Craig & Sam Down Under

Hi guys!

Sorry it’s been a while since our last blog, we’ve travelled an enormous distance since you last heard from us and as always, there is much to tell…

We left you last time with the tale of our trip from Geraldton to Perth and how we stopped at the Pinnacles and New Norcia on the way, so really we saved the best stuff for this blog because Perth and Fremantle were two of the BEST places we’ve been so far in Australia.  For a start things were cooling down a lot and so the weather was loads more comfortable which made us lots happier.  Although Perth is the only big city in the West and we have a tendency to avoid big cities like the plague, this city was really special.  Fremantle is a town nearby where we set up camp and we used the buses and trains to get in and out of the town and city over a few days.

On our first day we did some exploring in Fremantle and sussed out the public transport ready for going to Perth.  Fremantle was about the same size of Hanley but obviously far nicer.  We went to the Motor Museum where we mooned over loads of cool cars, including one of Stirling Moss’s racing cars.  We visited yet another Maritime Museum on the harbour which was nice although Craig enjoyed it way more than me, I’d had a guts full of boats by then.  We also spent a little bit of time just strolling around the town, which you can’t really appreciate unless you’ve been there, so all I can describe is that it had a great atmosphere, friendly people ( not too many weirdos), clean streets and some cool old buildings, we felt like it would be a great place to live. 

The next day we went into Perth on the train and the city had pretty much all the same attributes as Fremantle only on a bigger scale.  We visited the Swan Bell Tower where we got some great views of the city plus a demonstration of bell ringing.  We were only just in time for the bell ringing and a crazy old lady let us ring a couple of the bells ourselves.  Then the official ringers arrived and we went up a couple of floors to see the bells in action as the ringers attempted a quarter peal, where each bell would be rung approximately 1200 times!  They were very good although there were a couple of false starts and we didn’t stay to watch the whole thing because it takes about an hour!  After that we went for some dinner and got all Sex and the City about it, supping coffee and munching muffins  -the city just has that effect on you, thank god we escaped!  Next we went in search of the Government House but only found the gardens! They were nice but you know… gardens.  Then we decided to find an internet cafe to do a blog and conveniently found a pub that had internet access and sold Guiness!  The internet was out of order but the Guinness was gooooooooood and it seemed so rude not to partake of a couple of pints!  The next stop was The Perth Mint and it was awesome.  We did a tour of the Mint and watched a gold pour take place, sitting about 5 feet away from $225,000 worth of solid gold bar!  We also weighed ourselves in gold on a funky machine, Craig’s worth about $2.7million and I’m worth a measley $1.9million!  The tour guide gave Craig a free coin with the Perth Mint insignia stamped in it and we also bought ourselves a personal one with the inscription ‘Sam & Craig * Great Australian Adventure * 2005-2006’.  It’s our new favourite belonging, we call it the precious and if you’re lucky we might just give you a peek when we get home.

Next day we returned to Fremantle to explore the markets which are supposed to be some kind of extravaganza over the weekends but we didn’t really have the money to splash out on stuff so we just had a look around.  We did however, manage to scrape together some funds to visit The Candy Cow.  The greatest sweet shop in the world ever.  They had some many sweets your teeth ached just looking at them.  We bought some Caramel flavour and Baileys flavour Fudge and it was gone before bedtime.  Yummy.  We also went to Fremantle Prison and did a tour there.  Pretty much everywhere we’ve been in Australia has involved visiting prisons and museums, so those of you who think we’re just bumming around should realise it’s actually very educational.  The Fremantle Prison was one of the best ones we’ve been to and I think that’s mostly down to the tour guide we had, an Irishman who was very very funny.  He pointed out tennis rackets on the roof from when prisoners had rioted, showed us the tennis balls the townsfolk used to cut open to put messages and drugs in and then throw them over the prison walls, we saw prisoners cells where they had been allowed to put artwork on the prison walls as well as the prison chapel where there’s a waiting list to get married there – it’s a huge trend, but we turned down the offer of a brochure to take home.

