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

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006 at 4:01 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.