http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Claire-and-Tel/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Claire and Tel en-us Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:18:53 +0000 Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:18:53 +0000 Getting a bit slack with the travelblog entries Time's flying by we can't believe we've been living in Alice Springs now for nearly 7 months.Mention Alice to people outside here and you normally get one of two reactions. Either you get told what a shithole it is and how you'll be stabbed turned mad by flies and burn to a crisp before finding out that the person you're talking to hasn't even be http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Northern-Territory/Alice-Springs/blog-453215.html Our 3 weeks with Clive and Vanessa here has flown by but we managed to pack loads into the time They left yesterday morning and homesickness hit us like a tonne of bricks. I think it was just that they were going ldquohomerdquo and will be just up the road from all the people we are missing so much today we are feeling much better againSo the guys arrived on the Wednesday I had just finish http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Northern-Territory/blog-415732.html How time flies eh 7 weeks without a Bloghellip.SorryWell we are both still alive and kicking just This working for a living deal is not really agreeing with usWell after an hour wandering round town and a couple of interviews well more like chats really Tel found himself with a choice of a couple of jobs. Hersquos been into the thought of doing something that pays him but with no real http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Northern-Territory/Alice-Springs/blog-408582.html Meet Gloria our gorgeous new neighbour. She lives on the bush outside and is an Australian Golden Orb Weaving spider. She's a pretty clever spider her massive web is yellow colour to attract bees to it and she can change the darkness of her silk to suit local conditions. If the weather gets too windy she can release some of the structure so the web doesn't get blown away. So that birds don't fl http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Northern-Territory/Alice-Springs/blog-391704.html Well we finally made ithellip.We are back in OzAfter much stress collecting together a ton of papers and information having xrays medicals blood tests police checks paying out almost 1000 quid and waiting the longest 6 weeks of our lives we were finally granted a visa to come and work and live hereWe arrived in Melbourne on the 25th March and as we landed after 9 in the evening dec http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Victoria/Melbourne/blog-386965.html Well its probably time for another blog although we're not actually doing a lot of travelling at the moment. Hopefully we're soon going to be moving to Alice Springs to live for a while and at the moment we're catching up with friends and family in the UK while we wait to hear about jobs and visas. We're hoping to be off in a few weeks and although we're going to have to work in Australia it wil http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/United-Kingdom/England/Greater-London/Crystal-Palace/blog-371316.html Didn't want to mention in the last blog that the day after we arrived back in the UK from Hong Kong we were straight off again this time back to Goa on a package deal for a couple of weeks. Didn't want to mention it because we were going over to suprise Giane and Babu our friends that live there just on the off chance that their internet connection decided to work and they read the blog and it http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Goa/Calangute/blog-354217.html Not having spent a winter in the UK for a couple of years and struggling to reacclimatise to the cold and damp we headed off to Hong Kong for a week to warm up My mum Janet wanted to come away with us somewhere hardly seeing us recently since we've been travelling for two and a half years and after a bit of a debate we thought that Hong Kong would be somewhere that she would enjoy. It was to b http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Hong-Kong/Hong-Kong-Island/blog-349371.html And so to Malaysiahelliphelliphellip.We arrived in Malaysia on Wednesday evening and after a night sleeping over in Kuala Lumpur we took a short flight east to Kota Bharu and then a ldquospeedrdquo boat out to the Perinthian Islands.Our plan was to stay 2 or 3 days and then head south to some other islands down the coasthellip..hmmmhellip..well its 8 days later and we are still here http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Malaysia/Terengganu/Perhentian-Kecil/blog-332765.html Well the time has come. After nearly ten months 31047km several hundred photos of tame parrots and nearly getting wiped out by road trains a couple of dozen times its time for us to leave Oz. We're back at Tony and Vals in Koo Wee Rup packing our stuff up ready to be dropped at the airport in a few hours time. We'll stay in the motel there