This post was originally published in 2008. It has since been updated for accuracy of links and content.

And having seen the critters at night, gone into the opal mines, caught some yummy fish for dinner, listened to the mining bells chiming through Broken Hill, toured the inside of a Royal Flying Doctors emergency plane, and enjoyed the hospitality of oh so many people we have come across, we also feel we’ve managed to meet a few of the characters that live here and get a feeling for the pulse of the place.

So when set with the task of leaving something with the van; something that characterizes our trip and says something about us, we were torn.

Do we leave a chunk of opal we fossicked for? Nah. It’s mostly potch, and if you don’t look closely you’d think it’s just a rock with some shiny blue stuff.

Do we leave some fish? Nope. Caught it and ate it already.

Do we leave sand from our squeaky beach? Rather not. Gets between your toes something fierce.

How about a kangaroo, since we got close enough to pet one? No can do. I doubt that future ambassadors would appreciate this furry friend as a travel companion in the van, despite its cuteness.

Click Here to read the rest of this post and find out what we left with the World Nomads Ambassador Van to leave our mark. Thanks World Nomads for six unforgettable weeks!

This post Our World Nomads Ambassador Trip Legacy appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

This post was originally published in 2008. It has since been updated for accuracy of links and content.

Australia’s Great Ocean road meanders from Warnambool on the western end to Melbourne in the east. In the next few days we would see an array of spectacular vistas covering the gambit from raging ocean on eroded limestone cliffs, to serene fishing villages, to surfing towns with the merchandise and awesome off-shore breaks to prove it. Although you can technically drive Great Ocean Road in a day, you’d miss almost all of it to stay on the winding road that some locals have dubbed the Great Bitumen Sea Snake for all its twists and turns.

We were sure we saw other couples in passing cars doing exactly what we were doing: gaping from the awesome scenery to the local guidebook (Lonely Planet of course) and maps, then frantically pointing at the nearest turn-off to snap a few hundred more picture-perfect moments.

Interestingly though, there weren’t too many other couples in other cars to identify with. Why, you ask? Well, characteristic of the drum we march to that nobody else can figure out, we’re here in the off-season. Yes, in the south of Australia, the winter weather does not make for plentiful tourists.

But we also like it that way thank you very much. Rolling into towns such as Apollo Bay is a treat when you can:

A) find parking

B) nab an ideal place to sit at the local waterfront café

C) take a picture of the scenery without a dozen wandering people unwittingly getting in the shot.

Sure, we had to wear a few extra layers, and swimming was on the very outer edge of possibility without hyperthermia kicking in after about a minute. (We chose not to test that theory). But at least we had lots of sunshine and none of the rain that is characteristic of the region at this time of year.

And sure, the towns didn’t quite have the life and energy you’d feel if it was peak-season, but we actually got a chance to chat with the locals more so than we might have otherwise.

While chatting with one such local shopkeeper in Apollo Bay, we asked him about what it is like to run a business in such a seasonal town.

“It’s getting to be a year-round thing, slowly. We’re seeing more and more tourists in the off-season, and the actual off-season is getting shorter every year,” he said. “But for avoiding crowds, you’ve come at the right time. We have a permanent population of 1,200 that swells up to 10,000 in the summer.”

Great for business, bad for nature photography and hermits.

There is more to this engaging article! Check it out on our World Nomads Ambassador Trip Journal. One more post to go, then this part of our Aussie trip is over!

This post Winding Along Australia’s Great Ocean Road appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

This post about Brambuk Cultural Centre was originally published in 2008. It has since been updated for accuracy of links and content.

Being from Canada, we feel right at home in Oz. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again.

Everywhere we turn, we see more and more similarities between Australia and Canada, and are amazed that two countries so far apart geographically can share so many commonalities.

One such common bond, and one neither country is particularly proud of, is the struggle with our respective countries’ indigenous people, history, and culture. In settling both countries, aboriginals were ill-treated, not respected, and their history was largely erased instead of preserved.

The tragedy persists as now aboriginal people are left fighting for land, rights, and respect. Relations are strained at best, and although apologies have been issued by governments for historical blunders, there is a lot of ground to cover before everything is really okay again. Who knows – maybe things will never be okay again.

See also: The Australian Aboriginal Tent Embassy – The World’s Longest-Standing Protest

Before our journey into the outback, we were warned by some people of towns along the way that they considered unsafe to even stop at, much less chat with the locals (who were predominantly aboriginal). We were told not to make eye contact. We were warned of road-side ambushes, and told our fair share of horror stories – some possibly true, and others obviously not.

