Australia 1999 – part 1

My Australia travel 1999 (part 1) summary:

Visited: February 1999

Duration of this visit: 85 days (total Australia: 101 days)

Capital city: Canberra

Population: 26.6 million (2023)

Australia travel blog 1999 reading time (part 1): 9 minutes

• Picking-up grapes and pears to earn money for further travelling.
• Beautiful cities of Melbourne, Adelaide and especially Sydney.
• Sunrise and sunset at Uluru and The Olgas sacred mountains.
• Swarmed by flies whenever I stopped in the bush.
• Learning to play the didgeridoo in Alice Springs.

In 1999, Australia became the starting point of my 15-month Asian Big Tour – a journey through South-Eastern Asia and China to India.

In this article I describe the first part of Australia travel adventure in 1999, where I spent almost three months travelling and working: a bed in Melbourne, life on the pear and grape plantations, sacred mountains of Uluru and The Olgas, surviving 50°C in Coober Pedy, fighting flies, and learning to play the didgeridoo.

More articles about my Australia travel adventures are available here:

The heat at Melbourne airport was much more bearable than during stopovers in Sydney and Denpasar. 48 hours after having left my home in Slovenia, I only wanted a bed in one of the youth hostels, as the discomfort on the planes and airports really tired me out. An old house near the beautifully kept city center gave me cheap shelter, a simple kitchen, a useless TV, and friendly Japanese roommates.

At night, the ground floor turned into a classic Australian pub. Loud music filled the space, often drowned out by men shouting over ice-cold beers. I quickly learned that not drinking beer in Australia felt almost sinful, and there seemed to be very few sinners.

Melbourne is a modern city filled with contemporary glass towers that look impressive from a distance. Up close, they felt unsettling and made me wonder where this race for space is leading us. Lack of space is hardly an issue in Australia’s endless expanses, where land is abundant beyond the major metropolitan areas.

I don’t remember many specific places to visit or things to do in Melbourne. For me, it was more a starting point to rest, adjust, and get a first feel for the culture and Australian lifestyle.

Shepparton, along with Mildura, is Victoria’s main fruit-growing region and a perfect place to look for temporary work.

I expected trouble with the authorities, as working on a tourist visa was officially forbidden. In reality, many travelers took casual jobs because locals had little interest in hard work for low pay. They have strong social support systems that allow them to live comfortably without working too much.

Early in the morning, I set out to find a pear plantation owner who might give me a chance to prove my skills and earn money. After half an hour of walking, I reached the fourth plantation and finally came across the first pickers.

“No visa, no problem!” replied John, with a smile on his face.

Nicknamed Giovanni, a middle-aged man born in Australia who considered himself French, had only visited his parents’ country once. He handed me an old tractor and a trailer with three large empty containers to be filled with pears.

“I will pay you 19 AUD for each container you fill up and you can work as much time as you want!“

He showed me a few speed moves and tactics to be successful and I was ready to go. There were so many pears that it would take at least a dozen hands to follow my eyes.

I stayed at Giovanni’s farm for two weeks, getting up at six in the morning and walking half an hour from camp to work. I picked pears for 10–12 hours a day with a short lunch break.

In the evening, my girlfriend prepared a delicious dinner in the overcrowded camp kitchen, packing part of it for our lunch the next day. Alongside the intense work rhythm, the biggest challenges were small flies and the unbearable 35°C heat.

Giovanni left us alone most of the time, always repeating the same phrases in rare conversations. I needed quite some time before I realized how bad his English actually was. He criticized government policy over and over, Australians’ laziness and the situation in Albania.

“Albania is very bad!” he suddenly said one day.

I watched him, surprised at how confidently he spoke about one of Europe’s poorest countries. I could barely hold back my laughter, joking about his blunt remarks later.

The irony was clear: he owned a large farm in Australia, while I was educated but broke, picking fruit from his trees and walking back to my temporarily home – a tent.

A town of Mildura replaced Shepparton, pears were substituted by grapes, while the daily routine remained pretty much the same. Picking pears is better suited to men, because the job involves climbing ladders while carrying a heavy bag on the chest. Grape picking is easier for smaller and more skilled workers, especially women.

For me, working in the vineyards was much harder than picking pears. I often cursed the metal baskets that had to be filled with white grapes. Because it had rained just before harvest, the grapes were very delicate. As soon as I touched them, many fell off and landed in the tall grass instead of in the basket.

Luckily, I met a kind Slovenian family in Mildura who gave me a place to stay. I lived for a while in an old garage with a comfortable bed. It was far from a luxury hotel, but after a hard day of work, all I needed was a good shower and a clean, comfortable bed close to the vineyard.

