GeriatricsInTraining

Once upon a time, in 1981, there was born a child. His name was Laurent. No one knew that in 27 years, he would be known as Laurent the Magnificent! He searched high and low, all around the state of Western Australia, known as Australie Occidentale, for the correct pair of sunglasses - and when he found them at Laubman & Pank in Esperance, he became known as Laurent the Magnificent. Narrated by Laurent, 14/2/09 And, if you know the saga (10 months of sending sunglasses in various stages of repair from Sydney to Midland, Geraldton, Broome, Sydney, Broome, Kununurra, Sydney, Midland and finally Esperance), you can imagine the thrill upon their final arrival! Esperance was the first major stop of the second phase of our roadtrip - after a swift trip via the cliffs of ... read more

I’ve heard quite a few complaints about the slow start to the movie Wolf Creek; but for us, watching the film for the first time in January, that was one of the most suspenseful sections. It mirrored almost exactly our own trip to the Crater - minus, thankfully, any engine failure or murderous stranger - with jokes about ghosts, a deserted campground, and gathering storm-clouds. But when the backpackers in the film decided to go 2500 kilometres to Kalbarri to get medical aide, we were reassured that it wasn’t real, after all. Our southern trip was quite neatly broken into three sections, beginning with a few wanderings around the back roads of the Kimberley. Both the King River and Duncan roads were nice wandering tracks, and notable, respectively, for the amount of discarded beer bottles strewn ... read more

I’d been looking forward to driving the Gibb River Road since we started our trip, and the gorges along it are as stunning as everyone says, especially if you can see them without the attendant crowds (i.e. be prepared to get up early, and stay a little later than most). Each one is a little different, and everyone has their own favourite - I loved scrambling around Lennard chasing a water monitor, whilst Laurent preferred jumping into the pools at El Questro and Galvan’s gorges. But if you can take your time, there are places other than gorges to see. We particularly enjoyed exploring historic Tunnel Creek, although we’d recommend that you take a torch - we reached the end to be told that there were freshies (small, normally harmless, crocodiles) and eels in the pools ... read more

WA's a big state. A REALLY big state. And as much as it's filled with incredible places to visit, there's a lot of space in between. Which, of course, has meant we've done a lot of driving in the past few months. We may only be about 3000km from Perth by the shortest route - but we've in fact driven around 7000 kilometres. So there are times when we get a little bored. Coming up from Port Hedland was one of those times, and, perhaps being by that point tired of talking only to eachother, we introduced our two new travel companions (see right) to the mix. The result was an extended version of the following conversation (S = Swagman, played by Laurent; O = Octopus, performed by Sarah): (Swagman climbs the steering wheel) S: "Whew, ... read more

So...in true Sarah and Laurent style, we're rather behind on the updates! But we've been having so much fun that it's rather difficult to find time to blog, even when we do actually have internet access. It feels rather longer than 3 1/2 weeks that we've been travelling, probably because we have a very established routine each day as a result of our free-camping. We can't change the routine, because then we can't fit all the gear into our car! But we have been complimented several times on how neat and organised our vehicle is (what a change from my usual messy mode of living, hey mum?). And we're definately doing well on our Geriatric Training Mission. So far the following characteristics have been acquired: * Bedtime is 8:30pm. Anything after that is extremely late; * ... read more