I am now in Port Douglas, Australia with my family, while they are visiting. Yesterday, I went scuba diving for the first time, at the famous Great Barrier Reef. Although the weather was cloudy, I saw some beautiful coloured corals, fish and even a reef shark. Indeed, my Australian adventures have been packed with first-time experiences: driving stick shift on the right side of a car and on the opposite side of the road, driving on loose sand (on Fraser Island), scuba diving, as I mentioned, and many more eye-opening experiences during my time in the Australian Outback, which I will elaborate on below. First, however, I will explain why visiting the Australian Outback was important to me, as most people I have met decided not to include it as part of their itinerary.
Why visit Outback Australia?
The Outback covers most of Australia; it does not have a specific size, or location. Outback is actually a term that is used to describe any sparsely populated regions of the country. Australia’s population is very much concentrated on the Eastern, Southern and South-Western coasts. All of inland Australia and most of North and North-West Australia is therefore generally known as Outback Australia.
At the core of the Australian Outback is Australia’s Red Centre, named this way because of the oxidized iron in the soil, which gives it a reddish color and because it is a desert located literally in the centre of Australia. The most populated town of the Outback, and located in the Red Centre, is Alice Springs, with approximately 24 000 residents. The Indigenous culture is quite strong there: 30% of the population identifies as Indigenous and many of the remote communities that surround Alice Springs are Indigenous communities. In fact, the three largest Indigenous groups in Australia today live in and around Alice Springs.
In terms of natural landscapes, the Red Centre is where you will find Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, one of the only landscapes in the world that is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Area for outstanding natural values, but also outstanding cultural values. There is also Watarrka National Park, which is home to Kings Canyon, and the MacDonnell Ranges, which offer gorges, swimming holes, walking trails and spectacular views of rock formations.
So, with an area that covers most of Australia, stunning World-Heritage listed scenery and an insight into aboriginal culture, I think it is now obvious why visiting the Australian Outback is a must-do.
Preconceptions
Truth be told, I hadn’t done much research on the Australian Outback before going, so I was not aware of most of what I have listed above… I thought there was only one rock (Uluru) in the middle of a flat desert when in actual fact there are mountain ranges. I had imagined miles of red soil and sparse vegetation, but found there to be more greenery than I expected as I was looking out the airplane window during landing. Furthermore, I was anticipating a prominent redneck/cowboy culture and was extremely surprised at how strong the aboriginal culture was.
My wwoof hosts in Alice Springs certainly did not fit with the redneck/cowboy picture, which obviously had an impact on my outback experience. It would have been very different if I had been volunteering on one of the cattle stations around Alice Springs. Instead, I was helping my host establish his permaculture market garden. For those who don’t know, permaculture is a sustainable agricultural system that tries to simulate nature’s processes and ecology, while providing for the needs of humans. “From a philosophy of cooperation with nature and each other, of caring for the earth and people, it [permaculture] presents an approach to designing environments which have the diversity, stability and resilience of natural ecosystems, to regenerate damaged land and preserve environments which are still intact.” (Permaculture College Australia) My host sells his produce on the market, so he is using permaculture principles for his market garden (that’s why it’s called a permaculture market garden). Without getting into too much more detail about permaculture, I will mention that my host grows a variety of vegetables and fruit and has chickens, goats and pigs on the farm. He also collects food waste from the local grocery stores in order to use it for compost.
Before spending 5 nights wwoofing in Alice Springs, I participated in a 3day/2night camping tour of the Red Centre and visited Uluru, Kata Tjuta and Kings Canyon. Both the camping tour and the wwoofing left me with very interesting first-time experiences:
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Seeing the Biggest Spider I have Ever Seen: A Huntsman
At most of my wwoofing locations, I have been living in a guest accommodation (not in my hosts’ house). After enjoying a delicious first supper with my hosts in Alice Springs, I made my way back to my caravan, and you can imagine my reaction when I opened the caravan door and saw this Huntsman spider staring at me in the face.
My host had warned me that I may spot a Huntsman around the property and assured me that they are not poisonous. I googled what exactly a Huntsman spider looks like, to make sure that this creature in my room was indeed that, which it was. I thought about going back to the house to ask my hosts if they could kill it for me, but decided that I was too old for such childish behaviour. So I googled “how to remove a huntsman spider”, only to find several scary spider videos, which didn’t seem very smart to watch, given the circumstances.
I contemplated my next move: do I kill it, or try and move it outside? I noticed that my Australian cousin was active online and asked for her Aussie advice – surely she must have encountered a Huntsman before. It turns out she usually kills them with a shoe. I couldn’t bear the thought of all the guts that would spew out of the spider, given its size, but I also kept imagining a failed attempt at moving it outside and having it crawl up my arm onto my face. No thank you. So I went to bed and the next morning, it was gone.
Every night after that, after supper, I would return to my caravan and the first thing I would do was scope out the area on the lookout for the Huntsman. Every night, the spider was there. On one occasion there was two of them. I would occupy myself with the light on until I got comfortable with the spiders’ presence in my room until I finally switched off the light and fell asleep. Let’s just say daddy longlegs are no big deal for me now.