A week later, the grape harvest ended, but I soon found work on another farm. The heat was worse than in Shepparton, I was exhausted, and the boss unfairly cut my pay every Friday.

After three weeks, I had enough of hard work. I started my Australia travel adventure and exploring new places, which was the main reason I came to Australia.

Adelaide is the starting point for a trip into the Australian bush, towards the famous Uluru mountain. I also visited museums and other landmarks, from old warehouse buildings to modern exhibition spaces. My main goal was to find cheap transport to Alice Springs, where I planned to figure out how to get to Uluru.

The best option would be a person driving alone who needs someone to share fuel costs with similar itinerary. I found a British traveler named Phil with an old Ford Falcon, and he fit all my criteria. The next day, another Australian girl joined us, and we started a long drive into central Australia. It was the next stop in my Australia travel adventure.

We drove for twelve hours through a boring desert and reached Coober Pedy in the late afternoon. It is known as one of the hottest places in Australia.

Temperatures here rise above 50°C in summer and drop to 0°C at night in winter. Because of these extreme conditions, many residents live in underground homes where the temperature stays around 25°C all year.

People built these homes in old opal mines and turned them into living spaces with rooms and normal house facilities. They are called dugouts. The only downside is the lack of natural light because there are no windows.

Coober Pedy is known as the biggest opal deposit in the world because of the large amount of precious opals mined there. These are clear stones that shine in red, green, blue, and other colors when exposed to the sunlight. Rich opal deposits and profitable mining are the main reasons why about 1,500 people live in this harsh, unattractive place. The climate is extreme, the soil is infertile, and there is very little water. So, there are no green areas.

We spent two nights in an underground camp that was just a large tunnel dug a few meters below the ground. The camp was a few kilometers from the downtown, which made it feel safer than Coober Pedy itself. In the town, drunk Aboriginal people sometimes wandered the streets looking for trouble.

The sacred mountain of Australia’s Indigenous people is located in the center of the continent at 863 meters above sea level. It is called Uluru in the Aboriginal language and Ayers Rock in English.

A large sandstone formation rises out of the desert, as if it had fallen from the sky. Uluru was formed over millions of years by erosion of the softer surrounding rock. Beneath the surface, it extends at least another 2.5 kilometers.

One of Australia’s most recognizable natural landmarks, Uluru is a famous place to visit and a major attraction. This beautiful orange-brown-red rock attracts thousands of tourists from all over the world each year. I had seen images of it many times before, but the feeling of seeing it in real life for the first time was impossible to describe.

My excitement increased after walking around Uluru on a 10-kilometre trail. Its red color changes throughout the day and comes alive again just before the sun sets behind the horizon.

For Aboriginal people, Uluru is a sacred mountain, so climbing it would be seen as disrespectful and a form of contamination.

But tourists wouldn’t be tourists if they didn’t do that. I had decided long ago to respect the Aboriginal people and only admire Uluru from below. The climb is also very dangerous and not suitable for many unfit visitors, who rush up and down just to take quick photos.

The second sacred mountain, Kata Tjuta, also known as the Olgas, is located 25 kilometers from Uluru. It is just as impressive as its famous neighbor. This group of large dome-shaped rock formations rises more than 546 meters above the dry landscape and is also sacred to Aboriginal people. The sandstone colors change just like Uluru, from bright red and orange to dark red at sunset.

Uluru and Kata Tjuta were among the highlights of my Australia travel adventure, and two of the most memorable places I visited.

During ten days of driving through the southern and northern territories, I saw only eight kangaroos along the road, and all of them were dead.

This happens because they are most active during the night when temperatures drop. At that time, they often jump around and end up under the wheels of road trains, large trucks with multiple trailers.

In Alice Springs, I learned the basics of playing the traditional Aboriginal instrument, the didgeridoo. It is made from hardwoods, especially eucalyptus, which are naturally hollowed out and shaped by termites or cutting.

To play this wind instrument and produce a deep, resonant sound, a special breathing technique must be learned.

This technique is called circular breathing and involves keeping the lips vibrating to create a continuous drone while breathing in through the nose.

During a basic lesson, we practiced how to breathe out continuously through the mouth while quickly inhaling through the nose. A good way to practice is using a straw in a glass of water. If the bubbles stop, something is wrong.

I never became a good digeridoo player, but I bought one of the most memorable souvenirs as a backpacker: a well-tuned didgeridoo with traditional Aboriginal decoration.