Dolphins, Dugongs and other such things

When last I dragged my lazy arse in front of a keyboard, the story was last September and my adventures out of Denham. It ended as I hopped over the Peron peninsula for a night in Monkey Mia. Note that that's pronounced "my-a" not "mee-a" - the latter seems more reasonable, but the locals laugh at you unfailingly if you use it.

Anyways, Monkey Mia has become something of a "must do" on the WA backpacker scene, as the local dolphins swim right close into shore (ie in as far as thigh-depth) on a daily basis to gawp at the tourists and get fed some fish. The tourists, unsurprisingly, gawp back, a well as taking umpteen dozen photos of the cheeky cetaceans. It's about as close as you can get to a dolphin without actually being out there swimming with one. I would experience this the following morning, prior to my departure from the resort (for that's all Monkey Mia itself is, a resort - hence why I had spent much of my time in Denham, the actual township of the area), but my focus the day of my arrival was elsewhere: on a catamaran.

Yes, I was going to indulge my love of sailing, and head out to see one of the other varieties of critter for which Shark Bay is famous: the Dugong. Also known as the "sea-cow" and related to the Caribbean's Manatee, the Dugong is a large, herbivorous sea mammal which feeds on sea grass. Due to its dependence on one food source and slow breeding pattern, it's now getting ever more endangered, and this was my first chance to ever see one. I was going out on the Shotover, an ex-ocean-racing catamaran (yes, I am obsessed with racing boats) which was spending its retirement in WA, helping the biologists there study the ecology of these creatures (and making some money on the side from taking tourists out to see them).

And it was a beautiful day - clear blue skies, golden sunshine, turquoise waters, and a whole heap of sightings of dugongs, aided by the polarising sunglasses the crew lent us. I took quite a few pictures although, without a polarising lens for the camera, most of them turned out looking just like brown blobs on the surface of the water - I know what they are, though! On top of this wildlife-spotting trip, I also did a sunset sailing trip on the same boat, which was more about the performance of the boat and less about spotting anything. Oh, and of course it gave me the chance to indulge my passion for ridiculous quantities of sunset photos.

After all of that sea-borne excitement, and the antics of the rest of my time in Shark Bay, I made myself some pasta, had a couple of beers at the bar and then called it an early night. I had to be up bright and early the next day to get down and see the dolphins come in, as well as checking out of my dorm and meeting up with the Easyrider when it arrived. Yes, having stood in the water while dolphins swam a foot or so away from me, and then marvelled once again at just how big a pelican's beak is, it was time to load back onto the Yellow Bus and head off up the coast.

This would be where the loss of my notes again comes back to haunt me, as I can scarcely remember anyone from that bus trip, or even the driver. The trip itself was largely uneventful, being composed of the usual long, mildly dull stretches along Aussie highways with nothing much to look at. My MP3 player got a fair workout again, as I was perched up chatting with the driver, and the trip only started getting memorable once we passed Carnarvon and popped into a bottle-shop. Alcohol on public transport vehicles (including tour vehicles) is strictly prohibited in Australia, but one of the factors in WA is the sheer distance - if you know the nearest police point is at least 4 hours' drive away, it can tend to embolden you. So we had a few cold beers on the final drive down towards our night's stop at Coral Bay, where we stopped down by the beach on arrival to settle in for the sunset over the Indian Ocean.

Once that was out of the way, we got ourselves booked into our accommodation, the Ningaloo Club backpackers. This is actually quite a nice setup, and much larger than would seem to be necessary for a village the size of Coral Bay (honestly, it's tiny - it's scarcely even a one-horse town on its own, unless that horse was a Shetland Pony). The secret there is that Coral Bay has turned into another of those "must do" places for backpackers on the West Coast, due to its snorkelling and diving opportunities, and other options such as quad-biking, plus the fact that even in winter it's usually pretty warm, so many backpackers start topping up their tan there...

