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Published: August 6th 2007
So this blog continues in Oz but this time on the west coast! We started our journey by flying back to Darwin. Having already visited there we decided to leave the very next morning and booked online a Greyhound ticket to take us on a 6000km epic journey down to Perth. As we packed our things and readied ourselves, we discovered to our horror that the bus had not been able to leave for the previous 3 days as the whole of northwest Australia (particularly the Kimberleys) was under water - yes summer is also the wet season in Oz! We crossed our fingers and hoped we would make it to our first destination Katherine and luckily we did! We only stopped overnight in Katherine but this was long enough to visit the beautiful gorge and spot another fresh water crocodile!
Before we left our hostel Sam thought he would help the owner who was trying to fit a new aircon unit... well a few minutes later and Sam was covered in blood on his head and chest, as the front of the unit (the end he was holding) weighed a lot more than the back and the whole lot
Torquoise Bay
Great snorkelling if you like sharks (sadly Claire doesn't!), stingrays and turtles.shot out and impailed Sam in the head and chest!! After some TLC and first aid from Claire, we were back on the bus getting strange looks as it looked like Sam had just been in a fight. We then made a long night journey to Broome, arriving there about 9am on Claire's birthday, so priorites first (no not sleep)... present opening! Then a dip in the pool, as it was so hot and humid. We spent the rest of the day relaxing and visited the beautiful Cable beach (22km long!) and then had a treat for Claire's birthday - yep you guessed it - pesto pasta! Claire was in heaven - its the simple pleasures in life hey! We stayed in Broome for another day, not too much to do there but catch up on some admin and relax - oh and chase away a giant brown snake (one of the top ten most poisonous snakes in the world) that was slithering past our door. Sam calmly made the snake move along by stamping his feet loudly and Claire decided that she would not be leaving the room again that night and quickly proceeded to block all the gaps
The following morning we travelled to Karratha - in the middle of nowhere but we stayed in a great little hostel run by a lovely random guy. As we were the only tourists at the hostel he promptly took us out for a day trip to see the sights and for a swim in the sea - all for free!
We then headed on another night journey (the driver swerving every now and again to avoid all the Kangaroos that had decided to jump out into the road in front of us) to the lovely coastal town of Exmouth arriving at 5.30am and not being able to check in to our hostel until 7.30am - so we spent a couple of hours sleeping on benches outside the tourist information centre - freezing! We stayed in a lovely caravan park and our room was a portable cabin, which we shared with another couple - double rooms at each end of the cabin and with our own kitchen and TV in the middle - pure luxury!
We ended up loving Exmouth and stayed for 5 days and were there to celebrate Australia Day with the locals at the only
Crazy Golf
The English show the Germans how to play golf!! party in town (quite amusing with country music all night long - ugh!). We rented a car for a day (our first time driving for 5 months!) and went to the beautiful Turquoise Bay for some drift snorkelling on the Ningaloo reef (strong current that allows you to float along a reef). When we first saw the bay we realised where it got it's name, the water was so blue and clear - stunning. We headed straight into the water and did our first of many "drifts" that day. Turquoise Bay was an amazing snorkelling spot, probably the best we have been to and we saw so many new kinds of fish, brightly coloured corals, a blue spotted stingray, turtles and much to Claire's surprise black and white tip reef sharks about 2 meters long (these are apparently harmless but Claire was not waiting to find out and promptly swam back to the shore as fast as her flippers could carry her!). After some persuading by Sam (promising she would not see anymore), Claire ventured back into the water and had some fab snorkelling but the sharks seemed to like us and we saw lots of them. After a while
Snorkelling with the Manta Ray
We swam with this huge graceful creature, which was over 5m wide. it was time to move on and see some more of the coast, so after heading out to a few viewpoints we made one last stop at a remote beach and to our surprise spotted loads of Kangaroos and Joeys on the beach! A beautiful sight. On our way home we were stopped by a group of mad Emus walking down the road in their own world - most peculiar sight! We finished the day with a great Aussie BBQ with our German friends Thomas and Iris!
Whilst in Exmouth we also managed to get in some diving at the Muiron Islands - 2 really good dives where we saw among other things, lots of beautiful red coloured Cod and more sharks. We also managed to get in some more snorkelling and Sam managed to scare the life out of Claire on the way back to the boat when he spotted a huge Eagle Ray below and started shouting excitedly at which point Claire thought he had seen a shark and proceeded to freak out! It must have been quite a sight for the people watching us from the boat - oops! Before leaving Exmouth we couldn't resist trying
out the main town attraction.... minigolf! Yep, we teamed up with Thomas and Iris and played England vs. Germany - it was a tough 18 holes with some real lack of skill if we are honest but the Brits just beat the Germans (after a few recounts!) and we all had a real giggle playing!
