The Road to Becoming OZ Experienced – Barossa Valley from Parachilna

Photojournalist David Savage travels Australia on the OZ Experience…

On The Bus…
In Alice Springs about a week earlier I heard about a legend. The Legend of an OZ Experience Bus gone ‘HIPPIE’, driven by Hippie Happy ‘Shell’, reputedly from the stars somewhere over New Zealand. Today I met the Legend. Stepping onto the bus I was greeted by a chorus of ‘Happy Happy Drinking Day’. I looked around to see a barrage of hanging dream catchers, chimes and swinging glittery tinselly sparkly things… I was in a sixties time warp, man! Every day on Shell’s bus is a different ‘Happy Happy Something Day’ and today, heading into wine country, today was ‘Happy Happy Drinking Day’.

On the way to the Barossa Valley, we called into the small town of ‘Orroroo’. The town is pretty small and the road names are numbers. For example, ‘First Street’, ‘Second Street’, ‘Third Street’, and so on. This made it easy, as we discovered, to find the square root of many things on the way to the bar, where we began to celebrate the Public Holiday ‘Happy happy Drinking Day’.

The journey took us along dirt roads weaving in and out of the Flinders Ranges, stopping here and there for photo opportunities with kangaroos. The dirt roads gave us that jack-hammer feeling, but getting that far out into the hills was well worth it, and beats all known highways.

Before hitting our destination we hit Taylors Vine Yard. For a cool $3 we tasted some twelve wines accumulating to about three glasses of wine per person (all-important information to the value seeking backpacker). I asked our host, Avon, what the perks of her job were. ‘Free wine, of course’, she replied, but only two bottles per month. We told her she should talk to her union. By the tim we ware getting fack on the fuss, weed had a thew and a seep was hell in oder.

Barossa Valley
In the Barossa Valley is the Old Marananga School House (1800 069 731), converted to a backpackers hostel. Free with each bed taken was the loan of a school uniform. There were uniforms in an assortment of colours. I noticed when this news was announced, the boys started getting excited. It was refreshing to see so many men in touch with their feminine side… a little later on it was quite scary to see so many men in touch with their feminine side. The girls too were getting excited, for they had new models (the boys) to paint with make-up. It had obviously been a while since any of them had owned a ‘Girl’s World Beauty Doll’.

The night went by as you can imagine with lots of wine, stuffed bra’s and ABBA. Why is it always ABBA that finishes off a night of cross-dressing? There is an OZ Experience bus staying here several times a week, and with very few neighbours, there is a lot of space to make a lot of noise.

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