my tooth stopped hurting altogether. No more toothache...unless I accidentally clicked my teeth together (like to chew), at which point excruciating, debilitating pain would shoot through my jaw. Eating link sausage in the airline breakfast, where you had to keep biting harder until you bit through the casing and your teeth snapped together, caused more than a few muffled screams. Good times.
Finally back in Atlanta, we got our bags quickly and got in the car with my parents. We saw some amazing things, and I can't wait for another chance to go back to Australia, but at the time, I was never so glad to be home in my life. (I ended up having a root canal on the tooth, but after the last couple of weeks, a root canal was like heaven by comparison. Of course, that was just the beginning of another saga with this stupid tooth, but that's another story...)