Sharks, Dolphins and more Sharks

Each new area of WA we drive through brings us new and more gorgeous surrounds. Kalbarri is a national park just north of Geraldton and just when you thought the coastlines couldn't get any better, they do. After seeing our first Roo's (see last blog) we sat on the edge of the cliffs gazing at the coastal cliffs as the sun was setting. The cliff colours were all the shades of red and orange that you would find in any good art shop as well as a beautiful range of blues in the sea crashing away at the foot of the cliffs and a rather marvelous selection of pinks and blues lighting up the sky as the sun went down. We took ages finding a camp site as every 2-3 k we were having to stop and have another look at the scenery, the Ozzies are very good at sign posting scenic views, they even have camera signs and laybys so you can stop and take a pic.
We ended up at the Red bluff caravan park and spent a couple of nights there as we explored the local sights. One of these sights was 'Natures Window' which was situated about 30 k inland in the Kalbarri national park proper. We had to drive down an unsealed red dust road for about 27 k just to get there, bumping and rattling the whole way, I was sure something was going to come a cropper, but we made it ok. The drive along the dust track was pretty uninspiring in terms of scenery, just outback bush and very flat, but when we got to our destination we discovered that there was a huge gorge and river cutting through the barren wilderness.
We had originally planned to do a walk, but as always we'd arrived late, so had a short one instead, taking in the now repetitively unbelievable scenery that we have come to associate with WA. Natures Window itself is a hole in a rock, you've guessed it, that looks like a window. The view through the window looks out onto part of the gorge and we took the obligatory photos and were on our way again. Its a hard life all this driving, scenery viewing, wildlife watching type action, but we're yet again putting on brave faces and struggling on.

Not being able to take any more of the unreal landscapes of Kalbarri, we headed north again, this time with Shark Bay our destination. Unfortunately for us, Shark Bay proved to be just as beautiful in its own way as Kalbarri and we were obliged to spend another few days there roving about in the camper. It just happens to be a World Heritage site and fulfills all four criteria meaning that it's an area of outstanding natural beauty, has endangered species living there, unique habitats, ancient fossil stone things, yadda, yadda, yadda. All this boiled down to making it a jolly pleasant place to spend some time. The whole peninsula of Shark Bay is a Marine park and is filled to bursting with sharks, Loggerhead turtles (endangered), dugons (endangered), whales, dolphins and alsorts of other critters. First up was a visit to the Ocean Park Aquarium which is a family run place with the aim of creating a naturally run aquarium. Its all open air and in the middle of the small site is a great big pond full of sharks. They feed the sharks (as you can see) by dangling half a fish in the water, so enticing them up to the surface for us to see. The really nice thing about this place was that there was hardly anyone else there and you got a personal tour around by one of the family. They also had a couple of baby loggerhead turtles that had been rescued, very cute and also a sea snake, which we were able to have a stroke of, insanely poisonous, but very docile creatures. Having had enough of sharks we headed for Eagle's Bluff, where you can stand on the cliffs looking down onto the bay and in the shallow waters at the foot of the cliffs you can see......Sharks! :) What an amazing place, to be able to see sharks, turtles, rays and dugons from the cliff top, how cool is that? Also flying about were some ?eagles (need Chris or Tina to confirm), some kind of bird of prey anyway, they looked very majestic sweeping around and over the cliff face.
Shark bay gets its name for obvious reasons, there's tons of sharks everywhere, not only lots of harmless reef sharks, but also lots of quite dangerous Tiger sharks, so when I asked the shark man at Ocean Park if it was ok to snorkel in the bay, he said we should wait until we got to Coral Bay up the coast. He said he'd snorkeled with Tiger sharks in his youth, they're very big, inquisitive and will eat anything, so best avoided, which I thought was quite sensible advice :) See if you'd fancy snorkeling with a Tiger shark.
Among the bays less scary inhabitants are bottle nose dolphins. In a tiny little place called Monkey Mia is a beach where for about 30 years wild dolphins have been coming regular as clockwork to get a free feed. Going to feed the dolphins is not as brilliant as it may sound however, as the circus that surrounds it, turns it into one massive shitfight. There must have been getting on for a hundred people trying to get a look at the dolphins, which was way too many for us, so after a few photos, we turned our attention to the Pelicans strutting around the beach, who were much more interesting. I'm pretty sure we do take an interest in things that don't involve wildlife on this trip, but I'm struggling to remember what now.
On our way out of Shark Bay, we dropped into have a look at Shell beach, a beach where the 'sand' is actually billions of tiny shells. Very white and crunchy and cool looking. We walked about in the baking heat for a while before heading to have a nose around the Stromatolites. These are basically living fossils that have been there for millions of years and are one of the features of Shark Bay that gives it its World Heritage status. Unfortunately, they're incredibly dull and not even interesting to look at.
We were about to leave the area, trip to see rock formations wasted, when we spied the most disgusting spider we've ever seen. We'd been looking forward to seeing some kind of giant / poisonous spider in Oz, as it's supposed to be riddled with nasty critters, when we came upon the Golden Orb spider. I don't think its poisonous, but it's pretty big and what it may lack in poison its makes up with all round mingingness in abundance. The egg shaped part of its body is easily the size of a Cadburys cream egg, no joke and I'm betting a lot less tasty!


