Australia closes Sydney

We heard as we got closer to Sydney that it was pretty much closed. How can a major city like Sydney be closed!!? Because of the APEC(Asia Pacific Economic Conference) in which George Bush was attended. The security was soo tight and the Australian government were soo paranoid it was untrue. I don't think they wanted Bush to be assassinated on their soil! It was soo over the top it came across as totally pathetic.
All this meant we had to head a bit south for a couple of days before everything died down. Everyone in Sydney had been given the day off so they would get out of the city on the day of the conference. This again affected us as everywhere we wanted to go was packed full of people.
We passed through an innocuous town called Goulburn on the way to the coast. When we got to a campsite there we asked if they could lend us some extra blankets as it wasn't getting any warmer. The lady who worked there offered to give us 2 sleeping bags! She actually lived on the site itself and took us to her place and gave us two sleeping bags and a hot water flask to keep! Amazingly generous and very handy indeed. From this moment on sleeping in the van improved ten-fold. The morning after we drove up to the war memorial in Goulburn for a view over the place. It's an odd memorial but quaint. A lighthouse on a hill but it's totally land-locked with no sea for miles. Every night they put the light on to shine around the town. Whilst we were up there we got chatting to a couple from Tazmania, or 'Tazzy' as everyone calls it. They were really nice and after we told them about the trials in our van they gave us a water bottle! The generosity at times was really cool. They also offered to put us up for a couple of weeks if we were going to Tasmania, we werent but a nice offer either way.
Off to the coast, the Tasmanian guy told us it would be warmer nearer the coast due to the sea actually heating the land at night. Not sure if this was true because normally it's the opposite but as soon as we got to the seaside town of Kiama we felt instantly warmer, the sleeping bags clearly helped too.
Kiama was heaving. The busiest campsite we'd been on, we had most campsites up and till then to ourselves but this was totally rammed. A cool little town Kiama. The 'famous'(?) blowhole was here, unknown to us, so we checked it out. Basically its a smallish hole in a rock where the waves come crashing in that when water pummels it there`s a high gush of water jetting out into the air. It's not bad for 5 minutes or so. I was itching to get to Sydney but at least we had a couple of days just generally doing not much in a nice place.
We headed north through Woolongong, a lot of surfers here but the place is fairly grim. Already it's a lot busier on this stretch of coast than it has been anywhere else in Oz. Plenty of surfers out and a large amount of people watching too.
Enough is enough. All our lives we've seen pictures of the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge and heard soo many good things about the place that we really wanted to see if it matched up to Melbourne. APEC or not, we're going.

Capital Territory

As soon as you get to Canberra you realise what everyone was talking about when we were advised, "You'll need a map!". We got lost immediately and it's a very easy thing to do. Canberra was chosen as the capital because deciding between Sydney and Melbourne could cause serious friction. Canberra is somewhere in between. It's surrounded by hills in large flat area seemingly in the middle of no-where.
The design of the new capital was put up as a competition and received various entries. The winning design was odd to say the least. It's looks good on a map but to navigate it's just frustrating and it also means that there are no main areas where people seem to congregate. The whole place is shaped on a couple of giant circles and one way systems. Often you can see where you want to go but getting to it is tricky. Endless circling becomes even harder when on foot. Pavements are an afterthought in Oz.
However, Canberra is still quite nice place. It's covered in trees and fairly pleasant to walk around parts of it but having a car seems fairly essential. This is the home of the Australian government and we went for a look round. A nice building that you can see from a long way off. It's built on Capital Hill, yet another nod towards America. A grand building inside with loads of marble. Information on the way the Australian government works is also inside, very similar to the American Government. Shocker! Also interesting was the fact that it took many many years before Aborigines could vote, and even now there are no Aborigines in Parliament so it may seem there are none that get the opportunity to run for election but I could be wrong.
Parliament was not in session that day but normally you can watch from viewing galleries if you wish.
Canberra is also home to the National Museum. What a great museum it is too. A crackingly modern and quirky building from all angles. It also has oodles of information about Australia and it's history aswell as modern times. A definite must-see of Canberra.
Some nice looking buildings and tree lined avenues make up this disjointed place. The majority of people living here are civil servants but there are things for visitors, mainly revolving around museums and art galleries. The place seem fairly quiet otherwise. We did get into an art gallery which varied between totally dire and pretty ok.
A major problem for us is that it was really cold at night. After staying in a lay-by freezing to death we decided to splash out on a cabin in a caravan park. I say cabin, I actually mean a knackered old caravan from the 60´s with styling straight out of a horror movie. It was warm though, with both heaters on full whack. It was a shame we tripped the fuse though. We soon found out how to get the electric back on, by ringing the half asleep park caretaker, so all was fine.
We were told the view from Canberra's communications tower was really good so we paid our money and went up. Yep, loads of trees pretty much. Not a lot else you can really see other than the distant mountains, not bad but not great.
A day or two is well enough, lets get to Sydney!

The Prom to the Capital

The drive out of Melbourne and to Wilsons Promontory got pretty good. Trees everywhere and the approaching coast looked great. We made it just to the edge of the national park itself and stopped at a campsite right next to another gorgeous lake. You can tell we're far south though. It's freezing. The wind felt arctic, and most likely was. We had to get north to get warm so the next day we first drove south to have a quick peek at the Prom and then head north as quick as possible.
Wilsons Prom is another one of those other-worldy places that Oz seems to have in abundance. We drove down surrounded by coast of both sides with rolling hills......wait a minute, they're massive sand dunes, and the odd mountain. Blimey. The sea is a colour of blue I don't think I've seen before and the whole place looks amazing. We took a a couple of hours walk down to a beach named Squeaky Beach. It's exactly what it says on the tin. Squeaky. The white sand particles are large and round here and when you walk or slide on the stuff it squeaks. I thought this was totally weird but great. The beach was all to ourselves too and we were only joined by other people once we started heading back.
There are plenty of walks and cycling trails around here and the area is just unreal. I'd come back because we really didn't get chance to see much. Although the river nearby the information centre was orange. Very clear and orange. Is this insane or what? On the way back from Squeaky Beach I nearly stepped on a huge wombat. They're fairly cute animals and quite docile. Just munching away whilst we wander past, I mean come on, this place really is like a frickin zoo island.
Due to the cold we made a rather rash decision to head north quick. We tried, probably foolishly, to pull an all nighter. This has various problems. After dusk is when roos and wombats stroll freely on the unlit roads and, as we started to realise, not many petrol stations stay open. Due to being so cold in the van we thought driving would at least be ok with the heater on. Unfortunately, we should've known, the heater packed up a couple of hours into the night. We were driving in utter darkness with coats, hats, gloves and a blanket on. This soon turned spooky on the dark way to Canberra.
We were entering ski country, we should've known that would be cold too. Although the ski-ing areas looked lacking in snow, a major problem I'm sure, it was still cold. In the dark it was quite eerie. We knew there were large mountains looming around us but we couldn't see them, in daylight we would've seen Australia's largest peak but not now. Then the snow started. We had brilliant sunshine during the day and now comes the snow. And also the fog. Large patches of mist and fog envelop the road. This looked cool but didn't feel too great at the time.
We ended up having to pull over at a rest stop at 3am in the morning as we were running perilously low on fuel. It was a bit dodgy but ok. When we awoke we realised we were camped right next to a 'no camping' sign. Ah well. It was also in one of the grimmest logging towns we'd seen so far. Deliverance style.
Off to the next town for fuel, Coomra. A small-ish town based around the ski industry. Had an alpine look to it but a bit uglier. Let's get to Canberra, please.
We'd now left the state of Victoria for New South Wales, a humongous state. And then we go onto Canberra which is in it's own little area, known as the ACT. I can't remember what this stands for at the moment but it ....oh yes, it's Australian Capital Territory. It's a tiny area but there you go. We'd heard a bit about Canberra and that it's not really worth visiting even though it's the capital but we have to find out.