We would have liked to stay longer in Perth/Fremantle (to be honest, we’d have liked to live there permanently) but it was a national holiday weekend as well as a beer festival and the caravan parks were booked out so we had to move on.  There were only a few things we wanted to do in the South West corner, the first being Busselton Jetty, the longest completely Wooden jetty in the world and we’ve got photos to prove it.  Next we visited a National Park near Pemberton where they have the Gloucester Tree. This is a 60m tall tree that they’ve built a hut at the top of, for watchmen to go up and keep an eye over the forests in case of bush fires.  There’s a kind of ladder going all the way to the top and Craig climbed up by himself.  Obviously since someone had to take photos, I couldn’t possibly go up with him and was truly devastated that I didn’t get to climb it… oh well!  Actually, it was quite shameful that I was really too chicken as there were 9 and 10 year old children bounding up and down like it was no more than a simple staircase.

Next we stopped over in Albany, and spent a few days just chilling out as with the National Holiday there wasn’t much going on, the Aussies aren’t fools who slog in the garden digging and planting and building away their bank holidays like we do, they go to the beach and chill out so everywhere was closed.  We had to wait until Tuesday to get any food shopping which meant we were forced to have a MacDonalds and a curry takeaway over the weekend.  Gutted.  Craig got to do some fishing from the jetty down at the harbour though and was thoroughly chuffed with himself because he caught at least twenty fish on his first day.  I went with him on the second day and at the first sight on fish-blood had declared myself a non-fishing fan.  My book turned out to be really good though.

Moving on from Albany we headed back inland quite a way to see Wave rock.  It’s huge, it’s stripey and it’s er, rock.  Not really worth the long drive but at least we can say we’ve been.  We also went out to see the rabbit proof fence (or State Barrier Fence), which got it’s nickname because of the rabbits it attempts to keep out of Western Australia.  Craig has seen the film about 3 Aboriginal girls who are taken from their families to a Government run school-house type place and escape, walking miles and miles along this rabbit-proof fence through the desert to be reunited with their parents.  Film sounds good, the fence is just a fence.  Do we sound bored?  Not really, but you’ve gotta remember that each place we go to takes at least a whole day’s driving (7am-4/5pm) and it’s hot and there’s literally NOTHING in between places, it’s vast and lonely so forgive us for being disappointed when we drive so far to see things and they’re just rocks and fences.

 Anyway, we had a really huge jaunt ahead of us and our last massive spate of driving across Australia and that was the journey across the Nullarbor.  Nullarbor is Latin and literally means No Trees.  And there aren’t.  No trees, no nothing.  It took us about 4 days from Albany to Port Augusta, we drove through plagues of locusts which Craig had to remove from the inside of the engine, they were plastered all over the radiator and stuck in the wheel arches.  It was truly disgusting.  From Port Augusta we made our way South passing briefly through Adelaide to a place called McLaren Vale.  We knew there was work here so we came to check it out and have now been here for about a week, picking grapes.  We have been into the city of Adelaide very briefly one day to look for other jobs because the grapes don’t exactly pay well, but we’re saving most of the sightseeing for when the Jontfam arrives. 

There really isn’t much left for us to do here on the mainland, we’ve already seen so much, all kinds of terrain, cities, outback, rural areas, small towns, every kind of museum you can hope for, beaches, forests, parks, rocks, so so much and yet we’re only half way through our time!  It’s been amazing so far and while we’re working the grapes we’re busy plotting trips to Tasmania, Kangaraoo Island and maybe, maybe New Zealand – but that’s pennnies permitting. 

Sorry there won’t be much for us to tell for the next few weeks, although we can probably tell you lots of funny stories about grape picking and more amusingly, grape pickers (we’ve met some real characters) but do keep checking the blog and please leave us some comments!

 Love to all, missing you bunches (no pun intended)

 Sam & Craig

Long time no blog!  Or maybe it’s not that long in terms of time, but because we’ve done soooo much stuff lately it feels like ages since we’ve left a blog – and this one’s gonna be fair hefty so get yrself a cuppa before you start reading…

When we wrote our last entry we were in Broome, which is on the North West coast of Australia and the hottest place we have ever been to.  We stayed there for three nights on a nice caravan park just out of town near Cable Beach.  It was really a lovely little town and our first experience of a Western Australia beach town, it’s true what they say, the beaches on the West are truly the most fantastic in Australia and far nicer than any we saw on the East coast (and some of those were pretty damn fab). 

