Mar 2009

Getting a bit tired of the constant early morning starts, we asked if we could leave our pitch late. So, with the luxury of a whole half an hour extra in bed, we started our drive north to our final destination in Western Australia, being Freemantle.

We had plenty of time to kill before reaching Freemantle, as most campsites wont let you on-site until 2pm, so we headed first into Mandurah to have a quick look. We headed to the beach area, passing lots of “millionaire’s row” type houses, each with their own private yachts outside. As we’ve already found on several occasions, the beach views are amazing!

We then headed further up the coast to a place called Rockingham. Again, it was a nice seaside resort but very little to do except look at the sea (although we don’t seem to be tiring of doing that just yet!).

We reached the campsite just outside Freemantle around 1:30pm and were let in early. Fairly exhausted after the mileage we had put in over the past few days, we couldn’t face doing anything when we arrived, save for going in the pool.

Suitably “refreshed” after a swim in a pool so cold we had to avoid the icebergs, we dredged up some energy from somewhere and headed into Freemantle. We only had one thing in mind – we knew that along the harbour was a row of fish and chip restaurants and take-outs, and we ate an amazing meal sat in the harbour docks watching the sunset over the sea.

Total Distance Driven In Australia : 1,363km

We are pleased to announce that Kangaroo Watch is now officially over!

We left the Coalmine Beach campsite, and headed north towards Perth. On the way, we stopped off at the Diamond Tree Lookout again, partly for a break from the driving but also partly for me to reminisce about my death defying feat of the previous day.

And what was waiting for us there? Only a bloody kangaroo. And not just one, there were six!

It wasn’t the authentic “see a kangaroo in the wild” experience that we are still waiting for. Basically, there was an old woman “Madge” who spent her time looking after kangaroo orphans and she was sat outside her van bottle feeding six joeys.

We got to stroke one of them (something we wouldn’t have considered with a wild one!) and found out lots of useful facts about kangaroo rearing (which I’m sure will come in extremely handy in Oldham!). So, all in all, we can officially declare the Diamond Tree Lookout as the most exciting roadside stop in the world! Go there – you’re all missing out!

From the Diamond Tree Lookout, we continued north and started to look for campsites. We had planned to stay around a couple of lakes we had passed a few days earlier, but each campsite we arrived at looked more like a trailer park! Eventually, after a couple of hours aimlessly driving (at one stage realising that we’d made a wrong turning and were heading south down a road we’d travelled north on 10 minutes previously), we found a decent site in a place called Mandurah. It even had special toilet seats!

This is around 100km south of Freemantle and Perth, so we decided to stay here ready for heading to Freemantle tomorrow.

Total Distance Driven In Australia : 1,238km

We woke up today totally confused about what time it was. We knew that the UK had changed their clocks forwards, and so logically would have thought that Australia would either be doing the same or doing nothing. What we didn’t expect was that the clocks in Western Australia would be going back an hour! So from going to sleep the night before 9 hours in front of the UK we are now only 7 hours in front of the UK. Has anyone seen the missing two hours in question? If so, please do not approach them as they are considered dangerous, but contact your nearest police station immediately for further assistance.

There have been two writers who have had a profound impact on our desire to travel. One of them was Michael Palin, who I mentioned in my Beijing blog many moons ago. The second, and the more relevant to Australia, is Bill Bryson. His book “Down Under” will be acting as a bible to us over the next couple of months. With this in mind, we aimed today towards Walpole a couple of hundred kilometres away on the south coast, to visit the Valley of the Giants; an elevated walkway above giant trees which we had read about in the book.

The drive south took us through some amazing woodland and was a really fun drive, the twist and turns at times reminding us of Highway 1 (Big Sur) in California. After a couple of hours we needed a break and spotted a signpost to something called Diamond Tree Lookout, so into the car park we turned. What started off as a five minute stretch quickly turned into the most terrifying thing I have ever done in my life!

It turned out that the Diamond Tree Lookout was a giant tree, 52 metres (173 feet) high, with a lookout post built at the top. What’s more, there was a series of metal rungs going around the tree. And what’s even more, it was free and totally unsupervised to go up this tree.

The logical thing to do here would have been to say
“Ooh! Look there’s a free tree you can climb there. That looks like too much hard, dangerous, work. Let’s carry on with our drive.”.

Why then was a voice in my head saying
“Climb it. Doesn’t matter that you don’t like heights. It’s there! Do it now!”

