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How to do a road trip like Farrah and Ben

Saturday, February 28th, 2009

Get the most troublesome bit out of the way first

We decided to take the very long and very straight Albany Highway all the way down to Albany and work our way back round the coast to Perth . This drive took 5 hours and took us alongside mountain ranges and through English-looking green woods and then through bleak scrub not unlike Dartmoor . Pick up free maps at info centres which surprisingly are MUCH better than the ones you pay for!

 

Charge up the iPod

Aussie radio stations have a fondness for playing Midnight Oil. Without the MP3 connector I would have had to sing. Ben would not have been happy.

 

Take loads of water, enough snacky food for 3 days and always fill up on petrol

We always tried to have about 5 litres of water between us in the car and at least half a tank of petrol – there are stretches of road with absolutely NOTHING for miles and miles and no other cars. The roads are long and it can be tiring so its good to stop for a quick snack now and again. However, I don’t think either of us wants to see another can of tuna for a loooong time!

 

Get some of that antibacterial hand stuff and tissues

You never know when you will need to stop for a wee at the side of the road. Watch out for snakes and kick yourself when you drive round the next corner and find a 5-star deluxe toilet with soap.

 

Pay attention to the many crosses at the side of the road.

Every so often and usually always under a tree will lie a cross with someone’s name and date of death on it.

 

Tell Ben that he is a wonderful person

“Please can you look where you are driving!”

 

Make friends with the many people you will meet in hostels who are living there

We seemed to end up in dorms with people on working visas who had made it their permanent home. This was not a bad=2 0thing – they left their laptops and things lying around which made it feel safe to leave valuables in the room but they bloody woke us up early.

 

Take the time to eat every kind of cake you would never dare eat in England

Lamingtons, Bestings, Melting Moments. Full of fat, cream and sugar. Eat them, who cares?? The bakeries here are a national institution and make the best cakes for very little money.

 

Learn to LOVE coffee

Coffee is a major business in WA. Coffee is advertised more than beer and its almost impossible to get a bad coffee. Even a crappy looking petrol station will have a good coffee machine to give you a buzz. Every type of coffee you can think of.

 

Tell Farrah that she is a wonderful person

“Oh for gods sake!”

 

Don’t risk getting caught in a bushfire

In Albany , everyone raved about Two Peoples Beach so we tried to go check it out. The road leading to the beach was 16km long with no side roads and lined both sides by forest. Just as we turned in we saw a sign saying the beach was closed due to EXTREME fire risk. We continued gingerly for about 3km then decided that it was not worth the risk – we aren’t locals, we don’t know how seriously to take these things so we decided to leave well alone. We returned to a café at the top of the road and were told by the staff that they had never seen the warning before and that everyone was a bit wary given the situatio n in Victoria . We also missed a bushfire in Prevelly where we based ourselves for Margaret River by a week and when we went to sleep at night we did so with knowledge of our nearest exit – run for the sea!!!!

 

Stay at the Blue Wren in Denmark and hang out with your room mates

Ahhh, a lovely hostel with a great big golden Labrador and chooks living under the house. Here we met Janine, Shaunagh and Gareth. We went to see the sunset at the beach together and took Shaunagh and Gareth to look at Giant Tingle trees in the Valley of the Giants. I can now tell the difference between yellow, red and Rates tingles. I am such a geek.

 

Always have emergency back up dinner in the boot

Days are light until 8pm, it didn’t get dark until 8.30pm at the start of our road trip. By the time you get some place and check in its pushing 9pm. Almost everywhere in these rural areas shut at 9. Its good to have a packet of 50c noodles in the bag somewhere. But we didn’t eat them until the very end of our trip….

 

Appreciate how beautiful life is away from the city despite it being not so easy.

Pictures of Perth : http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=217860&id=535680087&l=3c5b7

 

Look for stars in Pemberton

Pemberton is an old timber t own in the middle of national park territory. Its perfect for looking at stars at night. We took some head torches out so we could find our way home. The locals found this highly amusing. I told them I was looking for mining work in Kalgoorlie .

 

Climb the Gloucester Tree

Bloody hell. Im never doing that again!!! A huge 60m Karri tree with spikes sticking out, a few people sat at the bottom said they tried to climb it but had returned because the vertigo had got too much for them. It wasn’t the heights that worried me but the strength to climb up without any help!! If you missed a step or fell to the side there was only one way to go – down!! So, wearing my trusty Merrells, I took one spike and then another. I felt my arms pull, I ached but I kept going. And this was after running a couple of k with the mad Frenchman from our hostel.  There’s a lookout built on top and once I was up there I was shaking! Shaking but so glad I did it! Ben went one be tter and also climbed the Bicentennial Tree. Nutter.

