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Published: September 25th 2009
Aboriginal dancer
part of the Darwin festivalG'day mate! (sorry but it had to be done!!)
So we are a little behind on our latest blog entry and have lots to tell you all to get you all up to speed!! As you all already know we are now in Australia where we are traveling for 8 and a half weeks, so far time has gone very quickly and we have seen and done so much!!
The Oz adventure started in Perth airport when we were chosen as the special two to be interrogated by customs! First came all the general questions "what are you doing in the country?" "how did you finance your trip?" "how much money have you got?" "what jobs did you have in the UK?" etc etc.....after a 10 minute discussion we were free to get our bags only to be then pulled out of yet another queue, this time they moved onto full searches....starting with my bag - everything was taken out and put on display for the Airport to see...then they decided that i looked like an international drug smuggler and started swabbing all of my possessions! Believe it or not, it was at this point they got a positive result
Crikey its a big un!
Didnt realise these crocs could jump! from the inside of my wallet (hardly surprising with most bank notes having traces of drugs on them!)....this fueled their fire and they were convinced they had hit the jack pot! We tried explaining that they were wasting their time and neither of us had anything to do with drugs and that no drugs had been in my wallet, i repeated my job back at home..still the women continued not really listening to a word we said, After Ami's bag was searched and still nothing she decided it was crunch time and stated we were to be strip searched. So there we stood awaiting our fate and off she went to get the go ahead from her boss....the fact of the matter is she didn't ask anyone at all, she stood at a distance watching our reaction the whole time...with this she soon realised she had just wasted about an hour and a half of her time and we were finally let go! Ami was so relieved, as you may remember she was not feeling too rosy at this point....so a strip search could have been embarrassing for all involved...not to mention messy!!! But the customs officer didn't want to
Down under!
god did i feel like a prat!! get away completely empty handed so decided to confiscate my colouring pencils.....as they had bark on them!!! All in all a great introduction into Australia...but as we keep saying "All part of the experience!"
Perth itself (Western Australia) was very cold and was always raining...which was very odd to us as even when it rained in Asia it was still hot...on the plus side our backpacks were very light, as we were wearing everything we owned!!! I'm still rocking the socks and sandals yet Ami has caved and bought a pair of cheap pumps!
We stayed in a 22 bed dorm room in a hostel and paid 19 dollars each (10 pounds) for the privilege! so yes we are back to western prices and don't we know it. The Hostel was surprisingly unfriendly, with everyone just doing their own thing and not really speaking to one another. However the one advantage which we lapped up was getting to go to the supermarket and buy food we know and love!! HELLO CHEESE! The hostel's provide kitchen facilities so we could pack away our camping stove for the time being.
We spent a few nights here in Perth but there really
was not all that much to do, especially with the weather, we did get to go to the nearby port town of freemantle which was really nice and had a hippy feel to it.
It was went we tried to leave Perth we discovered just how hard (and expensive) it is to travel in Australia, everywhere is so far away! weighing up our options we couldn't believe that flying is actually the cheapest and the local greyhound bus is by far the most expensive!! For this reason and the time factor we decided to fly to our next destination - Darwin (Northern territory).
We arrived in Darwin to a dramatic weather change! back to good old sunshine!!! and to the start of the Darwin Festival which runs for 17 days each year, and has lots of events running throughout the day and evening - some of which are free! So great timing for us.
Another great thing about Darwin is each day staff at a nearby hotel give out meal tickets to travellers which entities them to a free meal - yes that's right - completely free, you don't even have to buy a drink! so we dined out
Not scared at all!
after all its not that big! most evenings and got very used to queuing up for our free grub!!! Although i've never actually ate at a soup kitchen i'm pretty sure this is how it feels!...oh and this brings me on to our only other meal of the day which was free breakfast from our hostel, however hostels are much more expensive in the North and we were now paying 30 dollars a night each...but boy was it a good breakfast!!! we sure made the most of it...eating till the point of discomfort...and taking what ever we could for lunch!
This hostel was much more friendly and we made some great friends here - mentioning just one 'Andy the hitch hiker' A German guy who was a complete hippy....No shoe or top type (no idea how he did it the floor was so hot!!)
We had a lot of time to kill in Darwin and ended up staying alot longer than we really wanted to as our cash card had broken back in Perth so we were waiting for a new one to be sent out to us...only problem was it took a week longer than expected to arrive.
During our stay we went on a
Giant termite mound
Apparently this is only one quarter out of the ground...so there is another three quarter's underneath the ground! two day tour to Kakadu national park where we slept out underneath the stars by night and saw cool things like waterfalls, giant termite mounds, plunge pools and rock art by day. We tried our first taste of Kangaroo in the form of a barbecue stir fry (bit of a shame as i had not even seen one alive yet!!! but hey it tasted good!) and we also learnt a new game called 'cruncher' round the camp fire....this game is legendary, you basically start off with an empty cereal box, and each person takes it in turns to bend down picking up the box with their mouth....only rules are that you cant touch the floor with any part of your body except your feet and that you must AT ALL TIMES! have your cruncher up (cruncher = one arm straight towards sky, holding an imaginary cigarette). Each time the box is picked up correctly, a piece is torn from it, thus making the box smaller and smaller! A lot of fun was had playing this game - head plants galore! Try it sometime...even more fun when drunk!!!