for the night and tomorrow fly out to Kuala Lumpur wh http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Victoria/Gippsland/blog-328974.html The road to Sydney is paved with many thingshellip.unfortunately none of them gold but there you goSo our first stop was in a tiny town called Glenrowan. Now on paper this is not much more than a one horse town between Melbourne and Sydney but throw into the equation the fact that it was the place where the infamous Ned Kelly was finally arrested on the 28th of June 1880 and it seems you have http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/New-South-Wales/Sydney/blog-318840.html Wow Seven Weeks since our last Blog Ooops Sorry time flies ehSo anyway what have we been up to apart from dodging the rain and trying to keep warmWe did as planned in the last Blog make it up to the Murray River to a lovely spot called Bourkes Bend but being right on the river it was freezing we managed a couple of nights and gave up on the third morning when we found that the c http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Victoria/Lakes-Entrance/blog-314874.html And so sadly we left Linda in Port Augusta and headed off for Iron Knob once again. We managed to catch up with Judy but the other people that we had met including PJ and Michelle were off visiting people around Oz. Still we spent the afternoon with Judy and her two crazy dogs and then headed back to Port Augusta for dinner and the night. The following morning we set off for Broken Hill a silver http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Victoria/Kerang/blog-287902.html Probably one of the weirdest places we've ever been to is Coober Pedy roughly half way between Alice Springs and Adelaide. For about 40km each side of the town you drive through a surreal apocalyptic landscape of white conical mullock heaps and old machinery signs warning of the presence of thousands of mine shafts each dug in the hope of finding opals. Coober Pedy itself is a small dusty town http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/South-Australia/Coober-Pedy/blog-284006.html Arriving back into Darwin after our jolly in Bali we eventually managed to convince the immigration officer that despite her intuition we really arenrsquot illegally working our way around Oz and wersquore really not and finally stamped in for another six months were reunited with Tilly our van. Obviously upset that wersquod abandoned her for a week shersquod decided to leak clutch a http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Northern-Territory/Uluru/blog-281398.html One of the quirks of the Australian immigration service is that if you want to stay longer than your initial visa they want you to spend some of your money in a different country for a while rather than just letting you pay a fee to them. Seems a bit stupid to us but thatrsquos how we ended up in Bali for a week.Wersquove always had an image of Bali as a sort of Benidorm for Aussies cheap be http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Indonesia/Bali/Kuta/blog-275971.html So we last left you in Broome shortly after arriving there......Well Broome it's self didn't seem to have too much to offer lots of shops selling pearls and a huge beach Cable beachwhich you couldn't swim in cause of the 'stingers' We did spend an evening on the beach to watch the sunset as did everyone else staying in Broome the beach was fairly packed with everyone sitting around in their http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Northern-Territory/Darwin/City-of-Darwin/blog-270739.html Well we survived the Cyclone....well actually it never actually arrived Just rained cats and dogs for 3 daysSo Coral bay being a bit of a wash out so to speak we decided as soon as the road was reopened to head on up to Exmouth and the Ningaloo reef. We read about Exmouth before we were even in Australia as it is one of the few places in the world where Whale Sharks go past close to the coast a http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Western-Australia/Exmouth/blog-262223.html At the end of the last blog we said our final farewells to Pete and Nirbeeja and after travelling with them for nearly four weeks finally went our seperate ways. That was in Busselton home to the longest wooden jetty in Western Australia. Or was it in the southern hemisphere Or in the universe We've been to so many places with the longest wooden jetty that we've lost track. Suffice to say no t http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Western-Australia/Carnarvon/blog-259530.html Hello PeopleHere we are again actually not far from where we last left you. It would seem we are only about 130km from where we did the last blog two weeks agoIn fact we have slowed down considerably from the first weeks of our trip. Firstly we had actually planned to treck fairly fast as far as Adelaide partly as we had done this route before but also because it is not far from Melbourne an http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Western-Australia/Bunbury/Bunbury/blog-252854.html