Week 3 – 4th Dec – 10th Dec

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On Monday, we were giving a new job - wire-lifting. Still on the same property, this involves going from post-to-post detaching the lower wires and re-attaching them higher up to support the new growth. This was much better as it was easy to cover a lot of ground in a short space of time. It’s just not too cool when you get into the rhythm of it and forget to watch for spider’s webs in the idle of the lanes! The little bastards have really strong and sticky silk - very different from back home. So when you get one on you, it’s a bit tricky to get them off. It’s pretty rubbish when you get two at the same time on your sunglasses! Anders was in his element doing this work, and really went at it hard. We did the same thing on Tuesday except for some reason I got an incredible surge of energy and decided that I would spend the whole of my day running from post to post while lifting the wires. This meant that I was doing a full row in 10 minutes compared to the usual 20-30 minutes - and it was great exercise! On Tuesday evening, we had a nice amount of beers and stuff and Tom and I went out in the van to go and get some cool night time pictures. I won’t mention the off-road rallying near miss on the final corner though! But I did get some great video footage of it haha!!

On Wednesday we left Karridale, as agreed with Gavin. We needed to get back to Perth to collect our bank cards and TFNs. First stop was Margaret River to fill up with petrol. I suggested that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get the van checked as we weren’t too happy with the fuel consumption. We booked in with a local garage and while he had a look at it we went to the river mouth beach nearby. Awesome! Such a cool beach with great waves and stuff! We went to go and collect the van, slightly nervous about how much it was going to cost and what was wrong, if anything. He had spent 2 hours looking over it and it turned out that the timing was 10 degrees retarded, it needed new spark plugs and a new fuel filter, but otherwise it was fine. I was taken aback when he gave us our bill for $101.95 (about £40)! Top banana! We got an extra 50km from a full tank straight away!

Next destination was Perth. We checked into Spinner’s Backpackers, just down the road from our first hostel and went for a night on the lash at Black Betty’s. It was the same deal as last time we were there, except it cost $15 for all the beer we could drink. It turned very messy as Anders and I had stuck with the girl who was in charge of keeping tabs on how much beer we’d all had. She mentioned to us that most people from our group had left and there was still about $300 at our disposal. Sweet! So we got really really pissed ‘til about 4am then stumbled back to our hostel.

On Thursday, we went to collect our bank cards and TFNs. Only problem was that my card hadn’t been sent, but I can still get money out in the branch, so no worries. In the evening, I met up with a couple of friends from university, Emma and Lauren, who are travelling around the world and had dropped into Perth for a few days. We had a few beers together - it was really good to see them. On Friday, we didn’t really do much. Anders and I went to see Casino Royale, which I thought was really cool, and that was about it.

We left Perth on Saturday to head north. Our original plan of driving up the west coast all the way to Darwin was fast becoming unrealistic. Everyone was saying it would be simply too hot and humid. We agreed that we’d drive as far as we could and as soon as it got unbearable, we’d turn around. We were planning to get some work as we went as well. The drive north was cool - our first taste of being in the middle of nowhere with nothing for miles around. Lots of long straight bits of road where you don’t see any cars for ages! First destination was Cervantes, which is on the coast and is the entry point for the Pinnacles National Park - the place with all the rocks pointing out of the ground. Anders had already seen it, so in the evening Tom and I set out to have a look. It was cool - a much larger area than I had anticipated. Another box ticked, we headed back to our hostel. We checked out in the morning and started out drive to Kalbarri, further up the coast (about 700km north of Perth), which is just south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Long distances in the van can get a little tiresome. The main problem being the fact that the engine is located directly under the front seats, and my god do you feel it! the exhaust is right under the front passenger seat and it gets rather hot after a while! However, we reached the town of Kalbarri on Sunday afternoon and decided to try a spot of camping. Anders has a tent, so 2 of us go in there and the other goes in the van. The campsites here have loads of facilities, and this one was no exception - even a swimming pool, which came in very handy in the days to come!

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