Next stop was Coral Bay (another night bus journey), a tiny place with one hostel, a few shops and a gorgeous beach. Finally Claire managed to get Sam to spend one whole day on the beach - after 5 months of trying! Claire did have to return the favour though by playing boules with some rocks... got a few strange looks from passers-by as rocks were hurled passed them! Before leaving the beach we took a walk along the shoreline and saw lots of stingrays and huge fish right in the shallows. Whilst in Coral Bay we booked ourselves onto a Manta Ray snorkelling trip. Coral Bay is one of only two places in the world where Manta Rays inhabit the shoreline all year round. So the next thing we knew we were flinging ourselves into the middle of the ocean swimming as fast
as we could after these beautiful black giants. On the first attempt Sam was the only one who could see and keep up with the ray (his triathlon training must have paid off!). On the second attempt we both swam with a huge Manta Ray (estimated 5 metres in length) - a truely awesome experience and something we will never forget! On the way back we managed to get in some more snorkelling and were lucky enough to visit a shark cleaning station (where small fish come and clean the sharks) and we saw 8 huge sharks (Claire was still getting over her fear at this point). Sam was loving it up at the front of the group with Claire hanging onto his hand for dear life!
From Coral Bay we headed further down the coast to Monkey Mia, a small holiday resort, hopeful that we might see the group of dolphins that come to the shore each day for a friendly feed by a conservation group. We were extremely lucky as not only did we get to see the dolphins up close and personal but we also got to see the 3 young dolphins calves that were born
at the start of the year. Amazing!
On leaving Monkey Mia we had a 3.30am bus pickup. Our bus picked us up and then told us that our southerly bus we were due to connect with was delayed by 3 hours! Unfazed by this he drove us to his house and opened up his living room to us and made us a cup of tea and brought us some cake! What a star (showing us real western Oz hospitality, can you imagine National Express doing this? We think not!). Eventually we made it to our destination - Kalbarri - a very quiet retirement town overlooking the sea. Like many other places on the west coast it was pretty dead except for the lively Pelicans at feeding time each morning! Our real adventure here was trekking (seeing the sights of Nature's Window, Z-bend Gorge and the 4-ways Gorge) and kayaking on the Murchison River. There was a choice of the distance to kayak: 2, 4, or 6km (mostly against the current), a prize for the correct guess as to which one Sam wanted to do. All in the name of fun hey!
Our last stop on the Greyhound before
arriving in Perth was at Geraldton - this eased us back into civilisation as there was a proper town complete with traffic lights - a strange sight to behold in western oz!
It was strange to arrive in Perth, a big city compared to everything we had experienced on the west coast, but we got straight into things by catching a train to Fremantle. Fremantle is a really chilled out place and we spent the day wandering around soaking up the atmosphere and looking at the local sights and then spent the night in prison... well sort of... we had a torchlit night tour around the old Fremantle prison, which was a maximum security prison up until 1991 when it was closed. Very spooky, Claire spent most of the time clamped onto Sam's arm as we had the wits scared out of us by various actors jumping out at us from darkened cells - great fun! We then rented a car (which we thought would be an old banger but turned out to be a fab 4x4!) and embarked on a mad 2-day road trip to Albany and back, to explore south of Perth. We drove through beautiful country
side and stopped at various places of interest on the way, oh yeah and Claire got breathalised on the way there! Random Police checks on the roads but Claire was so thrown by it all that when the Policeman asked her to roll down her window she could not work out which button in the car would open hers and managed to open them all except hers...thankfully the Policeman saw the funny side and didn't try and make her walk in a straight line to see if she was tipsy or something! Sam thought this was all hilarious of course!
In Albany we visited the Torndirrup National Park and went and had a look at the various rock formations by the sea (The Gap, the Natural Bridge and the Blowholes) before having to head back to Fremantle - even the locals thought we were mad to cram in so much stuff in so little time!. We had a great drive back though, stopping off at a honey farm and tree top walk (looking at the magnificent Kauri trees). Things took a minor turn for the worse that night when Claire started to come out in lumps and bumps all
over her body and to her horror her face - thinking at first that she was having an allergic reaction to something and then realising that she had actually been attacked by bed bugs in the Fremantle hostel (a friendly guy pointed out that the bed that she had slept in a few days previously was apparently infested with them!). Lets just say that Claire was not impressed and headed straight for the showers - ugh! Oh well, the bites went down after a week!
Once back in Perth we had a day to explore and headed out to the luscious and huge Kings Park, where there was a very poignant Bali memorial (designed so that the light from the sunrise on the day of the bombings shines directly onto a memorial plaque with the victims names on). That night we headed out to a Belgium bar meeting up with our German friends again and had a few interesting tasting beers (strawberry beer is just not right!).
