As Cheeky As You Can't

Channel 7 Morning Show

2010-11-10T13:59:00.000-08:00

For more TV coverage video go back to the bottom of the home page

Challenge Completed!

2009-06-30T01:21:00.000-07:00

We did it!

For those who are interested, my first purchase was a pear and rhubarb crumble tarlet........Mmmmmm.............and I'm still trying to get out of a parking ticket I received one day prior to the official end of our trip.

We completed our mammoth journey a few weeks ago and have been trying to adjust to 'normal' life again.

With a few responsibilities which had escaped our attention for the nine months we were on the penniless journey, each of us now has a few neglected issues which require our urgent attention.
But of course we will resume writing blog posts and thank you’s, which are missing between Adelaide and Brisbane shortly. Please rest assured all you lovely people who helped us, you have not been forgotten. We will be giving our blog full attention as soon as we catch up with mums and dads who haven't heard from us in ages, with student loan repayments which have been neglected, feed hungry goldfish, eat all the salt and vinegar crisps we can, and get a bit of exercise after being cramped up in the cheeky van for so long! We are also catching up on the long awaited beer and bourbon which has been sorely missed for many a night of the trip.....so when we sober up......we will be back.

Our Cheeky Challenge - Circumnavigating Australia without Money

2009-05-26T23:56:00.000-07:00

Want to know more about how we started and what we are doing?
Read more about our mission and what people are saying about it here
Read The Beginning here
href="http://ascheekyasyoucant.blogspot.com/2008/08/its-lifestyle-choicer.html">The Challenge

From UN World Peace Day (Sep 21st) we circumnavigate the continent of Australia. See map.

We begin with NOTHING: we will have no cash, no clothes, no possessions and no vehicle at the start of our journey.

We remain penniless the whole journey, not spending a cent for anything.

We do any job given to us and donate all our wages to Book Aid.

At the end, we give back, donate or auction all we have been given.

Attempt to reach our goal of raising £10,000 ($22500) for Book Aid

We place the outcome of our journey, our lives and our adventure into the hands of others.

We work in exchange for goods and services such as food and fuel.
Read more here

The Penniless Nomad Adventure Tour - Where are we now???

2009-05-26T13:20:00.000-07:00

View Cheeky Trip in a larger map

It's 4pm Friday and we have just landed back in Brisbane! Hooray! We will be out fund-raising this weekend and then we will complete our penniless venture first thing Monday. We are hoping to reach our goal of $25,000.

Namaste Restaurant

2009-05-13T01:42:00.000-07:00

We had spent most of our time in Adelaide passing a cold between ourselves, and were consequently feeling pretty rough. Hostels aren't the best places to be when you are feeling unwell, there is little peace and even less privacy, we were however about to get pretty lucky. It was Friday and we had to move out of our hostel and we had nowhere to go, but in the space of one hour the endless phone calls that were made without success were about to become a distant memory. Not only did Quest Mansions offer us a serviced apartment for the weekend, we also received a phone call from Angela at Namaste restaurant to offer us a complimentary meal for the Saturday night.
Cities are often like this for us. We can go for days without any success and the gulf between our situation and those around us seems to be at its widest. With no money to spend and most people busy, cities are often the hardest places to get by. For us to have somewhere quiet and private to relax is a big deal - and to be offered a slap up meal in a nice restaurant, allows us to slip back into a relatively normal life, if just for a little while. For the opportunity to do this huge thanks must go to Brian and Angela Stebbing at Namaste.

We followed up their initial phone call to make sure it would be okay to turn up in our rags as we didn't want to offend their patrons, and after promising to dress as smartly as we could we spent the next 24 hours salivating in anticipation.On our arrival Brian and Angela greeted us and as they were very busy Angela led us to our table. After handing us our menus and recommending a few dishes she then said we should feel free to eat and drink what we liked. We were to be treated like normal customers. Normal customers! Overjoyed we thanked her and eased into our chairs for the duration.

The food was exceptional. This fine food was eaten with bottles of beer and glasses of wine, as we relaxed more with each passing minute and eased even further into our chairs. When coffee and desert were offered we had to pinch our selves.

As people drifted gradually from their seats and departed into the night we continued to enjoy our food, and for us, this rare taste of the lives we used to live. Just as we thought the night couldn't get any better we were invited to stay a while longer. It was the chef’s birthday and the staff were staying around for a few drinks and some food. We were so full that we couldn't conceivably force any more food into our rotund bellies. We did have room however for a few more drinks as we savored the company of our hosts and the restaurant staff.

We are exceptionally grateful to Brian and Angela for their act of generosity. We left Namaste with bellies full of divine food, but also having enjoyed some much needed and seldom enjoyed time away from the consuming nature of 'the trip'.

The word "Namaste" translates as "I respect that divinity within you that is also within me."

Adelaide - The Cold, the Flu and Someone has been Humping my Pillow!

