In many ways it is great to be here, and in many ways I have fitted back in really easily, I know how things work here and i speak the language! I know which shops to buy things in, and food is recognisable! But there are many less appealing things too, like having to stay in cheap accommodation in hostels and sharing a room with 5-9 other people, having to really think about how much things cost because i can't afford whatever i want now.
But the things which really shocked me, and are still confronting me every day is how much emphasis we put on superficial things in life. Appearance is considered so important here. In most of Asia, outside the big cities it isn't something i have really had to think much about for the past 5 months. But here, we are obsessed by it. I feel like I'm constantly being bombarded with adverts telling me I'm not skinny enough, my skin isn't flawless enough, I need to wear make-up, I ought to love shoe shopping and high-heels, it just goes on and on... Not to worry - the ad's promise me a quick fix solution to these problems.
It's such a highly stressed society. No-one can move fast enough. Got to have the latest phone, got to keep up with everyone else. Because why? We already have so much. And I'm not meaning that we should all be contented just to have food, water and shelter. But to every now and again step back from our own reality and be grateful for these most simple, and fundamental, things. More than half the world works just to have these things and many die because they don't. We don't have to. We take these things for granted.
And, here I am arriving back from Asia, having met some other travellers who I've really gotten on with and I'm expecting the travellers here to be the same. It took about 5 seconds to realise that the travellers in Australia are a little different to the ones in SE Asia, who are themselves, a little different to the ones in India. Travellers in Aus, seem to be here mostly with working holiday visa with the intention of taking a year out and partying as much as possible.
So, I decided to see a bit of the west coast and then head on over to Sydney to see Marisa who is home for a couple of months.
I responded to an ad from a Swiss guy looking for people to travel with him on a road trip in his car. And on the 4th of March we set off for three weeks around Western Australia. Me and my three beautiful boys. We had so much fun. Four very different personalities, but we got used to each other quickly and ended up having a blast.
Australia, (in case you hadn't realised, like me) is HUGE. The state of western Australia is many times the size of the UK. From Perth to Exmouth(our most northern destination on our trip) is 2100km. But Broome, which is still in W. Aus is another 2000km along the coast NE from there. Trips in Aus. have to be calculated in days, not hours. And everything worth seeing is so far apart!
After finally getting out of Perth on the first day we made it to the Pinnacles, some strange rocks which stick out of the desert planes. And this being Australia, there isn't just one or two, there are hundred over a fairly big area. We drove around and made the mistake of deciding to walk about. Our first encounter with the flies seemed bad but was nothing compared with what was to come!!
The next day we drove up the coast and stopped off at the beach. It was stunning. White soft sand, clear blue, turquoise and green waters, just perfect. All the beaches along the west coast are like this. And usually fairly quiet too. I've never been much of a fan of beaches or swimming in the sea but in western Aus I couldn't help but want to jump straight into the water and play in the sand! Later we fed the kangaroos at a wildlife rescue sanctuary where they rescue the animals after being hurt on the road or orphaned. They are very cute, and quite gentle for such large animals, though i wouldn't like to put this to the test, i reckon they've got a lot more power in those scrawny little arms than it looks. We camped in a cute little caravan site and made full use of the pool!! Nearly all campsites here have pools and BBQs - God bless Australia. We had dinner and played cards and realised at about 11.30 that we had been sitting in the corner of the BBQ area called the beer and bullshit corner - how appropriate.
We carried on up the coast the next day making a small (200km) detour to meet Prince Leonard, the Prince of Hutt River Province. Have a look at the website! www.principality-hutt-river.com The heat was unbelievable - dry and dusty and with flies all over the place. We sent some postcards with Hutt river stamps, and the boys had their passports stamped by the prince himself! We finally arrived in Kalbarri town which is next to a National Park but i was not in the mood to look around - I was so hot, tired and pissed off with all the flies! They just gather around you and go for your nose and eyes and most horribly your lips. But thankfully they dissappear when it gets dark and we had a BBQ that night and played cards. In the morning we fed the pelicans before making our way up to Monkey Mia which is famous for the dolphins which come into the shallow waters every morning.
