Planes, Trains and Automobiles....but with lots of bush!

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Part One - Road Trippin & Teary Moments

Running a wee bit late for flight but thankfully they brought me to the front of the line at check-in. Easy 3-4 hour journey over, the idea was to get a free shuttle car to hotel and meet Mum and Murdo there. I’d spent the past week thinking about seeing my mum and letting a tear out here and there..as I got closer to seeing her I was so emotional. As I arrived and was heading to collect baggage I noticed the familiar long dark hair and huge smile. We ran to each other as if it had been 10 years and not 10 months, gripping onto each other and sobbing with delight. It was a great feeling to see my mum again oh yes it was. So, once we had prized ourselves away from our super glue-like grip, exchanged compliments about the reduced sized of each other's butts etc etc I finally got a chance to say hey to Murdo. He looked great too - they’ve both lost a bunch of weight since I saw them last in March of 08. So we arrived at Miss Maud’s, a rather fancy, ornate Swedish hotel in the centre of Perth. I stayed in one of the nicest rooms yet whilst travelling (only to be superceded on the same holiday in Monkey Mia!). We had a wee walk and catch up along the waterfront and stumbled upon a little volunteer-run all you can eat vegetarian Indian eatery. It was tasty (hot) food and you could stuff yourself silly and then decide on how much to pay for the meal. Great idea and very fair I thought…..helping to bridge the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. Next morning I had been previously prepped by Murdo for the amazing brekkies at Miss Maud’s but I still was not ready for the sheer splendorous array of goodies. We filled up on croissants, fruit, cereal, yoghurt, bread, French toast, pancakes w/ cream strawberries and maple syrup, beans, egg, cheesy tomatoes and these weird little hash brown thingies that were to DIE FOR. Yup it was even an effort to write all that let alone put it in my gob.

Fed and watered we were ready to hit the road, pity the car wasn’t! Murdo waited for quite a while before being able to come collect us and the crazy mountains of luggage in tow. We drove for a couple of hours outside Perth, through the vineyards and lovely countryside until we reached the world famous Pinnacles. I always have to place myself in a film in situations like this. The whole of WA so far felt like the US (even though I’ve never been!) and it was as if I was in some Texan road movie... There was something really stonehengey about the place but the actual stones would have been reduced in size (think This is Spinal Tap) and multiplied by about 10000! The bright yellow stones and sand set against the bluest sky gave it such a surreal ‘dali-esque’ quality. We attempted to run about like druids but it was too freakin hot (like 48 in the celcius) and so we decided that seeing them from the car would be just as magical 

The road trip was getting off to a great start, I was loving the Roadhouses and the long strips of nothingness apart from the ‘open road’. It felt like we were road trippin the old route 66 or something. But then I began to understand the concept that the open road can be very hypnotising. I often slipped into a transe-like state and was only marginally worried when Murdo (our designated driver) told me the same thing was happening to him…eek!

My mum was desperate to see some wildlife and she was lucky to see 3 kangaroos, 2 wallabies and some bunnies within the first hour or two. Trouble is they were all in the form of road kill…

We stopped at hangover bay (nope! I’ve not been hungover for a wee while thanks very much) and for the first 10 minutes we had it all to ourselves. Mum and I got into the water and occasionally freaked out due to rogue seaweed, shadows and apparently ‘two huge fish’ - still not convinced Ma!! It was almost like being back on Siargao island in the PI, so beautiful and calming. Still very hot though! After a wee walk down the shoreline and a dry off we hopped back into the bliss of air-conditioning. Ok so I complain all the time about it usually but it really was heaven in these kinds of temperatures. After another 3-4 hours of driving on day one it was almost 7pm and so we decided to park our butts in Jurien Bay for the evening. We found a motel that looked like it was straight outta Psycho and was in turn named the 'Bates motel' by Mum and Murdo - they aptly took some pics of their shower to help them remember. The swimming pool made me giggle - it was completely enclosed, fenced off and padlocked and looked like it was never used - like the patrons never got the chance because they were hacked up in the bathrooms…just a thought. We noticed that our place also seemed to be the local hang out and had a job separating the bogans from the non-bogans! We took a sunset walk and turned out that Jurien Bay was a bit of a ghost town. The full moon was huge and so beautiful this night and so we spent a bit of time trying to capture it. We then popped into the only other open establishment for some scran. It filled a (not so gaping) gap but I wouldn’t say it was spectacular. When asked about the lack of people, the lady serving us just gawped at us and said ‘it’s a full moon’. We looked back a little bemused as she hadn’t really explained much…..meanwhile my mind was conjouring up allsorts of full-moon-related reasons which included the town being full of werewolves and they were off to neighbouring towns to eat people’s faces or they were all scared of the moon and stayed in their houses for fear they might turn mad - you never know with small town superstition. Anyway, after a moment that seemed to last an awkward lifetime, she finally said ‘they are all out fishin’ uhaaaaaaa right this all seems to make sense now! I guess we really should have surmised that, thanks chip shop lady.

