Andrew Bickley
At the age of 27 we have embarked on an early life crisis and decided to leave our life of luxury and comfort in London and return to our homeland of Yorkshire. As part of the trip we have taken a slight detour to spend a year in Perth, WA and then amble back to Yorkshire through various parts of the Asia-Pacific region (which will be decided nearer the time that such decisions need to be made, i.e. the last minute!)Andy and Nicola Bickley
Nicola will be providing information about our extended stay in Perth and onward travels, including anything that may be considered useful or helpful.
Andy, on the other hand will be sharing whatever passes through his head at the time of writing, which will hopefully be vaguely interesting and perhaps occasionally profound (though this will definitely not be on purpose and will definitely be rare!)
*Update (Dec 2011)
It's looking like our stay in Perth is going to be extended by a couple of years....so the travelling is going on hold. We still intend to do our RTW adventure, but all the reading of travelblog has filled our heads with so many ideas we've decided we need longer to save! We'll still be updating our blog with our travels around Australia and neighbouring countries, so we'll keep you posted!
Travel Blog Posts
Sea Lions at Jurien Bay
Published: March 15th 2012Oceania » Australia » Western Australia » Jurien Bay
March 3rd 2012
Since visiting Cervantes a few months ago and spotting a flyer for swimming with sea lions in Jurien Bay we’d been planning a trip back up to the region. This time we invited along some friends, Martin & Sophie (Andy knows Martin from Football in London and they moved out to Perth in October) and John (Irish John who we both went to University with – came out on a working holiday visa in January). I booked a cheap rental through Professionals - $150 per night for a 3 bedroom cottage and set about planning the long weekend. Friday evening after one of the most hectic weeks at work I’ve ever experienced, we packed up the Pajero, picked everyone up and hit the road. Ideally we’d wanted to be up to Jurien before nightfall due to ... read more
Bunker Bay Relaxation
Published: March 15th 2012Oceania » Australia » Western Australia » Dunsborough
February 18th 2012
We’ve had quite a busy few months here in WA. Generally just getting on with life, Andy has a new job that he started this week which is much more related to what he wants to do in the future and for me its been wrangling with my employer over getting the permanent visa sorted out. The application has gone in this week, but I’m not hopeful it’s going to be sorted out for another few months yet. Anyway, onto more interesting things! For my Christmas present from work I was given a 2 night stay at the Quay West Bunker Bay Resort in Bunker Bay. This is a 5* place right on the beach. We booked the day off on the Friday to head down and make the most of a long weekend. As it ... read more
January 29th 2012
4x4ing So with the excitement of Christmas out of the way it was time to get stuck back in to exploring and living life WA style. In order to do this properly we had to get a car that is closer to what the locals would drive, and this meant we had to say goodbye to our first Australian car, the trusty Excel, a sad occasion. Luckily, as we had bought it with the help of Stephen (Nicola’s brother for those who aren’t aware of the family tree) we were able to list to car at $300 more than we paid for it and I was hopeful of a profit. Unfortunately the profit didn’t materialise, mainly through my impatience at having to show the car to a bunch of random idiots and just wanting it to ... read more
So this is Christmas, what have we done.
