Week 6 – 25th Dec – 31st Dec

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Merry Christmas!! Unsurprisingly, Christmas Day felt like no other I’ve experienced. The plan was to have all food ready by 12pm, which was a bit of a mission considering that we had only one oven and one stove. But we pulled it off and there was quite a spread. Garry had done a bit chunk of lamb with roast potatoes and carrots; Mamako did a variety of sushi rolls; there was some mashed potato; Tom did his prawn cocktail; Anders provided us with a plentiful supply of Swedish meatballs and gravy as well as some beetroot salad; we had Indonesian kebabs; Elizabeth did a big vegetable pie; Slim carved up his ham and made a big tray of cauliflower cheese; there was a selection of salads and lots of bread and wine and beer and everything! A few days ago, Tom and Anders had come up with the sterling idea of purchasing a paddling pool and some water pistols. After lunch, we filled the filled the pool and spent most of the afternoon in and around it! It was great to be 10 again and piss about with water pistols - Slim joined in with the fun and was absolutely loving it!

The other afternoon activity involved facial hair sculpture. I had grown my beard for a month and decided that it was time for a change so Anne and Elizabeth took it upon themselves to take it off in stages, which was quite amusing. Then it was all gone and we went for a swim down at the pool. On our return, we launch into the desserts - slim had made the mother of all sherry trifles, into which he had poured a whole bottle of sherry! It was awesome - I reckon that stuff would get you pissed on a couple of servings! We also had some fruit cake and Anne had made a couple of pumpkin pies. I’d never had pumpkin pie before and it were right bloody tasty - especially with lots and lots of cream! I was going to make chocolate mousse for everyone but there wasn’t enough space in the fridge and there was already enough food so I made it one Boxing Day instead. The evening was a very sedate affair and everyone crashed relatively early. Although it was strange to be in a completely different environment and without family for Christmas, we all had an absolutely brilliant day - I couldn’t have asked for more. Everyone was in good spirits and I’ll never forget it - cheers Garry!

Boxing Day would be our final day in Nannup, so I thought I’d have a bit of a walk around town and down along the river. Food was the traditional leftovers meal, which was fine by everyone, and in the evening we had a few beers and a few games of pool down the pub. When Thursday came around it was our cue to leave Nannup to start heading east. We had been there for a couple of weeks and had grown very fond of the place - great people and the best hostel from the point of view of relaxation, which is reflected in the fact that it was voted into a list of the top hostels in the whole of Australia. It was definitely time to leave, though, for pastures new.

Our first destination was the ‘Gloucester Tree’, the tallest fire lookout tree in the region, near Pemberton. They still actually use it as a fire lookout when the availability of planes is low. It’s about 60m tall and they’ve put steel rods protruding from the trunk, in effect creating a kind of staircase. We climbed to the top, came down and that was that really! After that, we drove to Denmark, which is down on the south coast. It was quite sleepy, but there was much more there than there had been in Nannup. They had some great old fashioned shops where you can just buy lots of cool stuff there with cool old-fashioned signage. It’s a really nice, friendly place but for us it was only somewhere to use as a base to go and see other stuff, rather than stay around the town. As such, we didn’t feel like we needed to spend much time there.

I got lucky with an unsecured wireless connection so I was able to tap into that and upload a whole load of photos, which was cool. On Thursday we drove about 50km down the road to the ‘Valley of the Giants’. Here, they have built a 600m suspended walkway, the highest point of which is about 40m up, through the canopy of these massive trees. It was interesting to view everything from a completely different perspective. On the way back to Denmark, we took a dirt track down to the coast to a location called ‘Conspicuous Cliffs’. The beach here was yet another fine example of how to be a beach, and the cliffs were indeed conspicuous, as cliffs tend to have a habit of being unable to hide. It was interesting to see another type of coastline, though - much more rugged scenery and very beautiful. Back in Denmark, we hired a couple of canoes. They didn’t have any three-man canoes, so I went on my own and Tom and Anders shared. It was bloody good exercise and a good laugh, although I did manage to ground myself a couple of times on rocks beneath the surface which did a much better job of being inconspicuous than a cliff ever could.

As an aside, I actually got an e-mail from Garry (Black Cockatoo) today informing us that one of our leads had called the hostel offering us 3 days’ work in a town a little north-east of Nannup. Unfortunately we were now too far away to go back and do that - it would have been great to have a bit of cash-in-hand for New Year, but not too worry. We were now thinking about where we would like to be for New Year’s Eve, and the only realistic option was Albany. We wanted to be in a decent size town with a bit more choice pubwise. The weather turned a little cloudy on Saturday, which was a shame as Tom and I had hoped, before driving/on the way to Albany, to go and see some more of the local beaches and other stuff that looks much better when the sun’s shining! It was good news for Anders, however, as he had decided that he would walk to Albany over a couple of days. Each to their own!

