The end of the road - boo hoo!

---

We're all up and out for 8am and our first stop on the way home is to another country inside Australia to see Prince Leonard at the Hutt River Province.
The story is that when England joined the European Community, Australia lost it's biggest wheat contract almost overnight. For this reason they restricted how much wheat each person could produce and sell, although this was against the law.
Mr Leonard owned over 213 acres of wheat land, but was told he was only allowed to farm about 15 - which would not even fed 1 person of his family never mind 4 all 4 of them!
As he was a very very clever man, he wrote to the authorities stating that it was a violation against the human rights act or something in the country and he wanted them to rectify it immediatley, and cleverly signed it from the 'Hutt River Province'. When the authorities wrote back, they also adressed it to the 'Hutt River Province' saying 'Too Bad, so sad'. What Mr Leonard then did was send a letter declaring war on the country of australia, then 24 hours later sent another letter surrending and stating there were no casualties. Through this act he somehow (very cleverly) managed to separate his estate from the country to become his own country. To do this he had to take a title (to which he took the title of a Prince) and had to create his own post office, currency, stamps, government office - even his own border! This was even signed off by the Queen of England!
We had to get our passports stamped to say we had entered and left the 'country' and the Prince himself showed us around and let us sit in the Prince and Princesses throne's in his chapel!
So cool but unreal at the same time!
After this it was a short drive to the Greenough Wildlife park where we got to hand feed Kangeroo's, Emu's (they hurt when they get the food) deers and Goats! There was also a mini snale show where we all held python's of different ages - I want a baby python!
We went for our final lunch together (how sad) and then it was the final 4 hour leg home. England won the Trival Persuit championship (yeah!) and it was really sad when we got back as we'd all made such good friends on the journey.
The good news is that Suzi, Kim, Dan and ourselves are all planningon being in Sydney at New Year so we can all meet up again!
Steve suggested meeting for an after tour drink so the girls, danial and the Swiss couple all arranged to meet at the Brass Monkey that night. We managed to get ourselves into the Britannia Hostel on William street which conviently was 2 doors up from the pub! And it has a cheap internet place (which is where I'm doing all this typing up from!)
Di spotted a Nando's here, which for those of you that don't know (like I didn't) its like a fried chicken place but the difference is you can choose the hotness of the chilli sauce you want it coated in. I went for hot and it was yummy!
It was good to meet up again, we ended up quite merry in an Irish Pub called Rosie O'Grady's which had a live act on aswell!
Steve got quite drunk (who can blame him after driving for 7 days and working non stop!) and was soo funny!
We've all swapped emails but it's been an amazing adventure - soo glad we did it.
Just hope our tour down the south on Saturday is just as good!
Have a couple of days in Perth now so just gonna chill and hopefully see some of the sites - and finally get sme clothes washing done so we can have clean clothes - woo hoo!

---