Adelaide and Area

I arrived in Sydney last evening, after a week in Adelaide and the surrounding area.

I really only spent one full day in the city of Adelaide. Then I was off on another campervan adventure. I had another 4wd “Trekker”, which is the same vehicle I damaged in Darwin. This time, I managed to return the vehicle unscathed, even though I did drive some 4wd roads.

Adelaide

Adelaide seems like another pleasant, small city, much like Perth. I didn’t see to much of it however. On the afternoon of my full day there, I just went to see the new James Bond film, Casino Royale.

They could have called it Bond Begins, as it shares many traits with Batman Begins. The main thing is that they ignored all of the previous movies in the series, and started afresh defining the Bond character. In the last 20 Bond films, the character of James Bond has almost no character development, and he is mostly just a prop that is moved around between action sequences. In Casino Royale, the focus is primarily on developing the James Bond character, and the action scenes are secondary. It makes for what may be the best James Bond film, competing the first two or three Sean Connery films.

Mungo National Park

Mungo is actually in New South Wales (Adelaide is in South Australia), and I also had to drive through Victoria, to get there.

There are a number of lakebeds in the park. The lakes have been dry for 20,000 years, but the former shorelines are now significant archaeological sites. Traces of human habitation have been found, dating back 60,000 years. The traces are primitive tools, fireplaces, and the remains of meals. They are buried in the sand and dirt of what had been the beach.

Now, the former beach areas have interesting eroded formations.

Murray-Sunset National Park

South of Mungo, the Murray-Sunset park is mostly accessible via 4wd roads. These roads could be mostly driven by car, except for some short stretches which require the high clearance and traction of a 4wd.

There was only one short “technical” section that I encountered. The track I travelled had to cross a few hills that were really vegetated sand dunes. At the crest of the hill, the sand was very deep and loose, similar to what I encountered on the Jim-Jim Falls track. However, in this case, the track was quite wide and straight, so the chance of hitting a tree were slim.

I have learned that crossing these sandy stretches requires the delicate use of lots of torque! You need power to “break trail” with the front wheels, but too much power will cause the wheels to spin in place, and dig downwards, until you get stuck.

On one dune crest, the track up was very steep, and I could not quite reach the crest before I ran out of momentum. I put the gearbox into “low range” and backed up a bit in the track I had already made. I then ran forward, using momentum to move a little forward of the previous position. After doing this a dozen times, I was over the crest, and I could go back to high range to descend the other side.

Other than the 4wd track, there was not much excitement.

Limestone Coast

The final place I explored was the Limestone Coast. It has some mildly interesting beaches and seaside towns.

The most notable thing, for me, is that it gets very cold at night, camping near the ocean!

Dead iPod

Yesterday, I found my iPod is dead! It comes up with a “sad iPod” icon, which means a hardware fault. With an iPod, it means: time to buy a new one. Fixing an old one will cost as much as buying a replacement! I do not feel or hear the hard drive spinning up, so the drive is probably dead.

I have all of my music backed up on mp3tunes.com, so I may be able to buy a new iPod, download all of my music (over 30GB!), and install it. I have to investigate the feasibility of doing this.

Still No Packages

The packages sent to both Alice Springs and Sydney still have not shown up. This is very bad! I am trying to get the tracking numbers for the packages that were sent by Express Mail through USPS and Australia Post. Obviously, something has gone horribly wrong to make these parcels so late!