The Outback

[Kyle]We got up early in Bruce Rock after a night of the heebie jeebies (With all the thoughts of bed bugs and other nasties). The town was empty. This was magnificent desolation. We could explore the town by walking right up and down the middle of the highway through town. The place very much reminded us both of the Old West in the U.S. It was dusty and forgotten and was built out of rickety wood.

We headed out of town on more and more minor roads. We would go hours without seeing any other cars in either direction. We passed sign for a place called Hidden Hollow and decided to stop on a whim. Wow! Somehow, it had managed to remain hidden behind the trees alongside the road. It turned out to be a huge mound of granite, rising up out of the flat farmland below. Hidden Hollow itself was a deep depression in the mound in which a small stand of trees had taken root. The rest of the rock was equally interesting. There were deep channels and bowls cut by wind and rain. In the low spots, silt had accumulated in which mosses and lichens had taken hold. They had, in turn, broken down into soil which supported larger and larger plants. The whole thing was endlessly fascinating both geologically and biologically. We found well worn ant highways where they move everything from the far corners of their grove and little colonies of tadpoles living in the pools.


Hidden Hollow
After Hidden Hollow, we headed down rural dirt tracks to find Andersen Rock, another version of the Hidden Hollow rock. There was actually one of these rocks about every few square miles around here. Andersen Rock was way out there and, like Hidden Hollow, we had the whole wonderful place to ourselves. One of the things that I really like is that everything is so different. 80% of the flora and Fauna in Australia is found nowhere else. The plants are different, the forest smells different and, the best part, parrots are as common as finches out here.


Driving Out Back, but if you find time to stop and look at the small stuff, you can discover gems like this spider orchid
After Andersen Rock, we went to Wave Rock. Wave Rock is just like it sounds - a giant rock in the shape of a breaking wave. It was part of the larger Hyden Rock. This had a handful of other tourists and was even one of the regular bus tour spots. We still had lots of time to wander the site alone. Wind and water over the millennia have worn down the rocks into abstract sculpture, which was loads of fun to climb around on. In addition to the usual parrot sightings, we also found several lizards and one two meter carpet python, who was a docile as could be and wanted to have nothing to do with me (I can hear my mother gasping right now).


Scenes from at and around Wave Rock - including the carpet python
We tried for another campground that night but, again, couldn’t find it. We decided to head for nearby Dragon Rock. We figured we could find a quiet spot where no one would bug us. Australian signage let us down again and we never found it either. Eventually, right at sunset, we ended up pitching the tent behind some trees along a lonely dirt road. It was a cold, uncomfortable night on hard ground. Sometime in the middle of the night, a road train came barrelling through. It was so loud, we were both sure it had gone off the road and was about to run us over, even though we were 50M off the road. We woke up simultaneously with a start and were each reaching for the tent zipper when the sound started trailing off.