But knowing our own aboriginal issues back in Canada, we’ve always maintained that there are two sides to a story. So in many of the towns we have passed through, we’ve made a point of visiting the local aboriginal cultural centre in search of that balance. Some centres were informative, and others were not.

Which is why we were absolutely elated when we rolled into the Brambuk Cultural Centre in the heart of Grampians National Park. Free to all, and run in conjunction with Parks Victoria, this museum-cum-souvenir shop-cum-café is a place you could easily wile away a good chunk of the day.

So naturally, visiting Brambuk on the day of our departure from the Grampian mountains and spending the whole rainy morning there was heaven.

If you’d like to know more about what we saw and learned at Brambuk Cultural Centre, then check out the full article over at our World Nomads Ambassador Journal!

This post Setting the Records Straight at Brambuk Cultural Centre appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

This post was originally published in 2008 . It has since been updated for accuracy of links and content.

Being of a volume and pitch similar to what we heard in Hawaii when the tsunami warning system was tested each month, we wondered what these horns meant. We were pretty sure that a tsunami wasn’t an immediate risk in Broken Hill.

Broken Hill, otherwise known as the “accessible outback”, is a destination, but not. Some of the key draws of Broken Hill aren’t the city itself; rather the surrounding areas. Between the beautiful outback surrounding Broken Hill, sculptures in the Living Desert, the national park to the north full of aboriginal sites, the quirky ghost town of Silverton (home to many movie sets including Mad Max), the mining town of White Cliffs where people live underground to escape the summer heat, and the expansive cattle stations, Broken Hill’s appeal largely lies in the area 100kms around the city.

The town of Broken Hill itself is a heavy mining community with over 100 years of history. With lodes of iron, zinc, silver, and other metals, the landscape of Broken Hill somewhat resembles an open pore on the face of the Australian outback landscape that has been squeezed for its underground riches. This is not a particularly savoury analogy I know, but then again mining – as necessary as it is – isn’t a particularly savoury industry.

That is not to say that the city of Broken Hill should be avoided, by any means. There are numerous wonderful art galleries to enjoy – almost too many proportionate to the town’s size, but you won’t hear me complaining.

One such art gallery, and one not to be missed, is the Silver City Mint and Art Centre, where you can not only purchase beautiful hand-crafted jewellery and art made by a variety of local talent, but you can also view the Big Picture. Which is just as it sounds – a beautiful big picture; in fact it is the world largest canvas painting at 100metres in length.

Broken Hill is also home to some of the most friendly people, and conversations with passing strangers sometimes last 10 minutes, or even through tea. In our time at Broken Hill we have been invited into people’s homes and hearts, cattle stations, and places of business with warm welcomes and generosity that appears to be characteristic of the Australian Outback and even of Australia itself.

But you still don’t know what the mining horns mean yet! If you want to read the rest of this article and find out, please click here to see the article in full at our World Nomads Ambassador Trip Journal!

This post The Mining Horns of Broken Hill appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

While a title like Royal Flying Doctors might evoke images of yet another hospital trip for Kelly (as happened in Thailand and Hawaii), this story has a much happier ending.

This post was originally published in 2008. It has since been updated for accuracy of links and content.

No, instead, this is about an incredible tour we did of the Royal Flying Doctors Base in Broken Hill.  

Australia is big. Really big. And although Broken Hill is known as the “accessible outback”, most of the outback isn’t so easy to get to and through. So when a medical emergency strikes, there aren’t many options.

Until John Flynn entered the scene in the early 1900s, the options were either to survive or die. No outside help would be forthcoming. But John Flynn, a visionary who was distraught that the outback’s 2 million square kilometers was serviced by just two doctors, saw possibilities.

Against odds and criticism, he set up a program with radio alerts, a little canvas plane, and medical supply boxes that changed the face of medicine in rural Australia.  

The program blossomed from its start in 1928 to now: with 22 bases across the country, medical help is never more than 2 hours away, no matter how remote you are. These 22 bases serve a chunk of land larger than Western Europe. The program has two components: medical clinics (with a focus on prevention), and emergency service.

