Y'know, they just look like rocks to me...

G'day again. Yes, it's time for a little more bloggage. So, back to Kalbarri, where I'm about to meet my new bus.

No, not literally the bus. I haven't taken to greeting motor vehicles. It just gets to the point, once you've travelled with backpacker companies for a while, that you realise that "a bus" is actually an acceptable collective form, at times, for backpackers. A gaggle of geese, a school of fish, a pride of lions, a bus of backpackers. So, the next Easyrider hit town, and I noticed two things. Firstly, there was a very high Scandinavian content. Secondly, the driver was female.

Now, this latter shouldn't be all that surprising, what with equal opportunities and that, but it's sadly true that it's not too often that you get female drivers. Where companies have separate drivers and guides (e.g. Shamrocker in Ireland) they seem a little more frequent, but otherwise they're in a distinct minority. Might be to do with the demands of the lifestyle (away from home for quite a while, dealing with rowdy and arsey backpackers), I don't know. At any rate, it means you do notice it when there's a lass in charge up front. And this new driver, in true Australian style, was called Kylie.

No, I'm not making it up, that really was her name - it's actually not that uncommon over here. It also appeared to be her driver-name, which is slightly unusual, but I guess if you're the only female driver there's no need to have some kind of distinguishing moniker in the way that might be needed if you were, say, a Dave or a John. (We actually found out later that she'd nearly been assigned another driver-name, but I'll get to that in a bit...)

Anyways, back to the rest of the bus. As I said, high Scandinavian content (2 Swedish lads, 2 Norwegian lasses and a Dane, out of about 15 on the bus), and also a girl called Jane, whose accent it took me a little while to place, until I suddenly realised that I was hearing the dulcet tones of Belfast - you'd think it would be impossible to forget what a Northern Irish accent sounds like, but it would appear I came close. At any rate, apart from getting to know the people I would be spending many hours on a bus with the next day, my ulterior motive for making myself known was to wangle my way into the trip to Finlay's again, for more fish. Yes, I know, I'd only had it 3 days earlier, but it was SO GOOD, and the rest of the dining options in Kalbarri weren't exactly blowing my mind (to the point where I'd cooked for myself the last couple of nights).

This lot were actually slightly more outgoing and lively than my previous group (okay, they were more up for having a few beers!), so we ended up sitting around the little campfire in Finlay's courtyard (it was actually a touch chilly that evening), finishing off our respective alcohol supplies. All good fun. Still, it was a relatively early night for us all, as we had a fairly early departure the next morning. Seeing as how we were going up to Kalbarri National Park...

Yes, I had several hours experience of deja vu, going back round by the Z-bend, the Loop and Nature's Window, however this time it was enlivened by people doing abseiling down near the Z-Bend. Whilst travelling with Scoobs, he hd mentioned the possibility to the bus, but not really done much of a hard-sell. Kylie, or 'Kyles' as she was often referred to, was obviously a very different beast, having basically persuaded everybody who came in on her bus to do it! This left only me, Kev and Jeanette (back on the bus at the same time) and a German girl whose name I can't recall for the life of me not wandering off cliffs. I have to admit that I would have been tempted, but I wasn't sure what doing a 20-metre or so descent would be like when my only previous experience was the 71-metre lunacy I did at Knysna in South Africa. So I went for a wander down by the river below the descent site, and chatted with the German lass, who'd been working on a horse-farm for a bit - one of those times when I think, maybe my whole travelling experience is just a bit too tame. I don't do enough things that are really different. Until I think of the prospect of getting up at 5:30am and going to shovel horse-shit. And then I decide I'm quite happy doing things the way I do...

So, after people had lowered themselves off cliffs to various accompaniments (some squealers, some deathly silent, some whooping with joy, etc), the most memorable provided by two VERY Scouse girls, it was back on the bus and heading off up north. And this was just one of those classic examples of Australian outback driving. Scenery that makes you go "wow" for all of about 10 minutes as you first drive through it, but which has got kind of monotonous when repeated for about 3 hours, as you head along a road with no marked turn-offs until you reach the road-house which is pretty much the only settlement for many, many kilometres around. There's a certain wild beauty to the countryside, but you do struggle at times to stay awake, and road-house food is of the "if in doubt, deep fry it" tradition, which is good for hangovers but very bad for the figure.

Time on the road was thus passed in the usual ways - chatting with fellow passengers and/or the driver, card-games (Shithead being a partiularly popular one amongst backpackers), reading, listening to music, sleeping, writing up travel journals. The one dramatic interruption was when Kylie slammed on the brakes and we screeched to a halt. She then quickly reversed a couple of hundred yards down the highway. Some of us started wondering aloud what had gone wrong with the bus. But no, there was no problem with the bus. Kylie had just stopped because she saw a lizard.

