Going down....

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Yep we’re in Ozztraylea - after a short 32 hour transfer from downtown Beijing we had crossed the Tropic of Cancer, Capricorn and the Equator and made it to Perth. We flew via Sydney, getting a great view of the city when we took off on the last leg, a mere 5 hour/2250 mile hop to the closest bit of Western Australia....I’d forgotten how big this place was. It feels great to be in an English speaking country for the first time in 5 months and I think it’s even more noticeable because of the generally laidback nature of Australians. Even customs immigration were friendly and not only smiled, but were actually joking about the food on the plane!! One exception was the rather miserable quarantine man that insisted on unpacking our rucksacks, disinfecting our walking boots and handing them back soaking wet. OK fair enough he had a job to do, but did he need to make a point of telling me that I should have known better because I came here 10 years ago??! I can’t remember having a problem in Oz before, but I do recall arriving with my bike in New Zealand and having half my belongings (tent, shoes, boots....) washed for me at the airport, before cycling into Auckland in the pouring rain with freezing wet feet - what a welcome to the country! Lexa mentioned that she had heard the Auckland story a ‘few’ times before but hadn’t really believed it!

The sun has just come up out the window of our lovely YMCA hostel (particularly nice after the Beijing basement experience) and I just tried to wake Lexa up by playing ‘Sun Arise’ by Rolf Harris which I just happen to have on my iPod....she didn’t get the joke, no pleasing some people, although it might be something to do with the deafening fire alarm that went off twice in the night and forced the occupants of all 10 floors of this tower block hostel into the carpark in their jim-jams. Not a good nights sleep...

Feeling rather groggy from our epic flights and awful night, we walked to the ‘Traveller’s Autobarn’ to pick up the campervan that we had rented for 6 weeks. Following much paperwork, some brief instructions and after we had fixed a couple of things on the van, we headed out on our mission to tour Western Australia in a slightly tired Toyota Hiace with only 385,000km on the clock...

Our first stop was Scarborough beach for the National Surf Life saving championship. Essentially a collection of the fittest Ozzies in the country running and paddling in and out of the sea. It was a huge event and gave Lexa a rather warped view of the average Australian physique and a minor complex about not being an Olympian.

On the advice of various locals we decided to head south first, with warnings like “there’s nothing much north of here until you get to Exmouth” - and that was about 2000km’s away.... I became the ‘chaffeur’ simply because we had only put one of us on the insurance for economic reasons, (something that we would live to regret) and Lexa assumed the role of chef to revive the comatose driver after another 8 hours at the wheel!!

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