Troppo

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We left you wwoofing on a pearl farm north of Broome on the sparsley habited Dampier penninsular. We were hoping that by wwoofing with a pearl farmer we would be able to get a foot in the door work-wise, but the problem is that only a few years ago there were 16 pearl farms the global financial melt-down has reduced that number to 2 so the jobs are fewer and those who have them are less inclined to come and go.

We spent a reasonably uneventful few weeks with James, Sarah and their two small boys. Mainly gardening - pulling out weeds, mulching and sorting out their vege patches. We were able to get more-or-less everything booked for Shanghai to Hereford so we're all set to go and we're both very excited about that.

We didn't see a lot of the pearling activity because they are not harvested until June, so for the time being there's just hundreds of shells sat in boxes underwater; but we were taken on a powerboat tour of the mangroves which was fantastic; everyone was very kind and we enjoyed our evenings having dinner in the mess chatting with the mechanics and getting to know the tour operators.

We drove another 1000km east to the town of Kununurra, towards the northern territory border and saw almost exactly nothing on route, partially because there is very little to see but also because the few tit-bits of interest were still closed by the cyclone that had passed through a few weeks previously.



We had no intention of staying in Kununurra for any length of time but Alice's female intuition pricked its ears, we popped into a job embassy and the next day I had a job as a cook in a cafe. After a brief stop-off weeding at a sandle-wood plantation Alice joined me at the cafe and we're both feeling very chuffed working for a very nice woman for a couple weeks.



We have flights booked to take us to Melbourne from Darwin on April 30^th, then a week or two packing bags and sorting visas before we fly to Shanghai on May 17^th, very exciting.



There will be plenty of updates when we're on route home, but probably not much more until we leave Oz in 5 weeks then we'll be home on July 4^th

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