This is another one of those things I just can't get. I mean, HOW, when driving along at 100km/h or so, does a person spot a lizard that's maybe 10cm long on the side of the road? Admittedly, the species in question, known as the Thorny Devil, is quite an attractive little beast (Kylie brought it onto the bus for us to look at), but I'd have thought its coloration also made it somewhat difficult to spot in the dust at the side of the road! And that's even before you get onto questions of "keep your eyes on the road"...

By mid-afternoon, we had covered most of the requisite distance for the day, and arrived at Shark Bay (another fun name for those of you with the most popular phobias about Australian fauna...). And here we made a couple of stops, firstly at the Hamelin Pool. This is an interationally renowned site. Never heard of it? You're obviously not into cyanobacteria, then.

Specifically, Hamelin Pool is one of the world's best sites for Stromatolites. The really eager amongst you can go off and Google the term to your hearts' content, but in a nutshell they're one of the world's oldest known lifeforms. They're very slightly similar to coral, in that the individual organisms are tiny but the effect of having them around is to produce visible elements somewhat akin to rocks. In fact, they look a lot like rocks. Really. Bit disturbing to be told that your ancestor was once something that looks like a rock. Okay, so it was billions of years ago, but still. It looks like a bloody rock! Made life very exciting for the marine biologist we had aboard, though! (apparently these stromatolites were one of the key reasons for the trip...)

After taking the necessary pictures of our rock-like distant relatives (apologies if that assertion upsets any Creationists out there!), we headed down to the beach. So far, so normal for Australia, you'd guess. Except that this beach was different. It was apparently around 110km long, and composed of shells to a depth of around 10m. That's a LOT of shells. And the ones that have been compacted together for longer turn into a fairly solid brick-like material that's actually sometimes quarried and used locally as a building material (I believe there was a restaurant in Denham made purely from the stuff, and quite picturesque it was). Anyways, there are absolutely no prizes for guessing what this place was called. That's right. Shell Beach.

Having wandered around, looked at the shells, decided not to go in the water after seeing a dead jellyfish washed up at the shoreline, and taken the obligatory group photos (which now frustrates me, as I can't remember who most of them are!), it was back on the bus, and onwards around the Bay, through the fence that crosses the narrow neck of Peron peninsula. Looking it up on the web, it appears this may be called the Eden Gate. We just called it the Dog Fence. You see, the fence cuts right across the narrow neck of the peninsula, and is designed to keep "feral" (introduced) species out of the area. The idea is to turn the peninsula into a reserve for native animals, safe from the unfortunate effects of sheep, goats, foxes, cats, etc. Well, they've got rid of most of them, but are still having problems with the cats. So, one part of the solution is that, as you pass through the cattle-grid onto the peninsula, loudspeakers play quite loud recordings of dogs barking. We thought Kyles was taking the piss about this, but you can actually hear it quite clearly if you have your head out the window as you drive through. I don't know whether this really does scare the cats that much, but the parks people seem happy with it.

I'll go on a fair bit more about the Shark Bay area in the next posting, as this one's getting a bit long, but suffice to say we arrived in Denham, the main town of the area, where Kylie proceeded to drive us around for the grand tour. This took about 5 minutes. We also found out that her colleagues attempted to rename her as "Bowser" at one point, as she apparently accidentally drove into the fuel bowser at Denham's petrol station on one of her earlier runs! Obviously, this is the kind of thing it's good to learn after you've just spent a day being driven around by a person...

Our home for the night was the Shark Bay YHA. Here, courtesy of the friendly owner, we scored some free BBQ'd kangaroo (yes, I am being serious), then grabbed our alcoholic beverages of choice and settled down for a game of killer pool. I think I explained the rules in an earlier post, and can't actually be bothered now, but let's just say this game had a couple of differences. Firstly, the state of the felt on the pool table meant that this had about as much in common with your average game of pool as a mini-golf course does with a professional 18-hole golf links. Various rips and folds created all manner of interesting obstacles. And secondly, I won. For the first time in my life, I won a game of killer pool. Actually, you could probably count the number of games of pool I've ever won (not including doubles where my partner has "carried" me) on both hands. So I was quite a happy bunny when I went to bed, looking forward to a few days in Shark Bay.

Yep, I was jumping off the bus again, for more mischief and mishaps, but that will wait for next time. (I'm not getting any better at writing these cliff-hangers, am I? I blame it on exposure to too many crap trailers aimed at getting anybody interested in watching Neighbours or Home & Away over here...)

Anyways, until I get the urge to write again, farewell!

Pat