Broome was a major pearling town and on one of our days there we visited the Pearl Luggers exhibition where a cer-ay-zee guy who knew all about the history of the town and its pearling industry did an hour talk and demonstration but at about 200mph.  He really knew his stuff and it was fascinating, especially the stuff about the divers.  While we were there it was out of season for most tourists because of the severity of the heat.  It was actually very uncomfortable most of the time we were there, literally sweating the whole time and never wanting to be out in the sunshine because it was so extreme, so the 17° temperature of the air conditioned gallery was lovely and there was only one other couple there for the talk.  Because we were such a small group, the guy let us hold two pearls from the safe that they have at the exhibition.  One of those was considered the most perfect pearl to ever come out of Broome, and the two together valued more than AU$150,000 (about 70,000GBP) – all in the palm of one hand!

We also went to the Sun Cinema in Broome, the oldest operating outdoor cinema in the world.  In the day time we had a nosey around the foyer looking at seriously old movie posters of the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Humphrey Bogart, King Kong and Marylin Monroe, all originals, as well as movie projectors and other memorabilia and antiques.  We went back after dark and watched the new Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe film and had mexican food and obviously some goodies.  While we were sitting there we saw a shooting star in the sky – magic.

We visited Cable Beach twice whilst in Broome, once in the day time when there was sunshine and heat and again at sunset.  In the day time was had a lovely stroll along the shore, Craig found himself a crab, some shells and a funky flat rock that he could ‘surf’ (pics soon – they’re hilarious)  He also got himself stung by a jellyfish whilst trying to convince me to progress into deeper than belly-button height waters, I returned to the safety of the beach at a rate of knots when he said he’d been stung – even though it didn’t hurt that bad.  In the evening we returned to see the sunset and tok some cool photos of the sky and the mad-funky effects the clouds were having.  It was amazing, all purples, oranges and navy colours going on, I even shed a couple of tears (big girlie).

Anyways, it was far far too hot to really relax in Broome, even though it was a nice town and we enjoyed all the things we did there.  So we couldn’t wait to head south towards cooler temperatures and our next stop was Port Hedland.  This doesn’t advertise itself as much of a tourist destination, it’s more of an industrial place with huge piles of salt heaped all over the place and loads of ships coming and going from the port.  We had intended to stop over there to break up the massive distances on the West coast, as the driving can get extremely tiresome and was starting to drive us mad.  We also had good intentions, everywhere we stayed to get the exhaust on the van fixed, but everywhere we’d been the garages had been less than helpful, scratching their heads and saying ‘ooh… it’ll take at least a week to get the part and then I don’t know how soon we can do it for you…’.  So when we found a place in Port Hedland that could order the part for us there and then and have it delivered the next day, even though that would be a Saturday and we’d have to wait until Monday to actually have the work done, he said he could do it in hour or so and it was the best offer we’d had so far.  So we went to the caravan park we’d booked into when we arrived, but left after about 20 minutes, it was a serious grot hole.  And with the problems of the heat, we had also gained flies.  You’ll never know how annoying they are until you’ve had at least half a dozen or so in every facial orifice you own  – all at once.  So we found a BIG4, the upper class of caravan parks and booked in for the long weekend.  They had a rec room fully equipped with TV, pool table, ping pong, subbuteo, chocolate machine, internet and most importantly, air con.  We camped out there for most of the daylight hours during our stay.  We didn’t do much but watch TV and read books until Monday when we got the van fixed and prepared to leave the next day.

Our next stop was Exmouth, a lovely town on the tip of Cape Range Peninsula off the West Coast.  Our main reason for staying there was to visit Cape Range National Park and see the Ningaloo Reef.  The reef comes so close to the shore that we were able to take our snorkelling gear and just swim out a few metres and we were right above the reef.  In the morning we swam off Lakeside Bay, which had beautiful clear blue waters and the softest, whitest sand ever, but unfortunately all the coral on the reef was dead and there were very few fish.  We did see a sting ray though!  In the afternoon we moved down the coast a little bit to Turquoise bay which was fabulous, the water was just as wonderful as before except this time the coral was alive, striking colours and tonnes of fishes to see.  Fishes that in this instance we managed to leave behind…

Whilst in Port Hedland Craig had managed to acquire for himself a fishing rod (I won’t tell you how) so when we got to Exmouth he found a great little tackle and bait shop where the owner was very friendly.  We spent ages in the shop chatting to the guy there who gave Craig loads of helpful hints and a basic beginners guide to fishing.  We bought a book, some hooks, weights, fishing line and stinky bait and set off for the marina.  It was lucky we had done our snorkelling before Craig got kitted out or he might have tried to catch some from the reef!  When we got to the Marina there wasn’t a soul about and signs everywhere saying ‘NO FISHING’ so he was pretty gutted and absolutely dying to find somewhere where he could try out his new gear.