2009-05-11T20:23:00.000-07:00

More spanners in the works.
Gareth’s visa is up again and he has had to jump out of the country again to renew it. This time he has skipped out to New Zealand for a few days. In the mean time Phil and I have been put up in a great apartment, Quest Mansions, for a few days over the weekend, right in the city. It is pure luxury to be able to do simple things like sit on a sofa and make a cup of tea whenever we like. Charlene, the manager has even taken our washing down into the restaurant below, washed our clothes and fed us. This is a treat.

Lilly flowers in Adelaide Botanic Garden

When we arrive in a city we always have to make use of the free public facilities such as library internet access and newspaper reading rooms. Days are spent in the library trying to catch up with emails and writing up everything that has happened during the long periods on the road when we have no internet access and catching up with the news.

We find a place to relax in Adelaide Botanic Gardens

When we have time we visit tourist information to get free maps and find out what treasures we can see for free in the city, and we are always surprised at how much you can do without money. In Adelaide, the South Australian Museum has a huge array of exhibiions under one roof, free of charge. As we wondered around we noticed the Veolia Nature Photographer of the year 2008 Winners were being exhibited. Below is my entry to this competition.

An interesting plant stem found in the Botanic Gardens

Just a month previously I had entered this picture in the 2009 competition, thanks to my sister Tara paying the £20 entry fee, and I was eager to take a browse around at the kind of standards I was up against. Luckily, we were given complimentary entry into this separately charged exhibition but as I walked through the gallery of astonishing shots, as I walked from frame to frame, I could see my chances of getting anywhere with my entry diminishing with every step. Take a look here at the amazing online gallery.

The hilariously named 'Mother in Law's Chair'

Another fantastic free attraction is the Adelaide Botanic Gardens featuring historic, scientific and educational exhibits of native and exotic plants. Filled with all sorts of people enjoying lunch under trees, taking pictures of specimens and taking a break from the office, this is a green haven of relaxation and peace, slap bang in the middle of the usual hubbub of city frenzy.

A Street Entertainer on Rundle Street Mall

Adelaide itself is a lovely city. If I had money to spend it would have been a great place to try out all the amazing looking cafes, and eateries. But even without cash it was still nice to wander around and happen upon some wonderful pieces of street art.

So far we have managed to go without doing these extremes

A few days later the temperature dropped.
We had been kitted out in clothes fit for intense humid summer only and now we have just landed in what feels like winter. Luckily I was given a pair of jeans from Sheree in Esperance but if it weren’t for that one pair I would be without full length covering my legs. I am still yet to be given any shoes and my toes are usually a pale blue colour. Sleeping in the van which is tightly parked in the small car park of a The Travellers Inn Hostel, (to whom we are very grateful for allowing us the use of their facilities including phone and internet). It’s so cold that I am wearing nearly every clothing item I have been given, I can't stop shivering even though I'm lying under a pile of sleeping bag, blankets and coats and I can’t bring myself to open the window to help remove the germs from my cramped environment for fear of letting more cold in. I have the dreaded flu.

Teenage lovers carve their declarations of love on the bamboo canes in the Botanic Gardens making some interesting graffitti art

I don’t know if it was the scrubbing of seagull poo out in the open, wearing next to no clothes, in Esperance; the sudden drop in temperature; or both, that got the better of me, but I am pretty miserable at the moment.

The camoflage pattern of this London Plain tree must be the inspiration for army wear

Headache, muscle ache and sinuses completely blocked, I have to breathe from my mouth, and I can’t stop the insane cycle of 3 sets 8 eight sneezes in a row per tissue.

Water fountain at the Botanic Gardens

Of course, we all know a cold is untreatable, but there are things which you can do to relieve the symptoms and to remove the germs from your environment.
Unfortunately for me, I can’t do any of these things. I can’t wash my pillow, put on warm clothes and lie in a comfy bed in a heated room with a bowl of chicken soup. In fact, I can’t eat any food items which would do me any real good right now. We are eating out of tins and it may well be the lack of fresh food in our diets that has left me susceptible to catching this cold. I don’t want to wash my hair because I haven’t used a hair dryer in over half a year and I know my long hair won’t dry properly for days in this wet cold weather.
Yes, the trite little mundane issues we most often find difficult to deal on this trip, have for me been turned into huge maudlin complaints now that I have flu and feel sorry for myself. The hackneyed sentences ‘Oh, if only I had a……..’ and ‘I would be better by now if I just had a……..’ splutter about my vicinity whenever the boys are near, but due to our circumstances, the only thing Phil can do to comfort me is make cup of tea after cup of tea (with no milk though I want it white).
Well, I won’t die but I don’t half feel the need for a few comforting things right now. I’ve just used my last tissue. Phrump.

So, looks like I won’t be doing much work in Adelaide.