From Perth we flew to Adelaide, a really lovely city, very underestimated - full of parks and trees and lovely "old" buildings. Whilst there we couldn't miss out on a wine
Fremantle Prison
We did a great night tour of the prison, which included actors jumping out at you! tour of the Barossa Valley, so we headed out on a tour and sampled some gorgeous wines from four different vineyards including the Jacob's Creek vineyard. By the time we had sampled ten wines at the first vineyard we were already feeling rather tipsy, so you can imagine the state we were in when we returned to our hostel later that afternoon! However, we did find a great hangover cure in the name of Haighs Chocolates - a local chocolate factory - yum!
From Adelaide we rented another car and began our five-day journey along the famous Great Ocean Road. Before reaching the road (more short than you think) we took a detour via Hahndorf - the oldest German settlement in Australia, very random place as it looks like a small German village but we ended up having a traditional cornish cream tea there which made it even more odd! Good fun though! We then headed out to the middle of nowhere, also known as Coorong National Park to have a look at the salt plains there and also to stay at an Aboriginal owned camp (Camp Coorong) where we were given a great little cabin all to ourselves.
The next morning we were shown around a fascinating museum all created by the local family there and we were even shown the traditional art of weaving. The people at Camp Coorong went out of their way to make us feel welcome, it was a really special place.
From Coorong we headed further south passing through the Murray River, Robe and Mt. Gambier (taking in the sight of the awesome Blue Crater Lake on top of the extinct volcano there), making our way to the Grampians and spent the night in Halls Gap. The following day we went out trekking around the Balconies, Boroka lookout, Reed Lookout, Zumstein and McKenzie Falls). Whilst having lunch at McKenzie Falls we were amazed to see 4 or 5 wild Kookaburras in the trees, we initially thought it was a great sight, that was until the surprise attack! Yes, we were ambushed by these so-called local lovelies! One bird flew straight into Claire's chest and then into Sam stealing his bread roll straight from his hand and flew into a nearby tree to feast on his prize. We decided to seek refuge in our car soon after this as the people on the
Mind the Gap
Can you spot Claire - makes you realise the scale! picnic table next to us told us that one bird had drawn blood on them moments previously! Thanks for the advanced warning mate! We wil not look at Kookaburras in the same way ever again!
After leaving the Grampians we finally started our journey on the Great Ocean Road. The road is actually a memorial to the Australians that died in WWI and was built over 13 years, 1919-1932, by around 3000 returned soldiers, providing work for these survivors of war. Driving along the road we took in the sights of the Bay of Islands, London Bridge (now called London's Arch as one of the arches collapsed in 1990 leaving two tourists stranded - they had to be air lifted by helicopter!), Loch Ard Gorge and of course the infamous 12 Apostles, although there are not 12 anymore (the most recent one to collapse was on 3rd July 2005), still an awesome sight to behold.
After seeing these sights we decided to try our hands at some wildlife spotting - wild Koalas to be exact. We had heard a rumour that they could be spotted in the trees along a road towards a place called Cape Otway (the
lighthouse featured in children's TV show Round the Twist) - well we didn't think that we would see any but before we knew it we had spotted our first one! Amazing! Koalas are so cute and always look half asleep and really are not bothered by people at all. So we were soon craining our necks out of the car to spot some more - what was going to be a quick 15 minute look turned out to be 2 hours of Koala spotting fun. The following day we did the same thing again at a place called Kennett River and spotted 2 Koalas about a metre away from us (ok maybe we did get a bit obsessed and got carried away with it all but we loved it!). For those that are interested we we spotted 63 wild Kolas.
We eventually made our way to Torquay (the end of the Great Ocean Road) and went for a swim on Bells Beach and then headed for a quick peak at the surfshop outlets on the edge of town (Torquay is the home of Quiksilver and Billabong etc - Claire's dream place), however we stayed a bit longer than expected
Wine Tasting at Jacob's Creek
The Sparkling Rose was especially good... (ok Sam could not drag Claire away from the sales!) and we ended up missing our 5 o'clock ferry, which we had planned on getting to help us on our way to Philip Island, our next destination. No worries though as it meant we could pick up some fish and chips to have on the 6 o'clock ferry - bonus!
Philip Island is famous for the so-called Penguin Parade of "Little Penguins" (yes that is their real name, aka Fairy Penguins and they are the smallest penguin species in the world) who march up from the sea at dusk and waddle up the beach to their nests everyday. Unfortunately we had "miscalculated" (we can hear you saying in disbelief that we are never late anywhere!) how long it would take us to drive to our hostel on Philip Island and we soon realised we would have to do some serious blagging if we were going to see the penguins and have somewhere to sleep that night! After a manic drive to the penguin parade we arrived in the pouring rain and watched the fascinating sight of these tiny penguins waddling up the beach! So cute! We managed to eventually
turn up at our hostel over an hour late but they felt sorry for us and upgraded us to a private cabin with ensuite bathroom and our own kitchen! We wished we were staying for more than one night! The following day we had a bit of time to explore the island and see its other animal attractions, the Fur Seals (Australia's largest colony lives on Philip Island at the Seal Rocks).