 

Tell Ben that he is a wonderful person

“If you keep looking out of the back window Im going to make you map read. I don’t care if it makes you feel sick, just look at the road!”

 

Fill your tummy with goodies in Margaret River

Wine tasting, chocolate, olives, marron, venison, fudge, coffee, its all going down in Margaret River ! We visited some wineries. Ben was very gentlemanly and offered to drive. As it happened I didn’t like much of what I tasted. Ben bought a bottle of red which I couldn’t take – I pas sed out after one glass (haha no jokes about me being a lightweight please) But boy oh boy, chocolate!!! But it melted as quickly as we ate it so sorry I cant send you any! Also visited a cave!

 

Marvel at the beaches along the way

White sand, turquoise water. Keep your bathers on every day, plan time to make several stops at every bit of pretty beach.

 

Laugh at the ‘chi chi’ people in Dunsborough

Nice town, nice beach but where did all these rah rahs come from?

 

Walk the jetty at Busselton

Every time you look up you think you are nearer the end. You are not. Its 2km long.

 

Find your inner peace by swimming with dolphins at Bunbury

Im glad that we left Bunbury til the end. A lovely place and we stayed in a really good hostel too with hammocks and places to chill out. The sunsets were sublime. We woke up early every day to go spot dolphins. One morning we arrived to find that we had missed them by a couple of minutes and they had been interacting for nearly half an hour. BUT! They returned about 5 times that morning and swam up and down past our legs with curiosity. Ben was a happy boy and ended up eating the muffin he refused to eat when he thought he had missed out on seeing dolphins YET AGAIN (Ben always seems to miss dolphins by split seconds on his travels haha).

 

Make a quick decision on what to do with those last few days before Ben returns to the cold, grey and damp of England

Not enough time to do the coast north of Perth up to Monkey Mia and Exmouth as planned so we went as far as Cervantes and visited the Pinnacles desert which is full of weird limestone formations. The best time to go is just before sunset when the sun is low and to be back in town before it gets completely dark. On arriving in Cervantes we noticed a bushfire!! An electricity pole had caught fire resulting in a power cut for the town. The blaze was quickly put out but it did mean that all the shops shut up for the day, no ATMs worked and that we would have to live by oil lamp that night. However, the power came back on about 9pm and Ben, as determined as he was to not eat those 50c noodles, insisted we see if anything was open. Nope. We had noodles for dinner. They were good.

 

Tell Farrah that she is a wonderful person

“Will you just shut up???”

 

Visit all those places the Lonely Planet makes very little mention of

Such as Yanchep National Park where we saw koalas, had the privilege of being jumped past by kangaroos and sat in warm sunshine on green grass by a big lake where pelicans ate fish. And Farrah ate chocolate. Yeah!

 

Say bye bye to Ben, look back on your photos and decide what to do next…

Until my next adventure, here are some pikchush: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=221804&id=535680087&l=43fa6

Bushfires, Birthdays and Bogans

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

Hey everyone

Im now in the deepest greenest gorgeous-smelling Southern Forests area of Western Australia. I made it to Perth and am now exploring the south coast and working my way round from Albany to Margaret River and back up to Perth.

The Indian Pacific was bloody good fun. After a day bushwalking in the Adelaide Hills with Craig the rock star where we spotted koalas, possums, turtles and -eek- poisonous hopping ants, it was time to head west and so I boarded the train which would take 2 nights to cross the Nullabor Plain. I had absolutely no idea what to expect apart from huge expanses of desert. So many people warned me off doing the train at all and when I said Id do the cheap seats they were even more like WHHHAAAAT??? and reviews I read were not favourable. I think Bill Bryson in ‘Down Under’ even suggests its not a good idea (do not quote me on that – I will find out as I just got it for my birthday), but as you know, I never listen to anyone so of course, this was a journey for me! I’ve travelled on overnight trains through Thailand alone and they were fine so I expected that this would be a similar if not better experience. Craig and Lili teased me and said that they heard a huge team of WeightWatchers would be on my train but I got on and it was full of … BACKPACKERS! ALRIGHT!!! PARTY TRAIN!!! The seats were comfy, larger than airline seats and almost fully reclining. I sat next to a Japanese student called Nao all the way and=2 0she was great. The other side of the aisle and behind we had some German backpackers and a couple of guys. And we’ve all exchanged contacts so thats nice. Yes, there were times when you felt the scenery was on pause but I slept all of the 2nd afternoon (as one of the German girls said, ”I cant believe you slept all day!”) Sleeping was not a problem although the first night fully through the desert was quite cold so if you ever take this trip and dont fork out for your own cabin (boring – you’d never meet anyone) take a blanket. The staff were all really cool and friendly. The food wasnt too expensive and it was OK but loads of people take their own. From the train I saw kangaroos hopping away and that was pretty magic. I saw the stars really brightly at night. And we stopped at a couple of places – Cook, a ghost town – Im not even sure why the bones remain – and Kalgoorlie – a gold rush town where men still go to mine and – ahem – enjoy the company of the ladies of the night – I tried to get some pics of dollies but they started screaming and running indoors. I was with one of the guys off the train. We laughed at them and went off to eat pizza.