Magnificent Melbourne

Down the road from Geelong is one of Australia's main cities, Melbourne. It's also the main city of the state of Victoria. As it turns out Melbourne and Sydney have a great rivalry. We're spending similar time in both so we can judge for ourselves. Sydney is supposed to be the brash beach and harbour city whilst Melbourne has the style and culture. This appears so at first glance. From the highway the skyline looms in the distance and looks modern and glassy. Much bigger than Perth and once we got into the centre we realised it's a totally different proposition, i.e. it's good. The streets have a kind of New York look about them, from what I've seen in pictures of New York that is. I like it. Melbourne looks modern but also has many grand buildings from times gone by that are in immaculate condition, probably because it's not too old!
After a quick drive through the centre we had to find our way out to a campsite. As always in Australia this sounds easy but never turns out so. The road signs in Australia must be amongst the worst in the world. Large signs will tell you what road is coming up, or that you're about to pass, but not where the road leads to. This is incredibly annoying. You can drive for a good half an hour before seeing a sign telling you that you're going in the wrong direction. It happens all the way through the trip and is one of my biggest annoyances of Oz. Another annoyance is the incredibly hyper kids here. I don't know what they're fed, oodles of fried mars bars most likely, but the kids up to even early twenties have either slight mental problems or are just on a constant sugar high. Many bus or train rides have proved this time and again. We endure many an hour on public transport all through Asia and all were fine but Australia is a different prospect altogether. It's incredibly depressing on public transport here.
Our first day in Melbourne was spent mostly looking round a Pixar exhibition in the Animation museum on the great Federation Square. Pixar, if you don't already know, made films such as Cars, Monsters Inc., Toy Story and the like. I'm not normally into this type of thing but I have to say it's probably the best exhibition I've ever seen anywhere ever. The artwork that goes into these films is unbelievable and mostly a lot better than some of the guff we've seen in supposed art galleries. After the exhibition we stayed in the same place to have a nosey in a room called The Memory Grid. This is a collection of booths where you can sit and watch upto 300hours of independent films, from skateboarding to far out art movies. A very cool idea and completely free. A good way to spend your lunch hour if you worked in the city. Another room in the same place was full of pc's where you can play independent computer games. These were created by people at home to enter into a national competition and it was brilliant. You can spend as long as you like messing around on different games all for zero cash. It was certainly a different day to what we've had anywhere else on the trip and a very good one at that.
Walking the city you quickly see how varied the populous is here. A massive Chinese population aswell as a huge Indian population make for varied and interesting areas. I liked it a lot. It's very odd that we've been through soo many one horse towns, some nice some you'd rather drown yourself than stay longer than 15 minutes in, and the population generally consisted of 300 white blokes. And then you get to somewhere like Melbourne where people from all over the globe live and it's a lot better for it.
You don't have to wander the streets too much if you don't want either, a free tram is available that gives you information about the place as it takes you round. It just has a good vibe about it, quirky art things are everywhere here, art and music are big here and it shows. There's also a couple of small European style streets full of trendy cafes and restaurants. There's definitely some class here that doesn't exist in the majority of Australia.
At night most of the city looks beautiful against the main river flowing through it, the Yarra. It's well lit up and is good for a wander along, some kayak the river at night but I thought it was way too cold!
Another free exhibition was on here also. It was mainly over the top art guff but some it was really funny. There was one really long video from the guys who made the Honda commercial that had bits of the car knocking other bits of the car into other bits in a massive chain reaction. Amazing stuff and well worth a look. They're German guys I think but I can't remember their names. Another short video we saw was of a Korean guy standing side on to the camera. He was tasked with guessing what items were hitting his head from off screen. He was bad at guessing but some of the items would've been tough to guess when flying at the back of your head, a chair, tv, toaster, sofa,computer and other stuff that looked like it really hurt!
There are plenty of music venues and places to eat and drink here and loads to do for free if you like. Just wandering around the new harbour area near the large Aussie Rules stadium was good. Melbourne is also famed for its love of sport and a few teams co-exist here, a couple of large stadiums lay testament to this.
I really like this place, apart from the long commute to it, and the surrounds. It's definitely a place worth coming back to and I think I will.
Luckily whilst we were there we got to stay with Laura's old boss, which was brilliant. Especially because they put us up for a few days, oh the home comforts we've been without for so long. It was really good to have a base and relax for a few days and not have to sleep in that frickin cold van! Thanks very much guys!!
We also took in a great museum, fantastic building which was mostly better than the art. I was sick of aboriginal art by this point. I've seen loads of it and generally just think it's crap. There are some ok pieces but in the whole it's garbage, more so the stuff with horribly drawn people. We did see some great stuff from a guy called Geoffrey Bartlett. Very evil looking stuff, would and metal based stuff mostly, and it reminded me of artwork found in a Tool album, metal!
Before we left we also got to check out one of the areas just outside of Melbourne, and a great war memorial park on the way, St Kilda. It's quite a bohemian almost hippie type place but with a large mix of drinkers too. It's good though and has quirky bars and very late night patisseries, for the munchies I presume, and arty shops selling antiques to clothes to music. There's a beach and harbour here too but we couldn't see too much of that at night. It would be a great place to live, expensive, due to it's locale to Melbourne and for that fact that it just seemed relaxed. There were a couple of street performers here, fancy swallowing a sword?...thought not.
We had to do it. Just had to. It's not my fault. Honest. On the way our from Melbourne we drove to the street where they shoot the Neighbours tv show. I don't know why but I had to go! It was tiny. We drove up it and took a couple of snaps before hastily driving away in embarrassment.
Melbourne was great, the best city in Australia so far by a country mile. And it seems it's in the best, even though on of the smallest, states of Australia. Victoria. As we find out Victoria has even more to offer than the beach and surf towns of the Great Ocean road and Melbourne. The most southerly tip of mainland Australia, Wilsons Promontory(or Wilsons Prom as everyone calls it) next.

