Merry ChristmOz

The Talented Termites of the Northern Territory (and Russ and I) wish you all the best for the festive season.

THE END OF THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD

Darwin gets into the swing of being Down Under

...Can I just say that I thought of the title before Baztralia came out.

I know, I know, but I just have to say it – G'day! Given all the travel amendments we've had to do on our journey so far, I wasn't sure we'd really make it to Australia, but I can now confirm that the land of Oz does exist; now I'm here I am in no hurry to click my heels and whisper “There's no place like home”.

But before I go on any further, I feel I need to make a statement concerning my previous blog entry about Japan. It became apparent that Russ' and my reaction to our Japanese “experience” at the very least disconcerted some people. Can I clarify therefore that we did like Japan and we did enjoy our time there. Also, as a result of comments concerning my previous entry, I don't intend this to be a guide for potential travellers; if my notes on Japan came across as being touristy, well, as I said at the time, it was because we felt like tourists. In fact I tried very hard to not put people off, by saying that you should go, then you can make up your own mind. Surely, if we all liked exactly the same things, life would be bloomin' boring? There, I've said my piece, I hope we can all be friends.

I'm very aware that we are long overdue making some comment on our travels around Australia. The reason for that is that even though we've been here since 14 August and I'm writing this over 3 months later, we didn't manage to get round to proper travelling in Elmo until 16 October. The reason for THAT is that we arrived in Australia expecting Elmo to have arrived two days beforehand. Nothing is ever that simple though is it? Thanks to someone “forgetting” Elmo and leaving him on a Korean dockside for over 3 weeks, and the long, intricate Australian processes to get a car and all our equipment cleared through Customs and AQIS (a very strict quarantine process, involving among other things, Elmo being steam-cleaned, as they are very anti any “foreign bodies” entering the country, i.e. soil microbes, bugs and beasties ... surprisingly Russ got in no problem...)

Such a delay in Elmo's arrival meant a frustrated fortnight hanging around Brisbane while we sulked, then had tantrums, then finally got our arses into gear and flew off to Perth and the west coast for 3 weeks (that was the length of time our shipping agents told us it would be until we'd get Elmo. That's not quite what happened, but I'll leave that for a future blog entry). Since that's the main of our Australia experience so far, that's what I'll concentrate on in this section of our blog.

Perth, like other cities in Australia, is a fantastic mix of old and new

Pretty much our main reason for coming to Australia is because in the mid / late 1960's Russ' parents came out here for a few years, as part of the “£10 Pom” influx, and Russ was conceived here (although not born here, which disgruntles him greatly, even though I told him that had they all stayed in Australia he wouldn't have come across the love of his life – he thought I was talking about mountain-biking.) Russ therefore had a strong urge to see where he came from (Cottesloe, a suburb of Perth) and see where his Dad had worked (Exmouth). Since both these places are more or less either end of the West Coast we decided to hire a camper van, rather than rely on the quite rare public transport there. At the risk of immediately ostracising ourselves from may of our friends, do you know what, we both really like the campervan and camping lifestyle out here? We've even both taken to eyeing up motorhomes and Winnebegos ... Obviously the – usually - completely different weather makes a difference (I'll come back to that) and also the size of the country and the distances between places means there's none of the road-rage that UK caravanners are subject to and the cause of.

Yes, the weather. So we'd crossed Eastern Russia in 35 degrees C, then experienced 40 degrees in Japan. We got off the plane in Brisbane to 21 degrees, a fine summer temperature in the UK, but following the temperatures we'd had, it felt like we'd gone back to winter (which, bizarrely, we had; Brisbane's Spring starts on 1 September). It felt even more ridiculous when we flew in to Perth's 15 degrees, and once we were on the road in the campervan, we experienced nights of 3 degrees, and trust me, 3 degrees in a metal box is not conducive to a good night's sleep; even Russ was glad to share the hot water bottle I take with me absolutely everywhere.