More photo's from Kalbarri and Shark Bay


Next time on the Andy and Sam blog: Will Sam ever dive again?




Listening to: The Pixies - Dolittle

Blog of Beige...Werthers and Sand

Thank goodness for Werther's Original. No longer under the watchful eye of Auntie Heidi (invented purely for aspiration), we got into the habit of buying "driving sweets" quite early on and now we are hopelessly addicted to those creamy toffee delights which claim to be ancient but were only invented in about 1997. They've seen us through many episodes of getting lost and soothe the side of my brain which I'm not used to using - ie. the one which reads maps. Oh, it's so difficult and the map we have is most inadequate for our complex needs. As the passenger, I have a lot to be doing as it is. I have to decide where we're going/staying/wearing/eating/spending. I also have to check the Werther's level every morning while Andy checks the van's oil and water. It's not my fault though, as the other side of my brain is positively hypertrophied, so there has to be some sort of recompense. Would I rather be able to read maps or make Fimo models which vaguely resemble people I know and shove them on top of cakes? I certainly know which is more useful in everyday life.

Unfortunately, our saving money campaign is not going well. The further up the Western coast we trundle, the more frequently we encounter "no camping" signs. Our second departure from Perth found us in Lancelin, a place famous for its sand dunes and surf. You can either hire quad bikes or take a ride on "Big Foot," an old school bus adapted with massive wheels to spin you around all over the dunes. Being firmly in budget territory now, we just had a walk about and tried not to get too overheated. Being in the mood for a lot of sand, we then drove to Cervantes, the small town near to the Pinnacles Desert. A lol about for a couple of hours on Cervantes beach (the temperature's about 10 degrees hotter than when we arrived in Oz 2 weeks ago!)

The Pinnacles are formed as a result of glacial changes which began 3.5 million years ago, exposing a massive chunk of the sea bed which is rich in calcium carbonate (limestone). Rainwater dissolves the CaCO3 (see, "Chemistry Matters" - Mr. Mounter was right afterall) and distributes it throughout the surrounding sand dunes. The sand then smothers the vegetation which then rots and becomes petrified, thus forming The Pinnacles. These limestone points are then exposed as a result of weathering and wind, resulting in the formations visible today.

What all that means is that they look very cool, especially when you visit them at dusk, as we did. Present in their thousands, they cast ominous shadows across the desert, which looks kind of eerie and haunting. Some of them appear in the most unusual of shapes as Andy discovered. Well I thought it might be the perfect spot to do a music video. I was unable at this time, to get Andy to join in. The cool thing was you could drive your van around the main bits, to save you from the ravages of the desert.

We pushed onto Jurien Bay just after nightfall. We seem to be the only people who arrive at caravan parks after hours and have to get the owners to come out especailly to book us in. Don't get me wrong, the facilities are fantastic. The showers are very hot and powerful and the loos are spotlessly clean (I can't tell you what a vision that is after 7 long months of trepidation re: toileting), but I don't really want to spend all day in one. At least that's what I thought until we reached Jurien Bay Tourist Park. Apart from all the usual finds (communal BBQ area, kitchen, scary woman-behind-the-desk), they have a "Jumping Pillow!" Imagine a massive pillow (the biggest in WA, might I add), inflated with air to create something between a trampolene and a bouncy castle and you're only part-way there. What a creation! When I finally pulled Andy onto it, we had a magnificent half hour work-out, which had the children standing round staring at us. Before long Andy was doing sommersaults and double pikes and all kinds.