Not long in Geelong

Geelong is the official end of the Great Ocean road although the good coastal driving is well over. The town, or even city(another 20,000 or so population), is a nice place. The main street leads down a hill to the newly refurbished dock area. It´s fairly arty and there are plenty of quirky things dotted around to make the place more interesting, which is nice. The main quirky thing is the bollards. A local artist was commissioned to paint old bollards from the previous pier on the docks. Each bollard is placed somewhere along the waterfront, some are hidden, and are painted like people. They're mainly local people who've shaped Geelong but there's also a few national faces, the prime minister John Howard being one) and the only bollard that has been vandalised funnily enough). There's plenty of these bollards, 104 in total, and it takes a good couple of hours to see them all. We lost interest at about 30 but they're very good. Each one also has a rabbit somewhere at their feet. This is a nod to the serious rabbit problem they have in Australia. They were introduced by a bloke who had nothing to do so he wanted some rabbits to shoot on his land. Geelong was home of the first landing of the imported rabbits. The problem was is they spread massively across the country devouring the weak foliage and destroying many a farmers land. This was such a problem that a fence sprawling the length of the country was built to curb the spread of them. It wasn't completed quick enough though and even when a second fence was attempted the rabbits spread way too fast. It was too late and now rabbits are pests throughout the land. Traps are common place.
The rest of Geelong, away from the docks, is ok and fairly pleasant looking. We visited a great art museum(one of the most famous Australian paintings was here - A bush burial - it was alright but there was better) and a smaller fine art gallery, admittedly by accident but good non the less. There's more flash bars and cafes here too and you can tell we're getting close to Melbourne, it's but an hour away. But that's another post!
In reply Matt, WOGs are what the 'true-blue' Aussies call foreigners. We heard it stood for 'Western Origin Gentleman' but are still unsure as various people from different backgrounds have been called it, From the Greek to Indians. It's quite strange at times but nearly everywhere we'd been so far in Oz was solely white people, barring Alice Springs. That soon changes in Melbourne. The population is very mixed and better for it.

How many Apostles?

One of the most famous and most visited parts of the Great Ocean Road is the Twelve Apostles. These are small but tall rocks out from the mainland that they were once part of. And no there isn't 12 of them. There never was. I think there's 8 or 7. Plenty of bus loads of tourists stop here to take photos. They do look impressive but it's all subjective. I thought other parts of the coast looked better. The rocks used to be called the Pig and Sows. This didn't sound to great so for marketing purposes they came up with the new poetically licensed name of the 12 apostles. It worked too. Huge amounts of people visit here daily whereas other parts of the gorgeous coastline are totally empty.
By the way, at this point we were in another Australian state, Victoria. The slogan for this state is 'The place to be'. For once it actually seems to ring true. The tourism machine is well organised and the places we've been are great.
On we go through a few towns. Notably we stop at a nice place called Aireys Inlet. Every town we visit we're told to visit the lighthouse, being the shipwreck coast it's unsurprising that they all have lighthouses. But the one at Aireys was a bit different. One because it was in excellent condition but mainly because it featured in an odd children's TV show I used to watch when I was a kid, 'Around the twist'. The place and the beaches along both sides were nice places to be and a real friendly town with locals saying hello to us on their way back from the pub and so on.
Just before Aireys is the most photographed stretch of the road which was the main part that was actually right near the ocean. It was a really good drive, it looked even better for all the sports cars and motor bikes. Thankfully, everyone was heading the opposite way to us and it looked really busy, it's supposed to be worse in summer.
We pulled up at great photo opportunity spot and were joined by a group of hippie-type dudes that pulled up in their campervan with music, the doors, blaring out and cans of beer falling from the inside. It was like the 1960's all over again, I presume. Beards everywhere, superb.
We took in a couple of waterfalls and forest walks along the way to Torquay, the home of Australian surfing. This is where Rip Curl and Quicksilver are based and were founded. It's also home to the longest running annual world surf contest at Bells Beach. We went to take a look at the point where the serious surfers do their thing. I was dying to have a go, until I saw Winki Pop(?). This is the name of the rocky point where the main surfing goes on. It´s a rocky point to say the least and surfers have a walk over slippery harsh rock to get out to the surf. It looked pretty shallow too, black rock just beneath the surface. Not for the likes of me.
Be we did get out surfing for the first time in Oz just round the corner at Front Beach. It was amazing. I had the waves to myself and the beach was fairly quiet. The water was see-through and the sun was glorious in an unclouded sky. Shame the water was absolutely freezing but the wetsuits we hired were really good. A cracking day.
We also got to look round the surf museum in Torquay, which was really cool in itself. Another classic Aussie quote came from the guy at the surf hire shop when I asked where all the Aborigines where in Victoria. He said, 'Ah we killed them all years ago'. He was a nice guy though and I think some Australians are slightly embarrassed by their history. He also, as he told us, got some stick in Sydney for looking like an Italian or Greek, which he did but it does show there's still a bit of an issue for non true-blue Aussies(as they are called). More of that soon.
I really liked Torquay though. Surf shops everywhere, although non cheap like I'd presumed!
So we leave surf central and head to Geelong, the official end of the Great Ocean Road. The road has been a great experience and definitely worth a visit. I think I'll go back and do it the other way. There's loads to see and loads of great walks and, when I go back and hire a bike, cycle tracks. A beautiful place. The place to be.