So not only can the RFDS help travelers and residents in the outback who are in need of emergency assistance, but the communities throughout the country are empowered with their own medical kits and regular clinics to prevent people from becoming ill or injured in the first place. W

e had a chance to chat with some of the employees at the base, and we even were so lucky as to get a peek inside the emergency services plane and speak with two emergency nurses. Stories of adventure and courage were plentiful, and we could tell that there is a strong bond among employees at the base peppered with lots of humour and fun.

“I couldn’t imagine going back to working for a living,” said Brendan, of his career as an emergency nurse. “Sure, you’re alone in the back of a metal tube at 20,000 feet providing medical care. It can be tough at times. But the view is incredible,” he said.      

The view was indeed incredible. We saw a full rainbow from the plane, and learned even more about the incredible outback and its medical angels. Read all about it at the full article here, courtesy of World Nomads.

This post Royal Flying Doctors to the Rescue! appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

“When I close my eyes, I see opals,” said Kelly, shaking his head.
It seems he has a touch of opal fever.

This post was originally published in 2008. It has since been updated for accuracy of links and content.

Lightning Ridge and the surrounding areas are famous for its abundance of opals, and in particular the black opal, which can basically only be found here. For decades, people have visited, and never left. They were entranced by this fiery precious gem; one that constantly changes and flickers in the light.

While I appreciate the area and the gem (and in fact acquired a few for my own personal enjoyment whilst here), I didn’t quite understand the fever itself, until I saw Kelly come down with it.

Lucky, this is one fever that didn’t require a hospital, as it did in Hawaii and Thailand.
There are a few ways you can mine for opal:

• Own a claim. A few thousand dollars, a few safety and environmental courses, and some heavy machinery later, and you have yourself a mineral claim, and the ability to go underground for opal. More on the opal mining process in a minute.
• Go fossicking or “noodling”. You accomplish this silly sounding task by going to the rubbish dumps, where miners have dumped truck after truck load of sandstone from their mines. Although miners have a pretty keen eye for opal, it is very easy to miss a chunk while chipping away at the sandstone underground. This is where the fossickers and noodlers can make a living if they work hard enough. A full-time fossicker in a heavily mined area about 60kms from Lightning Ridge can make an average income of $20,000. Some may say that’s pretty meager, while they will say that they’re outside, with nary a care in the world, and enjoying every day. Fossicking is also the most common way for a short-term visitor or tourist to try to get their hands on some opal.
• Actually, the most COMMON way for the average tourist to mine for opal, is in the jewelry stores. In Lightning Ridge, you can mine through store after store and dealer after dealer looking for that perfect piece of opal to take home with you.

There are also a number of different types of opals, and ways of fashioning them into gems too. The two main types of opal are:

• Black Opal. Since the back of the stone is black (or almost black, for the “semi-black” or “grey” opals), the colours of the opal shine magnificently. This is the rarest kind of opal, and the Lightning Ridge area is one of the few places in the world to find it.
• White Opal. This is a more common form of opal, with an array of glittering colours shining through a milky white stone. White opals can also be found at Lightning Ridge, as well as the well known mining town of Coober Pedy and other places.

As for finding the opal that will suit your pocketbook and still be “the real deal”, here are a few pointers on the different types you’ll find:

• Solid Opal. Being the most precious type of opal, your wallet will feel the effects of buying a solid stone the most. It is just as it sounds: solid.
• Doublet. A doublet is a thin slice of solid opal, glued on to a black backing of potch (which is technically opal, but is colourless and therefore worthless). Doublets can be quite magnificent since the colours of the stone shine against the dark backing.
• Triplet. This is the lowest grade of opal, but also the least expensive. Similar to a doublet, a triplet is a thin sliver of opal glued onto a dark backing, and then covered on top with a layer of silicone or crystal. This protects the stone, makes it look bigger than it is, and helps the colours of your tiny slice of gem to shine radiantly.

And of course, ask anybody in town what they prefer, and they wouldn’t be seen with anything other than a solid opal. Then again, they find the bloody things laying on the ground half the time around here.

THIS POST ISN’T FINISHED! We got to visit a personal underground mine, spend a Friday night at a pub/library/community center/general store with a rascaly bunch, and we even scored some opal! Read the rest of our story here at the World Nomads Ambassador Journal.

Other Lightning Ridge Adventures:

Lightning Ridge Australia: The People, The Appeal

Lightning Ridge: Past and Present, Outback and Inland

The Black Queen Experience at Lightning Ridge

This post Lightning Ridge: Catching Opal Fever appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

“Outback theatre with a twist,” says the flyer for Black Queen, with a picture of an oil lamp and a woman with a mysterious look. I didn’t really anticipate that this opal mining town would exactly have a bustling theatre community, but there it is.