We spend most nights in the van but do have some nights in a couple of hostels around town and are reminded about how disgusting other travellers can be. We found this cheese sandwich on the window sill, one bite taken out of it and the rest just left there for days. It was there when we checked in and was still there when we checked out, ants crawling all over it, a few days later.

Anyone who has ever stayed in a cheap large dormitory room knows how great and easy it is to meet fellow travellers and find a sociable group of people. However, along side this togetherness and friendly socialising, comes a few annoyances too. For example the ‘dorm rustle’. It starts with one or two of the dorm occupants going to sleep at a reasonable hour in preparation for that early morning tour they have booked, which has a pick up time of six am sharp. The fun starts as the rest of the bunk bed residents slowly decide to hit the sack in drips and drabs at stupid o'clock throughout the night in varying states of inebriation.

A water fountain on the streets of Adelaide displaying Aboriginal statues

Of course, with a room full of other people trying to sleep, putting the light on would be a big no-no, so, with up most respect for others the ‘rustlers’ creep into their corner of the room, and the fumble in the dark begins. Every item they need in order to prepare for sleep is in their back pack, somewhere, but will most likely at the bottom, the plastic bags within rustle, bin bag protecting clothes are searched through, afterward shopping bag are riffled and finally bags containing toothbrush rustle free of their bristle sticks.

Finally the rustler is ready to bed down and they hop into bed banging their head on the top bunk on entry, the under sheet of plastic on the mattress rustles as they find a foetal position facing the wall. And then a few minutes later, the next party goer returns from a few beers on the town, trips over a few plastic bags and starts his own rustling. All the while I’m trying not to listen to the rustling around me, trying so hard to get some sleep, but I am lying awake in my bottom bunk, staring at the disturbing bit of graffiti someone has written on the underside of the top bunk, which simply states:

‘I’VE BEEN HUMPING YOUR PILLOW.’

Doing a very small amount of fund raising around a few pubs, doing newspaper and radio interviews and we tried to make up for the fact we were all feeling a little caught out by the weather and cold temperature but all in all we really didn't feel too constructive in Adelade due to our failing health.

We interviewed in the ABC Adelaide studios

Adelaide - You Mad Cows Can't Donate Blood

2009-05-10T17:26:00.000-07:00

Does Mad Cow disease explain our crazy travel plans?

When we have a bad day, when things don't seem to pan out well, when we have to eat that stale bread without butter and sleep on the bottom bunk of a six dorm room that has decided to have a party around us, we look to other things to make us feel better. Without money it is impossible to reach for a bar of chocolate or a beer to comfort us, we have to think of other ways to take our mind off the things we covet.

Bad days for us are pretty tough. No food, no bed and no phone credit not to mention the SA temperature is dropping and we are only kitted out for tropical heat. This kind of bad luck usually only holds for a short while, we know from past experiences that we will eventually have good fortune.

In Perth, our new found friend, Mike Gilbert, turned one of our worst days yet into a joyous occasion when he decided to help us out when he was himself having a bad day, so we decided to take a leaf out of his book. Walking the streets of Adelaide we came across a blood donation centre and decided to give blood. Being the recipient of donated blood myself I know how important this kind of service is so we walked with a needle nervous stride to do a good thing. If we could help someone today then maybe due to karma we would have a better day tomorrow.

However, what we found out about our potentially tainted blood shocked us.

We can’t give blood because we lived in the UK for six months during the period 1980-1996 for fear of vCJD (the human form of ‘mad cow disease’). We three mad cows are not eligible to be donors.

Interestingly, if we had genital herpes or had smoked marijuana we would have still been eligible.

We walked out feeling a little perplexed, we didn’t feel ‘mad’ but then it would explain a lot, maybe it even explains the reasons behind us doing this trip.

25th April, ANZAC Day in Adelaide

2009-05-04T18:03:00.000-07:00

The Bugle pierced the gravity of reflection as The Last Post sang out long and clear after the One Minute's Silence, with the rain falling a steady, quiet drizzle, as with bowed heads, facing the Cross of Sacrifice in Memorial Park, and the Cathedral Church of St Peter standing watch behind, those present paid their respects, a dignified tribute to those who had died while in the service of their country and listened as the Chaplain spoke

An Anzac Day onlooker walks home after the parade ends

"They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them"

'We will remember them' repeated the crowd softly, hands cupped, or behind their back.

"Lest we forget" spoke the Chaplain

'Lest we forget', repeated the crowd.

There was a shift in the mood, a collective composing, as the National Anthem 'Advance Australia Fair' was sang, muted, solemn, clear and proud. A brief pause, then the Chaplain lead the Benediction to The Glory of the Soldier

"We remember the people of ANZAC who offered their lives that we might live
We recognize their gift enables us to explore, to value all that is precious to humankind. On this anniversary day, gathered around this Cross, we are aware of those who took inspiration from the sacrifices and suffering of their God.
The strength that coursed through the hearts of the ANZACS on that Sunday morning of April 25th 1915 is expressed in the words of the "poet soldier"

After the poem was recited the service came to an end. Moving around the Cross and back up King William Street, I crossed the park, passing all the uniformed men and women, old and young, gathered, talking, smiling, shaking hands, wistfull still after the service, but not sad, respects had been paid, tributes made.