The start of the Great Ocean Road

It all started with Cheeseworld. Just past the official start of the Great Ocean Road is the 'famous' Allansford Cheeseworld. Had to buy some cheese being the tourists we are of course. Nice stuff too.
Anyway, the Great Ocean Road itself is the worlds biggest war memorial. It was built by service men returning from the first world war. Mainly to give them something to do but also to connect the small coastal towns and give Australia something to rival great driving routes in other countries, such as the Pacific Coast Highway in America. Who would've thought that Australia wanted to do something like the Americans? It's pretty obvious when you come here how American things are, although I've not been there yet! The small towns and roads look American, the government is based on the US and they certainly know how to promote themselves like America!
Back to the road. It took a while to build, 30 years I think, in various forms and length. Often sections of the road were hand cut into the rock along the coastline. Nowadays the official start and end, Warnambool to Geelong, aren't really coastal roads at all but it doesn't take long to get there. When you do there are seemingly hundreds of places to stop off to have a look round and go for a stroll. Empty beaches in gorgeous coves with pristine blue ocean rolling in against cliffs and rocks.
The first bay of major note is the Bay of Martyrs, so called due to the amount of Aborigines that were driven off the cliffs here by white settlers. Another bay close by, Massacre Bay, unsurprisingly has the same type of history.
What makes this stretch of coast so popular, apart from the endless promotion of it, is that the land is fairly weak and had been broken down over time by the constant crashing of the waves. Some parts of the earth and rock are much harder than others so get worn away at different rates. That's why you get all these little islands and rocks out in the sea. They used to be part of the mainland. Where puddles form inland cracks eventually appear in soil, the water drains through the earth and eventually wears it away until it becomes separate from the mainland. You can see dips in the ground as you walk along where new pools are eroding away the landscape and in time will cause more land to separate into the sea. It does make for a good looking coastline though. It´s constantly changing too so if you go back 10 years later it won't look the same.
It's a tourist haven here. Huge amounts pass along this road everyday, a lot of them on day long bus tours. I was glad we could take our time and drive it. About 3 days is the average people do it in, we took 6.
One of the most famous parts is called London Bridge. This is, or was, a piece of land that had formed two arches into the sea. In 1990 2 tourists were stranded on top of the farthest arch as the first arch collapsed into the sea. A helicopter had to fly out to rescue them. Now the rock is a solitary arch in the sea and renamed 'London Arch'.
Port Campbell was another overnight stop off that I mainly remember for it's good looking one street town and beautiful bay. Surfers, probably locals, were insane enough to be riding waves in between the rocks and cliff as well as the pillars of the pier. We also walked up to the top of the nearby cliff for stunning views of the forthcoming coastline. A beautiful place this really is.

Port Fairy to the Great Ocean Road

A charming little place, Port Fairy, was the next stop. It used to be called Belfast until 1850 due to the large Irish immigration. But now its mainly a mix of surfer types, fishermen and artsy types. This is the home of a large Folk music festival every year. There was quite a loud storm out at sea that evening and many a ship have fallen foul along this stretch. That´s why this part of the coast is named the ´Shipwreck coast´. 180 ships were wrecked along here in an 80 year period, between 1840 and 1920.
Some towns have a kind of aura about them, when you arrive you almost know if you like them straight away. Others do grow on you but it´s fairly instant with a nice place like this. Friendly people and a great tree covered caravan park help.
Just down the road was an old volcanic crater which is now a national park and home to lots of wildlife, Tower Hill reserve. Some of it is wetlands and there´s a nifty boardwalk around them, where there´s a constant frog croaking soundtrack. I did'nt like the warning signs entering it though. ´Remember, snakes live here too´. Oh good. Again it was'nt difficult to spot wildlife. I´l say again that I´m no wildlife fan at all but it really is amazing here. We saw 3 different lizards crossing our path, large emus, enumerate multi-coloured birds, enchindas(a large kind of hedgehog) and koalas just relaxing and eating in the trees. All with a free reign to wander where they like.
We took a walk upto the top of a hill and looked out over the place, along with the ocean in the distance, and it was another great view. It´s a great looking place Australia. But I was itching to get to the Great Ocean Road. We´d heard how winding it was and how close to the ocean it is and that there´s loads of things to see so I was really looking forward to it. And to actually driving round some corners!
Warnambool, a surf and whale spotting town, was in view from Tower Hill and the official start of the Great Ocean Road. There next then.
Warnambool was another friendly town with great surf and great surfers. The first time we´d properly seen any so far in Oz. We did´nt spot any whales though. In Warnambool they also have a fake maritime village set up for tourists. It´s all about the ´old´ days of the shipwreck coast and has a water show with lasers and pictures projected onto the water itself. Sounds just like the 'only one in the world' show from Xi'an in China. But looking at the photos it didn't look a patch on the Chinese equivalent. We didn't go in though. Too much money of course! I wasn't paying 5 times the cost of a much better Chinese park to see more 'historical' guff! Let's hit the road. The one next to the ocean.

Holes in the ground

Australia has a lot of practically untouched places due to its size and relatively small population. This gives you the chance to see things we don't have at home. One of these was a salt lake in the Coorong National Park. This lake enables you to see limestone being formed. Sounds a bit dull but it was totally weird. The lake had a pinkish purple colour to it and the edge was white. The soil around that was black and spongy and even further to the edge it was hard limestone. We could be on another planet the way this looks. The type of algae living in this lake is where many scientists believe all life formed from and that's why the whole region, called the Limestone Coast, is internationally recognised, supposedly. We walked around a couple of these lakes for nearly two hours and saw one person as we left. Most of the places along here we end up visiting are empty.
We stopped at one of the best campsites on the trip that evening, Sea Vu. Our spot overlooked the ocean and a little bay and we got out for a sunset stroll along the beach with the surf crashing in. We slept to the sound of the waves and thought it didn't get much better than this......well a bit warmer and it would've been better but you cant have it all!
We reached our next big town, its a city apparently but only 20,000 live here. Mount Gambier. Its an odd place. Described in our Lonely Planet guidebook as, - like a lush oasis set against a volcanic backdrop - What utter shit. Its grim. Its a logging town, a massive industry around here named the Green Triangle. Ive never seen anything like it as far as tree cultivation goes. For a day of driving we pass nothing but trees being grown and harvested for the wood industry. Its a massive undertaking. Huge areas are cut down for wood and paper but even bigger areas are replanted for the next 30 years or so in a constant turnover of trees in this area.
Back to grim Mount Gambier. Ok, its not all bad. The reason I said this place was odd is because of a couple of things. One of them is that on the edge of town is a large volcano. Extinct and now half full of water. The volcano is called Mount Gambier, unsurprisingly, and the water inside is named Blue Lake. This, if you haven't already guessed, is because its blue. Genius. But it really is bright blue and even more so in summer. There's no explanation for it either. Its baffled science.
The other reason Mount Gambier, the town not the volcano, is odd is due to its sinkholes. These are large holes in the ground that are in a couple of spots around town....I mean city. These large holes have been made feature of. One is a garden-cave type scenario and the other is a barbecue area. The strange thing about the BBQ hole is that at night people go down and cook their food on the provided electric bbqs, which are everywhere in Oz, and the possums come out. At night possums stroll out from their cave homes for feeding, they live in the sinkhole but are tucked away during the day. Its like a bloody open air zoo this country. Its hard to imagine people come down into this hole at night, it is floodlit, to scoff food and feed possums but that's exactly what they do.
Bill Bryson mentioned this place in his book on Australia but I cant remember what he said other than he saw an amazing 3-D woman thing in the tourist information centre. We went in but I was too stingy to pay to see it. Besides, Australia is pretty expensive. Shopping is dearer than England. Most chocolate bars are 1 pound and a packet of Tim Tams, like Penguins bars, are nearly 2 pounds. Beer is more expensive too so we have opted for the drink of champions, boxed wine. For about 6 pounds you can buy 4 litres of suspect wine. It will do. It helps keep us warm in the van so of course its a necessity.
We head on along straighter than straight roads with huge logging trucks passing us in both directions. The speed limit is 110 km an hour but we keep the van to a steady 85 because when you go over that the fuel gauge goes down way too fast.
Another grim port town, Portland, was passed through and stopped off at briefly for fish and chips. Australians pride themselves on fish and chips and pies. Pies are well overpriced but quite good and fish and chips are ok. The fish is excellent and mostly fresh, you pick what type you would like from a kind of fish counter, but the chips are consistently terrible throughout.
On the way to lovely Port Fairy we spot many brightly coloured birds and I spot one a bit too close, it hit the van window. Only clipped it but it scared the bejezus out of us. They're clearly not as quick as our quick witted pigeons!