The next place after Exmouth was just down the road (to us, anything less than an 8/9 hour drive is ‘just down the road’ so expand your imaginations a bit), Coral Bay.  And like the beaches at Exmouth, this was equally fantastic.  And better still that they had defined fishing areas and Craig stood out at sea for a couple of hours watching his bait get munched and munched and munched.  He caught a couple of tugs on the line, a piece of coral and a rock which resulted in the first lost hook and weight. Oh well, at least it gave him the opportunity to practise setting up his own rig for the next time.  And he had fun anyway.  Meanwhile, I sat on the beach with Steven King (not really) guarding the bait from the seagulls and getting myself an interesting looking tan.  As well as traditional bikini lines I got a pretty funky raccoon look as i didn’t take my sunglasses off all day (kinda like Robin’s mask from Batman) and sunburnt ass cheeks. Nayce.

The next place after Coral Bay was one that we had been looking forward to since the very beginning of our planning this trip.  Monkey Mia at Shark Bay.  When we had first tacked up the map of Australia on my bedroom wall and gazed in awe at all the places we might see, we hoped we would make it to Shark Bay even if we didn’t get to see anywhere else on the West Coast (how naive we were!!).  So you could say we had high expectations and our experience certainly met them.  The resort of Monkey Mia is the closest place you can stay to where the dolphins swim up to the shore and we stayed one night on the caravan park there.  The place was lovely, it was a shame that there weren’t more attractions in the area, but we were happy to spend the night and wait until early the following morning just to see the dolphins.  There was a surprising number of tourists there considering everywhere else we’d been had been out of season due to the intense heat.  A long line of people were gathered at the feeding area of the shore for the first feed of the day.  The CALM Rangers were there to give information and also ensure the safety of the dolphins.  The lady with the microphone had an annoying but amusing habit of holding the microphone next to her shoulder but turning her head to talk to the crowd.  Mostly we heard her say “And the name of this dolphin is hmm…hmm….” or “the really interesting thing about these animals is…hm..hm….hm”.  Oh well, we laughed.  Then there was the age old law of ‘the bigger the camera, the less the rules apply to you’, where the rangers would be telling us that if we stand in a very straight line in the shallowest part of the water, the dolphins will feel the most comfortable and come right up to the waters edge, but if you allow the line to curve in at the edges, they will feel enclosed and back off.  The people with the biggest camera lenses stood right in the water, in front of everyone else and snapped away regardless.  When it came time for feeding the dolphins, four rangers lined up in the water and asked the whole crowd to move back onto the sand.  Reluctantly the giant camera folk gave in after some coaxing and pointed commnts from the rest of us.  The rangers then proceeded to pick people out of the crowd to come forward, take a fish from the bucket and feed a dolphin… And they picked Craig!!  We were so chuffed, only gutted that the camera chose that moment to have a dicky fit and didn’t work.  It totally made Craig’s day and was brilliant for us both.

Geraldton was the next place on our list and was the first place we were truly comfortable with the weather, it was just right, hot enough in the day but lovely and cool in the evenings.  We stayed over a weekend and Craig got to do some more fishing, we saw a really good display at the Maritime museum which had all kinds of info on the shipwreck of the Batavia, the HMAS Sydney Memorial, the Geraldton Gaol Craft Centre. It was a nice place, not too exciting but enjoyable all the same. 

From there, on our way to Perth and Fremantle (where we are now), we stopped off to see the Pinnacles at Nambung National Park and the small town of New Norcia with its Benedictine Monastery.  We were tempted to run around the Pinnacles naked like Billy Connolly did on his Australia tour but managed to restrain ourselves!  New Norcia was a pain in the butt to find so our time there was limited but it was great in a holy kinda way.

I better stop now cuz my hands are aching and Craig needs a pee but I promise not to leave it so long until our next blog!  There’s still loads to tell you all.

Huge thankyous to people who’ve left us comments, without them we wouldn’t have had a clue that you were reading about our travels, thanks for the posts and thanks for being interested!  When it says ‘comment awaiting moderation’, you did everything right that you were supposed to do, but we HAVE to check all your comments before they go for public viewing these days so don’t worry and please be patient.

Much love to all, missing everyone as usual

Sam & Craig xoxxo