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Eating Kangaroo
Eating kangaroo was something I wanted to experience while in Australia. I saw it several times on restaurant menus, but was not prepared to commit to a full meal in case I didn’t enjoy it. Eating kangaroo is actually a sustainable and healthy option, since it is a lean meat with high protein, iron and zinc contents. Kangaroos are being harvested from the wild in order to control the abundant population. In 2010, Australia’s estimated kangaroo population was about 27 million. In 2016, it hit close to 45 million!
When my hosts heard that I wanted to try kangaroo, they cooked up a kangaroo stir-fry dinner one evening. It was a lot gamier than I expected. I would eat it again, but don’t think it would be my preference on a restaurant menu.
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Killing A Chicken
Alice Springs doesn’t have an abattoir, so if you want to kill one of your farm animals, you either do it yourself, or you have a friend do the job. My host kills his own chickens and pigs to eat. Some of his chickens were getting quite fat and needed to be killed, so my host asked if I wanted to give it a try. I told him I would think about it.
For someone who has a pet bird and who was vegetarian for a year and a half, I wondered if killing a chicken would deter me from eating meat ever again. But my mindset has changed since I was vegetarian: I now believe that farm animals are raised for the purpose of being eaten and I do not have a problem with it if the animal has been bred in a humane way. This is why I will generally spend the extra money to buy free-range or organic eggs and meat when I grocery shop.
Well, my hosts’ chickens are being raised in a free-range environment. I thought long and hard and finally decided that if I do not have the guts to kill a chicken myself, a chicken that has had a good life, then I simply do not deserve to be eating chicken.
The whole process started off with the chase. My host’s 8 year-old son pointed out which chickens were fat enough for me to choose from. He explained that I needed to catch one by the feet and turn it upside down. The chicken would struggle at first, and then calm down. I later found out that the chicken calms down in this position because the weight of all its organs is pressing down on its air sacs making it hard to breathe. I ran after a couple of chickens and finally caught one by the feet and it did calm down, just like it was supposed to. I placed the chicken, still upside down, into a cone-shaped bucket that was hung against a wall, with another bucket beneath it that would capture all the blood. The chicken’s head and neck stuck out of the cone. Poor thing was still so calm. If it was fighting back, I’m not sure if I could have done it. My host handed me the knife, and demonstrated which part of the neck I was supposed to slit. I failed my first two attempts, which agitated the chicken. I wish I had managed on my first try, to save it from that misery. On my final attempt, blood came flushing out of the body, onto my hand and into the bucket below. I started panicking because the chicken’s body was moving and I thought that it was still alive, in pain, but my host explained that it was normal for convulsions to occur following the death.
In order to make it easier to pluck the feathers off the bird, I needed to dunk the body into hot water for a few seconds. When the feathers were removed, it really started to look like a chicken dinner on the shelf at the supermarket, rather the animal on the farm I had been chasing 15 minutes prior. But, I still needed to cut off the head completely, as well as the feet, and open the body to clear out the insides. This part I was not brave enough to do without a glove. Out came the intestines, heart, liver, lungs…
After soaking the chicken in brine for a few hours, we ate it for supper.
I wouldn’t say the experience was enjoyable, but it was eye opening and I’m very glad I pushed myself to do it. Throughout high school, I remember learning about how the Quebec aboriginals always thanked the animal they hunted, for providing them with food. I never really understood that tradition until now… I really wanted the chicken’s spirit to know that I did not kill it for enjoyment, it was strictly for food, and that I apologize for the suffering I put it through, but I respect it and am grateful.
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Collecting Eggs from the Chickens
Everyday my hosts’ 8 year-old son is responsible for collecting the eggs from the chickens. One morning I went along with him. He warned me that sometimes, the rooster gets a tad aggressive, so we needed to steer clear of him as much as possible. There is a gate that usually remains open, but we closed it behind us so that we could collect the eggs from the nesting boxes peacefully, without worrying too much about the chickens and more importantly, the unpredictable rooster. One of the nesting boxes had a chicken covering the eggs in it and it did not seem thrilled by our presence, so we collected as many eggs as we could and left the premises in a hurry.
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Riding a Camel
While in the Outback, I learned that Australia actually has the largest population of camels in the world! Camels were brought over from the Middle-East when the road between Darwin and Adelaide, connecting the North and South of Australia, was being constructed. Horses could not deal with the heat. My 3day/2night camping tour stopped off at a camel farm, so I took the opportunity to ride one. The experience was short (only 5 minutes), but sweet. The most interesting part is when the camel gets up and down. They aren’t the most graceful and it’s important to hold on tight!
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Experiencing My Hottest Day
Confronting the heat was one of the reasons why I wanted to visit the Australian Red Centre, and the weather did not disappoint. I was in Alice Springs during the hottest period this summer, with temperatures reaching 43oC everyday, the hottest I’ve ever experienced. Women are recommended to drink approximately 3L of water per day in average weather conditions. Well, in Alice Springs I was told to drink 1L of water per hour to stay hydrated. In outback country, where towns are few and far between, the sun is strong and the air is dry, being stranded without water can be deadly.
I am very glad I chose to make the trip out to the Red Centre and wwoof in Alice Springs. It’s a whole different world from Australia’s populated, beachy East coast. My time there has given me a different perspective on the country and life experiences that I will never forget.
