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