There are such contrasts in the landscape on that coastline (in fact, the more we see of Australia, there are contrasts everywhere); we were both reminded of Eastern Russia – drive for an hour and you're in scrubland, drive for another hour and you're surrounded by lush Spring growth, and such Spring growth! We'd been advised we'd picked the right time to see that side of the country, that we would be amazed by the Spring flowers. We thought, okay, this is all going to be relative, right? Our perception of Australia is a dry, desert country, so we thought maybe we'd see a few cactusy-type plants. How wrong can one be? I don't think I have ever before seen so many different flowers all growing in the same place. If you can imagine an alpine meadow, with, granted, a bit more dry, red earth between each plant instead of green grass, and a few less softly chiming bovines. I stopped taking pictures once I'd developed RSI in my camera-button finger (while Russ nipped inland, climbed Uluru, and popped back again to see if I'd finished yet i.e. I took a very long time).

One of about 500 photos (seriously) of Spring flowers in WA

Right, our journey up Australia's West coast. On 28 August we flew into Perth, where we stayed a couple of nights in the city's YHA, a comfortable enough place to lay our heads, and a good cheap source of a nice big barbecued steak,
sausage and a generous dollop of home-made coleslaw. Perth is one of the many cities in Australia, especially on the West Coast, that is starting to see the benefits of the mining money that's sloshing around (or at least it was until the financial crisis reared it's ugly head). There is therefore a very sparkly glass and steel CBD (Central Business District) well under way, whilst the shopping centre is a mix of flash department stores and 1960's concrete boxes. I think I can probably wax lyrical for hours on some of Australia's architecture; so many of the homes are gorgeous old-style “Queenslanders”, made of wood panelling and up on stilts (or stumps, depending on which part of Oz you're from, apparently - thank you for that Harvey and Joan), and there are so many 1920's – 30's buildings, which we in the UK knocked down in our own 1960's concrete frenzy. We went to a cinema in the “old” shopping centre, and walked into an Art Deco wonderland; I missed most of the first half of the film we went to see (Hell Boy 2 by the way – ummm, it's OK) because I was too busy trying to absorb my surroundings; Art Nouveau and Deco are my weakness.

Perth's CBD-scape plus admirer

Two days later we picked up our “Backpacker” campervan. Whilst in the office waiting to see the instructional DVD, we spent a few minutes drooling over the Prado (Elmo's a Prado) they had on display, which had been converted and set up for off-road camping, even down to a pull-out sink and cooker in the side! And then began our trip proper.

One of the saddest, overriding memories of that particular trip, and one which has re-occurred since we've managed to get going on the East side too, is the number of kangaroos we've seen. Why sad? Because most of them were dead on the side of the road, hit by 4x4's, or, as seemed more likely on the West Coast, by “road trains”. These are lorries, or trucks, that are not one, not two, but THREE trailers long. They are seriously huge, and don't stop for ANYTHING, mainly because they are so big that by the time they've stopped they will have already run over what it was they were slowing down for in the first place. The advice given to car drivers is that if you meet one, just do your best to pull over as far as you can. Most of these trucks are covering enormous distances, and are on the roads all hours of the day and night, including dawn and dusk, when kangaroos and wallabies are at their most active.

Our first sight-seeing stop was Yanchep National Park, where you can walk round Lake McNess (yes, really) and where we saw a few wild koalas , I believe one of them actually moved (the science bit; koalas only eat eucalyptus, which is where they get their nourishment and water from. Eucalyptus is actually quite toxic and takes so much of the koalas energy to convert into goodness, that they are only actually awake for 4 hours a day. If you see one with it's eyes open therefore, you've caught it at a very good moment).

Yep, a good moment

From there we stayed in the small town of Cervantes, on a lovely campsite fronting onto the beach, which gave us good access the next morning to Nambung National Park and the Pinnacles Desert. It's one of the strangest places I have ever seen; a truly bizarre landscape of thousands of limestone pillars, jutting out of the sandy ground, some of them 5 metres tall.