In any case, I was hopping off the bus again there for a few days, so that seems a logical point to stop the narrative again. Until next time, fare thee well...

Sharks, Hot Tubs and the World's Smallest International Airport... (possibly)

Right, here we go again. Time to get on with my travels in Shark Bay. Not that I did all that much the first couple of days. Had to do laundry (the joys of having only enough clothes for a week and a half make that something you actually have to plan for, making sure you're somewhere with washing facilities handy when the clothes run out). Go food shopping. Get to know new hostel-mates.

Oh yes, the latter carried on the Scandi-heavy theme from the bus I arrived on, as there were 3 Danes (2 girls whose names I can't recall, and a guy called Martin) and 2 more Norwegian girls in my room (who introduced themselves as Hayley and Chrissy, but were actually called Helle and Kristina), plus an assortment of Germans and the usual smattering of British and Irish. Oh, and this would be one of the few occasions where I actually met and got to know somewhat the owners of the hostel. Partly because they actually interacted with the guests a bit, but also because at least one of them was borderline certifiable. But a bloody good laugh. You see, the hosteliers were an English couple, John and Kirstie. And John was a full-on Brummie, and mad Villa fan. And rather a good laugh.

I discovered this at the end of my first full day in Denham, as it was the final night in the hostel of one of the girls who had been staying and doing cleaning and the like in exchange for board, so John was out the back with the hostel guests, knocking back a few bevvies (and there were one or two other substances on the loose too) and chatting away. There was more of the roo on the BBQ as well, if I remember (he'd come into possession of a whole damned kangaroo, so was working his way through it!), and everybody was in a pretty mellow mood, so John offered to do a trip up to the Hot Tub.

Now, we'd heard about this from Kylie, and I think it'd gotten mentioned the previous night, but we were all into our pool competition then and didn't go. This time, I decided: ah, what the hell? So we all piled into the hostel minibus and John's 4WD, swung by the bottle shop on the way out of town (for those of us who needed to stock up on grog), and headed out of town, north into Francois Peron National Park. Bit of a strange name for an Aussie NP you might think, but he was apparently a 19th Century naturalist (that's a biologist before any of you with sick minds misinterpret it) who travelled on one of the French ships that was surveying part of Australia, and made prodigious notes about the animals and the like which he found up on this peninsula in Shark Bay. At any rate, the land was used as a farm for a long time, until the government bought it up as part of this Eden plan for creating a native animal conservation area (see previous post). As a result, there's actually a homestead up there. And also, bizarrely, an outdoor, hot-spring-fed hot tub.

All very surreal - you're out in the bush, down dirt tracks, there's little or no lighting, then suddenly there's this old homestead and, in a fenced-off area around the side, a big hot-tub. After a certain amount of stumbling around and people getting down to their cossies, we all piled into the tub. There must have been about 12 or 15 of us, which made life a little congested in there - though this eased periodically when someone had to pop out for a while to cool down - yes, the water was that hot, if you were in there for more than about 15 minutes solid it got seriously uncomfortable. And we were warned in no uncertain terms that it was not a good idea to put one's head under the water - the joys of hot mineral springs.

All in all, quite a fun evening - a lot of the usual kind of conversations you tend to have when having a few beers on the road, but with the added bonus of being out in the open air, able to see the stars (including the odd shooting star, which was really cool) and sitting in a hot tub. Felt bloody cold when actually getting out of the hot tub, though. So we all piled as quickly as possible back to the vehicles, and headed back into town to the hostel. So anyways, an interesting second night in Denham.

The second day there (also the second day of September 2005, now that I check back as to when all this was happening - 9 months ago, sheesh) accounted for the laundry, the newspaper, a certain amount of (very unusual for me) sunbathing and, in the evening, going down one of the local pubs to watch an AFL game on the TV featuring my beloved Adelaide Crows. Yes, one of the slightly unexpected leftovers from my first visit to Oz, back in 1995, is my devotion to Australian Rules Football and the Pride of South Australia (as their cheesey club song loudly proclaims). In expectation of a few of the smart-alecs out there, yes, there are rules involved, and no, it isn't just a big game of aerial ping-pong played by big men in little boys' shorts (which I have heard suggested as a reason why Aussie Rules is quite popular with the girls...).