On account of my toilet key not working, I had cause to sneak into the Mens facilities a couple of times during the night. Next morning when I was checking out, the owner said to me sternly "Are you the one who's been sneaking into the Men's toilets?" How embarrassing! Mysteriously, when I tried my key that morning, it worked fine. "Oh, I just like to have a look!" were the words which came out of my mouth and he gave me a knowing nod. They're probably busy circulating my photograph to all caravan parks up and down the coast.

It's a bit of a bummer that the sea is still very cold. We're in places of wonderful marine life, but at the moment, there's no way you could spend too long in the water without a wetsuit. There are sea-lion colonies dotted around the coast and the opportunity to go on snorkelling trips with them. A quick browse through a conservation leaflet was a little discouraging however. It warned of the sometimes volatile nature of sea-lions and how they can inflict terrible injuries (I think the males weigh upto 200kg). And obviously, anywhere you find seals and the like, you will find a tapas-seeking shark. This is without the added danger of box-jellyfish, seasnakes, stonefish... Oh, the drama of it all. On the local news here, there was a report of stingrays being found with their tails cut off and were now investigationg the possiblity of revenge-attacks after the loss of Our Steve.

A drive through the tiny town of Greenhead brought us to Dongara - Port Denison. A gorgeous day for it, we bought a few snags and steaks and whacked them on the barbie! All the communal parks have gas BBQs thrown in for free to accommodate your beautiful view out to sea. Seemed rude to not mark our first barbie with a nice bottle of wine (Houghten 2005 White Burgundy from the Swan River and Nannup regions of WA -V.V. good for $10.99). Getting very into this wine lark but it was a pity Andy was driving, as I had to indulge alone. This afternoon tipple enboldened me somewhat and I decided it was time for a dip. At knee-level something with pincers had a go at my foot, so I was out of that sea sharpish.

Geraldton was to be our next port of call and overnight stop. The drive along the way shows the incredible Leaning Trees, deformed by the prevailing Southerly winds. Geraldton is the biggest place between Perth and Exmouth and it was here that I managed to get in to waist height before a massive wave came and scared me. Suffice to say Andy didn't even make it onto the sand - he was sat comfortably by the van on his little camping chair, keeping watch over our little abode. We're loving the van!! It's so nice to be able to load up the camper rather than lugging everything you own about on your back and the horrors of daily packing and unpacking. Our condiment collection is growing, we have learnt to wash up in three millimetres of water, and you can just whip out the chairs when you find somewhere nice to stop. It affords us a much better nights sleep than we're used to (no changing beds every 2 or 3 days and no cheap clippy-cloppy sandals reverberating through resonant corridors all night long). We have everything we need and despite the limited capacity, we could still swing a spider if it dared cross the step. Thanks to Mazza though, I now have the perfect spider-deterrent...Horse Chestnuts. Apparently they hate the smell. Mazza we miss you.

Kalbarri was our next destination (is anyone else tired?). We have clocked up some
3,000km already! Arriving just before sunset allowed us a taster of the fantastically rugged coastal scenery. The setting sun shone against the magnificent rock faces warming them to a gorgeous orange (or "Burnt Sienna" if you're Bruce). There we were looking at all the products of the forces of nature, when right next to us a family of roos decided to check us out. At last! We got our 'roo shots. How nice was it too see them full of life when all we'd seen for the last 300km roadkill versions. Apparently you're supposed to check the pouches of the dead ones in case there's a little joey in there...


Dance Hamble, Dance!





Listening to: Backini - Threads - Genius!