Flinders to Fleurieu to Big Things

It's difficult to write the next 50 days or so due to the sheer amount of stuff you end up seeing whilst on the road and stopping off. I'll summarise but it'll still end up massive no doubt.
Heading south to the Fleurieu Peninsula near Adelaide, we could never pronounce Fleurieu no matter how many times we were told it was said, Floo-ree-ooo. Not sure why, we just couldn't. I wanted to get to the coast to see some Australian beaches. A famous part of the Aussie lifestyle. We were driving through wine country. It's pretty but would be better when there's grapes on the vine I'm sure. For hours we drive through towns with wine cellars scattered everywhere, some of the places not looking too bad but mainly unremarkable.
We drove around the Fleurieu Peninsula in a day. It's kind of like a leg sticking out from below Adelaide that is home to loads of beaches and many small towns. Everywhere is pretty much deserted, it is winter I suppose, but still looks nice enough.
The beaches, of which there are many, look awesome and we generally have them all to ourselves. The surf looks good too but there's a reason no-one is here. It's bloody freezing!
Port Victor was the next sizable town, around 30,000 inhabitants compared to the 600 or 700 that occupy most townships. This is where we managed to see a whale. A southern right whale on it's migratory path. Australia is like a living zoo. You don't even have to try and you end up seeing a huge amount of animals going about their business. There is also a horse drawn tram leading out on a pier here, it looked tough work for the horse and I thought it was a bit unfair but tourism is what counts here.
We are definitely in surfers territory now. We pass towns that have surfboard shaped seats, houses with huge waves painted on them and street names such as 'Surfers Parade'. They do look great places to live, not sure how much work is around though. The beaches are pretty much untouched and in the main undeveloped other than the odd house overlooking the crashing surf.
We end up spending most mornings parking up facing the waves somewhere eating muesli, the cheapest breakfast going, and just sitting there mesmerised by the waves. It seems a popular pastime with locals too, every lunchtime you see all manner of vehicles parked up with people having their butties by the surf. Not bad.
We're making our way down to the great ocean road at this point but there's a few nice spots along the way. A great campsite next to a lake, the sun going down when we arrived, with pelicans floating around. Classic views and just brilliant to be on this trip.
Bird watchers would be going mental here, they would probably just implode with excitement. The Coorong National park is where we where. It's like a large wetland area that's home to thousands of bird species and wildlife. We mainly saw huge amounts of pelicans in breeding season. The birds flock here as it's like a huge salty inlet in which fish swim into and get stunned by the salt. Easy prey for the birds makes it a great habitat to live in.
We saw our first of the Australian big things on this section. The biggest rocking horse in the world and a giant Lobster, Larry. These are huge edifices created at the side of the main highway to lure unsuspecting idiots, like us, into spending cash on awful crap.

The giant lobster was outside a lobster restaurant, surprisingly, and it looked plain freaky. Huge! Not something I want to see on a pleasant day. I'm not sure I like these things.

Far out Flinders

The Flinders Ranges in South Australia are a large set of mountains that looked like something huge has dragged itself across the baron landscape ending in a kind of round volcano-like basin called Wilpena Pound, where we camped for a couple of nights.
On the way we stopped over at Port Augusta, the self-proclaimed cross roads of Australia. From this town you can go north to Darwin, west to Perth, south to Adelaide and east to Sydney. Either way it's a bit grim. The drive to it was better though, huge expanses of not much and the odd purple lake, yes purple lake. It's a chemical reaction we've been told.
Once into the national park, like most in Australia, you have to pay. This is fair enough as it must take a lot to maintain the huge areas involved. It's a trust based scheme though, which is fairly nifty, meaning you leave money in an envelope in the middle of no-where but it can be traced back to your vehicle by park rangers.
It felt like a proper bush campground setting with trees all around and kangaroos hopping about. The sun beating down and outstanding scenery made for great days but drops in night temperatures meant freezing times in the van.
Walks around showed some amazing views and Wilpena Pound itself really look like a massive volcano, no wonder scenic flights are taking off almost constantly. We even scaled a mountain! Albeit not a massive one but it did involve a bit of rock climbing. Mount Ohlssen Bagge. An odd name but there you go. Ace views from the summit, which I think now are lost as we've managed to misplace a memory card with photos on it! Found 'em!
Heading back south again and a couple of things get on my wick. Little gripes of course but these things bug me for some reason. Rounding. No-one has ever told me about rounding. I don't like it. In Australia they don't have 1 or 2 cent coins so they round prices up to either 5 or down to 0. Thing is prices in shops, when they actually have any, are advertised as say, $2.98. Which actually means $3. Overtime, a long time admittedly you lose out when paying with cash as the rounding is 60/40 in the sellers favor. This meant that from that moment forth during the trip I filled up the van with petrol always totalling 2 cents in my favor so they have to round it down. $50.02, $55.42, $65.62 and so on. I win again. Although over 50 days that's nothing I bet in a few years it all adds up.
Gripe number 2. Everything here is 'Historic'. There are loads of signs at the side of the road trying to get you to drive to 'Historic Ruins' or the 'Historic Bakery' or the 'Historic Toilet'. All these things are barely older than the van we're driving, or thereabouts. It's all about drawing you in to spend money at the awful little hicks-ville towns you pass through that normally you wouldn't stop at unless you'd just driven into the local 'Historic' lamppost.