Some pics of Adelaide and the train: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=213654&id=535680087&l=2fac4

In Perth I stayed with my friends Frank and Andy. I met them some years ago in Koh Samui when I hijacked their taxi (if I emailed you on my RTW trip you’ll know who Im talking about) and they just havent managed to get rid of me since (And I love you so much boys xx). My first story about Perth begins the day I arrived. Frank picked me up from the station and left me in his house to get on and he went to work. I sorted myself out, worked out how to get a bus into town and so on and was about to leave the house when I saw a massive yellow thing jump off the wall. I froze. I ran into Franks room and picked up a Havaiana and threw it at the yellow thing. It jumped!! OH MY GOD!! A MASSIVE JUMPING YELLOW SPIDER!!!! I shrieked and grabbed my stuff and ran out of the house!!! Even though it was boiling hot outside, I was shivering all over. I texted some friends to see if they could identify the spider. I texted Frank. And I texted Andy who was due to fly in from Malaysia that afternoon, warning him there was a yellow jumping thing in the house. I went straight to a bookshop in the city and looked up what it could be, keeping the spider pictures at arms length and sort of half keeping the pages closed. There was something called a grey spider. I thought it might be that but none of the descriptions said these spiders jump. My friends texted back to say that as long as it wasnt black and red then dont worry. But arrrggghh yuk I was pretty shook up. Later on in the day, Andy contacted me to say he was back so I headed back to the house. He asked me where my kangaroo was. I was like, what? And he said ý ellow, jumping thing?’and I told him what happened and he replied ever so calmly…óhhh the grasshopper?? I put him ooutside..’. <sigh of relief and eyeball roll>.

The evening I arrived in Perth, Ben also flew in from London! He was a bit jetlagged but nothing as bad as I was as his flight was considerably shorter than mine, minus the stopover in Singapore and not going as far as Melbourne! Actually, I think I fell asleep before him that night! Perth was just hot, hot, hot! We spent a lot of time at the beaches; Cottesloe and Scarborough, had drinks in Fremantle and spent all day riding bikes and playing with Quokkas on Rottnest Island. During this time Australia also witnessed its worst bushfires ever. Very sad stuff guys. One man was on TV saying ‘I lost my 2 kids mate” . So matter of fact, so, but we’ve got to get on and help each other through this.

I also had my birthday last week and I had a lovely day! Thanks so much everyone for birthday wishes, emails, texts, calls and so on!!! I was rather touched 🙂 Frank and Andy were amazing and made me a very naughty breakfast of french toast, fruit, cream and coffee, Ben managed to bring extra pressies from back home for me and then the boys took me to the Hippo Grill at Hilary’s Boat Harbour and I had an extra special time at the Aquarium of Western Australia and touched a shark and flirted with a sea lion (he was soooo adorable) before meeting up with a very old school friend also called Ben20who I havent seen in 20 years despite us both living in the same village until our early twenties!! He is very well and has now moved out here with his girlfriend. It wasnt weird at all, we had loads to talk about and hopefully we shall meet up again!

So now Ben and I are touring the cool forests (and watching out for bushfire!). We got a hire car and drove 5 hours straight down to Albany (and missed out on seeing the most talked about beach at Two People Bay because of EXTREME fire risk and have made our way through the hippy town of Denmark, hugged some giant Tingle trees and we are now in Pemberton ready to climb the giant Gloucester tree which reaches I believe 60 feet? The beaches down here are amazing. We have hooked up with people that we have been staying with in the hostels and gone to see turquoise waters. We even watched a man fishing a shark the other evening – he cut his tail off but still he wriggled! We are staying in a dorm with some crazy guys – one, French guy, William is going for a run tomorrow morning and is taking me with him because I havent been running since I got to Australia – Its been too hot!! – so um, we’ll see how I do waking up at 7am and running for the first time in 3 weeks… ouch!

