Blogs from Western Australia, Australia, Oceania - page 596

Greetings from the west coast of Australia. A couple of days ago I was sitting in a boring city called Brisbane which is slightly north of Surfer's paradise. When I say boring, this is no understatement. There is quite honestly nothing to do. It's probably the one coastal city in Australia that doesn't even have a beach. The only fun memory I have of the place was watching a professional Australian ice hockey game. Apparently there is a pro ice hockey league here. The Brisbane blue tongues home arena seats about 300, but it was completely full and loud. I'm pretty sure everybody was there to watch former team Canada Olympian and NHL SUPERSTAR!!!!Rob Zamuner play for Brisbane. Anyways, as I mentioned, Brisbane was dull and I could feel my brain going into hibernation just by ... read more

This morning was the last dash to Perth, just 160 km away. I stopped on the way in at Perth Dive Academy to get myself kitted up with some equipment for when I go back to Exmouth. I soon found that Diving is like any other hobby you can just keep spending. There seems to be no limit to the kind of stuff you can have and for some reason the most expensive equipment always looks the best. (Funny that). I was really good and left without buying anything, I did put quite a few things by for when I return though. My Next stop was the car hire garage, as the car seems to be making some very strange noises when I turn corners. It turns out that there is no oil in the power ... read more

I'm sorry, I know it's been a long time, but just saving you from uneventful entries... So I'm still in Australia, still in Fremantle (near Perth) getting pretty cozy. The life here is very laidback and the hostel life and guests are quite the "family" since the majority of us here are longterm tenants. Our days consist of waking up (at some point) and run for the front desk to see if there are any odd jobs for the day in the area...mostly labouring, gardening, cleaning.. the jobs others don't really want to do, but whatever, it's cash-in-hand, so it's good. So far I have gardened on those jobs as the others usually want guys ... bah! Anyway, I've picked up some work finally. I actually clean the hostel on the weekends... what a job that ... read more

As I left Geraldton the clouds closed in for the first time in months. Then the heavens opened and it started to rain. Listening to the radio on the way down you would have thought it was Christmas. Farmers and the like were literally dancing in the streets as this was the first rain they had seen for years. Probably wasn’t appropriate for me to ask when it was likely to stop!! When it does finally rain in WA it really knows how to. Coming from the UK I’m used to driving in rain but this was something else. The roads aren’t designed to channel the water away and it’s all you can do to hold onto the car as you aquaplane down the road with visibility not much greater than the end of the bonnet. ... read more

Day 110 Friday 21 July 2006 -Day 112 Sunday 23 July 2006 Kununurra Happy Birthday Kim for Sunday After packing up we had just one more walk to do - Emma Gorge walk which was another goat track. At the end of it was a huge waterhole with lovely waterfalls flowing over it. We were all so hot we wanted to get in but it was absolutely freezing. I was the only one that went fully in. The kids put their feet in and Graeme went in for one second. He reckons that he could have put his beers in it to keep cold. We arrived back from El Questro today because Martin from the UK had arrived in Kununurra the day before and he only had until Sunday morning before he departed on a bus ... read more