So, not for the first time in my life, I ignored the sensible option and trotted off to start the climb.

A few things you should know about the climb. Firstly, the rungs were very large, so under normal circumstances would have been tough going. Secondly, they were completely open to the drop below, so you had no choice but to look down. Thirdly, you didn’t stand a chance if you slipped as there would have been nothing to stop you bouncing off the rungs all the way to the ground.

All these points were going through my head as 15 feet up I semi-froze. The ground looked a long way down even from here. The top looked almost impossible. I stopped for thirty seconds – did I really want to risk the rest of the trip for a foolish pursuit like this? Indeed did I want to risk my life to do something like this? Apparently I did, because onwards and upwards I went.

Reaching the halfway stage, I was absolutely shattered, both mentally and physically. The thought kept going through my mind that hard as the ascent was, the descent would be worse. And the sign that had greeted me at the halfway point was hardly inspiring.

As I muttered to myself, in a battle of whether to carry on to the top, “Bruce” suddenly appeared from below. “Bruce” and his wife “Sheila” were the first “grey nomads” we had experienced; retired couples who take off in their campervans and travel Australia. They had travelled across Australia from a town a couple of hours south of Sydney, and were planning to do the full circuit of Australia before returning home. I’ve changed their names in this blog; not to protect their identities but because we bloody forgot to ask them their names!

Bruce took off on the final section, and plucking up courage/stupidity from somewhere, I followed. At times, it was hard to even pull yourself up the rungs, such was the steepness and height of them. It’s also extremely nerve-racking to see nothing but a sheer drop as you climb.

Eventually, I made it to the top, where Bruce took a picture of me. I could hardly stand up, my legs had turned to jelly so much, and I was as white as a sheet, but I attempted a smile!

Checking I was alright to get down myself, Bruce headed down and was gone.

I was left with the views from the top, which were worth all the effort.

I then had the tricky task of getting down! Lets just say it took a long, slow time, and that there is no scarier experience than swinging your legs into empty space looking for the rung with a 170 foot drop below you! The following photo was taken at around 40 foot, as a guide to the view (I didn’t dare take a photo at any height above this!)

When all the excitement was over, I was too tired to drive anymore, so Mandy took over the reigns and off we went. We arrived at the Valley of the Giants around 2pm, and it was worth the effort to get there. The views from the top of the walkways were stunning (although less height at 40 metres than I had climbed on the Diamond Tree).

The boardwalk underneath the walkways was also good, with many great photo opportunities for standing inside trees and walking through them.

We decided to stay at a campsite nearby, at Coalmine Beach, and arrived there after free-wheeling the campervan to the nearest petrol station as we were running on fumes. The location of the site was great, with a little walkway and stairs leading down to the beach.

We also discovered where Orville had retired to after splitting with Keith Harris. He was looking a big older than his eighties heydays (but then again aren’t we all!).

(This is a genuine alive bird – I thought it was stuffed at first!)
And when I asked it “Who is your very best friend?”, it replied “You are”.

How nice!

All that was left to do was get something to eat, walk head first into a spider web (cue much frantic head wiping and hair brushing), and collapse into bed!

Kangaroo Watch

0 alive
7 morte to date.

Total Distance Driven In Australia : 841km

Firstly, a few photos of our home in Western Australia!

Starting the day with another breakfast barbeque, this time having bacon for the first time since Ho Chi Minh City, we set off for a tour of the South West corner of Australia.

We headed on a 100km plus trip to Cape Leeuwin. On the way it actually started to rain! How dare it! It’s only supposed to rain in Melbourne!

Cape Leeuwin is the most South-Westerly point in Australia, and is very similar to Lands End in the UK.

What makes it particularly special is that the Southern Ocean and the Indian Ocean both meet here. You can actually see the two merging together, as the different currents collide and make waves and different colours in the water. And just in case you can’t see where this happens, there’s a handy idiot board to let you know (complete in this instance with an idiot!).

At the point where the photo was taken, we were exactly halfway between the Equator and Antarctica. Heading west, the first land you would hit would be Montevideo in Uruguay, over 13,600 km away, and heading south there would be nothing until you hit Antarctica!

On the Antarctica theme, we haven’t experienced genuine cold weather since Shanghai back in February. Cape Leeuwin though was absolutely freezing! It didn’t help that we were still dressed for the tropics, but even a thermal jacket wouldn’t have kept the biting wind out. It made the whole place seem bleak, moody and dramatic.

