Michele Clarke

CheleShocked

Michele Clarke

Hi! I'm a soon-to-be Massage Therapist, and occasional Arts Student from Perth, Australia. Sometimes I even work in a shoe shop, or with people with disabilities. Eventually I plan to do the only useful thing to my Bachelor of English & Creative Arts, and teach - all in good time.

I'm engaged to the most wonderful man in the world, Brennen White, who has never been out of the country!! :O!! So, Im going to drag him around Europe in 2012, after marrying him in Japan.

I've done a considerable amount of travelling from a young age, I've been to Singapore (3 times! age 7, 14 & 19), The USA & Canada (age 12), United Arab Emirates (18), Scotland(18), England (18), and, earlier this year, age 20, Scandinavia (www.travelblog.org/bloggers/michalyce).

Travel blogs are a wonderful way to keep in touch with friends and family, and to share just how amazing this world is!

I hope you enjoy my ramblings and my photography.

-Michele

"Save a horse; ride a cowboy"

Oceania » Australia » Northern Territory » Darwin September 24th 2010

CheleShocked

First and foremost - sorry about the epic delay in blog writing. In our defence, however, the past few days have been quite packed! As planned, we headed to Nourlangie, where, despite the intense heat and avid insect life, we thoroughly enjoyed viewing ancient works of art painted onto the rockface. We also drove to Anbangbang Billabong, but, given the time (around 6pm) Michele forbid Brennen to get any closer to the billabong than 30 metres (for fear of crocs) so we viewed that somewhat from afar. After these explorations, we made our way back to the Crocodile Inn, where we dined in the lovely restaurant and admired (but, due to financial restrictions, decided against investigating) the wide range of tropical cocktails. After a peaceful night's sleep and a filling breakfast, we were off again. We ... read more

Feelin' Hot Hot Hot!

Oceania » Australia » Northern Territory » Kakadu National Park » Jabiru September 22nd 2010

Us at Mamukala

CheleShocked

Michele is back in charge of writing - yay - now that she has come out of her cave of exhaustion/illness and is feeling like a human being again. Yesterday, we flew from Cairns to Darwin. The flight was packed, uncomfortable and uneventful. The only ususual thing was that the flight was continuing on to Singapore, meaning we had to follow international travel stadards. This proved unfortunate, as, due to restrictions on liquids in hand luggage, and confusion as to whether sunscreen lotion counted as liquid, we had to leave our favourite sunscreen behind in Cairns. We left it on a table, in the hope that some poverty-stricken, at-risk-of-sunburn person rummaging through the Cairns International Airport would find it... Arriving in Darwin, Michele's Uncle Bob picked us up in his shiny new $20 ute (won in ... read more

A Day On The Green (Island)

Oceania » Australia » Queensland » Green Island September 20th 2010

Just Off The Boat

CheleShocked

Guess who's back, back again. Brenny's back, tell a friend. I'm writing this blog for a second time, as my computer thought it would fun to, instead of saving the text like I asked it to, just bugger up and leave me back at square 1. So I apologise if it's a bit shorter than usual. Up early again today, somewhat begrudgingly in Michele's case, as she'd had very little sleep, and we were off to the docks. Despite the dodgy-looking overcast skies, we caught the 8:30am boat to Green Island, which is the only coral cay in the Great Barrier Reef to develop a rainforest. Luckily the sun decided to join us as the day went on. After arriving at about 9:30am, we had a very brief look around before our Glass Bottom Boat voyage ... read more

Bill and Bren; The Bearded Boat Men

Oceania » Australia » Queensland » Tully September 19th 2010

Bren On The Way

CheleShocked

I'm back! I survived! And it's my job to write the blog again, as my lovely darling Michele was unable to attend the Tully River White Water Rafting with us. Up at 5:30 this morning. Bugger that for a joke. Although unlike most people on the coach, I didn't nap on the way to Tully. Speaking of the trip to Tully, never in my life have I seen so many bananas. And Speaking of Tully itself, it is apparently known for being the wettest place in Australia (which they decided to honour with a giant gumboot in town). Oh yeah, and also apparently the best rafting river in Australia and NZ. We organised our rafting trip through Raging Thunder, whose staff were all very friendly and amusing. After all the introductory jibber-jabber, we headed to the ... read more

