My original thought for getting from Broome to Perth was to rent a car and do it on my own. Every car rental company wanted to charge me about $2000 to do a one way hire, so I decided to join a tour instead. It was a whirlwind 8 day tour covering the same distance as Los Angeles to New York City. I'm glad I didn't end up getting a car, because there were a few days where we drove over 700km on a straight, boring, monotonous road. Sometimes there'd be hundreds of kilometers between roadhouses, and nothing in between. However, in between the stretches of nothing-ness, there were some absolutely spectacular sights to see. We had a good group of people also, 10 of us of all different nationalities, so it was a great way to get down the coast.

Karinjini National Park - Definately my favorite place in Australia. We did a hike called The Miracle Mile. Actually we did about 9/10 of the Miracle Mile because a small part in the middle is now closed because there have been a few deaths this year (yikes). The normal hike entails climbing through two gorges, Hancock Gorge and Weano Gorge, that are linked with swimming holes and waterways that you need to cross. It was a little precarious at times, involving rock climbing and inching across rock ledges(right up my alley.) The area in between the 2 gorges was closed, so what we did was hike into Hancock Gorge up to the part that was closed, (the dummies in the picture shouldn't be there) and then hiked back out the way we came. Then we drove to the other end of the hike, and hiked into Weano Gorge up to the other end of the part that was closed and then hiked back out the way we came. To be honest, the whole thing could have been pretty dangerous, and another thing that made me glad I joined a group tour. The people that died this year were both independant hikers that fell while rock climbing and were not found in time. Rescue attempts in Karinjini take a long time because there are no helicopters or ambulances that can come rushing to the rescue within about a thousand kilometer radius. Rescuers have to first get to Karinjini, which could take hours in itself since its not on a paved road, set up rapelling lines, and then get to the person and manually lift them out. Our guide, Mark, who has been guiding in Western Australia for 11 years, was an excellent leader and we all felt perfectly safe, pretty much. :) Aside from the Miracle Mile hike, we also did some smaller hikes into different gorges of Karinjini, my favorite was a short hike we did into Hammersley Gorge to a place called Spa Pool. Also, look at the cute little dragon I found along the way!

Coral Bay - Another few hundred kilometers down the road from Karinjini is a little town of 120 people where we stopped to visit the Ningaloo Reef. The Ningaloo Reef is not nearly as well known as the Great Barrier Reef, and doesn't attract even a fraction of the visitors as the Great Barrier Reef, but I think thats what makes it even more special. I did a snorkeling tour for the day which took us out to the reef, where we found some enormous manta rays, to swim with. They have wingspans (if thats what you call it) of 3.5 - 4 meters, and there were two that I followed around for about 5 minutes before they went so deep into the water that I couldn't see them anymore. We did some whale, dolphin, and sea turtle watching, and spent some time snorkeling in the coral. I had another underwater camera which same as before, doesn't do justice to the coral or fish, and I didn't find Nemo, but I DID find a close relative of Nemos, an orange anemone fish, two of them! It was a great day all around, except for the fact that I had the most embarrassing moment of MY ENTIRE LIFE on the boat. I'm sure you all want to hear about it so here goes... Basically, while the boat was moving from one snorkeling spot to another, I went into the bathroom. Just as I had peeled off my wet suit and swim suit, the guy driving the boat decided to pick up the speed. The bathroom actually faces the back of the boat, so as he picked up the speed, I fell forward. I fell into the door of the bathroom in just the right way that my hand unlatched the door and it swung open. I fell almost all the way out of the bathroom with both my wetsuit and swimsuit around my knees. Of course since it was too windy up at the front of the boat, all of the passengers were sitting at the back of the boat and got to see the whole thing. Grrreat. Although the face of the older lady that was sitting closest to where I landed was priceless, I much preferred getting a bloody face from pulling the scale down from the tree on Kili.

Monkey Mia - The biggest attraction of the Monkey Mia resort is that wild bottlenose dolphins that come in to "interact with humans." What this really means is that they feed the dolphins everyday around the same time, so the dolphins come in to shore and hang around until they get fed. People line up along the shore and rangers spend about 1/2 hour talking about the dolphins and then pick people out of the crowd to feed the dolphins a fish. It seemed to me like a bit of a circus, but it was nice to see the dolphins up close like that. It seemed like they were checking us out as much as we were checking them out.

Rabbit Proof Fence - When I decided to come to Western Australia, I started asking people about how and where I could find the Rabbit Proof Fence. It is a fence that was constructed to keep rabbits out of the agricultural area of Western Australia, but I know about it because of a movie I saw a few years ago called "The Rabbit Proof Fence." It is based on the true story of three half caste (half aboriginal, half white) girls that are part of the Stolen Generation. They were taken from their family in the northwest part of Australia and put into the Moore River Settlement, near Perth, which was a training facility set up to teach the girls to be domestic servents. At the beginning of the movie there is a scene where they find a man repairing the fence near their home and he tells them that it stretches all the way across Australia. When they escaped from Moore River they figured out that if they could find the Rabbit Proof Fence, they could find their way home by walking along it - which they did, for 9 weeks over 1500 miles. Mark told me that there was a stretch of highway between Monkey Mia and Kalbarri where the fence is on either side of the road (the road itself has gratings so the rabbits wouldn't hop across). So for the whole day, I sat in the front of the bus looking for this fence. After about 4 hours of keeping our eyes peeled, we found it! There are now two fences there, the original rabbit proof fence which is shorter and made of mesh, and another taller fence that was built along side it to keep emus and goats out of the agricultural area as well. I think the others on the bus thought I was a little wierd for being so excited about a fence, but oh well.

Nambung National Park - Our last major stop on the way to Perth was the Pinnacles Desert, which is part of the Nambung National Park. The pinnacles are tall spires made of limestone that were left behind as the sand eroded away.

Along the way, since we were in such remote places without light pollution from city lights, the stars were incredibly bright. I started experimenting with my camera taking pictures of the stars and the moon and some of them actually turned out. I don't know many of the constellations, especially in the southern hemisphere, but I did pick up Orion, who is lying on his side down here, and Scorpio. I also played around with focusing on the moon and moving the camera around while the shutter was open trying to make words (it can be a little boring at night out in the middle of no where). "HI" was pretty easy to do, but my name was a little more complicated.

Also along the way, we met a woman who had found a dead kangaroo on the side of the road and noticed that there was a joey in its pouch. Baby kangaroos won't leave its mothers pouch even if the mother is dead so she rescued it and was on her way to the animal hospital but in the meantime she made it a surrogate pouch out of a sweater and a backpack and carried it around. She said she'd been feeding it soy milk and it seemed to be pretty healthy. It was so cute, I wanted it.

I'm now in Perth, the most isolated city in the world. Seems like a very nice city, but to me, a city is a city is a city. I only have two nights here and then I'm getting on the 3 day Indian Pacific train to Adelaide. 3 days on the train. Can't wait.