The ceremony by the Cross of Sacrifice was the culmination of the parade. The parade was a military procession of both serving and ex-servicemen and women, that passed northwards along Pulteney St, onto Flinders Street, before turning west onto North Terrace, passing the State National War Memorial there and north again when it meets King William St, and onto Memorial Park.

The procession was due for a 9.30am start. The light rain did not deter the diggers from marching, much as it didn't deter the crowds from lining the street to cheer them on. Almost 7000 soldiers and next of kin marched, with 18,000 lining the streets. ANZAC Day is a big deal. It marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War. ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The soldiers in those forces quickly became known as ANZACs, and the pride they soon took in that name endures to this day.

Anzac Day in Adelaide

The date, 25th of April commemorates that day in 1915 when Australia first became involved in wartime conflict, and the men of the Anzac Corps landed on the coast of Gallipoli, in Turkey. Over 8 months 8,000 men were killed as they met with fierce fire and relentless attack. The anniversary of this day became an occasion of national commemoration. Commemorative services are held at dawn, the time of the original landing, across the nation.

The marches are held also all over the country; in all cities and towns, townships and villages, a service and procession marks the day. It is a day when Australians reflect on the many different meanings of war, the lives lost and its impact on life today. The multiculturalism of Australia means that soldiers from all over the world are represented, from each and every war Australia has deployed soldiers to or fought alongside. Represented on the march were veterans now living in Australia who fought for Greece, Poland, Holland, Malta, America, Canada, France, Britain, and Serbia among others.

There were also Jeeps conveying Diggers from WWII too old to walk, and glassy eyed with emotion, as each year sees less and less of them remain; veteran Diggers from the Vietnam, Iraqui, Timor, Somalian conflicts were marching; brass bands played Waltzing Matilda; pipers played The Road to Glenrowan; Military bands rang out It's a Long Way To Tipperary; fighter planes flew overhead; the Australian Defence Force marched; the crowd shouted 'thanks, mate' and 'good on ya digger' and cheered and clapped applauding the whole time; the RAF Boy Entrants, the Womens Royal Australian Army Corps, the 1st Health Support Battalion, the Special Air Service Regiment, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd,4th, 5th,6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th Battalions of the Royal Australian Regiment marched by one after another; the energy and rhythmic military drums keeping tight each step; and the music, the noise, the sound of the beating shoes, pounding snare, steady rain, and collectivity of the emotion of it brought tears to the eyes of many, observing and taking part.

Children were told by parents what Grandad had done, where he'd been and why, a proud father watched as his son marched, replete with Grandfather's medals, honouring his memory, taking part in the march, generations united, paying respects to deeds done, lives lost and sacrifices made. After the march and the service at the Cross, there was the mood of an afterparty to the solemnity, as back over the bridge we walked, and onto Memorial Gardens where two large tents thronged with people, drinking, talking, reminiscing, laughing and acknowledging each other.

It was raining heavier by now, the drizzle had turned into a steady downpour, so I turned to go back, to a cup of coffee, in the hostel. Whatever your views on war and warfare, ANZAC Day is a very special day, and it is only one day when commemoration be made to those who died in service to their country. It is a proud day, when Australians are reminded of those who lived, and died, in their name. And it was a pleasure to have been able to witness it first hand.

The Nullabor - Dingos, Bottle Trees and Vast Amounts of Nothingness

2009-05-03T00:12:00.000-07:00

Bye Bye Western Australia - Ceduna Quarantine stop

"Holy shit, you better be carefull going over the..watch out as you cross the...have you got enough provisions, spare tyres, clothing, food, limbs for the trip across the...people have died on the... people have been lost, forever, and not seen since on the expanse of the... watch will you while crossing the..."

NULLARBOR!

A statue in the gardens at Eucla

Like the mighty screech of a creature from the sky that devours humans like tiny ants and keeps their skulls as mementos of its terrible fury, we had been warned, repeatedly and without cessation, each time the word was mentioned that we should watch out... along the Nullarbor. It was not good there, and we should be careful, no, more than careful, we should go beyond it, and keep going, beyond being cautious, and speed up past even vigilance, on through good care and prudence too, and career headlong into paranoia and obsessive suspicion and speculation. Only then will you see... the Other Side, they said.

NULLARBOR! the word chilled the air.