I think it was the last game of the regular season, prior to the Finals series. Most Australian sports seem to work on this basis, where you play all your league games just to work out who gets to the finals, and what position they have in them. As a devoted fan of football in its more common form, I just don't get how you can finish top of the league and not be champions, but it's accepted as the normal state of affairs over here. The team that wins the league is known as the "Minor Premier". Not that I'm remotely swayed in this by the fact that the Crows were Minor Premiers last year, but didn't make it to the Grand Final to have the chance to be Premiers (ie Champions). Oh no. They also don't go in for relegation, which I should probably be happy about given that my adopted team in the A-League (the Australian football league, rather than the Australian Football League), the Melbourne Victory, finished last but one. And that one was actually from New Zealand.

Erm, anyways, let's stop that before I go off into a bit of a sports rant. My 3rd day in Denham, I had booked to do something a little different. I was going flightseeing over Shark Bay. A bit expensive, I know, but I figured when on Earth am I going to be back somewhere like that, and it would certainly give me a different perspective. And it had one added bonus - the flight was also the mail run over from the Peron peninsula, on which Denham is situated, to the peninsula situated to its west, home to a giant salt-gatering operation based out of the wonderfully-named settlement of Useless Loop.

So, I got a nice little light aircraft ride, along with an American couple, saw the stunning turquoise waters of the area (Shark Bay is mostly pretty shallow, with a lot of sand or shell at the bottom and areas of sea plants, which makes for very pretty colours), took in the sea-cliffs over on Useless Loop's peninsula (which include the most westerly point in mainland Australia - so I've now flown over both the most westerly and the most easterly, albeit the latter was in a hang-glider a few years back) and made a landing at Useless Loop to do a drop-off of mail and the like. At which point, I had to giggle somewhat at the sign on the wooden shack by the side of the runway, which someone had labelled as "Useless Loop International Airport" (and yes, of course there's a picture of me standing under it, which will probably make it on here when I catch up with adding in more photos for places).

Having got back from said flight in the morning, I'd been planning on another quiet day, but got roped into going along with a whole bunch of the others from the hostel whom John had offered a free day trip up the peninsula. Now, I have to admit, I am uncertain to this day whether he actually has a permit to take a bunch of people on an informal tour into that part of the park - let's just say I didn't inquire too closely. I was also slightly worried that John's first reaction on hearing that the other vehicle going up there had left before us was "shit! my beer's in that bloody car!". We then proceeded at fairly rapid speed after said other vehicle, eventually catching up with it on one of the sand tracks in the park.

Seeing a couple of looks of consternation from the back of the vehicle when he jumped back in the car and opened a can of drink (it was actually some pre-mixed vodka and lemonade thing rather than beer), John promptly asked me if I felt like driving. Let me think... Yes! Partly that would be discomfort at being driven by anyone who's been drinking, but largely also by the fact that I'd never actually driven a large 4WD before, let alone had the chance to do so off normal roads (where the damned things actually make sense). So I got a crash-course (NO, not literally) in four-wheel-driving, which was pretty cool. Our destination up the peninsula was near an old pearling platform offshore. John was making noises about maybe taking the boat we'd brought and going out there in the evening, if we'd caught some fish. Yes, we had also brought a net, which we were going to try and use to catch some fish. Or, more specifically, a shark.