Next stop on the Oz tour was Alice springs which we yet
Rock art
at Kakadu national park again flew to save abit of time. Alice is a small town which is still the Northern territory but is pretty much in the middle of Australia, It has alot of Aboriginal arts and here i got to have a Didgeridoo lesson which was cool.
We took a three day tour to Ayres rock from Alice where we got to see the rock itself at sunrise and sunset, which was absolutely beautiful! we also did a rim walk of kings canyon - all pretty amazing stuff!
At night we slept in swags around the camp fire (swags = oversized thick material sleeping bag with built in mattress) - that is after we got all 25 people from our group playing cruncher - so many nationalities, everyone was very competitive and although we did Britain proud (we were the only 2 brits in the group) unfortunately we wont be bringing the gold home!
We then flew to Adelaide (southern territory) where we had a whole new experience to come!!! Back in Darwin we had been told about 'couch surfing' which is an Internet site where you create a profile, you then look at others profiles who live in the area
Fish feeding
they were massive!! you want to stay and basically ask if you can stay with them. Everyone on the site is a traveler at heart and its a complete trust thing...they let you into their homes for free because they want to help other travellers out. We liked the idea as you get to stay with locals who know the area inside out so you get the most out of your stay in any given place. So Adelaide was the first place we gave it a go and ended up staying in a student house along with 3 boys and one of their girlfriends, all were studying and super laid back. Very strange feeling when you knock on the door for the first time as you never know what your going to get as up until this point all communication has been done over the net...but we had an excellent first experience...and know we will never return to a hostel!!
Whilst with our hosts we went to the beach but the weather was not really sunbathing kind as we had left the heat again and was back in the Australian winter, although not as cold as Perth. We also got taken to the
The van!
Good british band too! market, where the girlfriend (Izzy) worked in a cafe, the markets was an all food market but apparently the best in Australia - it was amazing with so much choice of fresh produce. The boys took us to a free wildlife park where we got to hug a kangaroo amongst other things! One of the boys even got spat at by a alpacas...so he spat back!! that will teach him!
As a sign of our appreciation we cooked a English Sunday roast dinner for them all, which went down a treat! and it was great for us to taste it again too!
We organised to hire a camper van for a week so we could drive from Adelaide down the Great ocean road to Melbourne. We collected our wicked camper and hit the road - all a little strange at first seeing as i haven't driven for 9 months!! The camper was compact but had everything we needed and we loved having our own wheels!
First stop was just over an hour from Adelaide to the Barrosa wine valley, which is in the opposite direction to the Great ocean road but we really wanted to see it as that's
The 12 Apostiles
Shame about the weather but still amazing! where alot of the Australian wine is produced. Once there we were surrounded by wineries and vineyards so it would have been rude to not have sampled some of what was on offer!!! With this we parked up the van in a carpark for the night and set off to the first winery, here we got to taste most of the wines on the menu - and not to waste a drop there was no spitting from us!! We picked our favorite and bought a bottle of rose to have with our first meal on the road...already feeling slightly tipsy we decided to make a day of it and preceded to visit all the surrounding wineries and do much the same - except actually buy anything!!! By the time we got back to the van we were both half cut, and felt like drunk people scoffing a kebab whilst tucking into our pasta! only managed half the bottle of wine before we finally gave in and went to bed....it happened to be around PM! So we woke up half way through the night rather cold to say the least and pretty awake!!! Good first night though!
The next day was
Barosa wine valley
our one and only bottle!!! that we paid for that is!!! wasted slightly as we realised that our IPod had been wiped so we had to return to Adelaide and visit our couch surfing hosts again to get some tunes back on it - bit of a long process but we got there in the end and got back on the road towards the Great Ocean road this time.
The drive was amazing and we passed through some stunning scenery...although the weather could have been better as we had a day of rain and fog. We stopped off in some very cute towns, ate alot of pies and smiled alot. One good story from our road trip is that on the day we saw the 12 Apostles we stopped off at the next town to park up and sleep for the night, not realising that the town only consisted of 12 people and 1 shop! It was dark and we thought it best to ask for advise in the shop for somewhere to park our van for free as there was no obvious places. whilst enquiring a man overheard and said we could park in his garden for the night as he only lived behind the shop, once parked up he
felt sorry for us and offered us in as he had a spare room - we jumped at the chance of course, and later found out he was British and was a helicopter pilot at the 12 Apostles, so as you can imagine the house was very nice in comparison to what we have been used to! He was a really nice man and we had a great night chatting and drinking...probably having a little bit too much too drink!! In the morning he went to work and we had the free run of the place - arghhhh.....power shower!!!!
We arrived safely in Melbourne at the weekend and are already on hosts number 2, so will tell you all about what went wrong with number 1 on the next blog!
So far we are loving our Oz experience as it is completely different to what we have seen before on our travels...and Australia itself is very diverse as no two places are the same. love to everyone, thanks so much for all the comments - keep them coming! xx
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Hannah Burrows
non-member comment
Aaaaahhh-so that's what u call it!
Love that cruncher game-never knew it had an official title though! Last time I played it resulted in most competitors sustaining an injury of sorts-who knew cereal boxes could be so lethal!? Oz looks great tho-loving the pics-any wombats yet??They're my favourite animals. Am well impressed with that couch surfing lark-what a good idea. Just realised i'm the first comment-yes! I'm not competitive-honest! Keep up the good blogging-i'll eagerly await my wombat pic! xxx