The road trip starts here

Well kind of. Adelaide is where we picked up our campervan to drive around Australia for the next 52 days. But, first we had a couple of days to look around Adelaide.

The flight in from Alice was a scary one. Up and down and side to side more than I think I'd ever had on a plane, we landed okay though. The city looked good from the sky and has a great coastline nearby. Once we settled in we wandered round to get our bearings. It's fairly easy in most places in Oz to get around as most are built on grid systems. If you head in the general direction of somewhere you'll get there no matter what road you take, mostly. We bought some food from the great market they have on ever few days, selling stuff off real cheap near the end of the day- all the garlic we bought there lasted us 2 months!
That evening Clive, who we met at Uluru, cooked us a great pasta meal for which we supplied the booze. And here we encounter one of the many oddities of Australia, buying alcohol. It's tricky, especially if you're on foot. We had to walk for about 20 minutes to the nearest booze shop and it turns out it wasn't a shop, it was a bar that had a takeaway counter near the entrance. Newsagents don't sell alcohol. Supermarkets don't sell alcohol(apart from the classic, and our new friends, Aldi). It's weird how restrictive it is compared to England but even weirder is the amount of driver-thru booze stores there are on main roads! You pull up, tell the guy what you want, he goes and gets it, you pay, you drive off. You do have the option to get your lazy ass out of the car but most people don't.
I liked Adelaide instantly. A great looking place that wasn't too big or too small, not too busy, not Perth-dead. Stuff was going on here but you could easily get away from it all in about 20mins at the beaches in the area. The weather was still crappy but it couldn't put a dampener on staying here. Right let's get the van!
In Perth we stayed near a Wickedcampers depot so we checked out the condition of the vans, all pretty new and in good nick. Of course ours was a heap, it had to be! Adelaide isn't a busy depot and all the vans looked a bit ragged but ours was the king. The Flamin Wicked. I thought it would be fairly cool be it turned out to be soo frickin cold at night due to the doors having large gaps in them. One side door was jammed shut, until it opened whilst I was driving up a hill! We could've, should've taken it back and swapped it. But as usual I thought we'd see it out.
We stayed around Adelaide for a few days though to get a decent look round the city before screwing it off into the country.
The best thing, and what we were looking forward to the most, is the freedom your own transport offers. Essential in a huge place like Australia that has a poor public transport system anyway. Also it was great to just drive up at caravan site, of which there are plenty, rather than thinking about which hostel we'd be in that night.
Glenelg that day. A sort of seaside resort for Adelaide and a nice looking place too. They are very proud of the fact that this was the point at which the first official non-convict immigrants landed in Australia. The old volunteers as the museum were very helpful and gave us a quick tour. There happened to be a cool surfing display on too, which was nice.
We parked our van, registration 'TIP190"- how apt, in the caravan park down the road and that turned out to be the best caravan park in Australia, as the awards proved. It was right next to the beach to, I'm sure it would be lovely in summer but not now! All down here from here then. As it goes though most caravan parks in Australia are very well set up. It's huge business and we ended up meeting loads of Australians taking years out to travel around their country, as well as plenty living out their retirement in different parks throughout the land.
Returning the cooking favor we took Clive out the next day in our supervan into the Adelaide hills. Superb stuff too and cracking views, to a point as the clouds were rolling in, back onto Adelaide. Adelaide is near to grape-growing-wine-drinking country, the Barossa Valley being the most famous. So the hills and country around it look brilliant and totally not what you think of when Australia springs to mind.
That evening was an excellent meal at a German pub in a German town settlement, Handorf. A nice little, and a bit touristy but good, town on the outskirts of wine regions and Adelaide.
We finished off our venture in Adelaide by visiting the museums and art gallery, aswell as walking by the river in the sunshine alongside the many black swans around. There are plenty of great looking Victorian buildings very reminiscent of England, obviously.
Every state in Australia has a different slogan on it's car registration plates, Western Australia(home of Perth) probably had something like "Western Australia - Don't bother". The Northern Territory plate may have read something like 'The Northern Territory - Hot and Red, Red Hot!". South Australia was the "Festival State". There's loads of festivals here, who'd of thought? We didn't see one but in a few days I didn't think we would.
I liked Adelaide a lot. Australians we met before coming here, some very set in their ways, told us not to expect much but it was definitely a nicer place to be than Perth and quite a good city in general. But we're off into the outback, sort of.
Right the real road trip begins. We head north for the Flinders Ranges the next day.

The bottom photo is somewhere on the way to Adelaide, probably near the Flinders ranges but who knows. The middle one is Adelaide from the hills and the top photo is the dreaded van.

Alice? Who the fxxk is Alice!?