Seeing as how we were going for a wander around in Shark Bay, you probably won't be surprised to learn that there's quite a lot of sharks. However, those familiar with my general dislike bordering on phobia of sharks (okay, I used to hide behind the sofa as a little kid whenever they appeared on TV...) would probably be surprised to learn that I willingly went walking (okay, wading) through water that I knew there would be sharks in. However, these were only little reef sharks, not actually prone to attacking people. I don't mind them. They're actually quite graceful, as they zoom through the water, sometimes within a couple of feet of your legs. The thought of any of the big, toothy monsters still gives me the shivers. At any rate, due to a combination of factors (mostly involving the long boom net we were dragging through the water being a bit shite) we didn't catch anything. So we ended up just making a fire out of some driftwood and scrubwood on the beach, and sitting around having a few drinks. And before you ask, no, I wasn't going to be driving back, so I was fine to have a few tinnies.

In fact, we were driven back by a German lass, one of those rare individuals you meet who is so single-minded about something it can be a bit scary. It can also be rather scary being driven back, in the dark, down sand tracks, in a 4WD by such an individual, supervised by someone who'd had a few beers. And, indeed, it was. But hey, we made it, so that gets to just be added as one more for the list of "what exactly was I thinking?" that I'm accumulating on my travels. The party carried on back at the hostel, and ended up swinging back out to the hot tub again, where at one point we had the bizarre experience of sitting in very hot water having rather chilly goon (cheap cask wine) squirted into our mouths in sequence around a circle. Well, it helps pass the time, y'know?

And that night was the end of my time in Denham, but not quite the end of my time in Shark Bay. The next morning I checked out of the hostel, loaded up into the minibus, and got dropped off over the other side of the peninsula, at the place most people think of and mention when they travel to Shark Bay: Monkey Mia. And that's where I'll pick up next time.

Until then, adieu.

Pat

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

How to avoid Drop Bears (or perhaps not...)

When last I metaphorically put quill to parchment, I was in Kalbarri, snoozing off a big fish dinner and not getting up in the morning to bid adieu to my travelling companions of the previous day. After enjoying a pleasant lie-in (the beds at Kalbarri YHA are quite comfy, if I remember rightly - my only complaint about the place was that there were nowhere near enough bathrooms and toilets...), I spent part of that first day engaged in such pedestrian pursuits as going to the shops to get in supplies, nearly collapsing in horror at the cost of internet access, and sitting on a park bench looking out on the Indian Ocean. Realising just how little there actually is to do in Kalbarri, I also booked myself onto a trip for the following day, which my previous driver, Scoobs, had recommended - I was going canoe-ing on the Murchison River in Kalbarri National Park.

I have to admit to never really having gotten into canoes much as a kid. Usually because one of the first things you'd be asked to do, at least in a kayak, was to capsize the damned thing, and then get it upright again. I know the safety rationale behind it. I understand why they ask kids to do it (nobody likes a lawsuit or a corpse on their hands). But, as a child with a fairly hefty phobia about sticking my head under the water, that just wasn't going to be for me. Which is a shame, because I've actually found that as an adult I rather like being out in both canoes and kayaks (although this new-found liking was tested somewhat later in the trip, but that's another 5 weeks or so down the line...).

At any rate, the guy running the operation was a pretty sound bloke, although he did have the habit, common to many tour guides in northern Australia, of dressing a bit like Steve Irwin. Yes, safari shorts really are worn by some people in all seriousness, and many tour companies in Oz provide logo'd safari shirts. There is refreshingly not too much of the whole "CRIKEY!" thing going on, but you almost start to expect it.

Now that I remember it, I wasn't the only person to leave the bus on that first day. There was also quite a pleasant English couple, whose names I believe may have been Kevin and Jeanette (I know he was a Kev, but I'm not 100% sure on her name...). I remember this because they were actually on the canoe trip as well. There were also a couple of Americans with us, though I think they were friends travelling together and not necessarily a couple. Damn, I'm really missing that sodding notebook.

