Perth, and Walletths Empthied

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We arrived in Australia tired and sullen. Asia was gone and a lifestyle abandoned. It was back to western values, western attitudes and western costs - the latter being the most daunting. After 6 months of cheap food and accommodation we were apprehensive of the forthcoming cost cascade.

Our first shock was the accommodation fee, our second the price of food. On that first day we spent hours looking around for saver brands and out of date stock - with little success. Over time we've managed to find a balance between eating 49 cents noodles all the time and good healthy food - noodles with cabbage and tuna seems to be that balance.

Our first, and over-whelming task while in Perth was to buy transport. This was a feat which saw our sights slowly and surely drop - advert by advert. We originally had our hearts set on a beautiful, pristine VW camper - perhaps with a quirky picture painted on it. This slowly waned, dropping to high mileage VW, rusty high mileage VW, rusty high mileage any-old-van, to car. Hopefully a car with at least 3 good wheels and rust which hadn't crumbled yet. Then we found Marvin!

Obviously Marvin is the name we christened him with, but if you compare the picture with the original depressed android of 'Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy' fame, we think you'd agree.

Marvin is a 22 year old Mitsubishi people carrier with 300,000 Km's on the clock. His rust has been gaffa taped up and painted over, and the interior’s reasonably clean. It was a tough decision as we also had to convert from the 8 seater carrier to a form of bedded interior, but at $1,500 - within our planned budget, we bought him. After a service, a few repairs and an internal conversion (the seats flattened, MDF placed and a mattress laid out) we are now on the road in our 'mobile home'. Although to complete the package we had to spend 3 days trawling around every charity shop we could find (the Salvation Army 'family store' is the best) to equip our day-to-day cooking, cleaning and sleeping needs.

We decided a ‘trial’ run was in order to weed out any problems before driving thousands of Km’s across Australia through arid desert with no hope of roadside assistance. We coupled this trip with one of our favourite pastimes - wine!

We finally set off for Margaret river and its many ‘wineries’ (don’t know why they can’t call them vineyards) with the hope of trying the ‘odd’ glass and maybe seeing a dolphin or two. So, to the vines, err, beach….

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Photos

Marvin
Isn't he beautiful

It's a long, long road!
That leads us to who knows where - Margaret River, hopefully

Comments

[anonymous]

When are you going to write again?
Haven't heard anything from you for a long time. Hope everything is going well for you.