This post was originally published in 2008. It has since been updated for accuracy of links and content. Unfortunately The Black Queen experience has permanently closed. I

And being an actor/singer/dancer, of course my interests are piqued.
We drive along one of the five guided tours through Lightning Ridge, through old mining settlements. The white sandstone gravel roads weave in and out of this small off-grid community, and without the red car door signs leading the way, we would most certainly be lost by now.

After driving by rusted out trailers and toilets and cars and whatnot, my hopes for a genuine theatrical experience wane. I must admit there’s a sort of artistic beauty to an old car with about 12 cats milling on and around it, surrounded by flat white ground with sandstone piles everywhere. But I’m busy dashing my hopes of seeing a real show so I try not to be too taken with this unique scenery.

Pulling up to Black Queen, though, re-engages my imagination right away. The property, located on the very edge of Lightning Ridge, is charming and unique. The walls of the three cottages that make up this home are made of bottles, stones, and hand-mixed cement, and the surrounding property is filled with old signs about the Black Queen, monuments, and various little surprises for anybody looking hard enough.

We are immediately met by Gail, who is our fearless leader in this piece of outback theatre with a twist. I look over at the other four people joining us for the show, and think “Eek! Awkward. Doing a show for only six people? And I can only imagine how strange it would be if we were just two.”
But as we settle into the first cottage, and the first act, I realize that she can’t fit in many more people than what we have. We are almost a full house. And I also realize that we are actually sitting in the set. This theatre does have a twist indeed.

We have some incredible pictures of the Black Queen, along with the rest of this story, over at the World Nomads Journal here. Check it out!

This post Lightning Ridge: The Black Queen Experience appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

I was crushed. Luckily things changed, very quickly.

This post was originally published in 2008. It has since been updated for accuracy of links and content.

Ever since reading about it in the Lonely Planet, I wanted to go, and was prepared to travel out of our way to get there.
Lonely Planet says:

“Near the Queensland borer, this fiercely independent and strikingly imaginative mining community (one of the world’s few sources of black opals) has real frontier spirit. Battlers still dream of striking it rich underground here, and now and again some of them even do. Consequently, the streets are trodden by eccentric artisans, true-blue bushies and the general unconventional collective.
And that’s all ridgy-didge in the Ridge.”

So luckily, while attending a local Rotary meeting, and consequently spending the following few days enjoying the hospitality of many of the locals, we too had a chance to fall in love with Lightning Ridge.

The Rotary meeting was, of course, wonderful. As Rotarians, wherever we are in the world, attending Rotary meetings gives us a chance to trade stories with other people, all sharing the common goal of providing Service Above Self. We always have a good time.

Chris (short for Christine) was the first woman to open her heart and home to us. She had an additional flat on her property that was empty, so it was “no big deal” to her for us to stay there. Neither were the bacon and eggs in the morning, the wonderful dinner, contacts in Broken Hill and Melbourne, parting gifts, or unmitigated access to her laundry and small fruit orchard. She shrugged off all our accolades of appreciation, and said that it was just as nice to share company with somebody from abroad. We have opened up our (so far nonexistent) home in Canada to her; as soon as we get one, we hope she’ll visit!

I asked her why she and her husband (who was out of town) like to live here, since they are some of the few residents who aren’t here for the opal mining. And it seems that what makes Lightning Ridge attractive is also what makes it hard to take: isolation. At first, she and her family loved small town life, and lived in many of the smaller towns in the area. There is a rampant sense of community, and a real beauty to this chunk of land on the edge of the Australian outback. But now for Chris, with grown up children living in Perth and New Zealand, one with two kids of their own, the negative side of the isolation can be tough.

“It’s hard for somebody to visit us,” Chris said one day. “You have to fly into somewhere like Brisbane, and then it still a full day of driving to and from Lightning Ridge. Not a lot of people have that kind of time these days.”

This is true. You can’t just happen to pass through Lightning Ridge; you have to want to come here. With only one road in and out of town, no railway, and an insignificant airport, it’s not a thoroughfare by any means. We had basically planned our own road trip around Lightning Ridge being one of the determining factors of our route.

While we’re on our sponsored trip courtesy of World Nomads, we’re publishing all full stories to our journal over there. So to read the rest of this post, click here and check it out!