The size of the campervans should give a good idea of the size and number of Pinnacles

On our way to our next night's stop in Geraldton, we took a lunch stop at the top end of Dongara-Port Denison. We sat eating salad at the table of our camper, looking out onto a sunny Indian Ocean, and watching an osprey go hunting for his own lunch (he succeeded). Magical. That kind of made up for Geraldton. I think maybe we must have gone in the “wrong end” as LP described it as “like a seaside holiday town”, whereas we got a very different impression as we took a walk from our caravan park through what we later found out is the biggest grain export depot in Australia. A 24-hour enterprise, we saw road trains coming in to deliver their vast quantities of grain. We were even more unnerved when, having walked the 2k into the town centre to get fish and chips to eat on the sea front, we asked the shop owners where was a good spot, to be advised “nowhere after dark”! They eventually suggested a well-lit site further down the seafront (which we never found), with the lady of the establishment advising us to keep the doors of our car locked ... I didn't have the heart to tell her we were on foot.

The one attractive bit of Geraldton we did come across next morning was the Cathedral of St Francis Xavier, built by Monsignor John Hawes, who built 16 churches in pretty much as many years.

What a vast difference again when we stopped in Kalbarri. On the mouth of the Murchison River, it has a beautiful estuary beach, directly opposite the campsite we stopped in that night. We had a lovely afternoon, going for a walk along the sand, playing frisbee, and then Russ yomped back to the camper to get a couple of beers so that we could toast the glorious sunset we watched from the beach.

A Kalbarri sunset

The next morning we were up early in order to be back on the beachfront for 8.45am, in order to watch the daily pelican feed (conveniently opposite our campsite again). The story goes that back in the 1970's a chap called Cliff used to go out in his boat every morning, catch a few fish, bring them back to shore and gut them on this very spot. A few pelicans got the idea that if they hung around long enough, Cliff would chuck them the scraps. And so a daily ritual began. This continued for many years, until Cliff began to get older and poorly, and so on the days when he couldn't feed the pelicans, friends and neighbours would take it in turns to do so. Eventually Cliff went into a nursing home, and recently passed away, and now volunteers go every morning to the spot to feed the pelicans that show up (some mornings there are none, some mornings there are several) and to explain a bit about the pelicans to the tourists that invariably show up to watch.

Did you know, for example, that a pelican egg is only 3 x bigger than a chicken egg, and the hatchlings are too small to be fed from the huge adult pelican beaks as other birds are fed, so they actually climb down inside the adult pelican's mouth, into the gullet and feed direct from there! One swallow by the adult pelican and the hatchling would be a gonner!

Three hungry mouths to feed

We had to make an overnight stop at Monkey Mia beach resort, as it's world famous for the wild dolphins that turn up practically each morning for feeding (can you see a theme arising here?). The big disappointment of this was that it wasn't made clear until we got down to the beach that not everyone gets to feed a dolphin; “handlers” pick out a few lucky people – neither Russ or I were lucky that morning. However, the wonderful part was that 6 female dolphins turned up, one of them with her 4 day old baby. I know I've used the term “cute” before, but this really topped every previous experience of cute. You assume that since dolphins live their life in water, that from the absolute get-go they will be at one with their environment. Errr, not quite. The best I can explain it is to ask you to imagine a new-born colt, all leggy and wobbly, and then transfer that image to a baby dolphin in the ocean. There was much snuffling and spluttering and squeaking as this little mite tried to keep up with Mum in the shallows. It was like watching a little tot learning to swim and snorkle at the same time. Everybody's heart strings were well and truly tugged.

Maternal instincts were definitely awakened

Once we were able to tear ourselves away, we ensured we took a drive through Denham, Oz's most westerly town, then on to Eagle Bluff where there are World Heritage seagrass fields that are home to dugongs and a variety of sharks. They must have all been out visiting the relatives when we got there. Then we made a stop at Shell Beach, which is exactly as it sounds, only so much more. For as far as the eye can see in both directions the white beach is made up of tiny cockleshells, but not only that; in some places these shells are 10 METRES DEEP. Astounding.

Go on, try and count 'em, we dare you

After that we ventured on to Hamelin Pool, where one can see the previously thought extinct stromatolites. I couldn't quite understand the science of it all, but they are purportedly the oldest living thing on the planet, and it's thanks to their existence that we came along, as they put enough oxygen in earth's atmosphere for us to be able to evolve. (yes, my head hurts too from all this information).

Yes, quite

We spent the night in Carnarvon, a really pleasant small-town town, with a gorgeous Old Post Office Cafe, where I had great pizza, and Russ was Russ and indulged in a Kangaroo steak.