I Look Like I'm Unaware Of What's About To Happen

"Oh! It's a movie!": Scenic Railway and Butterflies

Oceania » Australia » Queensland » Kuranda September 18th 2010

Us at Barron Gorge

CheleShocked

Warning: This blog is being written by Brennen....hallucinations and nonsense may follow. After crashing in a heap of exhaustion last night, we made a comparatively late start today, dragging our mostly revitalised and excited butts out of bed to go to Freshwater Train Station for the Karunda Scenic Railway. We wandered around the museums and learned about the incredible feat of building the railway, and about the apparently colourful and aggressive Irish redheaded foreman who had a nearby suburb named after him. After purchasing the most expensive (but not overpriced) train ticket of my life, we had only a short wait until our journey began. The train ride started slowly, but before long we were zig-zagging up the mountain and through the many tunnels which were built mostly by hand (with tools obviously) with the occasional ... read more

"Nice Cairns!" or "Our Highland Goat in the Daintree Rainforest"

Oceania » Australia » Queensland » Cairns September 17th 2010

5am @ The Lakes

CheleShocked

Warning: This blog is being written on a serious sleep debt, hallucinations and nonsense may follow. Wow, what a day! We left Perth at 10pm, dancing around with excitement and anticipation. This only slightly dissipated throughout the uneventful flight to Cairns (the exception being that the woman in front of us was accompanied by her gorgeous seeing-eye dog, who attempted to sneakily suck up a piece of chocolate that had been left on the ground, causing a stir with the flight attendants). Upon our arrival at 4:15am (2:15am, Perth time) we caught our second wind - it didn't matter that we hadn't slept at all, we were in Cairns, we were adventurers, we didnt even NEED sleep! That trail of thought lasted until about 8am... Our room not available, we had spent hours wandering The Lakes ... read more

Avacados for Andrew, Blue-tongued lizard for Belinda...

Oceania November 28th 2009

CheleShocked

Today we drove from Melbourne to Mt Gambier. Our fantastic night out last night (plus my insistence on blogging, before packing, before getting to bed in the wee hours of the morning) resulted in a somewhat late start, however, so we ended up driving from about midday to 9:15. Except then we found out, it was actually 8:45, because we had travelled back in time/crossed the state line, depending on how you want to phrase it. It was a long and beautiful drive - roads slithered around mountains and along the cliffs for most of the trip - but frustrating, in that it seems more Victorian Drivers are unfriendly, enjoy changing lane suddenly and without warning, and like to sit 30-40kms under the speed limit, and ignore the multiple "slow-driver bays" scattered throughout the roadside. All ... read more

"I would advise you to visit the temple of temptations, where anything is possible, and I am high priest..." (AKA: An Ode To Melbourne)

Oceania November 27th 2009

National Gallery of Victoria

CheleShocked

Sometimes people just make your day! This seems to happen more often to us in Melbourne than it ever did in Perth... For example, the taxi driver who picked us up from the airport, who chatted away, advised us, demonstrated how to perform a hook term and was generally outstandingly friendly. Or the girl we met at one of our new favourite shops, Dangerfield, who agreed to help us make an ad campaign for Perth based around the theme of "drugs and sharks!"... or Sole, at the National Gallery of Victoria Art Gallery, who introduced himself as "Sole, your African waiter," called Brennen "your Lordship," and greeted me with "argh! I love your hat - it's amaz - argh! No! No! I love your shirt! It says "I love Tofu!" and there is the beautiful tofu ... read more

Lest We Forget - Canberra

Oceania November 25th 2009

Train to Canberra

CheleShocked

So we thought we could totally do our yawn of a capital city in less then the 27 hours we had; oh, how wrong we were! After arriving on the train, our inner-geeks were released by this AMAZING shop called "Mind Games" where there was a mind-blowing assortment of crazy European board games, epicly-sized chess sets and the craziest sets of cards we had ever seen! Once we'd spend a very restrained hour in this shop (we bought substantially less than half of what we fell in love with), we decided we'd probably be able so see the War Memorial, all the major museums/galleries, both parliament houses and some botanical gardens that day.... Three and a half hours later, we were still at the National War Memorial. It was mesmerising, and completely beautiful in a ... read more

"Your Taxi is Always Ready!"

Oceania November 23rd 2009

View from our Hotel Room

CheleShocked

When we called down to the front counter this morning, notifying them, as per the instructions in the "guest hand book" that we needed to give an advance of at least 15 minutes to get a taxi, the strangely accented man on the phone enthusiastically replied, "Your taxi is ALWAYS ready!" Ah, Sydney! How we have enjoyed your taxis, your trains and your trams. Your non-stop attitude, your enthusiastic engineers and your gruff but sweet tattooists. Let's start from the top.... We arrived in Sydney in the wee hours of Saturday morning, running on not-much-sleep and plenty-of-alcohol. We were exhausted. It didn't stop myself and my beautiful sister Tracey instantly hitting harbourside to purchase gorgeous clothes we neither need nor could really afford. After an afternoon siesta, we went to a steak house for dinner (where ... read more

Joined	November 19th 2009	Trips	2
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