Currently Reading: The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

The beauty of WA

Australia is massively big! A small understatement I know, but having driven about 1400 miles we've only covered a very small corner of the South West. We'd been told that Western Oz was beautiful, but that is another understatement, it's breath-takingly beautiful! Since leaving Albany we've been pootling through some immense forests and more gorgeous coastlines and have now come full circle back to Perth, just for a few hours to do some house keeping before we head up north.
We'd camped in a carpark in Albany overnight to save a bit of cash and woke up to views of the beach and to see a whale jumping out of the water, how cool is that? We set off again in our beloved van, heading for Denmark of all places, where we stopped for a spot of lunch and to chat with a clearly inbred local who told us about a secluded beach down the coast we could go to. We've seen Wolf Creek mate, so no thanks and off we drove again. The sceney in this part of the world is ever changing, drive a few hundred k and it all changes. This time the landscape became an endless forest full of 60 meter high trees. I've never driven for so long through a forest and you're gawping out the window the whole way, it's like driving through a Tolkien scene. We headed for Walpole - Nornalup National Park where you can find the Valley of the Giants. This is a section of the forest where some of the giants of the tree world live. Tingle, Marri and Karri trees to be exact. They've built a metal walkway 40 meters up that you can stroll around getting a birds eye view of the forest, this is at least our third canopy walk now and they're all good, there's nothing like being that high off the ground, with vertigo and staring down, I genuinely love it :)

After crooking our necks staring up at stupidly high trees we headed through the forest again in the camper and stopped at a caravan site for the evening. We parked by an inlet where a stingray called Stumpie apparently lives, along with sharks and all sorts of other great fish. It's nothing to do with Steve Irwin, but Stumpie lost his tail somehow, hence the name. Like many of our evenings, we ended up playing Scrabble, drinking wine and eating on this occasion Thai noodle soup (again) which I made some spicy pork balls for mmmmmmm :)

The next day we headed for Pemberton and the Gloucester tree. This is a 60 meter Karri tree that's well known as you can climb it to a lookout post at the top...if you're a mental! There is a kind of ladder that winds its way all around the tree to the top, we watched some nutters climbing it and that was scary enough. For us scaredy-cats there were some very brightly coloured parrots at the bottom which we took numerous snaps of.
During our drive through the forest we also saw our first wild Kangeroos. We've seen quite a few dead ones by the side of the road, in various states of decomposition, so see some living ones was a great relief. I'd heard somewhere that you had to be lucky to see them, I don't know if that's true, but we've seen a fair few now and one at very, very close proximity. We were driving along when out of the corner of my eye I saw a grey blur heading towards us and sure enough a Roo bounced across the road right in front of the van. I slammed on the breaks and the Roo skidded, fell over and slid on its arse in front of us, narrowly avoiding the wheels. I was sure we were about to feel a sickening bump as we hit it, but we looked over and saw it bouncing off into the forest. What an adrenaline rush that was :)

Next up was the town of Margaret River, a gem of a place, just off the coast and of course, a river. For geography fans out there, check out this interactive map of OZ and have a look down at the furthest south western point and you'll come to Margaret River. It's the heart of the Southern Australian wine region and there are hundreds of wine producers in the area. You can virtually drive down any road and you'll come to a winery. Even better, when you get to a winery you can go in and taste the wine.....for free! That's probably not a surprise to those in the know (Mum and Dad), but as you can imagine we were quite pleased with the idea of free quality wine. and on that note, we headed straight down the....pub and tried out some more Oz lager! Our one night out of the van that was, basically as it's well expensive in Oz, in fact things are generally the same price as they are at home, which came as something as a shock, I thought it would be a bit cheaper here, but no, so Croom has us on a strict budget which can only be broken if we need posh food or fine wine and hopeful a couple of dives :) Oz lager is proving a bit of a mixed bag, Tooheys is very nice, Carlton Draft is very good to, but avoid Redback at all costs, disgusting :( Luckily I was able to wash away the taste with a chicken pie, (its good to be back in a country that can make a decent pie)! The next morning we went for a walk along the banks of the river, followed by lunch at a place called Gracetown, where for the first time it was warm enough to get the camping chairs out and have lunch in the open air, the waves round this bit of the coast are pretty big and I went for a walk down to the rocks. It's an amazing experience watching these huge waves coming towards you, before breaking on the rocks, thousands of tons of water surging at you, real power of nature stuff!

