BootsnAll Travel Network
Add this blog to: MyYahoo, Google, Bloglines, RSS


Archive for the 'Perth' Category

« Home

What Farrah Did Next

Sunday, March 22nd, 2009

Hello everyone!!

This is my last email to you from Australia! Im afraid that I have decided now to go home and face English weather, doom and gloom 🙁 But at least its almost Spring and the clocks go forward soon 🙂  Have thoroughly loved my time in Oz and the last 3 weeks have been just bloody amazing! I have spent time in Perth with my old school friend Ben and his lovely lady Kris, met up with another old friend, Tracey who moved out here and is now married with kids, let Andy and Frank look after me, been kidnapped by drag queens (er yeah Im in recovery as I write hahaa) and seen parts of Australia many Aussies have never seen!

First of all I made the decision to stay and make use of my working visa. Unfortunately, despite many cups of coffee, phone calls and me practically forcing my way into production companies for a ‘chat’, TV work is extremely thin on the ground in Perth. Yep, I could have gone to Sydney, where a friend gleefully managed to land a top job within days of stepping off the plane, but in my eyes, starting again in Sydney just wasn’t something I felt 100% about – its a big city and learning to make friends again, build contacts up from scratch, etc… I just didnt feel it was right for me right now when I do it so much in London and I just felt more comfortable doing that in Perth but Sydney is TV central…However, right at the 11th hour I managed to land a shooting gig on a zombie movie and luckily my availability fitted in with them so yippee, I have Australian experience to slap on my CV as well as stuff covered in green body paint and strawberry jam. Yum!

Due to lack of work I decided to be creative with the time I planned to carry on in Australia. I decided that staying in Australia indefinitely by means of getting a day job wasn’t what I wanted to do so rather than sit around waiting for work in the time Id given myself, I headed off to the Outback! Yep, almost 2 weeks messing about in Alice Springs, camping out under the stars without a tent in Uluru and then living underground in Coober Pedy. A very fun experience. Alice Springs was full of flies and has a dry river running through it! I made some great friends in my hostel with whom I went out partying, culminating in being thrown out of Lasseters Casino and so returning to the hostel and making use of a cheap bag of goon (errrr!) which resulted in sore heads the next day. Many Aboriginals live in the Alice so I took the opportunity to use the Cultural Centre and find out more about Australia’s indigineous people but somehow ended up learing more about the Muslim Cameleers who came from India, Pakistan and Afghanistan to creat the Ghan railroads that run through the middle of Oz. I also walked right under the web of a golden orb spider and they are bloody HUGE!!!! It didnt scare me although it did freak me out – its so big, I was just in awe of it, its about the size of my hand. Seeing it ensured that any other spiders I saw from then on would not be a problem because they’d never be as big as that one, euuurrrgghh!

My trip to Uluru was totally amazing. I slept out in a sleeping bag in the middle of nowhere, had ants crawl on me, mosquitoes bite me, frogs jump on me, wind howl at me, rain pour on me… and I loved it!! There were some girly girls in our group who didnt want to pee in the bushes, moaned a little about staying in a creek with no facilities and slapped full make up on at 5.30am. They were really nice but they really stood out – the rest of us just got on with it! We did stay in some campgrounds so we had access to kitchens and showers and we all made dinner together every night and Im proud to say that I now have a great little group of friends who I hope to see again when we’re all back in Europe.

Uluru has real holy significance to the Indigineous people but it wasn’t until I did a 10km walk around the base did it really hit home how spiritual it was. Yeah you see pictures of it all the time but not until you get there does it take on meaning. We watched sunset and sunrise over the rock, hiked through Kings Canyon and Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) and had some very crazy fun in Coober Pedy where Opal Miners have made a killing! We ended our trip through the red centre in Adelaide and with my new friends went to see some of the Adelaide Fringe Festival. I did plan to meet up with Craig the rockstar and Lili from my earlier visit but we both ended up being so busy!

“There’s big rock in the middle of Australia? You’re shitting me!”
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=230372&id=535680087&l=6f4ef4f9f6

And so back to Perth to get ready for the return to England. I have thought and thought about staying on but my reluctance to go to Sydney and lack of work in Perth doesnt give me a heap of reasons to stay here especially when I am running incredibly low on funds and am hitting my last $122 as I write – Of course there are a number of people and things in England to come back to!!! – I have made some tremendous friends here, experienced some really magic and special things, revisited other friends and discovered  how hospitable and laid back the culture is here and for that, Im so grateful, you all know who you are. Im sad to come home and have had many propositions from the gorgeous gay friends I have made offering marriage so that I dont have to come home (hahahaha) and as my beautiful drag queen friend Maddie told me…”Just click your heels together and think of us…you’ll be back”…

And so people, that is the end of my travelling for now but as always, watch this space…
Farrah xx

Posted in Australia, Perth, Uluru | No Comments »

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

Posted in Albany, Australia, Indian Pacific, Nullabor Plain, Pemberton, Perth, Travel | No Comments »