End of the West Cory Maley Preamble: I couldn't help as I began to shift my thinking away from Denham north to the Ningaloo of Curtis Mayfield's "Move On Up." I was ready to move on up and so here is the end of one adventure and the beginning of another. Last Days in Denham After a good number of days, perhaps even spiraling into weeks, the people of my world were anything but constant. In a backpacker's life, [View Full Entry]

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Before I begin in earnest, I just want to say of Scotty's comment on my previous blog regarding the Chuck Norris Van: Hells Nah! Oh no you di'n't! You di'n't just say that! That being said, we can move on to stories that will hopefully prove entertaining for you at my expense. This blog begins on a dark a dusty road in a truck with Pommie Pete and another girl I did not know, but Pete did, presumably. Pete's a good guy. He works on the pearl farm, which I've not yet gone out to, but will shortly. We were driving [View Full Entry]

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It only took a day, really, to get here from Dongara. I got picked up late, after I had been misinformed of my pickup spot in Dongara, and fortunately was found by a very experienced driver just before he was ready to give up. We arrived in Kalbarri and had a great seafood meal, but I found myself betwixt two groups, and quite separated from both. Leave it to me to pick an anti-social seat. But it was amusing to find that the mostly Irish group decided to mummify the driver's apprentice. Good times. Arriving in Shark Bay on the tail [View Full Entry]

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I got up at the butt crack of dawn to catch my very late bus at 7:00 am. In real life, this is not a bad time. This is the time I normally left for work, for instance. But in the world of the backpacker, this is the equivalent of getting up at 3:00am to complete a term paper due that later morning. I was in a mood to meet people, and ended up chatting with most everybody on the bus. It was a good group, and I was a bit rueful of my decision to get off at Dongara (pr. [View Full Entry]

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As I finished writing the last few sentences of my previous blog entry, I felt that by stating that the rest of the day would likely be uneventful, I had guaranteed quite the opposite. I walked out of the internet cafe intent upon finding myself a coffee. Wandering into the main square, Cathedral Square, I walked into the Starbucks and got the odd feeling that I wasn't ready to sit down, despite wanting the coffee. Instead, I left empty-handed and spent the next half hour walking around the square, only to return to the same spot I had been earlier. As [View Full Entry]

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After leaving to Wellington, I found that I could not shake the smell I had captured in the hot pools of the upper North Island. After showering, scrubbing, and showering again. The promised perfecting of the rince-repeat strategy proved to be elusive. It's only 5 days on that I can say I mostly don't smell of hot-spring. This is good news for me. The bad news belonged to the poor fella who had to sit beside me on the long bus ride from Auckland to Wellington. Poor guy. For him, I was his old smelly German. I guess pay it forward [View Full Entry]

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I made fast friends with some people on the bus headed up to the Bay of Islands town of Paihia. Erica, an American cell phone store manager, and Brigitte, a doctor from Denmark, whose age remains a mystery, but it is apparently too old to be mentionable in public. It didn't matter though, we passed the time speaking of our mutual love of philosophy and Dostoevsky's The Idiot. It's one of his lesser known, but perhaps, if I may offer my humble opinion, his best book. Paihia is a little touristy, but charming and hard to leave in its [View Full Entry]

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I didn't find any silver or gold, but Franz Josef still proved to be a wicked stop on my itinerary. I decided that I needed a day to just chill out in the mountain air after being cooped up in a bus all day. All I needed to do was to find a place to stay. No problem, or so I thought. As the bus pulled up and I wandered up one of Franz Josef's two streets, hostel after hostel, backpacker after backpacker displayed the dreaded "No Vacancy" sign. Or in the case of one hostel, just a blazing red "NO". [View Full Entry]

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I arrived to the Sydney Airport with little more than everything I own with me. I have been successful at re-widdling it down, but my pack still weighs over 19 kilos, owing, probably to the numerous books I am carrying and the canned food. I managed to sneak under the weight limit, but just barely, and the woman at the check in counter sent me through with a wink. The plane was delayed, but it was okay, they had the news on TV, and I hadn't seen much of what was going on in the world lately, so I was eager [View Full Entry]

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As I alluded to in my previous entry, for those of you that received it, I had reached a fork in the road, and I took it. I was growing weary of the city. Melbourne for all it's wonderful nightlife was getting me down. I guess, in my heart of hearts I've grown into a country boy...or maybe a wilderness boy. Either way, the concrete jungle had left me out of sorts with myself and I needed to escape the hustle-bustle, and drink-til-you-drop scene. There's only so much damage one can do to their liver before it begins to revolt. I [View Full Entry]

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