It was our last full day of the trip and it was scorching hot. We found a place off the road to set up the table to have lunch, but shade was scarce and I was in even more need of my refreshing midday coldie than usual. This was a bad habit that I had acquired on the trip - one can of beer with my lunch - and the only other person who occasionally joined me was Dee, the Cork woman - fair play to her! I can't recall much of what we did that day, maybe we went down [View Full Entry]

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And so it was back to Kununarra again for more supplies - with all these early starts and fresh air there was no shortage of healthy appetites. We had a bit of time to put in before heading out to our camping spot on an island in the middle of Lake Argyle and went over for a look at the Ord River. Joel once more displayed his excellent driving skills by manuovering us and the trailer in tow over the fast flowing river at the Ivanhoe Crossing. We found a shaded and secluded spot for lunch on the other side and [View Full Entry]

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Back on the bitumen again ... We arrived in Kununarra in the East Kimberley and headed straight to the nearest Woolies to restock on supplies. Well Joel insisted on doing this alone actually, while the rest of us headed to the pub -honest! Kununarra's main industry is fruit and vegetable cultivation made possible by abundant water supply provided by the Ord river dam. More recently sugarcane has made an impact and there was even talks of using it to produce a local biofuel - gudonya, as the natives say. Because of time constraints for the day Joel had arranged a surprise [View Full Entry]

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So off we set on our 4wd, 9 day tour through the Kimberley to reach Darwin. We had booked the trip in Perth a few days after arrival and Kimberley Adventure Tours had come recommended. Certainly the vehicle was fairly new, but this was to be expected as the gruelling terrain in the Kimberley makes wrecks of everything. Our driver, cook and guide were all bundled into one very capable and instantly likeable Queenslander named Joel. During the tourist season (April to November) he does the nine day tour to Darwin, has a few days to get everything cleaned up and [View Full Entry]

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Another long stretch to Port Hedland and we definitely had the feeling that we had already experienced the best the west coast had to offer. We weren't even near the coast anymore, in any case as we trundled along the Great Northern Highway saluting the infrequent vehicles that we met. This was the Pilbara - a whole vast, barren and unpopulated land rich in mineral wealth, but precious little else. It was easy to see why a charge of manslaughter could be levelled at anyone who passed a fellow traveller in distress. Without shade and water it wouldn't take long to [View Full Entry]

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Coral Bay during the school holidays, not the ideal time for a visit and we probably got one of the last camping spots in the first of the two campsites there. Just as well we had phoned ahead. Disappointing place really, not much to do except head to the beach or pay a fortune for a boat trip. A lot of the kids were snorkelling just off shore, but when we tryed it it wasn't up to much. In one section there were a lot sandy coloured stingrays in the shallows, but they were impossible to see until they moved and [View Full Entry]

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It was a long, long journey from Kalbarri to Monkey Mia (pronounced my-ah), but we put the foot down and rattled out the 500+ km without stopping very long anywhere. By the time we reached Denham, however, we deserved a break and we used the free hotplates along the boardwalk, to cook ourselves up some delicious toasted sandwiches. Since the peninsula of Shark Bay is a world heritage listed site, we had to ask at the county offices for permission to camp at the remote Eagle Bluff, 20 kilometres before Denham. This we planned for the following night, on our way [View Full Entry]

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Turning off the Brand highway at Northampton, the road sweeps over rolling farm hills of crops and livestock. Quite unlike the flat landscape until that point. After a few days on the Brand Highway (the coastal highway between Perth and Broome) we realised that the driving experience was not going to be a scenic one like the Great Ocean Road between Melbourne and Adelaide. In fact, most of the time the road is a half an hours drive from the actual coast, so the views normally entail long, straight stretches with bush or farmfields on each side. As well as the [View Full Entry]

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Campervan company - Trailmasters - was located shortly before 10 a.m., after another hearty breakfast at the Emperor's Crown. A few formalities, like leaving a $5000 bond, were quickly gotten over with and I chugged out in the Mercedes diesel, pop-top camper on a beautiful, sunny winter's day in Perth to collect my other half and head north for more sunshine and cheaper beer - it's astounding the pre-conceptions you have before each experience in life. If you could just do it all again .... Well, the first thing that I wouldn't have repeated was to stop in a shopping centre [View Full Entry]

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Perth is unbelievably quiet and quite dead, as a matter of fact, for a city of over 1 million inhabitants. We walked around the city centre on our first day in Australia, amazed at how deserted the streets were after the hustle and bustle of Asia. Granted it was a Sunday. The other thing that stood out was how damn expensive everything was - $2 (1.30 euro) for a can of coke, $7 (4.60) for a pint - come on, what's going on? Well, what's going on is thousands of miles away in a place called the Peoples Republic of [View Full Entry]

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