Not far to go now to get back to our starting point, Brisbane

Good old Aussies. They love a good yarn, as has been mentioned before. But this Nullarbor of theirs was exciting them all beyond what we had seen or heard before; more vivid than the stories of spider bites, or crocodile attacks, or even spider attacks on crocodiles, were tales of the Nullarbor consuming travellers like some highway Bermuda Triangle. Hushed voices, raised eyebrows, a confidential lean-in, and a clasp of the hand warned us about it, made us promise to be careful, made us honour a sacred oath on a stone plinth while smearing goats blood onto our foreheads that we would exercise extreme care while crossing... the Nullarbor.

Probably the only point of interest alng the Nullarbor, some pagan looking worship tree, nomads have offered pieces of rubbish, the full moon back lights the bottle clad tree

What is this Nullarbor of which they speak? What thing or netherworld creature can this Nullarbor be supposing to represent? Tales of bloodsoaked Backpackers stunned to silence on the South Australian border, their suntans bleached a fearful pale green, and wincing at every mention of the word Nullarbor; that six spare tyres and another engine would be needed if safe passage be made; that those unprepared for it would surely perish and that dying on the Nullarbor be a thousand deaths before the blessed release of eternal darkness.

Australia's longest Straight road, the Nullabor

To dispense with the histrionics for a second we had to, in order to get to Adelaide, cross the (officially so-named) Nullarbor Plain. In the strictly factual topographical sense the Nullarbor Plain is the section of southern land between Norseman in Western Australia and Ceduna in South Australia. Nullarbor means 'no trees' in poor Latin, which is what it is famed for and for which its repute asserts its uniqueness.

Although the land within the Nullarbor is barren, the road is surfaced and mainly coastal. The Trans Australia Railway runs directly through the centre of the Nullarbor where presumably most of The Horror lives. The Eyre Highway along which we were headed, runs along the southern section of the Nullarbor Plain. The Eyre Highway was named after John Eyre, who along with John Baxter (who unfortunately died on the journey), crossed the Nullarbor in 1841. It wasn't until 1912, however, that the first car crossed the Nullarbor.

Thanks to Bruce and Stuart we had three new Jerry cans, to add to the four we already had. They were all full thanks to Henrietta and Donald MacKenzie. Jock 'The Wrecker' Murray filled our tank for us. We were also stocked with enough food supplies. Brian Tolhurst ensured we had enough fresh bread. Warm clothing we had need of and were given too. The Esperance crew had done all they could to make sure we got accross. It was up to us to do it. We could not let them down. Tear gas and a cyanide pill each inserted into our back-left molars we had also - just in case.

Heading out of Esperance we drove 203 kilometres north to Norseman. Topping up there, we headed 193km east to Balladonia. Staying there the night, we continued next morning east along the longest straight stretch of road in Australia, a distance of 145km, until Caiguna. There we stopped for coffee and sandwiches, glad to be alive. East again is Cocklebiddy where we put in 10 litres of fuel from the jerry can supply. Tense.

A further 90km away is Madura, and in order to reach it and to reach Mundrabilla another 116km east, we inserted 20 litres from the Jerry can store. We had by then covered 859 unforgiving kilometres. Staying in Mundrabilla for the night, we drank some/most of the beer Stuart and Bruce insisted (no, no, no, really, no ,no, no. Ok, then) we take with us, sipping entranced under the milky-glare of a bright full-moon. This Nullarbor was out there, we felt it.

The Nullarbor was illuminated by a full moon as we passed through the nothingness

The final town before crossing the South Australia border is Eucla. But 15 kilometres before that is the aptly named Border Village. While there Paul at the BP Roadhouse filled our tank for us and fed us and caffeinated us too. Leaving then crossing the border, we left behind the comfort and confidence gained while in Western Australia, and entered a new world, that of South Australia, and who knew if this was where the dreaded Nullarbor might strike and force us to sing Cliff Richard Christmas Carols before eating our heads.

That night we stayed at the Nullarbor Roadhouse over 1,000 kilometres from safety in Esperance and still 1,200 from Adelaide, but almost half way across the Nullarbor Plain. We saw the treeless expanse now. Now, we have seen a lot of nothing, if such can be seen and not experienced, and this was a whole lot of it. The wind sailed across the land uninterrupted and not a single natural undulation blocked the perfectly flat scenery all around us. This Nullarbor was so terrible because it was a void.

The moon-glare illuminated for us the starry sky after the sun not so much set as dropped down like a coin into a slot, and the pinkish sunset spread across the huge western sky. Wild Dingoes mooched around, hoping for scraps, but not wanting to offend The Nullarbor with indiscreet offerings to feral creatures (really, that's why, honest) they got none but a good old shoo-ing.

The night was brisk and cold. The sallying wind seemed be moving parralell to the ground, in a straight line hurrying accross the landscape. The silence was deafening. Looking out into the expanse it seemed entirely barren. Nothing moved, or swayed. At least the ocean is constantly in flux. Not so the Nullarbor Plain. It exists as a vacuum into which all living things must yield movement eventually and merge into the stillness. Nullarbor.

