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Published: August 14th 2007
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Leaving Coober Pedy
We were so releived when we finally left his hell hole After the sailing trip we headed for Cairns making one overnight stop just North of Townsville.
When we arrived in Cairns the following day we met up with Mark, Sarah and Dave who we traveled with in New Zealand. One of the nights out was on this party bus thing which takes you out around a load of bars and basically you get wasted. Was really good though because you meet loads of new people whilst getting smashed at the same time :o)
I decided to do a dive on the barrier reef so I went on this trip with a load of people for the day. We sailed out to Saxon reef where I done a scuba dive which was the first since Fiji. The guy who we were diving with fed the fish so you could actually stroke them when they came over! Saw turtles, a lion fish and also some stingrays. The dive was really good but for the remainder of the day I just went snorkeling as most of the reef is only a couple of meters below you. On the trip I bumped into a girl I traveled with on the Kiwi bus in New Zealand.
She had just met up with another girl who went to school with a girl I met in New Zealand….small world!?
Although we didn’t do too much in Cairns it was nice just chilling and working on the tan ;o)
We left Cairns after my diving trip and started the long drive to Darwin in the Northern Territory which is just short of 3000km! Apart from driving, eating and sleeping we’ve not done a great deal. The scenery has been amazing though and it’s is just like I pictured Australia to look like. On the way we decided to take an ‘un-sealed’ road from Normanton to Burketown which is around 500km. We drove for 3 hours until we both agreed it was too rough and would probably kill the car. We basically spent 6 hours of driving to end up where we started…not happy!!
Once we got back on a proper road we headed through loads of little places. Some only consisted of a petrol stations so I wont list them all!
It took us three days before we arrived in Darwin and we decided that after going without showers for that amount of time we would treat ourselves
to a hostel and a shower :o) The next day we went on an all day fishing trip which left Darwin at six in the morning. We had a great time on the boat although the fishing wasn’t too great. One of the girls caught this massive fish but apart from that they were all pretty small…..Justin didn’t catch anything…Haha!
After Darwin we headed South towards Alice Springs. We stopped at the Devils Marbles which is a group of random rocks just off the highway and also Wycliff Wells which allegedly has loads of UFO sightings? We went inside the petrol station/museum thing and it was so weird, including the people in there. They had loads of newspaper articles about sightings/abductions in the area and also this shine for King Kong which consisted of a stuffed gorilla and some blow up aliens?!?
Just before we arrived in Alice I got a text off this girl I met in Sydney asking where we were. It turns out she was in Alice Springs working in a hostel so we ended up eating/drinking at the hostel which was a laugh.
The following day we drove to Ayres Rock which was a four
ultimate party bus
I think Justins having a heart attack in this pic! hour drive from Alice Springs. It was really amazing to see the rock during sunset with a beer :o) Unfortunatly we couldn’t climb it because of the weather. Instead we drove down the road to do the ‘Valley of winds’ walk around the Olgas, which is another group of rocks. We then drove to Kings Canyon where we done another walk.
The next day we planned on getting to Adelaide but around 500km into the journey we had some mechanical problems :o( It was pretty late so we stayed in a rest stop at the side of the road and flagged a car down in the morning so they could call a mechanic in the next town. Unlucky for us the town happened to be a small mining community in the middle of nowhere. Its called Coober Pedy and is in the middle of the desert. Also unlucky for me was the fact I then had to spend my birthday in this town, and believe me once you’ve seen the highlights i.e. pub and opal mining museums, there really isn’t anything else to do! We thought it would only be an overnight stop whilst the water pump got shipped here.
It turned out it wasn’t the waterpump which needed replacing. The part we actually needed was in Adelaide and with it being the weekend meant we had to wait another two days!!!!!
After finally leaving Coober Pedy we continued South to Adelaide to stay with my god parents in Willunga. Not really a lot to say about Adelaide! Was just another city….
After staying here the night we continued to Melbourne which was the last stop! Decided to stay in a hostel on Kings street. Manged to sell the van to the first couple that looked at it which was a result. Decided to have a few drinks when we got the cash for that and ended up at the casino. Tried playing Craps with Justin and this girl we met staying at the hostel. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing and managed to loose $50. Was a quality night though!
Sorry about the lack of detail, but to be honest all I’ve been doing in the cities is eating/drinking, as theres not really a lot here to do like sight seeing etc…
Next stop Singapore!!
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Dazza
non-member comment
Gym membership
Glad to see you kept you top ON for these photo's meatball!! Get yourself down to Fitness first