So, our first stops for the day were the usual lookouts in the National Park - there's a couple of them, at either ends of a track that kind of forms the top of a 'T' with the access track for the Park as the upright. So we went and got our photos looking up the river from the Z Bend (where the river does kind of a Z-bend), and down the river from the Loop (where the river goes around almost in a full loop), the latter framed quite wonderfully by a natural rock formation which is basically a window. In light of this, the Australians have called it Nature's Window.

Those who've been to Australia will be familiar with this, but for those who haven't, it's worth noting that there are 4 themes followed when naming places: 1) Use the aboriginal name (unfortunately not as common as it should be) eg Wagga Wagga, Purnululu, Geelong, Wollongong. 2) Name it after a place in Britain eg Norfolk, Sheffield, Brighton, the Grampians, Perth. 3) Name it after an historical figure from Britain or Australia eg Sydney, Adelaide, Cooktown. 4) Look at it, decide what the most bloody obvious thing you can say about it is, then call it that eg Nature's Window, Circular Head, the Remarkable Rocks, 7 Mile Beach.

Anyway, getting back to the narrative, we wandered around at the lookouts, took photos (of each other when requested), wondered where Kev had gotten to (he was somewhat hyperactive and prone to wandering off...), swatted away some of the local insect life and headed back to the bus. We then headed back out towards the main road, before pulling over at the side of the road where our guide told us it was time for our little hike down to the river. Deciding that this would be a good way of working off some of the calorie intake from the fish dinner of a couple of nights ago, I happily got into the walking spirit (probably because it was all downhill at this point). However, before we could depart we encountered an Aussie school-group or youth-group or something who, on hearing the American accents, immediately decided that fun was to be had. Yes, they proudly informed the Yanks that there were Drop Bears down the track.

Again, this is one of those things you just pick up whilst travelling in Australia. Having got monumentally bored with fielding the same questions over and over about various bits of Australia's native fauna, particularly Kangaroos and "Koala Bears" ( the Koala, phascolarctos cinereus, is not even remotely related to bears...), the Australian populace apparently decided some time ago that some variety was needed. And so the Drop Bear was born. I've never seen a definitive Latin name for it, but it's ecology is fairly well-established. It looks like a bigger, meaner Koala, with Big Pointed Teeth, lives in gum trees, and drops on unsuspecting victims from above, grabbing their head and (if you believe some of the stories) attempting to eat it This is a fairly classic sample site of Drop-Bear myths. There's also an entry in Wikipedia. One "fact" that I hadn't been acquainted with prior to my trip to WA, though was that the beasts can be deterred by spreading Vegemite on your face (the young Australians kindly offered to do this for our American comrades, stating that they had a tube of it with them for just such eventualities) - I had always heard that they were deterred by wearing a very bright, silvery hat as they would then see themselves in it (like a mirror) and thus be deterred from attacking.

Anyways, having kindly declined the offer of assistance in avoiding murderous marsupials, we got back onto the trail and headed down to the river. I must have been feeling enthusiastic, as I just about kept up with the ever-energetic Kev. On arrival down there, we had some quick morning tea (yes, I know, it seems oh-so-English, but the Aussies are quite into their tea as well, and this was not merely tea, but tea and biscuits - though, not being all that partial to tea, for me I just drank some water; I still had the biccies, though!) before setting out for a leisurely canoe trip along one of the middle sections of the river. All very easy going, through beautiful gorge country. Classic Aussie scenery - red rocks, green plants in gullies and the like, cobalt blue sky and blue-green river. And a gorgeous sunny day. You couldn't really ask for all that much more.

On paddling back to our canoe departure point, we settled down for some lunch, then sat around chatting while it settled before starting the climb back out. Oh yes, the immutable laws of physics strike again. When you go down into a river gorge, that means at some point that you have to climb back out of it. And normally this would be the cue for me to start on about how I'm not built for going uphill, and shouldn't have drunk so much beer recently, and so on ad nauseam. Except in this case, I actually rather liked it. In fact, it was great fun, largely because we didn't just retrace our steps, but actually went up the side of the gorge, making it more like a bit of very tame rock-climbing rather than uphill hiking.

