On Sunday I arrived to Kununura - a small town, the last town in WA. I arrived quite early so I went to the visitor center to see what I can do there. They sent me to a small national park - nice but nothing after my last sights, and to some art galleries and fruit farms. The art galleries here specialize in zebra rock - something that is found only here and again the pictures will explain better than words. In the fruit farms I tasted different kinds of melons, indulged myself with ice-cream sundae and had a beautiful rest [View Full Entry]

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It started as a regular evening in the backpacker in Kununura. I joined a table with some mixture of people - French, Italian, English, 2 Germans. Somehow the converstion went to politics. The French girl was interested to know why our P.M. Sharon said that France was dangerous to Jews. From there it drifted to talking about the situation in Israel and also to anti-Semitism. This German guy said some annoying things from the start, as “why the Germans still pay HUGE amount of money to Israel, his generation pays for something they are not related to”. He argued that they [View Full Entry]

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The Kimberley is supposed to be an amazing region, kind of a "last frontier" land, hard to access, in the north of WA (WA=Western Australia) between Broome and Kununura. The problem is, you need 4WD to see most of it and some places you can only go with airplanes. I only had my lovely 2WD Nissan Pulsar and so I had to travel on the main highway (highway means a good sealed road… not more than that :-) I had a chance to see 2 of the more accessible Kimberley: Geikie gorge and the Bungle Bungles. I left Broome Thursday afternoon [View Full Entry]

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From Karijini you have to drive 1000 boring km with nothing on the way (except the town of Port Hedland where we stayed overnight - nice hostel but NOTHING to do), before you reach Broome. Broome is a good place to chill out a bit (or more than a bit when you don't pay a lot for a rental car). Marit and I decided we will all be better off parting here, and not going on to Darwin together. Unbelievably she tried not to pay all her share of the cost at the end, I was so glad that I didn't [View Full Entry]

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I have never seen a real ghost town. Until 1966 Wittenoom was a thriving town with the big asbestos mine in the nearby Wittenoom gorge. Then they discovered the danger of cancer from asbestos and they closed the mine. Most of the people left anyway as there were no jobs anymore and the WA government were determined to extinguish the town, maybe to prevent future law suits (even though several researches showed it wasn’t dangerous anymore). So they destroyed all public buildings, and only some private houses stayed, with no services. 20 people leave there now, determined to call it a [View Full Entry]

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On Saturday we had this very long way, going inland to Karijini national park. It's an amazing place and we spent there 2 days hiking in magnificent narrow and beautiful gorges.On Sunday we visited the 4 gorges area. We went down the gorge called Weano. After a short walk you reach the narrow part. You walk with your legs on the walls of the gorge, the water under you in the middle. Well it's not dangerous as it may sound because the rocks there are layered and you actually have like stairs all the time. Then you get to handrail pool [View Full Entry]

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If you were still worried, then I'm ok - the mosquitoes attack was over and maybe they were not sand flies after all because they didn't itch for too long. So on Wednesday I went on this 4WD safari tour. It was a nice day although a huge waste of money... I thought we would do some hiking but we walked for maybe 15 minutes... crossing the range with the 4WD was awesome, I admit to that. And then we also had a boat cruise in a really lovely gorge called Yardie Creek Gorge. The cakes that came with morning and [View Full Entry]

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I invented the term to describe my unexplainable fear of fish in the sea. I love fish on my plate… and I can handle them when I swim in fresh water pool in rivers. But I can’t go snorkeling in the open sea! I did it once years ago in Eilat, but that was the only time. I came here determined to get over that. I know, they are small, they are more scared of me… but I simply couldn’t. I only enjoy the fish when there is thick glass between us, as in an underwater observatory or a glass bottom [View Full Entry]

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I left Perth when it started really raining, and headed into the tropical north of Australia, a land of eternal sunshine! On Friday when we left it rained pretty badly, and it rained most of the time when we were driving to our first destination, but miraculously the rain stopped when we got there. That was the Pinnacles dessert, a very strange phenomenon of stone poles, different heights, sizes and shapes, just stuck there in the middle of the sand. I can't say it's an amazing place but really interesting. We continued driving further north and stopped for the night in [View Full Entry]

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I was supposed to leave Perth yesterday but my English travel-mate asked to postpone it to Friday. At first I was disappointed but then I thought that I could really enjoy 2 more days of not doing much. The most I did was read my Tom Clancy book. Once you start reading it you can't leave it. I sit in cafes, I sit on benches just out there, I sit in the lounge of my hostel, and I read. I am also keen to finish it cause I want to start my new book that I bought here (the "Almost French" [View Full Entry]

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