A Dingo puppy, quietly come over to wait for scraps of which we had none to give

It claimed a host of caravans and mobile homes and campervans, if our very eyes are to be believed!! The caravan park was full of passers-through when we went to bed. Full and teeming with campers, winnebagoers, campervaners, and sturdy swaggers. When we awoke, only one remained. An elderly couple were packing away their camp chair after a morning cuppa, probably amazed, like us, in a state of amazement, that the Nullarbor had claimed yet more people. That we were the only ones spared, we have Divine Providence and not being morning people to thank for that I'm sure.

Look how straight and featureless the road is in all directions

It was 297 kilometres to Ceduna, and we drove along the Eyre Highway passing close enough to the Great Australian Bight to make it easy to go see. It is a large bight (it looks like a large bite if you look at the map, as though a huge chunk has been chewed off) or open bay located off the coast extending from central west to the south. The coast line of the Great Australian Bight is characterised by stunning cliff faces of up to 60 metres high and it was a relief to see the ocean, after the Nullarbor almost clamied us the night before (the siren call of lost backpackers wandering in the night looking for rolling tobacco and cheap boxes of goon).

Sand dunes in the distance at the ege of the Nullarbor

Stopping along the way at Penang Roadhouse to fill the tank up yet again, we had clocked 1358 kilometres, with only 785 to Adelaide. Quickly feeding at Ceduna, we made it to Smoky Bay before dark, managing to find people good enough at the Caravan Park there to squeeze us in at an unofficial site beside the womens toilet, as it was Easter weekend, and they were full. Moving on next morning we topped up the fuel yet again at Wundera and Windarie Roadhouses before arriving, yet again, just before dark in Port Augusta, and finding, thanks to some more goodly folk, a plot at Shoreline Caravan Park.

Not wanting to hesitate in case the Nullarbor folowed us out and tried to eat our livers with some fava beans and a nice Chianti we made headway to Adelaide next day. Arriving in Paralowie, not far from the city, just before (ahem) dark we parked up in the Caravan Park. We had driven 2,266 kilometres in six days, survived the dreaded Nullarbor and broken new records for the amount of times we said but did not act on the mantra "early bird catches the worm". We may not have caught any worms, but we survived the Nullarbor and that's fine by me.

Quarantine searches our van at Ceduna

Look very carefully at the lonely building in the distance on the Nullabor Plain

Olive Picking - The Secrets to Becoming a Fit and Happy Octogenarian

2009-05-02T03:32:00.000-07:00

Henrietta and Donald MAcKenzie

Henrietta and Donald MacKenzie, run an olive farm just out of Esperance town. After reading our request for odd jobs for charity Henrieta offered us work picking olives. Sounds interesting I thought. I couldn't picture what an olive grove would look like and I was interested in learning more.

Smoko at the olive grove; well earned homemade muffins and flask coffee...Mmmmm

We landed around 8am in the morning ready to work but when we arrived it seemed the couple had been hard at work already for a couple of hours tending to their horse, dogs and laying out netting around the tree in preparation for our arrival. After brief introduction over tea we headed down to the grove at the bottom of their garden.

With nets on the ground around the olive trees, we were shown how to rake the olive from the branches, allowing them to drop and be caught by the net. Henrietta and Donald worked with us all day, with full vigour and energy. It’s not easy work, arms up in the air raking at a height all day but every time I thought of giving myself a break I would look over and see Donald with his new knees pushing the wheel barrow I could barely lift and notice Henrietta powering away, putting my weak stamina to shame.

Can you believe he has just had new knees and beaten cancer?

It was surprising enjoyable work. Satisfying….like popping bubble wrap all day the olives would pop of the branches and drop to the net with a satisfying thud.

At the end of the day we three were knackered. We sat at the kitchen table over a cup of tea but Henrietta and Donald, like Ever Ready Bunnies were out tending to the animals then preparing dinner.

Anne loves to rake olives, it's the pooping as they come off the branch

Over a delicious home cooked Shepard’s pie Donald told us stories of his et setting life living in Europe, Africa and finally Australia. The couple have led such an interesting live; climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, building three homes from scratch and trying out various farming trades.

Henrietta and Donald were such inspiring people. I’ve never met an octogenarian couple so full of vim and gusto, joi de vivre and a lust for life. Retirement for them meant being as active and as busy as ever, producing Olive Oil for sale as others their age complain about daytime TV but watch it all day just the same.

Of all the days on this trip I think I learned more in the twenty four hours with Henrietta and Donald than with anyone else. I have witnessed a lifestyle for elders that I hadn’t come across before up until this point. I hope I remember to model my years on that on this amazing couple as I reach my eighties. Donald has managed to beat cancer and Henrietta is an extremely active community member, volunteering with the pony club among other interests. With an incredible past shared together they are of sharp mind, are of great physical strength and have a great deal of love for each other. This is everything most of us wish to achieve in life.