The campsite was lovely and we headed straight for the sea when we arrived! At dinner, Brendan introduced the rest of us to goon, basically, cheap white wine in a box, called goon as this is the aboriginal word for pillow, and goon was to become our new travelling buddy, turning up at dinner most nights and staying well after dinner was finished. After dinner we sat on the beach and Brenden pointed out the southern cross in the sky! In the morning we got up early and went down to the sea and sure enough the dolphins were there, along with a huge crowd of tourists. They were totally at ease, swimming about in the shallows with all the people watching.
We had a lazy day, reading, going to a lookout point to see the sharks in the waters below, playing tennis and swimming in the pool . But most importantly we bought fly nets! Lovely green netting to go over your head! Whoever came up with this idea is a genius!
We left Monkey Mia the next day and drove to Carnarvon. Not a very exciting little town but the flies weren't so bad! On the 10th we drove up to coral bay, stopping to snorkle on the way. I hadn't snorkled before but i borrowed Brendan's snorkle stuff and it was amazing. There were so many fish! Maybe a stupid statement but never really thought about how many little fish there are in the sea! Little bright blue ones in small groups, big flat silver/grey fish, green fish, coral, and the boys even saw a shark and a giant turtle!
The next couple of days we spent just chilling out, reading books, sitting on the beach, having BBQs and enjoying the pools at the campsites as we made our way to Exmouth. The Ningaloo reef in this area has good snorkeling too. After Exmouth we started on the road to Karijini National Park, stopping one night in a road house where there were millions of grasshoppers, who we had fun trying to keep out of our tent, and loads of frogs in the showers! It was sucha funny place - like out of an American movie, where the only thing on the road is this petrol station where the pumps are from the 50s and most of the vehicles going by are long-distance trucks. The boys who work there do long shifts and live on site - there's not even a town around where they might live! I can't imagine living there - it is truely in the middle of nowhere!
The next day we got to Karijini NP and set up camp in the mot basic campsite, and headed off for the first of many gorge walks, walking down into Dales gorge and finding a beautiful waterfall (Fortesque Falls) with a perfect natural swimming pool at the bottom. It was so hot and this was the most perfect end to the day. We had a BBQ that night by torch light as there are no lights in the park and looked up at the Milky Way which was so clear and bright. We hung our rubbish up in a tree that night as there are no bins and we didn't want the dingos to get at it but in the middle of the night Brendan woke up to see a dingo approaching our tent! He yelled at it and it ran away (my hero!) but in the morning we found all our rubbish all torn up and lying all around our camping patch!!
The next day was bound to be baking hot again so we set off early for a walk in the gorge. It is so much cooler down in the gorge and we had stunning walk through the gorge with all the different rocks and waterfalls and pools. We spent three days walking through the different gorges in the NP and each one was more beautiful than the last. It was a wonderful place and easily the highlight of our trip. It is so special to be surrounded by nature - being able to see the layers in the rocks which formed more years ago than i can comprehend. And being so far from a town as well is just lovely for a few days. But the heat in the day and having no shade can be tough - the sun in Australia is so much stronger than anything else i have experienced. I have managed to get around Asia for 5 months and only been sunburnt once, and I've not even picked up much of a tan, but after just a few weeks in Australia I'm browner than I've ever been!
We spent the next two day in the car driving back to Freemantle just outside Perth where we booked into a hostel. It's a sweet wee town, on the coast, with a "cappuccino strip" and hundreds of backpackers working in the cafes. Ralf, Brenden and I went over to Rottnest Island for a night, hired bikes and cycled round the whole island. It was a lovely end to our trip.
We had so much fun on our road trip and I am so glad to have been traveling with these lovely boys and I was sad to say goodbye when it was time to catch my flight to Sydney. It was really nice to see western Australia, I think the things i will remember are how much time we spent outdoors, which I guess you have to when camping, the flies, the extreme heat, the pools at the many campsites, the BBQs, Karijini NP, the boys, Maggie (our car), driving along roads for miles and miles where the scenery doesn't change and there isn't really anything much to lok at out the window, and just how absolutely massive Australia is!! How long roads can be!