We went to Ocean Beach, which was a cool family beach with great swimming water. After that we tried to find ‘Monkey Rock’, just a little further down the coast. The signs seemed to stop halfway there, so we thought we’d turn round and go elsewhere, namely ‘Greens Pool’. Anne and Slim had told us that it was a really nice spot one thing we shouldn’t miss while we were in the area. We got to the car park and when I got out of the van I was less-than-chuffed to see petrol literally pouring out of the fuel line - great. It was really pissing out, so we got straight back in and drove back to Denmark to find a mechanic. On arriving there, we were told that we were out of luck and would have to drive the 53km to Albany - great! Luckily, once the fuel level was down to about 20l (half a tank) the leaking was nothing more than a trickle, so we were confident that we would make it. We pulled up at the Toyota garage but they didn’t have the part and only had one mechanic on anyway due to it being holiday time. The next two places couldn’t help us either but we managed to get to a car parts shop which sold us a bit of hose and some new clips. The trusty Gerber tool came out and I fitted it without any difficult, except for getting oil and petrol all over me - par for the course I suppose! Much to our relief, it was fixed and it only cost us $25. I think what happened was that when we drove to find Monkey Rock I had driven over a small branch and as I went over it, it rotated and flicked up, thereby cutting the hose on a weak point near the end. We thought nothing of it at the time, considering the van had been in much worse places. We just got unlucky - if it had hit an inch either way of where it did, we would have been fine. Oh well, shit happens!

On Saturday, Tom and I thought we’d do a spot of sightseeing and doing the touristy thing. We made our way up to Mount Adelaide, which offers an amazing 360 degree view over the city, the bay and out to sea. There’s the ANZAC memorial there as well and a short distance away is an old Army barracks. There was lots of cool bloke stuff to look at - old bunkers, anti-air guns, other big guns, missile launchers, radars and other such brilliant uses of metal. We had tea in the old Officers’ Mess, then went on our way again. Next destination was ‘Two People’s Bay’, about 30 minutes east of Albany. The water here was crystal clear, calm and shallow so we could wade around all the rocks and do a spot of exploring. Having had our fill of the place, we headed back, stopping off at Emu Point where there’s a largish marina. There was a big group of pelicans, which were loving the attention of all the onlookers and enjoying all the free fish they were being thrown! I got a bit snap-happy and managed to take a ridiculous number of photos of these comedy birds during feeding time. We were told that there was an 8ft stingray swimming around the jetty, but unfortunately it didn’t make another appearance while we were there, which was a shame. We did a spot of shopping in preparation for New Year, then I went back out in the van on my own to Mount Adelaide again - it having been cloudy in the morning, I was keen to see the view in the now-brilliant sunshine and it didn’t disappoint! Middleton Beach is the main beach in Albany, so I thought I’d take a drive down there see what it was like - yup, another cracker! Anders turned up at around 8pm that evening, having walked a lot further than he had anticipated. He had a pretty hard time after the sun came out but he made it, buggering his body in the process - he was struggling to walk for a couple of days after! He had been approached in the middle of nowhere by some religious nut who tried to convert him and convince him that he was in fact Jesus and that end of the world was nigh!! He also had hardly any sleep and woke up to find his tent covered in bull ants - big buggers they are. He was rather glad to get to the hostel!

Sunday was New Year’s Eve and we had been told about some fireworks that would be happening down on the shoreline in the evening. However, before the drinking started, I decided to take the van out and see some more sights. Everyone in the hostel was taking it pretty easy, catching up on sleep and stuff so I thought it was a good opportunity to head out on my own for a few hours. The first stop was Green’s Pool back over Denmark way. I was disappointed not to have seen due to our fuel leak and, having heard good things about, I was looking forward to checking it out. I have to say, it was really rather stunning but very busy, what with this being the height of the holiday season. There’s a bar of rocks about 100 metres offshore which break the force of the waves. As a result, the water’s very calm so it’s ideal as a family beach and the water’s absolutely crystal clear. Around the corner there’s a mass of huge, rounded rocks, aptly named ‘Elephant Rocks’. It was pretty cool and there were only a couple of people on the nice secluded beach there. After that, I went back to Ocean Beach, which was also really busy. I stayed there for a while, watched a bit of the learner surfers, climbed up some rocks and got a great view of this vast beach before heading back to Albany.

In the evening, we got amongst some beers down on the shoreline with people from the hostel. As well as us three, there were a couple of German guys, a couple of French guys and a French-Canadian girl - Anders had also bought some toy light sabres to provide a spot of entertainment! After a few, we headed towards the pub. On the way, the cops gave us a warning about drinking in public. They could have easily given us on-the-spot fines, but fortunately they were in good spirits and allowed us to keep the beers on us so long as we threw away our open bottles. We stashed our remaining bottles in bush, in an attempt to save some for later, and went to the pub. Tom came back from the bar with some evil green concoction, which actually went down very nicely. We had a few more then went to watch the fireworks. I followed everyone out about 5 minutes after them, having got chatting to some of the locals, but couldn’t find them as what seemed like the whole of the town had converged on the shore. Once the fireworks got going, they went on for about 35 minutes, which was cool, but if they had condensed them all into a small space of time, the display would probably have been better. I stayed with the locals and planned to meet them in the pub later. When I got to the pub, the doorman decided to be a complete cock and wouldn’t let us in for some stupid reason. He told us to go and sit down for half an hour and come back, but even after that he continued being a dick. I found out later that the others weren’t even in there so it didn’t matter that I didn’t get in. from what the locals were saying, it was a pretty tame affair anyway. I went to retrieve my beer cache from the bush with a couple of locals, head them and went back to the hostel. All-in-all, it was a fun New Year’s Eve, with lots of good banter and good humour (apart from the knob of a doorman!).

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