In the afternoon we went to Howard Park winery for a spot of tasting, they make wine under the label Madfish. The grounds were really pretty, with vine groves stretching into the distance and the winery itself was an interesting modern design. We tried a few varieties of red and one white, our favourite being a very fruity little Pinot Noir. It generally wasn't the greatest wine in the world and a bit pricey, with the cheapest bottle being about 7 quid (they went up to $70). We headed up the coast after that to a town called Busselton, where Anna, a girl we met in Borneo lives, to say hello and have a look at the famous jetty there. Anna is the manager of the underwater observatory, situated 8 meters below the surface at the end of the 1.8km jetty. We all went for a beer and then camped up in the carpark of the jetty overnight. The next morning Anna drove us along the 140 year old jetty in a little car thing to see the observatory. The whole thing was built up the coast in Freemantle and then all 500 odd tons of it were floated down before being sunk to its present position today. Unfortunately due to poor visibility it was closed to visitors when we were there, but Anna took us in and you could see a few fish hanging out, but not the normal 20 meter visibility, you could see how cool it would be down there though. A unique phenomenon occurs around these parts where the warm tropical Leeuwin current mingles with the temperate waters, thus forming tropical corals and hence fish, usually not observed in colder waters.

Anna gave us some advice on what to go and see round about and we had a brilliant day. We first went to spend some money on my ear again at the G.P.'s and now it finally seems fixed, although I'm resigned to the fact that I've got crap ears, not only to the make me look like a monkey, but they also get blocked up with infections.....great. Some beans and snags cured my ear depression and we headed for Cape Naturaliste to check out the lighthouse. We spent a couple of hours strolling around in the now really warm sun, (its seems to have shot up at least 10 degrees in the last few days here) and sat on the hillside looking out to sea trying to spot whales. What we did see were some sealions frolicking about in the waves below us and also a mad looking lizard right next to us. It was about a foot long, really fat, lazy and had a short stubby tail. After taking a load of shots of the lizard we headed for Yallingup and saw some even more impressive waves. There were some surf dudes out there and I can see why people are so into it now. Being able to ride on these monster waves must be such a buzz, I felt excited just watching them, I'm definitely gonna get myself a surfing lesson while I'm out here, grow my hair, dye it blonde and eat nothing but kangeroo snags! Hamble spent the time taking photo's of a heart she'd made out of shells :) Yeah Dude!

Driving back to Perth along the coast line was again, just incredible, the scenery all along the coast is spectacular, the colours of the sea range from the deepest blue to the brightest turquoise, from being totally calm to ginormous waves smashing against reef and rocks. Again it's another one of those things I'll always remember, just driving about this side of the country is a real privilege and its no wonder most of the Ozzies you meet are so happy and chilled out, cause their back garden is Eden!







Currently Reading: Samurai Executioner 10








Listening to: Deus - The Ideal Crash








Sam's Sayings: "Ooh, I luv a Werthers And"

Flamin' Galahs!!

Freedom at last! We have our camper and we're now on the road like the Littlest Hobos. Some who have experienced my driving may feel a pang of terror upon hearing this, but allow me to reassure you here... I am merely the co-pilot. This actually means that I do most of the groundwork but take none of the glory. My day-today work involves map-reading, deciding upon routes and itineries with only the occasional bout behind the wheel. It's actually quite scary driving something so massive, but luckily the roads are very straight and other traffic quite a rarity. My other main responsibility is making sure my first-in-command is fed with exotic delights and there is always a tinny or two in the eskie (that is a beer in the refrigerator for those of you unversed in Ozzie lingo.

Our departure from Perth was halted only by needing to stop by the Asian supermarket for essentials such as Thai basil and fish sauce, our pants not being dry in time and an ominous light appearing on the dashboard minutes after leaving the van-rental joint. Turned out we needed a re-fill of cooling fluid and after the bloke bashed the light a bit, it seemed fully operational also. Mmmm, there's a lot to consider with this driving lark. Our only other hitch was exiting Perth the wrong way, but we stopped off at a swan reserve and had a nice lunch. Three hours after commencing our journey and we were finally going in the right direction.

The plan was to head East, inland from the Western capital. Quite instantly, we were struck by just how quickly the roads became car-free zones. Also, the scenery is quite beautiful before you've even left the city suburbs and I was delighted to observe our first kangaroo road sign. We were really in Oz! We didn't actually see any 'roos, but some kind of dingo/fox ran out in front of us. The furthest we'd reached by nightfall was Quairading, but the 'campsite' was just a layby and it looked a bit spooky, so I urged Andy to get a shufty on. After a quick stop in York and a photo of its picture-postcard street, we were off.