Having gone back to the bus, we then headed up to another lookout, this one looking back towards the town, from which you could see the way the river sets up the whole countryside. You could also, unfortunately, see the municipal rubbish dump if you looked the other way (though only at a long distance - it was just like a clearing area in the greenery of the bush). But there's no need to kill the moment, is there? Just think about the beautiful late afternoon sun, the greenery, the blue sky, the fantastic view. Don't think about the rubbish. Damnit!

On returning to the town, I had another very quiet night (I was due a few, after my karaoke-related excesses the previous week). I had a very quiet next day as well, enlivened by picking up a couple of books from a second-hand shop, and by watching the sunset down at the beach. Then, in the evening, I met up with the next bus-load of Easyriders coming through town. But I'll save that for next time.

Cheers,

Pat

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

Thursday Night Karaoke Fever

Hello again, time to try and get a bit more of this written up. Looking back at last time, I was about to head off down to Margaret River, to meet up with my distant cousin James.

[Once again, the road to nowhere is paved with good intentions. This entry sat around gathering dust for a while. Ah well...]

Well, I knew him as James, my parents called him James, and his little sister Liz, who's been in London the last few years, refers to him as James, but apparently these days he's Jim or Jimmie to his mates. And considering I changed at short notice from Patrick to Pat 11 years ago, I guess I can relate to that.

To get down to Margaret River, I had decided to forego the dubious pleasures of getting a Greyhound bus down, and hire a car. Yes, for the first, and thus far only, time on my trip, I actually hired my own motor vehicle. Even more surprising than this change of habit was that I was actually alive and awake and in a good state to drive - the light drizzle probably helped sober me up (yes, it does rain down here too...). My trusty steed for the next two days was a little red Hyundai, an automatic (though I wouldn't hold that against it too much) and actually surprisingly nifty.

Following instructions I had scribbled down in a phone conversation with Jim a couple of evenings earlier, I proceeded for around 2 hours down the Western Australian coast, mostly on the highway, during which time my biggest distraction was making sure that the car didn't run away with itself and get me a speeding ticket. Those who've been in Oz will know that highways there tend to take "long and straight" to a level the Romans would have envied. By around lunchtime I was in Margaret River, one of Australia's better-known wine regions and most respected surf spots. The latter was the main reason Jim was there.

So the first thing we had to do in town, after I'd gone and seen his house, was drive down to have a look at the beach. The weather wasn't great, with a lot of haze and not much sun, but I could see from the surf breaking offshore why the place would be popular. However, apart from knowing that big waves are generally good, and "reliable" big waves seem to be regarded as better, I know nothing about what makes a good surf beach, so will leave the subject there.

After this, we met up with a couple of friends of Jim's and went off to a neighbouring town/village to a pub. Because it's apparently nicer than the pubs in Mag River itself. After visiting one of the latter later on, I wouldn't necessarily agree to that, but hey, it was a pub, it served beer, what more did we need? So I settled in, drinking beers, chatting away with Jim's mates, and watching while he and the rest of the lads bet money on the horses. Never having been one to willingly part with more money than I need to, I didn't join in on this, but was quite funny to watch, particularly as they got a little drunker.

After a few beers, I realised that it was now late-afternoon, going on evening. Where had the afternoon gone? Where had so much of my cash gone? And who the hell was going to drive us back to Mag River, as everybody had been drinking? The answer to the last, at least, turned out to be "one of the drunk people". This was not exactly good news for me, as I loathe drink-driving as a particularly undeveloped form of stupidity, but I had no other reasonable way of getting back into town so I went along with it. Was very happy, though, when we got back to Margaret River and went to one of the local places. Somewhere along on the way, I don't actually remember us getting any dinner, and lunch had been pretty minimal, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that I was a teensy bit pissed by this point.