Gareth, just about to gather the olives in the net

As we said our good byes Donald handed us a signed copy of his book. Over the next few days we each read it with much interest. What an amazing couple, a pleasure to meet, an honour to talk to and a joy to work with.

With more wages for Book Aid we headed for the dreaded Nullabor.

Fishing! We catch fish.....but alas, we don't get to eat them.

2009-05-01T20:21:00.000-07:00

Brett Thorpe, a friend of Bruce's, took us out in his boat The Ant, the day before we left Esperance. Discovering we hadn't yet caught a fish while in Australia, he vowed to correct this anomaly, promising without doubt that we would have fish on hook in no time. A bold statement said with the conviction of an Aussie who knows fishing is Australia's biggest past time, but who is ignorant of our ability to maintain highly embarrassing fishing failures.

The ride out was great, holding on tight for fear of falling out we bounced around our seats. Once we stopped the engines to fish the boat started to take a gentle roll around the sea. Unfortunately, it was this gentle rolling that brought about an irresistible urge to sleep, a sign of sea sickness, and I slept off the final half of our fishing adventure in the cabin.

Bret Thorpe takes us fishing on The Ant

With modern equipment using sonar to locate shoals of fish we anchored up near the edge of a reef and dropped our pre baited lines in. Our first catch was hooked within seconds of our lines reaching the sea floor. We caught nannigai snapper, 'blackarse' bream, skippies, queen fish, swallow tails, and the boat pitched and rolled, and drifted, and all our previous, sad, pathetic and comedy attempts to fish, were forgotten, as Thorpie attached weights to lines, to hooks and not only actually used bait, but the proper stuff too, not just crusts of bread, and we caught fish, actually caught fish.

It took us just over half an hour to get to our fishing spot and we fished for just over three hours. The boys were able to relieve themselves over the side of the small boat easily, for me there was nowhere to go. I could hardly hang my bum over the side of the boat, and definitely not in such close proximity to four men who were taking up most of the available room on the deck. The bumpy ride home was painful, motoring against the wind and it took us about 90 minutes to get back. And I counted down the seconds in every one of those minutes.

A gull hovers around the boat waiting to steal our catch

Queen snapper

Laury catches a big cuttlefish

On our return to land we received a lesson in how to fillet a fish. We watched in awe as an enormous, colourful, pile of tropical fish were turned into a relatively tiny pile of neatly prepared fillets. As this was our final day in Esperance we had no time to actually eat any of the fish we caught and we couldn’t take it with us for lack of refrigeration. So, we only half fulfilled one of our dreams of catching a fish and eating it. We will simply have to go fishing again. Woo hoo!

Nannigai snapper

Laury is given a lesson by Bret on how to fillet different fish varieties

Gareth buries the fish in the garden

The happy three with their catches of the day, notice Laury has the biggest smile

Travelling Australia without Money - Free Travel but Not Exactly a Working holiday

2009-05-01T14:37:00.000-07:00

Picture from the Post Newspaper, Perth

We have been on the road for more than half a year now without spending a cent. We have travelled nearly 20,000kms around Australia and we have received the help of hundreds if not thousands of people.
Who would have thought it would have been possible? But living in the modern day world without the use of money is no breeze in the park and the trip is taking it's toll on us.

It isn't easy travelling in this manner, we have done everything and anything to earn money for Book Aid and some days are easier than others. Looking in the mirror we feel we have aged quickly during the last six months. The simplest of necessities becomes a trial to aquire, turning something which is usually a no brainer in life before the cheeky challenge into a stress filled challenge.

Below are some more links to people covering our story.

AS Cheeky As You Can’t team members Phil Carr, Anne Race and Gareth Owen slowed traffic last Friday as they performed odd-jobs in nothing but swimwear and a garbage bag to raise money for Book Aid International.

TRAFFIC literally came to a standstill on Esperance’s main street last Friday, as cars slowed down out of curiosity to watch three scantily clad people scrub the roundabout at the intersection of Andrew Street and The Esplanade.The three friends, Anne Race, Phil Carr and Gareth Owen, make up the As Cheeky As You Can’t fundraising team, currently travelling Australia to raise funds for Book Aid International.
To raise funds, the teams have been accepting odd jobs in the towns they have visited, however they quickly agreed that Esperance people had some of the oddest jobs on offer.

Nomads Tour for Charity
PHIL Carr, Gareth Owen and Anne Race don’t have a cent between them but they’ve managed to travel across Australia and, in the process, raise $20,000 for the charity Book Aid International.
The trio left their homes and jobs in the UK with little more than the clothes on their backs.
They rely on the generosity of those they meet for everything from their food and accommodation to phone cards and fuel.
Read more here in the Busselton - Dunsborough Mail

Bin There, Done That
There are all sorts of people travelling around Australia at any given time and it is this diversity of people that you meet that helps to make it such a special experience......Grey Nomads

Going all the way with 'cheeky' Oz challenge

BARE ESSENTIALS: Phil Carr, right, and pals Anne Race and Gareth Owen, relinquished all possessions except bin bags as they started their challenge

22,000 Italians watch a home made video of us at the begininning of our journey!!!!