According to my map, the next place was Bruce Rock. Obviously the name swung it for me as a safe place to spend our first night. The campsite was a spotless but deserted area with hot showers to rival the ones we'd had in our poshest Asian hotels. I busied myself making noodle soup as the temperature remains rather chilly. It's amazing what you can get out of a couple of hot rings. It's all about ingredients y'see... Anyway, there we were, enjoying our soup...when the lights failed. Quite scary, you can imagine. And we were nowhere near Wolf Creek. Eating by head-torch is a romantic experience I can tell you. Presumably, the second battery had failed. Our faith in Traveller's Autobarn was diminishing, even though the woman who works there hails from Barnard Castle.

Little time had passed before I realised the downside of being confined to a small space with Andy. He was emitting pure chicken-gas every half an hour, which was fast replacing the oxygen content within the van. Don't light a match anyone, it would be an untold disaster. I must have passed out at some stage because the next thing I realised was it was morning and I'd had the best nights sleep in ages. A beautiful crisp morning greeted us and as we were unable to find the caretaker of the campsite anywhere, our first night was for free.

Exploration of Bruce Rock was a little bit pointless - it literally is just a rock. Rather more interesting was the visit to the garage. A very kindly bloke soon had us fitted with a replacement battery, forged the amount on the recipt (so we could claim $45 more than we paid for it) and threw a couple of stubbie holders into the bargain. To the unenlightened, these are little jackets made of wet-suit material which keep your beers cold - an essential aspect of Ozzie culture. The locals certainly seem very friendly and genuinely want to help you out.

Time for a more impressive rock feature - Wave Rock at Hyden. It's in the middle of the nowhere - apparently it's the wheatbelt region of the "Golden Outback," and is basically a 15 metre high "surf wave" of multi-cloured granite. The coloured bands are a result of various chemical weathering and leeching of minerals and algae. It's 2,700million years old and was virtually unknown to tourists until its photograph was published by National Geographic a few decades ago. Unfortunately, our arrival coincided with that of a big tour group when we hadn't seen another person for hours.

The Hippo's Yawn is a rock formation nearby which kind of resembles what it's supposed to, but isn't nearly as cool. Cruising through the tiny towns of Narembeen and Lake King (seems there's no lake there), brought us to our destination of Esperence. A splendid bottle of local Merlot and a couple of games of Travel Scrabble saw us through the night (is this what it was like in the olden days?). The following day lead us to explore Esperence which sits on the Bay of Isles in the Recherche Archipelago.
Unfortunatley the gorgeous blue sky has been replaced with grey drizzly weather and it's still nippy out. A wander down Tanker Jetty rewarded us with a sealion sighting just next to us. He looked just like Andy's dog Oscar, but we didn't hang around for long as it was freezing.

So I whipped us some Loatian beef laap. No beans and mini sausages for us! Oh no, I'm systematically going through all of our new recipes we've picked up along the way and here we are poncing it up with our fancy dishes, along with a few family favourites we've been missing like bean chilli and spag bol!! Basically we can't both stand up in the van at the same time. This means Andy is usually having a chop while I'm slaving away. On the occasion that someone else does wander past, I can see the jelousy in their eyes as they contemplate their egg finger buns and flasks of tea.

One noticeable feature are the colours of the landscapes and how they change throughout the day. The sky is a magnificent blue, the spring flowers are in bloom, offering fields of lavender and yellow, with the earth appearing as a rich reddish brown. The air is crisp and thers is none of that stupid humidity that's been expanding my cankles for so long now. There are lots of sheep in the fields and the forrests stretch for miles. Much of it remembles the English countryside, but there's always the odd remider that you're somewhere much further from home. There are bizarre trees which have adapted to survive in the arrid landscape and poor soil. Birds fly overhead as you disturb their roadside activities. Notably, these are the pretty pink-headed Galahs, of Alf Stewart fame. For any non-Home and Away viewers, Alf hilariously refers to people as "Flamin' Galahs!" if they've done something a bit stupid. Alf is played by an actor called Ray Meagre and his screen wife, Ailsa, by a lady called Judy Nunn. The autistic side of me has enabled me to dedicate to permanent memory the names of the entire cast of Home and Away actors... Anyway, we also bumped into a kukaburrah in a park in Perth.