Afterwards we drove on to Melbourne to meet up with Claire's second cousins (Robert and Siobain) whom she had never met but had kindly offered us a place to stay. We had a really great time staying at Robert and Siobain's beautiful home and were made to feel very welcome. It was lovely to finally get to know them. Melbourne is a lovely city to visit and we took in as many sights as possible, including the stunning St.Paul's Cathedral, Federation Square and even the old Melbourne Gaol, where thanks to something that Robert had mentioned to us we found out that a member of the Cornick family had been one of the 135 people hung at the gaol (including the infamous Ned Kelly). Apparently John Cornick
Larry the Giant Lobster
A random BIG thing in Kingston south of Adelaide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia%27s_Big_Things) stabbed his wife to death in a jealous rage when she tried to leave him...perhaps some family history is best laid to rest! It might make interesting reading in the family tree though!
We also managed to treat ourselves in Melbourne to a meal out, as it was Sam's birthday - so what better way to celebrate than at Jamie Oliver's new Fifteen Restaurant in the centre of Melbourne. The food more than lived up to expectations and the staff there were lovely, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves!
After a few days in Melbourne it was time to catch a plane again and fly out to Hobart in Tasmania. Hobart is a very hilly, compact city with a great Saturday market, Salamanca market, and it also has some awesome floating fish and chip shops - Sam particularly liked the fresh calamari rings and soon became a regular there at lunchtimes! Whilst in Tazmania we hired a car, which we thought we had got at a bargain price until we realised that in fact we had been given the oldest hire car on the planet! Our first outing in the car was driving up the rather steep roads of Mt
Wellington, perhaps not the best choice given the state of our vehicle but stiff upper lip and all that and we eventually made it to the top! The views from Mt Wellington, when the clouds parted, were all worth it though.
From Hobart we headed out to Port Arthur to see the convict buildings and ruins. Port Arthur is on the Tasman Peninsula and in 1830 was chosen as the place to confine particularly troublesome prisoners and it continued to be used until 1877. 12,500 prisoners served their sentences at Port Arthur and it now remains as a historic site. After walking around the site in the day we decided to do the evening ghost tour. Claire intially thought this would be fun but soon realised her fear of ghosts was as strong as ever and spent the whole evening clamped to Sam's side and nervously looking over her shoulder! One couple on the tour had to be escorted out as they were so scared!
From Port Arthur we drove to Coles Bay, avoiding many Echidnas (giant hedgehogs) on the way, where we went out on a great day hike to the magnificant Wineglass Bay and spent some
time swimming in the crystal blue sea and dolphin spotting. During the walk we had many up close and personal encounters with Rock Wallabies - very cute, just like mini-kangaroos! To top the day off we got some Tazmanian beers and a roo burger (yep a Kangaroo burger - yummy!) and watched the sunset on the beach back at Coles Bay. Again time ran away from us and we were back on a plane to Melbourne but we definitely want to go back to Tazmania as we only got to see a very small part of the lovely island.
Back in Melboure we had a great time staying with Sam's friend Jeanette (from Raleigh Ghana) and her husband Dave, they kindly offered let us stay with them in Port Melbourne. We spent the last few days of our Oz adventure going for a tour of the home of Australian cricket - the MCG, visiting the State Library - beautiful architecture, strolled through Fitzroy gardens and visited Cook's Cottage (believed to be the Yorkshire family home of Captain Cook and was shipped out to Oz!) and of course no visit to Melbourne is complete without visiting Ramsey street "where good
The 12 Apostles
We could only count about 5 Apostles, but they looked great. neighbours make good friends" (we can hear you singing the tune already!). Yes we went on the Neighbours tour and we met...don't get too jealous now... Dr Karl Kennedy and we have the photos to prove it! Really nice guy actually! Sam spent most of the tour bemused and not recognising much and we were both lost when it came to the gossip about new story lines, as we had not watched the programme for about ten years but we dared not admit this! We couldn't laugh too much at things though, for fear of being lynched by the truely dedicated Neighbours fans on our tour bus - hilarious stuff!
Sadly our time in Oz has now come to an end, but we had a fantastic time and would definitely like to return... just as soon as we pay off the debt and save the pennies up again...maybe in about 20 years then!
Farewell from Oz,
Sam & Claire
xxx
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J Bell
non-member comment
Bells Beach
Yes, glad you found your ideal beach guys - Bells Beach! That car looks awesome!!! More than a match for my Skoda, shame I don't still have it as I could race ya. Did the electrics cut out everytime you stopped though? That was the Skoda challenge (never to stop)... PS: Write the blog more often and then you won't have to write a novel!!!