So after a Bates motel-type sleep I dragged my ass outta bed at 7am and hit the beach for an cool morning power stroll. I met a lovely elderly lady and her brown/white border collie, Jessie. The lady goes out swimming every morning before sunrise, she says the water is warm but I was sceptical. Jessie wouldn’t go in the water unless the lady swam with her - how sweet. Jessie made me think of my collie, Jake. He had such a spirit and he would have loved this trip - all these beautiful beaches. We packed up and shipped out for our 2nd day on the road. Not long after our start did we decide to stop at the Halfway Mill Roadhouse. This was a bit of a photographer’s paradise. The food was terrible, the service without a smile (until I buttered up the waitress of course!) and the tacky curtains & fake flowers (which I loved) finished it off nicely. This is what I’m looking forward to when travelling the states. To permanently feel like I’m in pulp fiction. Who needs theme parks? The world is a playground innit (cheesy sod…)

So after our unfulfilling brekkie we hit the road for a much longer trip this day. The waitress told us that we had another 8 hours drive to Monkey Mia, cheeky git was wrong, it was more like 5. Nevertheless Murdo put his foot down and blimey we flew there! The stretch to Monkey Mia became less and less inhabited the further we got. We caught only the occasional farm or windmill (again, photographer’s paradise)….reminiscent of ‘what’s eating gilbert grape’….we also kept seeing mirages on the horizon and in the road. It felt like my eyes were playing a wee joke on me due to the heat and the crazy desert surroundings. I tried to get a pic but it wasn’t so powerful through the lens. At that point I wondered where Mad Max was filmed because it all felt a little familiar. We eventually reached the Billabong Roadhouse and stopped for some well-earned ice cream (well for Murdo at least). The roadhouse had loads of old memorabilia, typewriters etc and a wall full of pics of visitors from all over the globe. Interesting and friendly place. Mum and I shared a big fresh mango and creamy vanilla ice cream. It wasn’t long before we were back in the car, poor Murdo has done so much driving and never complained once - what a champion!

After another couple of hours driving and what we initially thought was a twister coming towards us (turns out it was a pocket of rain that came nowhere near us) we arrived at shell beach. It was super hot hot at this point and shell beach was dazzlingly white and vast. We spent about 10 minutes there but it was worth a look. Trillions of ickle white shells stacked up as far as the eye could see. There were big ridges going over the surface as if the movie 'tremors' had been filmed there...

We finally arrived in Monkey Mia, hungry, hot and very ready for our chilled-out few days in paradise. The beach front chalet's were heaven and the view even better. That night while we were chowing down on some seriously good food mum spotted a couple of dolphins swimming around the shore. I got overly excited and immediately started crying, thinking of my cousin Sara whose ashes were scattered here 10 years ago with these very dolphins. This was the main reason for a joint visit to Monkey Mia with my mum, so it was pretty heart wrenching. We were fortunate that it was still full moon and so the sky was really light as we walked down to the shore after dinner. I think that we picked a good first night because a dolphin called Nicky (named by the resort) and her calf came to say hi. At one point I was only about a foot away from her and could hear her little whines and puffs as she spat water out of her blowhole! Another very special moment, I started to get the feeling that these would be coming thick and fast over the next couple of weeks.

I was awake at 7am to see the dolphins being fed....but then after a wee chat with the staff I got to feed one (they usually completely randomly pick people - naughty!). Meanwhile, Murdo was doing his foot a mischief on a nail that hadn't been hammered in properly on the verandah. I have since learned that Murdo has a bit of an unfortunate history of foot accidents, but only on holidays!! And so to his dismay, the shoes went on and his chances of getting in the water were slim until his foot started to heal again. What a shame, maybe on his next trip the jinx will be lifted, at least I reckon he deserves a break :-/ We took a ridiculous amount of piccies and hung around watching the dolphins being fed all morning. I found them mesmerising, amazing creatures. So powerful and calming.

It was too hot to be able to spend much time outside so we hit the ocean. Mum and I had a play with her new underwater cam, taking freaky underwater portraits and some synchronised swimming instructional videos (at least mum tried :-)). We just look insane or stoned in most of the portraits though! There were so many Scottish people in this place I ended up feeling like we were just hanging out in some weird twilight zone where Oz meets Aberdeen. It was cool to chat to this girl Lauren though, she has been in Oz for over a year and gave me some hints and tips about Tazzy - hoping to head there for sure when I'm done working.

Throughout the day our air con had been playing up & the manager came to check it out. As the sparky was out of town (and I was guessing that would be pretty far away seing as the towns were at least 2 hours apart!) he decided to give us some other rooms for the night - in total we accumulated 6 room keys, we almost owned the place for one night ;-) I ended up sleeping in the next morning, the latest time yet at a whopping 9am! We jumped on a boat wildlife tour to see the dugongs (manities). We saw a couple and murdo managed to capture a little of them coming out of the water and we also saw a few sea turtles scarper away from the boat. We had a wicked time on the boat and with the help of a heavily pregnant lady, I lifted the sail which was kinda cool. That night we stuffed our faces and drank cocktails, mum always envisioned she and I sipping pina colada's on the beach and so she got her wish...the evening ended with some pretty heavy D&M's (deep and meaningfuls - phrase courtesy of Jasper from Melbourne).

Our final day in beautiful Monkey Mia began with another visit to feed the dolphins and say goodbye. I'm sure I have around 25000 pictures of dolphins alone from this trip! We quickly packed up and got on the road. I got to drive for about 15 mins and it was totally rockin' - wish I had managed to pass my test before travelling, but hey ho it wasnt my time. Next stop, stromatolites. These looked pretty unimpressive until I got them on camera, then I was snapping away like a crazy person. Kalbarri was full of stinky fish along the beach in town but then we found a cool bay further south and with some surf. I spotted a surf dude and took some pics, he then spotted us and shouted over that he would pay for the pics, pity we left before he emerged...could have began my surf photography career right there and then. I love it when the sun creates a little rainbow in the spray of the waves - and you can see it only for a moment. Magical.

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