Despite my OCD causing me to check under every loo seat for a red-back spider (we all remember the fate of Sky Bishop...) and shake our boots out incase a scorpion has bedded down in there, so far we haven't encountered any deadly specimens. Even the dogs are friendly - especially this one at Dog's Rock. Dog phobia improving much more quickly now rabid zone exited. Anyway, Dog Rock is in Albany which means I've missed out the bit where we did the Great Ocean Drive from Esperence.

This scenic drive meant we were able to take in our first glimpses of the South coast of Western
Australia (WA). Beautiful white sand and brilliantly azure water, with the presence of a bit of wind make it a bit of a haven for surf dudes. Looks a bit difficult to me, but we're keen to explore the one you do with a kind of parachute to pull you along on your board. Lazy surfing. It took 5 hours to drive from Esperence to Albany, a distance represented by a few millimetres on the map (this country's massive - why didn't anybody tell us?). Australia's not quite as cheap as we thought it would be either. Petrol is costing a fair bit (especially out in the sticks) and the camp sites are about $20-25 per night.

Albany is gorgeous and famous for its wine and whales. Have resorted to buying boxes of wine. Is this the start of the slippery descent into alcoholism, or is it sensible to buy boozer in a cardboard box which won't smash in the back of the van? Also, I'm economically-minded these days. The new me, along with no make-up and my start-to-finish getting ready time of 15 minutes. Tonight we're staying by the beach which will save a bit of cash on campsites, but will mean suffering a cold water shower in the beachside facilities.

As soon as we arrived in Albany, we booked ourselves a whale-watching tour. Being a nature-lover these days, I like a whale - though I do draw the line at wearing a "Save The Whales" t-shirt. The tour we chose cost $45 each and was the cheapest of the two. Turned out to be a good choice. The old bloke taking the cruise was just hilarious. Not only did he take us to just the right spots, he provided a very amusing commentary throughout. He particularly relished informing us that the Southern Right Whales we were about to see had penises of 1.5 metres long. Did we also know that STDs such as herpes were rife amongst whales because they were very loving creatures?

The first four or five we saw were about 50 metres from the boat and as they didn't really come out of the water much, there wasn't anything totally spectacular to see. We struck lucky towards the end though when a massive mother and her calf came very near the boat and put on a bit of a show for us. The females grow to about 15 metres, the bulls about 18 metres and weigh around 80 tonnes. They enjoy the pristine waters of Albany from July - October, before migrating to the Antarctic and indulge in a spot of crill-munching. The calves are carried some of the way on their mothers backs and are taught how to survive. There are humpback whales which frequent these waters too, but these are a fair bit smaller by comparison. Albany was once a whaling station, before everyone realised that this was a bad thing to be doing sometime around the 1970's. The whale-man brought out his guitar to try and communicate with the mother and her calf but he wasn't very good and they soon disappeared. So he wheeled out some jam & cream scones as compensatory measure. All- in-all a top day in WA!!!





Listening to: Thievery Corporation - The Richest Man in Babylon





Currently Reading: Once While Travelling - The Lonely Planet Story

Australia

G'day Cobbers! We've finally reached Australia and following a thankfully unscary 5 hour flight we're tucked up in a hostel in Perth. Sam's been practising her Ozzie accent for months now and sounds exactly like Kath and Kim and even I'm sounding less like an Indian Scotsman, so we were eager to meet our first proper Australians and hear the accents first hand. Walking through the terminal at Perth we spied the Customs officers, here we go we thought, its gonna be 'dinkum' this and 'galah' that, but on getting nearer, the Passport fella turned out to be a Geordie! Great, so we waited in line and were called over to the man next to him to check our passports, this time.....no, Irish! After having had our bags x-ray'd and sniffed by dogs to check we hadn't brought in any flora, fauna or food substances (I smuggled in some Bornean mud on my trainers and Sam had some Thai chocolate), we proceeded to get the shuttle bus into town, driven by....a bloke from Reading who as soon as he'd ascertained we were from England, proceeded to do Little Britain (yah i know) impressions all the way to the hostel, great.... We walked into the reception and approached the counter to find, yup another English man working there. Unbelievable :) Later that night we managed to find some authentic Ozzies, down the pub. It was great to have some beer out of a pint glass, but not quite so great paying UK prices. We managed to sample our way through some Oz lager, Tooheys, very nice indeed and one i've already forgotten, cause it tasted a bit farty :(

