Blogs from Kununurra, Western Australia, Australia, Oceania

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 ... read more

This past week has seen us enter our 11th month of travelling, Paul’s and my 13th year of marriage, and Western Australia, marking the home stretch of our Aussie Odyssey. Only six weeks to go! We are now in Kununurra, recovering after a very busy week in Kakadu National Park. Covering more than 19,000 square kilometres, Kakadu is Australia’s largest national park (second largest in the world), and it was one of the places both Paul and I were really looking forward to seeing. After the beauty of Litchfield, we had very high expectations of Kakadu, expectations that were somewhat dampened when we first drove in to the park. Coming in from the top end, one does not see the 2,000-million-year-old Arnhem Land escarpment, nor the wetlands or forests that Kakadu is famed for. Instead, the ... read more

23/9/11 Friends, Romans, Countrymen… lend me your ears… After leaving Broome, we headed to our next destination, Derby. The reason for a visit there was to see an old friend, Joy. When I say, ''old", she is in fact one month to the day younger than me! But "old" in that she was my best friend in grades 5 and 6 and we reconnected through Facebook a couple of years ago. What we discovered then was that we both worked in the same hospital and didn't know it! Anyway, Joy has just recently started with the Royal Flying Doctor Service and we were pretty excited to visit her at work and have the chance to see one of the planes! We then enjoyed drinks on the semi-circular Derby jetty while watching the plump orange sun slump ... read more

Easy day around Kununarra with visit to closed Ivanhoe crossing(IC) and Mirima NP(M) CADES DIARY Kununarra and Mirima National Park, Look Out and Ord Dam... read more

Yesterday when we crossed the border, we moved our clocks back one and a half hours, giving us a twenty-five and a half hour day. Totally confused by the time, we were up early today, even though we didn’t have to be. Frank said the sun was up at 04:30 am. I had myself and the van clean, breakfast over and the washing done and put away by 09:30. On my days off, I would be considering getting out of bed at that time. We went for a drive up to Wyndham, about one hundred kilometres away at the mouth of the Ord River. Wyndham is divided into two sections, the port town and the main town. The port town is deserted and desolate. We did have lunch in the hotel there though. We also went ... read more

Who wakes up in the morning and says to themselves “I know what I will do today. I will pack my cans of spray paint and drive a thousand kilometres to a famous landmark, then mark it with my name with spray paint, so that everybody will know that I was there for many years to come”? Not me, that’s for sure. But there must be a lot of people out there who do. A couple of days ago, we went out to The Devils Marbles and were disappointed to see they had been daubed with graffiti. Full points to the Rangers who had done an admirable job of trying to remove it, but it was still there. Today, we did some sight seeing in Gregory National Park, in The Northern Territory. Today we had our ... read more