We arrived at Alice Springs around 12am. Next to our intended Youth Hostel was a night club in full swing. We got off the bus to be greeted by an argument between some huuuge guy and the police. The hostel was shut. Everywhere else was shut. We got back on the bus. The driver thought the only places open would be the more upmarket ones. Okey dokey! We ended up in a flash hotel for the night, expensive but now and again it doesn't hurt. In the morning we walked back into town to the hostel. They had no record of the booking and no room for us. It looked a bit dire anyway so we rang another place and booked in, it was only over the bridge apparently. 5 mins walk. I took the wrong bridge and we ended up walking for over an hour around Alice Springs with our backpacks on in the heat. But when we finally got there it was a really cool and chilled out place with a garden and pool where they pumped relaxing music into throughout the day. "You're in one of the caravans tonight", said the owner. "Which one?", "The one with the clouds painted on it.". Of course. So stayed here for a couple of nights before our flight and it really was a cool place with some decent people too. Alice Springs itself isn't that great.
As with everywhere throughout Australia, the land was Aboriginal. Here, more so than other places, the presence of the white man has been fairly recent. Since the laws on banning Aboriginals from the town centre were lifted it's been even less time for the Aboriginal people to get used to a westernised culture. It makes for a very odd situation.
The Lonely Planet guidebook declares Alice to be dangerous at night due to the Aboriginal populous here but signs at our hostel declared otherwise. The main problem is Aboriginal violence on each other rather than anyone else and that isn't too common, besides it seemed fine every night we strolled about. I don't think I could get used to the place though. It's strange. There's absolutely no intergration between the Aboriginals and the rest of the population. They don't have jobs, probably because no-one would employ them, and they don't really do anything other than wander the streets, in their droves. Not that I'm trying to be unkind but it really is like being in a zombie movie. Walking around with these invisible people just moping about, some drinking alot, some just staring blankly and looking lost. It's weird. We heard that the Australian government give money to the Aboriginals just so they'd make it by but you can't help thinking they had a much better life before the white man came along. I'm not sure how long a situation like this can go on for but it really paints Australia in a bad light.
We again met up with Clive, the English guy we got talking to in Uluru, and ended up going for a meal with him at night. It transpired that he was going to Adelaide at the same time as us and stopping in the same Hostel. We arranged to meet again.
The main thing with Alice Springs is the telegraph station, as far as white man settlement goes. This was a great achievement for Australian communication as joining up a telegraph wire from north to south through Alice really meant that news could be reached to Australia from England in much quicker time. There's apparently an under water cable running from Singapore to Darwin in Australia and this is carried on south to Adelaide.
Alice was also a halfway stop for the Ghan. This is now a train but it previously was the Afghan camel train which took supplies up and down the country.
When water was found here, by the white folk(Aboriginals had known for years but the white man thought them a simple race who were very ill informed), it was in a spring and was named after the wife of the founder of the town. This was the first spot were we saw kangaroos. It was pretty odd but cool. They were just lolloping around not doing much, surprising big beasts that they are.
There is a good vantage point over the town on ANZAC hill. ANZAC is everywhere in Oz, it stands for Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. Memorials are everywhere from the first and second world wars and other skirmishes that have gone on over the years. The hill looks over the town and is a great spot to check out the sunset. It's a fairly small place but not too bad. It did grow on me but there's nothing really to do after a couple of days.
One story we got told from an Australian later on in the trip was quite odd. Whether it's true I don't know but here it is. The main river through Alice is called Todd River. Most of the time it's totally dry and you can walk across it, as we did. Some Aboriginals live and sleep on the river, not sure how they put up with the mammoth ants. Anyway, when it rains it really rains and the river flows fast. We were told that under the bridge in town there are metal fences, I never noticed, and apparently these are to catch Aboriginals in. The water comes so fast down the river that they get swept up whilst asleep or drunk and to stop them being washed way down river they're pinned up against these fences so that the emergency services can fish them out! It sounds odd but could be true for all I know, it wouldn't surprise me.

Where are you? Uluru

Flying out of Perth was good for a few reasons. Mainly because you get to see the baron outback of Australia almost totally uninterrupted by cloud. It's a red and desolate land with some amazing looking rifts and ridges with the odd tiny tiny town every now and then. Quite why we had to watch the life jacket demonstration on the way out I'll never know, unless the plane crashed in a creek but even then. This area is sometimes called the red centre and it's not difficult to see why. It's red. But not totally baron, trees do exist in abundance out here. They mainly look like they're dying but they're not. Uluru is the Aboriginal, and original, name for Ayers Rock. It was reverted back a few years ago when the Australian government granted the land back to the Aboriginal people. It's now loaned out from them to the government for a 99 year period. What happens then is anybodies guess. The Olgas, now renamed Katajuta, are also nearby. They're a collection of round rocks jutting from the flat landscape that also look pretty decent from the plane on the way in to land.
We got off the plane into the baron desert and it was raining. Not hard but still. We'd manage to forget where we'd booked to stop which is a bit of a mistake here. The only area the public can stop is some 20kms or so out of the national park in which Uluru lies. This area is called Yulara and is all owned by one company, meaning high prices but at least a decent set up. A free bus picks everyone up from the tiny airport and drops people off all the accommodation within Yulara. The accommodation varies from flash hotels to dorm rooms to campgrounds for tents. Guess which one we stayed in? The tents of course! And they weren't cheap. Ready erected and with proper beds but freezing at night. The warning signs for dingoes were disheartening too! At least there's a supermarket and bar/restaurant here so we can at least try and keep the spending budget down.
There are various lookout points around the resort, these are just large mounds of earth with boardwalks on but the views are great. After a beer at the bar we went up to have a look at Uluru at sunset. It was a real good atmosphere up there and the rock definitely has something special about it, it looks great. But we are still a fair way from it. The next day we get up around 5 to see the sunrise next to the rock. This was pretty damn cool. Up close in the dark the rock is menacing. A huge black monolith in the immense flat land of the dessert. Once the light appears and the sun starts hitting it all manner of colour changes affect the pitted surface. The sky was the clearest blue I'd ever seen and the rock has a kind of special look about it. It has to be one of the must see things in the entire world and I'm not completely sure why. It's an icon of Australia and for the aboriginals it's intensely sacred. That's why there are signs everywhere asking you not to climb it. You still can of course but we didn't. For one it's really steep, for two I wasn't that bothered. The best views are of the rock, not from looking from the rock. There's not much else out there! We took the 9 and a half km walk round instead and this took around 3 hours. Up close it looks nothing like we'd seen in the photos. They can't do it justice. The many different angles, holes, water pitted craters and canyons, huge rock falls, the shadows it's casts on itself, aboriginal art(although not great), the odd wave like curves and the little trees scrambling for life in cracks make it all worth seeing up close. Apparently it's a sight after heavy rain when water runs off it for days after. I'm glad it wasn't raining that day.
Afterwards we looked round the mainly dour cultural centre before heading back to the resort. At night we drank Aussie beer with an English we'd met and chatted to a couple of Aussies over an Outback Burger. This consisted of beef burger, bacon, fried egg, pineapple, cheese and beetroot. Tasted bloomin marvelous. Live music blared out, 'Tie my kangaroo down sport', 'A land down under', 'Waltzing Matilda' and so on. Good stuff though and the old guy playing guitar pulled out a Joe Satriani(mental fast electric guitar player) tune with ease. Cracking. A Spanish couple filled us in a little on South America and it all made for a great night.
Getting to our next destination wasn't so easy. We ended up getting on a tour bus just as transit passengers, meaning we had to get on the bus when the tour was heading back to Alice Springs after sunset at Uluru. We had a day to lounge about and wait for the bus. The heat during the day is intense but thankfully the bar was shaded!
We flew out from Alice Springs in a few days so needed to get there and have a quick nosey round. The bus turned up and we prepared for the 6 hour, 400km ride. In darkness. And outback it's dark. You can see stars right down to street level. We were told not to panic if we hit a Kangaroo or Emu, and besides, the bus had good breaks. A demonstration wasn't necessary at 80km/h but they gave one anyway.
I saw a lonely fire along the way that was covered up as we passed, people actually camp out here! Between Uluru and Alice there's nothing except one roadhouse, where we stopped off for a quick ale. I desolate to say the least. Getting in to Alice Springs at midnight without accommodation could be a problem though. Even the roadhouse phone was on the blink so I couldn't ring ahead. It'll be interesting I'm sure.