This post Lightning Ridge: The People, and The Appeal appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

This post was originally published in 2008. It has since been updated for accuracy of links and content.

But somehow it also adds to the character of Lightning Ridge, which is quirky and whimsical. There is so very much more than meets the eye if you want to discover its colourful underbelly. Allow yourself to stay a while. Head to the bowling club or one of the handful of cafés to meet some locals, and stay long enough to get to know them. If you do, you’ll see a whole different side to Lightning Ridge that is fascinating.

Never have we met such a concentrated group of incredibly generous people, who are so proud of their home town. They were willing to give of themselves to help us, and expressed as much interest in our story as we had in theirs.

Everybody has a different and unique story of how they came to Lightning Ridge. Only a few people we spoke to were born and raised here; almost everybody comes from somewhere else.
“In the old days of mining here, people came here to disappear. You rarely knew anybody’s name, and those names you knew were probably fake nicknames in any case. You didn’t ask much about somebody, and they didn’t tell too much either,” said one person about the opal rush that started in the early 1900s and converted Lightning Ridge from a deserted piece of land to a bustling mining town.

People came from all over the world and bought (or squatted on) “claims”: access to small pieces of land with permission to dig shafts to mine for opal. Anybody could and still can do it; for a few thousand dollars you could set yourself up with a claim, a trailer to live in, and much of the equipment you need to operate your small and practically instantaneous mining business.
And although there are still a number of mines and miners in Lightning Ridge, many of the big miners and prospectors are starting to do their active work further a field. It was when this started happening that the town collectively and individually had a choice to make: pack up and move shop, capitalize on the already steady stream of visitors to town wanting to see what “opal fever” is all about. And so it was that tourism became the main draw (and a large income source) for Lightning Ridge.

Please click through here to read the rest of this post (and see more pictures) on Lightning Ridge. It has been a true highlight of our World Nomads trip!

Other Lightning Ridge Posts:

Catching Opal Fever

Lightning Ridge: The People and the Appeal

The Black Queen Experience: Outback Theatre

This post Lightning Ridge: Past and Present appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

It did however get bloody cold at night – no big surprise for us by now. Armed with blankets and many layers of clothing, the cold at night was bearable. And the beauty and warmth of the days made the nights all the more tempered for us. We were constantly amazed that we had so much of this unbelievably beautiful national park substantially to ourselves.

This post was originally published in 2008. It has since been updated for accuracy of links and content.

Note: After this campervan extravaganza, we volunteered in trade for free accommodation in Victoria at an animal sanctuary, where a rehabilitated kangaroo fell in love with me. Like, literally. He followed me EVERYWHERE. You have to see it to believe it.

Immediately we saw kangaroos everywhere. We passed no less than a dozen of them grazing by the side of the road between the visitor centre and our campsite a short distance away. And every time I saw one I clapped my hands in glee.

We set up camp and enjoyed watching the kangaroos graze not twenty meters away from us. Photo sessions began, and there was much clapping of hands in glee. At sunset, we heard what was now becoming the commonplace symphony of birdsong (including the ape-like cackle of the kookaburra and the deafening prehistoric sounding scream of the cockatoo), and at night, we could hear the low belch-like grunts of emus grazing all around us.

Arising (and defrosting) the following morning, we saw yet more kangaroos hopping around our van, and there was more gleeful clapping of hands and photo sessions.

Our treks through the park over the following two days were incredible. Warrumbungle National Park is the remnants of a volcanic explosion that took place almost 17 million years ago, leaving 1,000 meter high granite spires and domes poking out amongst an otherwise flat landscape all around. The life that pulses through the lush green valleys in between is evident everywhere. Birds of all kinds (gosh, we love the colourful Aussie birds), goats (gosh, we miss the goats in Hawaii), emus, koalas (although we didn’t see any), and of course – kangaroos.

We trekked over peaks and through valleys, journeying about 30kms over the two days. We regularly caught ourselves forgetting that we weren’t in Canada since much of the scenery was similar, and only upon seeing an intrinsically Australian animal would we be reminded of where we are. And how lucky we are to be here.

If you didn’t already know, we’re on a sponsored trip courtesy of World Nomads and a variety of other wonderful organizations! As part of our trip, we are blogging about it over at the World Nomads Journal Platform. So if you want to read the rest of this article, you’ll have to pop over there by following this link to see it! Cheers…

This post Kangaroo Spotting in Warrumbungle National Park appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!