We arrived bright and early to Adelaide that Tuesday morning. Unfortunately, a little too early for check in. But most hostels are used to it, and many have of them have free bag storage. We got rid of our stuff, and chilled out in the common room for a bit. Another great thing about YHAs, is that most of them host daily activities to help make people feel more welcome, and Tuesday just happened to be free breakfast pancakes! Talk about luck! Around the noon hour we explored the city and tried to get a feeling for where everything was. Personally, [View Full Entry]

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Sunday was a big day for us, the beginning of our train trip from Perth to Adelaide! We took the Indian Pacific, a rather iconic Australian railway (similar to the Ghan, which goes up the centre of Australia to Darwin). Our seats were daynighter seats, in the Red class. We had heard unfavourable things about taking the train, but much to our surprise, it was quite comfortable. There was more room than the Greyhound bus (which we had done several 24 hour trips before) and you could freely walk around the car. As an added bonus, there were plenty of free [View Full Entry]

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Friday we were up early for our last TransWa bus ride. We caught the bus around 8am, and tried to rest as well as we could during the 6-7 hour ride. Once back in Perth, we checked in to the hostel, and much to our surprise we were in the same room again. And even more, we still had the same roommates from two weeks earlier! It’s unusual for people to stay so long in one place, but one had been working and the other was looking for work, and wanted to stay in the city. The next morning, we bought [View Full Entry]

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Oct. 14th: We got up bright and early to take the bus from Pemberton to the little coastal town of Augusta. After checking into the hostel, we did some exploring of the town and had brunch at one of the local diners, before heading back to the hostel for a bit of a nap. We then got some take-away Chinese and I managed to convince Kevin to play some board games with me back at the hostel. We went to bed early that night, as we had a big day ahead of us! The next was our only full day in [View Full Entry]

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Sunday evening we arrived in Pemberton. It’s a little town nestled among some fantastic rolling green hills. When we arrived, we showed up at the hostel to a bit of a surprise. Turns out there’s a pretty big backpacker population who works in Pemberton, and the main hostel is for workers. The receptionist then drove us a few hundred meters down the road to the cottage used for traveling backpackers. Very cute. Best part was that it was right across from the local supermarket. Score. That night we met our roommate from Germany, Wencke (pronounced Venx). She had been living/ [View Full Entry]

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Oct. 9th: After leaving Bunbury, Kevin and I headed to beautiful Margaret River! This small town is very famous in Australia for its wineries. The weather in Margaret River was very chilly and rainy when we were there. And our hostel room was freezing too! One thing you might not know about Australia is that it is not sunny and hot all year round. Haha. So, our first day in Margaret River, we only explored the town for a short while, and then hurried back to the hostel because of the weather. As I said, Margaret River is home to many [View Full Entry]

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Oct. 7th: This day didn’t exactly start off on the right foot. As we were getting ready to leave Fremantle, Hill dropped her small bottle of foundation. Not a big deal… until it hit the ground spraying foundation everywhere! And guess what? She was wearing her brand new light pink hoodie (not to mention it somehow even made it up to her face and on her contacts, which she was wearing at the time). Unfortunately it became stained. We tried washing it right away, but it was all in vain. As her only sweatshirt, she was really bummed (and since it [View Full Entry]

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Oct. 5th: Kevin and I traveled by train (subway) from downtown Perth to Fremantle, which is a beautiful suburb of Perth located right on the ocean. We had heard such good things about Fremantle that we just had to check it out! After walking around the little town for a bit, we had a nice pizza dinner at a restaurant and then did some grocery shopping. After heading back to our hostel, we happily discovered that every evening, the hostel shows a movie on a big screen set up in the lounge area. That night we watched “Pearl Harbor”. The next [View Full Entry]

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By October 2nd, we finally reached Perth. 8 months down, and only 2 more to go! Hard to believe that 8 months had gone by so fast. Perth, like many big cities, had quite a few hostels to choose from. There were even a couple of YHAs in the area, so we just went with the most central since we were only in the city for a few days. It was renovated from an old St John’s Ambulance building, and had some cool designs. Very modern too. Saturday, we took a walk through the city to Kings Garden. A beautiful garden [View Full Entry]

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So we were picked up from Monkey Mia around 3:30am. Definitely one of our earliest bus rides. We transferred over to the proper Greyhound bus at a roadhouse, and arrived in Kalbarri around 10am (which involved another transfer too). Can you guess what the rest of that day involved? If you guessed sleeping, you’d be correct! Lol We checked out the town before dinner, and picked up some groceries at the IGA. I don’t think I mentioned this before, but it seems IGA is pretty common here (mostly in smaller towns). I wonder if it’s a worldwide organization. Tuesday was g [View Full Entry]

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