We discovered the benefit of campervan living on heading back from the lighthouse. Having lost three toes each from frostbite, we needed a warm drink to get some life back into our frozen limbs. We had a choice:

1. Pay the AU$5 each for a coffee in the lighthouse cafe

OR

2. Get into the campervan, turn the gas on, and put the kettle on ourselves!

Guess which option we chose?

From the lighthouse, we headed to a nearby waterwheel which had semi-petrified in the salt water. The scenery here, if anything, was even more dramatic with the waves crashing over the rocks directly in front of us.

We then headed from Cape Leeuwin and took the tourist road back north for 110km. You would think the term “tourist road” would imply stunning vistas and jaw dropping experiences. Not in this case. Tourist Road obviously meant – “send the bloody tourists in their campervans through 110 km of (at times) mind-numbingly repetitive woodland and keep them off the local’s roads”. Wasn’t all bad though – we got to take a picture of the iconic Australia road sign!

Our aim by heading north (apart from the fact that our campsite was there!) was to go to Cape Naturaliste, another scenic place with a lighthouse. Unfortunately when we got there, most of the area was closed due to a recent wildfire. Our abiding memory of this place will be burnt trees and flies which refused to take no for an answer!

We’re leaving the campsite we’ve been on tomorrow and heading south east for a couple of hundred kilometres. Its been great in Busselton and exactly what we needed at this stage in the holiday. We’re definitely in campervan mood! Look out Australia!

Kangaroo Watch Report

"Living, jumping and saving young Billy who's trapped down a mine shaft" Kangaroos : 0
"Dead, rotting and lying by the side of the road" Kangaroos : 5

Total Distance Driven In Australia : 545km

There are certain truths I have discovered today.
Don’t buy your breakfast.
Don’t fry/grill your breakfast.
Don’t skip your breakfast!

The only way to live is:

BARBEQUE YOUR BREAKFAST!!

This morning, we caught up with some essentials (ie. Properly washing our clothes in a machine and not a sink for the first time since Shanghai!) and just generally relaxed.

We then drove into Busselton. One thing it is famous for (in fact the only thing it is famous for!) is its jetty.

This extends 2km out to sea, so what better way to spend an afternoon than a 4km round trip walk over the Indian Ocean!

At the end of the jetty, there is an underwater observatory which goes 8 metres underwater– we made the decision not to go down it as we’ll be seeing enough fish in the Great Barrier Reef in May (and it was relatively expensive as well)

Having managed the walk on the jetty without falling into the sea, we decided a really good thing to do would be….. go into the sea!

Walking back to the campervan, we passed some more of the “dag birds”.

A shopping trip later, getting our food for the next couple of days (barbie stock of course!), we waited for the night to fall and headed to the beach. I was determined to try for a photo of the Milky Way using a special function on my camera. In a country where pretty much every insect can kill you or leave you feeling decidedly poorly, perhaps it wasn’t the best idea in the world to be kneeling down on the ground in the pitch black for the sake of a photo!

It perhaps is not done justice here, but I finally got my picture of the Milky Way after years of trying!

Kangaroo Watch Report
Day 2: No sightings reported

Another day, another journey!

Popping to the post office first to send some more pointless memorabilia home, we checked out of the hotel and caught the taxi to the campervan company.

Before we set off, I had bored everyone rigid with the video of the campervan on the company website. It gave lots of useful information on not driving too slow for other drivers but sweet fa on anything useful. Well, today we had to watch it again. In full. Boring!!!

Two hours after arriving at the campervan depot, we finally set off. Apart from getting onto the wrong highway within 5 minutes of setting off, we found ourselves by some fluke heading south on the correct road!

(and as for the advice on the video about not holding up other drivers - the van drives like a sports car so maybe they should give advice on the correct hand single to give the slow drivers in front of you!!)

We decided during the journey to head to a place called Busselton. This is a coastal town on the Indian Ocean around 280km south of Perth, and sounded like a good place to recover for a couple of days. We knew there were campsites in the town, but didn’t know where they were so, after a four hour drive (which included a full supermarket shop to stock up and our first true sausage roll in two months), we drove through the town and pulled into a car park on the sea front. The view from the beach was stunning.

Heading back to the campervan, we noticed a couple of birds pulling insects out of the ground at the side of it. We’re no ornithologists but we think they might have been cockatoos.

To see such birds just hanging around like pigeons in England was a reminder how far we’d come.