There was an exciting start to the next morning, when some plonker backed into the driver's door of the camper, as Russ was waiting for me to check out of the caravan park. There followed a visit to the local police station to report the incident, where a brilliant female desk clerk told it like it is, with some quite fruity language. She was a star.

Later that morning we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn (as per photo at the beginning of this blog entry), and entered a landscape of termite mounds, wild emus and a feral goat. We reached Exmouth by early evening to find out that the couple who were running the caravan park we were staying at had moved from Chester 20 years earlier (only an hour up the road from home, for those who don't know).

Russ eyeing up a termite mound to see if it has potential as a 2-bed detached (once a surveyor...)

Exmouth Cape Caravan Park was lovely and peaceful. That first morning we had 6 cockatoos grazing round the campervan, and as I spoke to Mum that evening on the payphone at the entrance to the Park, we watched 4 kangaroos hop their way across the bowling green opposite!
We also succeeded in achieving Russ' main aim in coming to Australia, by taking a drive out to the Harold E Holt radio transmitter site where his Dad, Ken, had worked.

Some techy stuff about the station and radio transmitter Russ' Dad worked on

Whilst we were up there we visited Ningaloo Marine Park, where at a site called Lakeside you can walk in from the beach edge and snorkle out to coral that's very close to the shoreline. Perfect for someone like me who adores the sea but it petrified beyond belief to get in it. Still, with Russ holding my hand, I was able to successfully snorkle out to it, but it was hard to concentrate on the coral formations when there were so many gorgeous fish around; clown fish, black fish, bright blue fish, opaque fish with long, forked blue-tipped tails, sky-blue and pink fish, black and yellow fish, fish with snouts... you get the idea i was quite entranced.

All too soon it was time to leave Exmouth and start our return journey to Perth. Our first stop, Coral Bay, we found a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand it's a really pretty bay, where you can allegedly snorkle just 50 metres off the beach (although an old-timer we met there told us it's more like 100 metres these days, since some freak weather a few years back meant the coral spawn didn't float away, but rather hung around and blocked out the sun on the coral underneath, which killed quite a bit of it off). On the other hand, because it's well hyped as one of THE places to visit on this coast, every one and their mother (yes, okay, not you Mum, sorry) visits there, which the one-street town cashes in on, resulting in us being crammed into a camping site space that at any other campsite would have been left as no-good waste ground. Anyway, enough griping. Whilst Russ had a nap on the beach that afternoon, I went for a wade in the ocean and had a hugely beautiful fish (about the size of a King Charles Spaniel) come up and investigate me, so I went back to fetch Russ and we paddled around in the water for about an hour whilst three of these silvery fish kept us company.

The next day we managed to keep driving for 6 hours, crossing the Gascoyne River, which was completely dry. Russ went to take a couple of photos and ended up chatting to a chap who was using the bridge and the dry river bed underneath to train a couple of folk in emergency service procedures. He told Russ to go and check the marker to see what the depth of the river could be (7 metres is it's usual highest point). He also advised that the Gascoyne River is one of the fastest flowing rivers in the world...

The Gascoyne River, one of the fastest flowing rivers in the world ...

We made a pit-stop at the Billabong Roadhouse because, well, because you just have to (and we had a bit of a yen for an icecream). The owner told us he and his wife had only taken over the Roadhouse the previous November, when the temperature gauge under the fuel pumps canopy had shown a temperature of 48°C between 2-5pm every afternoon!

Does exactly as it says on the tin

That night we “rough camped” ie drove into a big layby where a few other caravans had already parked up for the night. We found a quiet enough spot at the one end of the site and had a peaceful night, apart from the occasional roar of a road-train passing by on the road below. The only other point of interest was that the next morning we had to do what we'd done when we'd rough camped in Russia, and that was to dig your own toilet! Made a little bit more exciting here as you weren't quite certain what snake or spider might be frequenting these particular bushes...
The next day we drove through an area including a place called Gingin (my kind of town when it sounds like alcohol) where it was more English than England to look at, only with sun! Lots of rolling arable and pasture land, homesteads that looked more like grand estates, fields of frolicking horses and nibbly sheep.

