Pinnacles and fresh fish

Okay, time to try and knock out another bite from the exceedingly large backlog of unprocessed blog entries, seeing as how I have some kind of enthusiasm, and have managed to find a hostel with free internet access.

So, my first days on the Easyrider started with the usual early-morning groan. One of these days, I am going to find a backpacker bus which caters to the likes of me by not departing until late morning, but, until then, I will have to deal with being roused from my slumber, and staggering onto buses whilst still half asleep, frequently (as in this case) still munching down on the last piece of toast for breakfast. Given that the bus was already fairly well-populated, I ended up in the "shotgun seat", up front with the driver. This was to be my perch for a quite a few legs of my Easyriding trip, which was good on the conversational stakes, but less so on the legroom front. I frequently ended up with my feet perched on the dashboard to stop my legs going totally to sleep.

Our driver in this case gloried in the moniker of "Scoobs". As those familiar with the backpacker bus scene (esp in Oz and NZ) will know, daft nicknames are often something of a must. And Scoobs had been at this for a while. He'd apparently left the job at least twice before, but ended up coming back because it was such good fun! And yet, this was to be, once again, his last run. So we were the first leg of the last group he would drive for. Again.

Scoobs also had the fairly enlightened view that, as we were the passengers and this was our holida, we got to pick the music. Given that I was at the front and had an MP3 player, this meant that effectively for this leg of the trip I got to pick the music. Those of you familiar with my behaviour at parties around the CD player will understand that this made me a very happy bunny indeed. And the music seemed to go down fairly well (Scoobs' only requirement was "No soppy shit...", which became the name of the playlist I set up for that morning!).

Our first stop for the day was up at the Pinnacles. These are weathered limestone outcroppings sticking out of the desert in a region up north of Perth, quite near to the town of Lancelin. And, to be honest, while they're quite interesting to look at for all of about 5 minutes, you'd probably have to be a geologist to get really excited about them for much longer. Or someone who gets very excited about suggestively-shaped rocks (of which there are quite a few amongst the hundreds). I'd seen them when I was in Perth 6 years earlier, so was even more underwhelmed than some of the others, but it was a gorgeous day (after several shitty ones weather-wise down in Perth) so I wasn't complaining about wandering around in the sun for a while.

After that, it was another of those relatively long days on the road which are so common to WA, most of which was spent chatting with Scoobs and my fellow passengers. Unfortunately, as none of them jumped off the bus that evening as I did, and as I managed to lose my diary in Darwin at the end of the West Coast trip, I can't remember any of their names! But they were very nice people...

That evening's stop was in Kalbarri, a nice little seaside town by the Kalbarri National Park, which includes a whole bunch of river gorges. That night, we got a special deal courtesy of Easyrider, of a fresh fish BBQ at an amazing outdoor place called Finlays, for the princely sum of 10 Aussie dollars (just over 4 quid) - combine that with a few beers from the bottle shop we walked past on the way, and we're talking a very pleasant first day on the road.

Having then said goodnight and goodbye to my newfound (and now forgotten) friends, I settled in for a good night's sleep (no early wake-up for me) ready for my 3 days in Kalbarri (that's how long it was before the next Easyrider bus!). And I'll write about that next time, so as to make sure that I actually finish an entry in one go for once!

Until the next time, my friends, adieu!

Pat