Published: February 4th 2012Oceania » Australia » Western Australia » Perth
December 25th 2011
I had hoped to have this completed a long time before now, but stuff seems to get in the way! Christmas in Australia is a strange thing, though not nearly as depressing as my title might suggest. The build up is very different from England, seeing Christmas decorations around the City in the middle of Summer brings the reactions of ‘I can’t believe they have put Christmas decorations up already, it’s still Summer! Oh actually Christmas is in Summer here, I’ll let them off. But its still wrong!’ It never really quite feels like Christmas. I even managed to convince an Australian of this as well when he was mocking the English view of it not ‘feeling Christmassy’ as to him Christmas was a date in the calendar, rather than a spirit of feeling, when I ... read more
Margaret River Round Three
Published: January 12th 2012Oceania » Australia » Western Australia » Margaret River
December 10th 2011
Sorry this blog has taken a while to be published, December was a busy month with my parents visiting from England. I’ll try to make it interesting as after re-reading I was worried it was reading more like a diary entry! My parents landed in Perth the previous weekend and had been given a week to get over the jet-lag before we sprung local activities on them. One of which was a big family trip down to Margaret River with them, my brother Stephen and his girlfriend Jenna and Andy and I. I booked this trip before we left London as I knew that accommodation for this area in December can get booked up months and months in advance. We booked into the Forte Leeuwin Apartments and had a lovely 3 bedroomed two story block that ... read more
Off Roading & The Pinnacles
Published: December 5th 2011Oceania » Australia » Western Australia » Cervantes
November 12th 2011
Going up to the Pinnacles is one of the first thing that jumps out at you from the Lonely Planet. I’d wanted to go up there and visit them since we landed in Perth nearly 5 months ago as it was something ‘touristy’ to do. You can do the Pinnacles in a day trip, but as I wanted to see them at sunset, and driving in the dark isn’t advisable because of the wildlife (our little Excel would not survive hitting a Kangaroo at speed) we decided to stay the night in Cervantes. So Saturday morning came, we packed up the car and with Andy feeling a little worse for wear I took over driving responsibilities for the 200km drive up North. No sooner had we pulled out of the driveway Andy decided that he need ... read more
As Long As You Are For Scuba - I Am 'Appy!
Published: November 6th 2011Oceania » Australia » Western Australia » Perth » Hillarys Boat Harbour
October 30th 2011
One of Nicola’s big plans for my time in Perth was to undertake a SCUBA diving course, and presumably because then we can both get very little benefit from having passed the course together, if the number of dives she has done recently is anything to go by. The big plan is to join the university dive club and join in on boat trips planned by the club, as they are generally a lot cheaper than going through a commercial dive shop. With this in mind we attended a social evening with the club in order to get more information about how things worked generally and to see how I went about getting on to a open water diving course. The evening was a success in that we were able to get information we wanted so ... read more
There's no flies on you! Oh wait - yes there are - millons of them!
Published: October 17th 2011Oceania » Australia » Western Australia » Rottnest Island
October 16th 2011
Having seen the weather reports for the weekend at the beginning of the week (predicted 35 degrees on Sunday) we thought it might be the right time to see what Rottnest Island was all about. So we booked our ‘Mega Blast’ ferry tickets with Rottnest-Express and bike hire which came to the princely sum of $175. On Sunday morning we were up early, deliberating the merits of taking our own food and the snorkeling gear over to the island. Due to the fact we were going on the Mega Blast rather than the usual ferry we were only permitted one carry on and eyeing over our usual haul when we go snorkeling we decided that we couldn’t take it all with us, as we just couldn’t cycle around the island whilst trying to balance all of ... read more
Dolphins, Sea Lions, Pelicans and Flies!
Published: October 17th 2011Oceania » Australia » Western Australia » Rockingham
October 8th 2011
Penguin Island We were pretty excited about the first of October, it was hopefully going to be sunny from here on in! With the weather forecast for Saturday 25 degrees and sunny we ran through our weekend ideas and decided to head back to Rockingham to the Shoalwater Marine Park and ‘Rockingham Wild Adventures’. We were very organised and out of the flat for 9.30am complete with snorkelling gear and picnic for the beach. We caught the 11am ferry over to Penguin Island and immediately went onto the Sealion Safari glass bottomed boat for a 45 minute tour around the neighbouring islands. On the safari we saw the resident pelicans up on Penguin Island and the guide pointed out the best place to snorkel on the island (we’d head there later). We also saw a couple ... read more
Autumn in England – oh no wait – Spring in Perth
Published: October 1st 2011Oceania » Australia » Western Australia » Perth
October 1st 2011
Yes that’s right, it has a distinctly ‘Autumn in England’ feel to the weather in Perth at the moment, whoever said that the sun always shines here and Winter lasts ‘only 6 weeks’ was definitely messing with the impressionable poms! We’ve been in Perth for 3 months now and at best I’d be able to describe the weather as ‘mixed’, we haven’t had any beach time yet which is disappointing, I’d had this image of us on the beach all the time!! Anyway, enough complaining of the weather – I’m quite sure in another few months time I’ll be telling you how it’s unbelievably hot and I can’t go outside for fear of melting into a puddle – but until then, it’s chilly! I decided that if I was going to have anything interesting to write ... read more
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