Life's a beach

Finally made it to Broome! And an excellent trip (of course). Stephan and Ann (the Germans) were great to travel with... we had a fantastic time. Tarja was kind of annoying all of us by the end pretty badly (Very early on in the trip I noticed an uncanny resemblance between her and Marvin the chronically depressed robot from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy). Not good when you start thinking of her name as Marvin either :)

I've got too many pictures to post on the blog here, but I'll upload all of 'em to Flickr and you can see them here.

Well, the trip... we left Perth Saturday to a great send-off... about 15 people from the hostel waited around for us and waved goodbye and stuff... when you've been at the same place for a couple months it almost feels like leaving home. (tear) It was kind of a rough morning though, our campervan was dropped off at the hostel at 10am, and I got to bed at roughly 7:30. heh. Plus I was the driver. :)

So the first day we finally left around 3 in the afternoon, and drove a couple hundred kilometers south of Perth, and stayed in a hostel since it was rainy and very windy. At times it seemed like the campervan was gonna get blown right over.

Not much done the first day, but the second was a little better. Still rainy 'n stuff, but we got to see a little more. We went to an eagle reserve, and a chocolate factory, and tried to do a bit of wine-tasting but the wineries seemed to be all closed. Heh, had our first minor incident of driving on the wrong side of the road too, Ann was driving and she pulled out of a gas station onto the right (wrong) side. My comment... "Other side of the road please!" heh. That night we stayed in another hostel again, and had a good night of drinking and playing games. (and keeping everyone else in the hostel awake. Whoops!)

By this time we'd all had enough of the cold, so we decided to start heading north. Mostly a driving (and recovery) day, so we ended up staying in the campervan just south of Perth. The campervan only slept 3, so the whole trip I slept outside in my tent... which was great once the weather got better. But cold at first. Oh yeah, that morning before we started driving, we did a tree-top climb that was in the area. That was a lot of fun to do, even when you're swaying slightly before even getting in the tree. heh.



So the next day we did a lot of driving, and passed through Perth early in the morning. This was Stephan's birthday too, and the people back at the hostel in Perth thought we were going to stop by and stay for the night, so they had a party for him even though he wasn't there. heh. We made it to Geraldton that night, and stayed in another hostel. One of the attractions along the way, the Pinnacles... yet another attraction in Australia that involves rocks. Seems to be a lot of those!



That night we tried to surprise Stephan with a birthday cake... but it was too windy outside the campervan and the candles kept getting blown out. So we made him go sit outside while we lit them in the van. heh. Turns out he knew about the cake anyways, when we were driving earlier that day and someone had to brake hard the cake fell down from where we were keeping it, practically on his lap. Ah well.

The next day we went to another country... very cool. Back in the 70's a farmer seceded from Australia and formed his own country, the Hutt River Province. They have their own currency, and a post office and church. They really made it into a tourist attraction (we even got our passports stamped). That was fun anyways. Plus the guy who started it has a big carving of his head in stone. It doesn't get any better than that.



Around now the weather was starting to get a little better, but I kinda caught a cold or something and ended up sleeping a lot of the next couple days in the van. Sigh. While I was out we went to Monkey Mia, a fairly big tourist resort along the coast. Every morning they feed the dolphins in the bay, and everyone crowds around. Pretty neat seeing dolphins up close like that.

Well, this is gonna have to be a two-part post. I'm having a hard time thinking of all the funny stories.. most of them were inside jokes anyways (a lot of Old School and Wedding Crashers stuff. That glass IS half full! hahaha)

One more picture, a shot of me driving the beast. The road to the Hutt River province was really muddy, so we kind of had a red van for a while. heh.



Couple more days and I'll post again. It's kind of a shock to have to pay for internet again after getting it free for so long! Hope this appeases all those living vicariously through me. :)

-Brad