Enter Aussie Bloke #1 stage left:

“Those birds are pests. The bloody council should poison the lot of them!”

We commented on the fact that they may have been pests to him, but it was amazing to us, to which he responded:

“Them birds are dags”.

Exit Aussie Bloke #1 stage right!

We drove up the road, and found a nice campsite fifty metres from the beach. It had the enormous benefit of having free wi-fi as well, which was nice!

We hooked up the electric supply, emptied our rucksacks for the first time in ages, and then prepared for the main event of the day. Paul Hogan urged us to put a shrimp on one in the eighties, I honed my skills in preparation for this day in the nineties, and today, finally, we had an Aussie Barbie!! The site has free barbeques for everyone to use, so it was just a case of turning up with the food and waiting for it to cook. And it was particularly nice, if I say so myself!

As night fell, we went for a walk around the campsite, and experienced a truly jaw dropping moment. I caught something out of the corner of my eye, looked upwards and saw the most stars I’ve ever seen in my life. We’d seen the Milky Way and lots of stars in Iceland a couple of years previous when we’d gone to see the Northern Lights, but this was on a different scale altogether. The Milky Way was clearly visible, there were millions of additional stars we’d never seen before, and the recognisable formations (such as the plough) were upside down in comparison to the UK. We literally stood still in our tracks drooling spit from our open mouths, like a slack jawed yokel from Barnsley/ Blackburn/ (Insert random town with predominance of slack jawed localness). A truly awe-inspiring sight!

By the way, we started Kangaroo Watch today. The report is:
Day 1: No sightings yet

Waking up today, feeling like we hadn’t been to sleep at all, we tried to cram as much into the day as possible. We first realised that we could afford to eat without getting a third mortgage, finding a nice café near the hotel, and then headed into town.

We walked through Perth city centre at 12 noon and something felt strange. Finally we put our finger on it – there were hardly any people! To put this into perspective, Perth is one of the biggest cities in Australia, we were walking on the main street in town at dinner time, and there were less people around than on a rainy Sunday afternoon in Oldham!

I got to revisit an old friend today, who used to be based in the UK but unfortunately no longer. I used to visit this friend on a weekly basis in the eighties, and spent many great times there. So imagine my surprise when Mandy pointed them out. I refer, of course, to TANDY.

I was obviously so surprised I decided to “camp up” for the photo; what the hell was I doing! Answers on a postcard please!

From Tandy, we followed a yellow brick road and headed to Kings Park. (Ok, it was more of a concrete pavement, but I’m trying to get all the Oz references in quickly!) This is the home of the botanical gardens in Perth, but also more interestingly gives you the best views of the city.

The gardens themselves were idyllic; we’re not turning into botanists or anything but it was a great way of relaxing and trying to regain the energy that we’d lost in the past weeks trials and tribulations.

Having walked for miles, we turned back to head for the hotel, stopping off in Woolworths en route (it seemed like a day to revisit old shops!).

Perth seemed like a really nice city; we got the impression that there wouldn’t be much to do here but at least the scenery would be stunning whilst you were doing nothing!

Tomorrow we leave Perth and pick the first of our campervans up. Over the next three months, in Australia and New Zealand, we will only be spending another nine days in hotels, and one night on a train. Every other day (around 75 days) will be spent living out of a space the same size as our bathroom at home.

Should be quite an experience!

An undeniable fact about the both of us is that we are not designed for early mornings. It’s not laziness – at a molecular level we simply just don’t function until early afternoon.

We pondered this fact as yet again we set an alarm for 4 am to catch an obscenely early flight from Singapore to Perth. This wasn’t the first early flight we’d had, and it isn’t the last early flight we’ll have, but the more it happens the more we wonder what sort of mental breakdown we must have had to DELIBERATELY book these early flights! I think the rationale was something to do with having more time in a place when we got there, little realising that having one hour in a place when you’re not exhausted is way better than arriving in a place hours before but too knackered to do anything! Anyway, I digress.

Arriving in Singapore airport, we grabbed a quick breakfast and then looked around the shops. Rather surreally one of the shops was playing the song “Land Down Under” and we were going to the Land Down Under. Saying that though, they probably deliberately play relevant songs just before a flight goes to a country (though I was unable to confirm whether David Hasselhoff was playing before the flight to Berlin!)

Our flight was delayed for one and a half hours whilst a succession of passengers decided they wanted attention for not feeling too well. One guy, obviously wanting to win the sicknote contest, decided to be sick all over himself, resulting in a delay whilst he was removed from the flight and his luggage located.