And then came the clincher. It was Karaoke night at the pub. As quite a few of you know, I'm a bit of a sucker for Karaoke, especially when I'm pissed, and the one tends to lead into the other, and back again, in a vicious circle. The rest of the evening is variously a blur, but I remember winning a Wallabies hat for singing (and then deliberately losing it, because I can't stand the Aussies' rugby team), singing several times solo and a couple in duet with some poor local lass, and that's about it. I woke up the next morning on an unfamiliar sofa, having apparently somehow lost Jim (I found out later he'd been politely asked to leave the pub after a misunderstanding...) and been offered a place to crash by my singing partner and her boyfriend.

Damn, that's one night I have to admit I'm quite glad I don't remember too much of. At any rate, my saviours dropped me back in town (at the pub!), from which I managed to work out the way back to Jim's house. On arrival there, Jim appeared to be in a worse state than I was (which was quite impressive), so we chatted a little bit and then I hit the road and he hit the sack. Realising just how knackered I was (and worried about my blood alcohol level), I only drove up as far as the coast, where I parked up for a couple of hours in a small town and crashed out, listening to the waves break on the beach.

I then got back on the road, as I had to get back into Perth, drop off my stuff at the hostel I was checking into in town (I was leaving on the Easyrider the next morning, and they don't do pick-ups from Freo), then get the car back. Thanks to Perth's traffic, this I managed with only about 2 minutes to spare, but all worked out okay. I was then planning to have a quiet night (understandably) but got talked by my new room-mates into going out for a couple of drinks. I know what you're thinking, but for once I did keep it to a couple, spent much more time chatting with people and (bizarrely) watching the cricket - this was during the Ashes, so everywhere was showing the games.

And then I headed back to the hostel for some much-needed shut-eye, in preparation for joining up with yet another backpacker bus. But that can wait for next time, as I'm determined to actually finish off this bloody post after a month and half's dithering.

Take care and have fun,

Pat

The Return To Oz

Greetings once more, mis amigos y amigas.

Time to try and finally kick off the Aussie leg of the travelog. So, cast your minds back, through the mists of time, as I am endeavouring to do whilst writing this, and consider Sunday 21st August, 2005. For that is the day when I returned, yet again, to my sometime adoptive home: Australia.

Specifically, I arrived at Perth's international airport, after an overnight flight from Jo'burg. I won't bore you all again by saying how much I dislike overnight flights, but suffice to say, one of the first things I did on arrival at my hostel in Fremantle, Perth's harbour suburb, was grab a bit more kip. After that, it being a Sunday, I went for a little bit of an explore around town, scoping out where the suprmarket, cafes, pubs etc all were. And then, in the afternoon, I got a bit of local insight into the town.

The reason for this goes back a year or so to when I first discovered Thorntree, the bulletin board section of Lonely Planet's website. Having posted on there a few times, one of my habits when travelling now is to look up areas I'm going to travel, just to see what other people have been saying about them recently. And, through a conversation on WA, I'd got chatting online with a local lass called Jo, who'd kindly offered to meet up for a beer and give me a different point of view on Perth from the usual "what does Lonely Planet/Rough Guide/Footprint say?" approach. She introduced me to the Little Creatures microbrewery in Fremantle (gorgeous beer), and we swapped travellers' tales and the like for a while. Made for a nice introduction back to WA, although I have to admit I hadn't realised quite how much of an institution the "Sunday Session" is over there - the brewpub was packed outside, despite this being the middle of winter.

In an effort to beat my body-clock back into shape, I had a relatively early night, but got up the next morning feeling dreadful. Light-headed, faint, shivering slightly, churning stomach. And no, Mum, this was not due to alcohol, as I'd only had a few pints the previous day. Being my usual stubborn self, I attempted to just plough through it regardless, so went off around Freo (as the place is known by most locals) around all the banks, checking out what I would have to do to get a bank account, as well as getting myself a new SIM card for my mobile. By the time I got back to the hostel again late in the afternoon, I was still feeling rough as anything, despite drinking litres and litres of water. Got myself an extra blanket, to try and beat off the shivering, and had another early night.