The Australian adventure (Perth)

And it all begins in Perth. We'd heard soo many good things about it that we'd been thinking about arriving here for a while.
Perth is the most remote city in the world due to it's location on the West coast of Australia. Most of the Australian population live on the East coast so Perth is a long was off. I think around 3,000 kilometres.
The promised land arrived with the worst landing we'd had so far. It was pouring with rain and and it felt like the plane lurched sideways after the constant up and down motion just before touchdown. But we're here non the less and the temperature is a shocker. It's half that of Singapore, around 16 degrees. And it's lashing it down, sideways.
Whoa, this feels like stepping back in time. Not far, around the late 80's somewhere. The small airport seems......I don't know, not as advanced as others we've passed through. The 'shuttle' service from the airport to our accommodation is a minibus. Public transport isn't quite what it should be. The driver says it's the worst rain for ages and they've been in drought for blah-de-blah long and so forth. Grim.
Our hostel is nice though, other than the lack of heating - apparently common in Australia(even though they have winter every year!). At the time of booking I knew we'd be hitting the tail end of winter but after coming through Asia the weather is a bit of a shock.
Our hostel was located in the 'bustling Northbridge area of the city. It's where all the bars, restaurants and clubs are located so we thought we'd go check out life on the streets that evening. Dead. Everything was closed bar a couple of places. The streets were empty and I started to wonder if we were in the wrong area. We weren't. A car pulled up and a drunk Australian got out and approached us. He was friendly enough and started talking bollocks to us almost straight away, "Hi, I'm Brad. My friends call me my father's son." He repeated this phrase at least 4 times. Interesting. We dived in a restaurant to get away, and nice it was too. Whoa, the prices here are mental!
One thing Brad did tell us of note though was about the death of Northbridge since an underground road bypass was built. Not as much through-traffic meaning not as much business. Ok. So let's head over the railway, which splits the city, to the main heart of Perth itself. Also closed. Except for MacDonald's of course. The streets were deserted other than a few rogues and vagabonds, we got asked for change immediately from some zoned out tramp. If I'm not giving to a heavily scarred 10 year old boy in Hong Kong I ain't giving to a drunk tramp to fund his booze and drug habit. Besides, I need to buy booze for myself!
Laura needed the loo so I waited outside the dirty looking MacDonald's. An arguing group of late teens wandered up the streets. This carried on to the boyfriend of the couple arguing saying to his girlfriend "Where are you going you stupid bitch? I hope you get raped!". Nice. She entered MacDonald's and after a strangely racist comment aimed at her from him, he followed her in. I then got asked for a cigarette of another scuzzy street urchin. Hmmm.
Back to the hostel then. On the way we thought we'd check out the Internet place round the corner. A dirty hovel full of pre-pubescent lunatics playing online games. The place was scruffy as anything, cockroaches up the stairs and food crumbs scattered on the tables. This was not the Australian dream.
Maybe we'd been pampered with hi-speed free Internet and up-to-date technology with excellent infrastructure. Maybe this was just a bad day. We'll see how it fairs in the daylight.
We headed out on the dirty train to Perth's port town, Freemantle. This is supposed to be a bohemian artsy type place with live street music and a flashy cafe culture. Utter bollocks. It was dead. I know this is winter but come on! We wondered round feeling fairly miserable. The free buses around Freementle and Perth are a great idea but there's so little to see it's hardly worth it. Maybe it's transformed in summer. I don't care. It's the worst place we've been. There's no atmosphere and the streets feel unsafe in comparison to anywhere in Asia.
A huge sign on a shop frontage read 'Freo(Freemantle) is dying, it needs a leader'. Looks like it's already dead. A nice beach though but clearly not the weather for it.
There seems to be a real people shortage here, but maybe this is coming from the hectic places of Asia. Some may prefer it but after a couple of days in Oz we were in total shock. This is far from the dream we were sold on and a long way behind the excellent places we'd visited so far. I didn't think it would take a while to get used to Australia. But it did.
Australia brought a few firsts on the trip for us. The first time we've seen loads of rubbish and ripped seats on public transport and the first time we've stopped in all evening. Normally we'd wander the streets at night among bustling atmospheres with sights to see and to just take it all in. Here? No. We couldn't face it.
Next day we checked out the Museum of Western Australia to find out about the culture and history of the place. It was alright and there was quite a bit of information about how badly the Aboriginal people were treated here and how many were slaughtered. There was also an interesting video about Perth in modern times. An aboriginal bloke talking about the racism he still gets everyday and many locals discussing the 'move out of the city program' which was a plan to get people to live on the outskirts rather than the centre itself. This means that after 5pm the place is dead. Odd.
Looking around you soon see how culturally diverse this place isn't. There are Chinese here but that's about it. We finally saw Aborigines though, they were just scrounging for a dollar to buy more booze. Apparently the aboriginal people you see around towns are the outcasts from their tribes, whether this is true or not we never find out.
For a place that likes to think of itself as clean, modern and forward thinking this place is still in the dark ages. Way behind Asia and not even a quarter of the fun.
Kings Park was a slight glimmer of what it could be. A great park slightly on the edge of the city. It offered great views back to the good looking skyline and river on which the handful of skyscrapers hugged. As well as war memorials there was also a more modern memorial to the Australians who died in the Bali bombings a few years back. 16 Perth citizens perished in the attack, 8402 people lost their lives in total.
Northbridge livened up a little after few days. The results of drunken brawls were evident, the first violence we've seen. But, how people choose to live here and call it paradise I have no idea. Maybe they lived under a rock all their lives. I don't think I'd come back in the summer to see if there'd been any change, it doesn't deserve the chance. The first big disappointment. We originally thought 4 nights here was not enough, we were wrong. Next stop Ayers Rock, or as it's now call Uluru.

The end of an Asia

So that wraps up the Asian leg of the trip. How's it been? An experience from start to finish. I was totally unprepared for what was involved but then you can't really prepare for the everyday life here until you live it.
China was a bit dodgy sometimes but incredibly interesting and exciting in a way. Japan was probably the highlight, along with the real surprise of the islands of Thailand. I forgot to mention we also saw the island where 'The Beach' was filmed and that we slept to the sound of croaking frogs that sounded like a group of cows had surrounded our cabin. I never knew they could be soo loud! Kuala Lumpur and Singapore were both good and are definitely worth a stopover.
All in all I'd go back to most places, China last but I'm glad we went.
At this point we were ready for Australia and a bit of normality. Or so we thought.