Some fast facts for you: Australia is thirty times bigger than the UK, which means we've got a lot of driving on our hands. In all that space there are only 20 million people and the vast majority of them live on the east coast. The capital is Canberra, not Sydney and the currency is the Australian dollar and there's 2.5 dollars to the pound.
Perth, the capital of Western Australia (map), is said to be the most isolated capital of the world. We have a few days to explore the city, where 80% of the population of Western Oz live, before we take to the open road. Extensive research and a few warning words from Tommy led us to hiring, rather than buying a camper van. Travellers Autobarn seemed like a good option and we've gone for this little bundle of luxury to provide shelter, warmth and wheels for the next month while we explore Australia's Western coastline. Yipee! No more herding about with a coloured sticker and a load of 'zany' travellers for us!!

Perth is an absolutely beautiful city, filled with quiet clean streets, some gorgeous skyscrapers and some really beautiful parks. Wandering around its hard to believe you're in a city, there's so few people about, there's quite a few cars driving about, so maybe just no-one walks? When you get right into the center there's people about in the main shopping arcades and in the huge Kings park there were a lot of people enjoying the sun, but otherwise it seems a quiet place. What's especially weird is the way that everything seems to close dead on 5 o'clock, maybe it's cause we're used to every shop in Asia being open till at least 10pm, but it makes it even quieter. Walking around town we've noticed a couple of disturbing things about fashion in Perth, the majority of shops are selling clothing straight out of the 80's and there also seem to be a large amount of Goths slouching about, particularly near the church. Very odd.
It's spring time on this side of the world, which should provide some respite from the tropical heat and downpours of Asia and being spring everything has that sharp, vibrant looking quality about it, the flowers are all out, the sky is imaculately blue and massive. There's a ridiculous amount of trees here, I've never seen so many different types all in one place and also so many birds about, including brightly coloured parrots, which we were amazed to see flying about, they're probably like pigeons here, but they look fantastic.

We've done loads of walking since we got here and yesterday ended up at the Museum of Western Australia. Among the usual stuffed animal section and geological rocks section (yawn) was a very interesting exhibition about aboriginal culture. It was nice to get a bit of a history lesson about the region, but was also fairly sobering stuff. The usual white man finds new a country and then steals all the land killing most of the indiginous inhabitants type story. On top of this as well though, was a goverment led initiative in the 1930's to try and breed out the Aborigines through inter-racial marrige, believe it or not, this carried on until the 70's through the forced (usually secret) relocation of Aboriginal kids under false pretences to white families. As if all that wasn't bad enough, there was a Goverment department called 'Aborigines and Fisheries', as they weren't classed as human, but came under Fauna and Flora! They have a National Sorry day here every year, which gives people a chance to apologise for what amounts to genocide, by trying to select indigenous people out of Australian society. Typically the PM John Howard doesn't recognise the day and won't apologise on behalf of the goverment for the past, so you see, things are the same all round the world aren't they?

Today has been spent lazing about at King's Park which is absolutely massive and incredibly beautiful! We walked all round the park through areas of bushland, nice picnic areas with families having barbies, no doubt drinking some stubbies too :) The place was so well kept, amazingly well landscaped with views across Perth and the River Swan. Lots of fountains, ponds, walks, gorgeous flowers and lawns, a great place to get away to, not that there seemed anything bad enough to escape from.
We're all geared up for our travels round Western Oz now, all we need to do is buy some snags from the supermarket to stock up the little fridge in the van and we'll be off.
Finally to end on some sad news, Steve Irwin died today, a massive cult figure in Oz and round the world, killed by a sting ray, no doubt he was taunting the sting ray until it lashed out at him.
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Perth Slideshow






Film of the week: Snakes on a Plane

Absolutely Superb!






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