Got up the next day, still feeling light-headed and queazy. Was by now starting to get slightly worried. In a fit of hypochondria, I went back to my African guidebooks, read through the health sections, and started halfways convincing myself I'd got Malaria. Realising this would probably be a bad thing, I went and got myself registered with Medicare, which is Australia's national health insurance organisation (Brits get free "immediately necessary" treatment, in exchange for Aussies getting access to the NHS equivalent), as well as going into central Perth to get the visa sticker for my passport, and to register for a Tax File Number (the equivalent of a UK NI number). By late-afternoon, things were feeling somewhat better, but I still felt a bit light-headed. The hypochondriac in me started whispering louder about Malaria, and I had another pretty early night, though I did spend about an hour downstairs in the hostel's bar, where somebody had put on a DVD of The Young Ones (the classic 1980s comedy, not the Cliff Richard film, thanks be) - more than an hour of Rik, Vivian, Mike and Neil at a time can get a little wearing, amusing appearances by 1980s bands notwithstanding.

And so Wednesday dawned. Another largely uneventful day, enlivened slightly by going into town and booking my Easyrider ticket. Easyrider, which is a name you'll be seeing a lot of in forthcoming posts, is one of the backpacker bus companies that spread across Australia, but is notable primarily because it's the big player on the West Coast - Oz Experience and their Big Green Buses may have introduced the idea out East, but they've never ventured into WA, which leaves Easyrider's yellow machines as the only option if you want to HOHO/JOJO your way up the west coast. And that was indeed my plan, to take in the whole west coast from Perth around and up to Darwin, starting on the Saturday. Having applied my usual travelling tendencies towards ruthless efficiency (quite why I plan things to the nth degree while on the road, but often can't be arsed even writing things in a diary back home, is a bit of an enigma), I pre-booked almost every sector of the trip. Feeling quite pleased with myself from this, and with the reviving state of my health having finally convinced me that I did not in fact have malaria, I headed back down to Freo, back to Sundancers Hostel and back to my room.

There to discover I had three new room-mates, which made a nice change from just the couple of stoner guys who had been there since I arrived. Two English girls and a Welsh lad, who helped persuade me that I was certainly well enough to go out again, and so we headed over to one of the bars in Freo that had a backpacker night on. Any of those of you who've done the backpacking scene out here will know that, in any major city, there is a backpacker night on somewhere most nights of the week - it's a bit like student nights in the big Uni towns back home. Unfortunately, the loss of my travel diaries along the way has left me unable to remember the name of the place, but I do remember that it was quite an interesting evening.

This was due largely to the fact that, rather than just play dance music all night, the place had a house band playing covers for a fair bit of the night. Nothing particularly surprising about that, you might say (though it's a trend I'd like to see more of in the UK). What was different was that they had a weekly competition of "Band Karaoke" - various of the punters had given their names and negotiated a song with the band early in the evening, and, about 10:30 or so, they each got their chance to effectively be lead singer for a song of their choice. Quite a lot of people singing Green Day songs as I recall. Certainly made a difference from most karaoke nights I've been to, as the requirement to put in a request early enough to still be pretty sober, plus the fact that you were up on stage in front of a crowd, meant that it was largely pretty good singers who took part.

I left at a fairly reasonable hour, though (about half midnight, I think...), as I had to be up the next morning and in a fit state to drive. Because I had hired a car for a couple of days, and was heading down through the south-western parts of WA to a small town famous for wine and surfing called Margaret River. And I was going there not for the wine (though it is rather nice), not for the surfing (me on a surfboard? are you kidding?), but to reacquaint myself with a distant branch of the family tree. Yep, I was off to meet a cousin.

But that will wait for another time and another posting.

Take care and have fun,

Pat