Will post some pics up of Perth and our little road trip next time – havent had time to upload them all yet! And by the way, I have a new word – BOGAN! Its what they call chavs overhere, hee hee hee!!!!

Lots of love xxxxx

Farrah the Aborigine: Living with rockstars in Adelaide

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

SNOW!!!

Yep, its all over the news here! Any excuse for you guys not to go to work! Seriously, keep warm just as we are trying to keep cool overhere hee hee!!

So Im now in Adelaide on a very short stopover – I left Melbourne on Tuesday. I was sad to leave but its always good to go when you still enjoy being somewhere. On Friday I was in St Kilda having a coffee, waiting to meet up with my mate Ben and two Aborigine guys walked past and were just staring at me to the point where it felt really uncomfortable and the people on the next table noticed and they leant over and said “you should hide!” I just carried on drinking my coffee and writing my postcard…. about 10 minutes later, I heard a voice… : “Sister… SISTER! Hey sister!!” I looked up and it was the two guys again. They said, “Hey are you Aborigine?” I started laughing and said that wherever I went people thought I was one of them and they started laughing and said I looked like their sister hahahahaha! When they realised I was English they said it was good of me to come over and visit their country and they hoped I enjoyed my visit. We shook hands and they introduced themselves and then they went on their way!

By the way anyone who doesnt have my mobile overhere its +61 404 651 629. I turn my phone off when Im asleep so Linda, dont worry about calling me when you’re drunk!
Also, some pics of Melbourne: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?page=1&aid=212725&l=53783&id=535680087

Im finding more and more as I settle back into a backpacker mentality that you do have to lay yourself open to opportunities and meeting random people and taking up offers that come your way. However, some opportunities you really should not take up, like if some musclehead on St Kilda persistently tries to buy you coffee (I told you there were no hot men on the beach). Some you really should. Like if your friend says you should hook up with some rockstars in Adelaide and they offer you a place to stay (Larry, again, you little sparkler, everyone needs a friend like you!), you should say yes! My friend Laura met Craig and Lili in Las Vegas and was a bridesmaid when they got married (Married in Vegas?? I love them already!!) and she suggested I meet them when I get to Adelaide. We made contact on Facebook and Lili immediately invited me to stay but being oh so English I said oh no dont worry Ill sort myself out and all that so I booked into a hostel but Craig offered to show me around town while I was here so we met up and again the offer to stay came so I accepted and here I am in this rather amazing house in the Adelaide Hills! Craig and Lili are the most kindest people and they have 2 wicked dogs – Max, a Rottweiler and Gomez – Im not sure what he is, but hes small with a lot of hair in his eyes and runs around like he’s on speed 😉 Craig is singer with BBSteal, they are on www.myspace.com/bbsteal Im just touched by all the people I have met who have offered help and stuff and Im finding more and more that Aussies are incredibly hospitable and when they invite you over they mean it! Adelaide is really hot – it hit 46 degrees the day I arrived and yesterday Craig showed me around the beaches, Glenelg, Henley, Semaphore and then we had Vietnamese for lunch. Craig and I have very similar views on politics and stuff so its been good talking to him about issues that most people wont talk about in case they get shot hahahaha! We walked around the Botanical Gardens a nd MH, you mentioned Norwood – we went for a drink there, it was actually a really nice suburb hahahahaha!! Its been really cool hanging out with them and if I hadnt met up with them I would still be in the middle of the City of Churches thinking there was bugger all to do. In fact, the night I arrived, I went for a walk and everything was quiet and closed. Where Melbourne had been bustling and people were out and about, here it was just … dead. It was like a poor man’s Christchurch. Honestly!! The hostel I stayed in for 1 night was nice and people staying there were nice too but despite having 2 fans blowing, the window and door open, it was too hot to sleep! The Adelaide Hills are much cooler..in all senses..!

So this evening Ill be getting on the Indian Pacific for 2 nights – ill get to Perth on Saturday morning (Ben should be flying in if his flight can leave England hahaha!) Wish me luck. Then again, I didnt come to Planet Earth for a simple life – that would be just too easy…

See you in Western Australia!

Fxx