We ended up in the small coastal town of Mandurah, on a campsite where a couple of once domestic black bunnies had gone “feral” and in typical bunny fashion were now absolutely eveywhere.

Another day's drive took us to Walpole, on the way passing yet more varied landscape. The closer we drove to Walpole, the trees just got bigger and bigger; a bit further back the land got quite scrubby; a bit further back still rolling pastureland again, orchards of cherries, apples, pears, oranges; and vineyards, or wineries as they call them here. Russ was very taken with the small town of Bridgetown that we passed through, lots of lovely “old-style” Australian buildings and homes. That night we stopped at Coalmine Beach, actually an estuary inlet, where the water is DARK BROWN, as a result of all the tannins leached out of the vegetation as the water makes its way down to the estuary. Funnily enough, neither Russ nor I felt inclined to go for a dip. This time we sat and prepared dinner at our campervan table while three Kookaburras worm-and-grub hunted around us.

A Kookaburra

We decided to hang on a couple of nights at Coalmine Beach, to give us a chance to wash some clothes, and to have a look round the area. I mentioned earlier about the trees getting bigger and bigger the closer we got to Walpole? That's because The Walpole-Nornalup National Park is home to the giant Tingle tree – not a made-up name, but a variant of an Aboriginal word for the type of Eucalyptus or Karri trees that they have. We visited the Valley of the Giants and took the Tree Top Walk, which is an amazing 600m long ramp gently rising and turning up into the canopy of the tingle trees. The ramp reaches 40m at its highest point, and it was glorious to be up so high and hear the wind roaring through the treetops.

Where's Wally? ... I mean Russ ...

On route to Margaret River the next day we stopped at the Gloucester Tree, one of three trees in the area which you can climb up the outside of. These trees were initially used as fire lookouts and hut-like structures were built at the top so that the fire wardens had some protection from the elements up there. Russ managed it, I welched after 6 steps. God it was horrible! It is basically steel poles whacked into a tree trunk that go spiralling round the outside until you get to the top, 60 metres later. There's no soft landing at the bottom, it's just hard ground; there's no handrail to grab onto, you lean over and up and put your hands on the next pole; there's no system of one lot of people go up, then another lot of people go down, you have to scooch over to the inside closest to the tree if you're lucky, or sidle to the outside of the pole (where there's nothing to stop you keeping going) if you're unlucky. Sadly we didn't get a proper picture of the tree, so you'll just have to make to with my terrible description and trust that I'm not exaggerating the sheer yuckiness of it.

Another day and off first to Yallingup (which means “place of love” in the local Aboriginal language – did you know by the way that there are over 200 different Aboriginal tribes?), where we got out of the camper for a little while and went for a bracing walk up a bit of the coastline to look at the rough ocean – it's the best surf for ages apparently. Then back in the camper until we got to Busselton which has a 2km jetty with an underwater Observatory at the end. The Observatory was closed when we got there but we thought we'd have a yomp along the jetty anyway ... there is a handrail on one side, but given the prevailing wind direction it's not the side you'd like it to be! And the wind certainly picks up the further along the jetty you go. After that we went for a visit with some people that Russ' Mum and Dad were friends with when they lived in Perth, and had a cup of tea with them and listened as they talked about the “old times”. From there it was another night in Mandurah and risking our lives with the feral black bunnies again...

One of my more attractive moments, I like to think

And so we got to Monday 15 September, and the camper had to be returned by 4pm (which was a saga in itself, given the girl we had to deal with at the office, but I won't go into that, suffice to say I sent a Victor Meldrew stylie email to the manager of that branch). Our last port of call was to go and see where Russ' parents had lived in Perth. We weren't sure if the little house would even still be standing; it was, and oh boy, how it's standing! The area has definitely gone up in the world, and a massive renovation and extension programme had been undertaken, as we were advised by the wife of the couple now living there. She very kindly gave us a whirlwind tour of the ground floor ... I have a lasting impression of the crystal chandelier in the kitchen.

Where Russ became more than a twinkle in someone's eye

Back to Perth we were then, and assuming we'd call the shipping agents to find out we could fly back to Brisbane and collect Elmo... Life's just not that simple is it? But I guess I'll save that for the next instalment.