The flight was uneventful, right up until we flew over Shark Bay for our first sight of Australia. This is (I think) the most westerly point of Australia and was a stunning sight from the plane. Unfortunately though, I was watching Keanu Reeves being an alien in a film at the time, so you’ll have to make do with this lesser picture taken 10 minutes later!

We arrived finally in Perth Airport. A quick thirty minute delay later (after Australian quarantine had decided that the whole plane wasn’t a health risk) we finally, finally, after years of wanting to get here, entered Australia! And realised immediately that we could finally breath with no humidity around!

Our first impression was that the cost here was a complete shock to the system. Having lived for weeks in countries where you could buy a three course meal for two people for under a fiver and still have enough change for a sack of coconuts, we ended up paying the equivalent of a third world national debt for snacks from a Seven Eleven. Still, the city appeared nice, as we walked along the Swan River at sunset.

Falling asleep, and feeling every one of the previous 51 days travelling, we pretty much fell unconscious onto our beds. So ended our first day in our second continent.

Waking up after our first real sleep in five days, we headed into Singapore for our final day in Asia.

We headed to the harbour area, to catch a cable car to Sentosa Island. On the way we passed a shop whose name accurately described it’s contents.

Quite refreshing honesty from a store, we thought!

We caught the cable car, which passed over some of the bluest water we’d seen so far.

On the island itself, there was a mini-theme park. This was exactly how Genting should have been, with the rides and activities blending into the scenery seamlessly. We went on the Luge toboggan run, reaching death defying speeds as we hurtled towards the bottom!

We then caught the cable car back to the top and, breaking with years of tradition, actually bought the photo at the top!

One ice cream later, we headed back to Singapore Island. I realised whilst going over in the cable car that it was now less than twenty four hours to arriving in Australia, so got quite excited. This resulted in a telling off from Mandy and being sent to the naughty corner of the cable car.

We then headed to Raffles Place, where we walked along the waterside.

A group of Malteser people were causing mayhem, but luckily they jumped into the water and were not seen again!

We reached the Merlion Park. This is a statue of a mythical animal which is half lion and half fish. Strange combination – how does it chase down herds of wildebeest in the Serengeti with no legs!!

Completely exhausted by this stage, we headed back to the hostel to pack for our journey from Singapore to Perth, catching one final sunset in the process.

Singapore has been simply wonderful, and we have such regrets that we didn’t come here sooner. But, Asia is now over, so onwards to our next country and continent….

AUSTRALIA!

We were woken at 5am by our “breakfast” on the train. I say woken; yet again the idea of sleeping on a train was somewhat ruined by not actually sleeping. We kept nearly nodding off, just to be jolted by the bumpy track and didn’t manage to sleep for even a minute all night.

Around 6:30 am, we were told we had to leave the train with all our baggage in the next two minutes to go through Singapore customs. Cue a mad dash to throw our clothes on, jam everything we had taken out the night before into our packs, and head bleary eyed through a customs train station.

We arrived at 8am to the most deserted train station we’ve seen yet. Hoping for an ATM to get some Singapore Dollars, there was of course none for miles! Luckily, we still had a few US Dollars left from Cambodia so we managed to use a money changer to get our cab fare to the hostel.

After the night from hell, we really needed a good experience at the hostel. And we certainly got it. We’re staying at Hangout@Mount Emily hostel and it’s one of the nicest places we have stayed at on the trip.

We couldn’t check in until 3pm, so had six hours to kill. Each area has been named as xxxx out (our room is the Zonk Out zone for example) so we headed to the Veg Out zone.

We grabbed some books, arranged the bean bags and cushions together, and relaxed the nights stresses away, occasionally watching the 50 inch plasma tv at the same time. It was bliss. We also had free access to a coffee machine, with espresso strength servings, which helped to keep us awake for the duration.

The hostel has an amazing roof garden, with views of the Singapore skyline, and a standing shower pool which was extremely refreshing!

We went for a walk later on, grabbing an amazing cheap meal in a Chinese food mall down the road, and then went back on the roof to watch a spectacular sunset.

We’d heard that Singapore was extremely humid before we set off, but it hadn’t felt that way to us. Thinking it must have been a fluke of the weather, we thought nothing more of it until we spoke to a German guy that night who had just arrived. He looked and felt like he had entered a sauna! Perhaps after 7 weeks in Asia we’re used to heat and humidity!

We really like it here!!!