See the link here

Below are some pictures that Mike Gilbert took of us filming in Perth

As lovely as the bin bag look is, we are looking forward to getting back into our own clothes at the end of our journey

Esperance Brumbys (Wild horses) - Apex and Rotary Club together to help us and Book Aid

2009-05-01T05:34:00.000-07:00

Glorious Esperance

Luke Winter, host of the morning show on Radio West invited us into the studio and as we waited for our spot (us media types have 'spots', not appearances, they are for the GP- general public) we were made aware of the pranking that was going on, the April Fools Day Grand Fooling. Luke was spreading the story going round that ACDC were coming to town, for one night only, only for a night, and that tickets were available from Ross Beckett at the Civic Centre, and to get on down there if you want to see the worlds greatest rock band performing in Esperance Civic Centre Music Hall.

Our 4X4 tracks on Cape le Grande beach

Many went, and when they found out it was an April Fool’s hoax a few found the joke in it, some were irate and didn't see the funny side at all, and we were on air just after Luke came clean, presumably our story was drowned out by swearing and cursing and slippers hurled at radios. How can the appearance of three idiots dressed in binbags and budgie smugglers compete with the rock-it-to-the-core get-on-down of ACDC?

We stop to admire the beautiful views

We also that day went to see Paul at Esperance Glass and he agreed to fix the window that was smashed by those drunken youths, which since Perth has been patched with cardboard, sticky-tape and a plastic bag flapping in the gap to give a raggle-taggle gypsy style to the van. He was amused by our story and so agreed to help out, just bring the van in early next morning and jobsagoodun bigfella.

We went into town and popped in to see Stuart Ward, at Bay Automotive, the Holden dealership in town, who we met the night before, and he introduced us to Bruce Kelman, his partner in the business. Between these two we were subsequently to find ourselves better looked after than Queen Elizabeth's prize corgis, if those corgis be pampered then plied with more alcohol than a herd of prize rhinoceroses could manage. More on that to come though.

Look at the angle this 4X4 is riding down a rock on! We were 'holdin on tight to the Jesus bars'.

Not only were we extremely looked after in terms of work to earn money for Book Aid but we were given the star treatment in private tours of the area. Barry Wroth, another Apexian and Laurie, our home host and resident policeman were our guides for the day. In Esperance there are two kinds of people; those with a 4x4 diesel powered truck, and those who want one. And as we thundered along the sand, riding the curve of coastline from Esperance Bay towards Cape La Grande and Frenchman's Peak I wanted to hurl Barry out of his seat and into the dunes aim seaward to take this badboy into Ultimate Off-Road Territory and tear up the motherlovin seafloor. Returning to sanity as my head bounced off the roof of the car, I mentally apologised to Barry as we rebounded over yet another compacted-solid drift of sand ("oops, didn't see that one coming", said Barry, repeatedly, again and again).

Laury runs into the cool clear waters at Cape le Grande

View from the top of the rock we climbed in the 4X4s

Slowing only momentarily along the 24 kilometre stretch to observe some Brumbies (wild horses) we wasted no time in getting to Cape La Grande. But this sighting of two brumbies and their foal was, we later learned, an extremelyspecial event. For the past four year Laury, an equestrian finatic, has been hoping to sight them. We were extremely lucky to see such magnificent wild animals galloping along the beach.

Brumbies grazing in the sand dunes, Cape le Grande

The walk down was a swift one, and we careered from Cape la Grande towards Esperance Bay, along the sand again with as much head banging, jolting bounce as we had on the way ("oops, didn't even see that one coming", said Barry) and back to Laurie's, for a barbeque, some beers, and then more beers once Bruce turned up.

Later in the week, at Stuart's behest and Bruce's insistence we joined them for dinner at the Loose Goose Restaurant, then after the meal (Phil cut loosy-goosy and enjoyed the local favourite of a Lamb's Brain starter followed by a Pigs Nipples main course) we went to Sin City Niteclub, a by-invitation-only venue, a select few get to enjoy, where the chosen ones are plied with drink and forced to have fun. In Stuart's immortal phrase, "so let's get you lot fucking mashed".

Sin City; Stuart's play room

Before we got too lathered

The night gets messier

It's all Stuart's fault, he hides his horns well

Sin City is the upstairs games room in Stuart's home, replete with pinball machines and video game machines, a juke box, pool table and bar, we did what we were told and went drink-for-drink with the Stuart and Bruce, cut loose, and as everyone in turn fell, staggered, collapsed, danced around and with decreasing competence played pool and with increasing gusto sang along to the music, we got absolutely hammered, totally shitfaced and we all woke up with sore heads, inside and out, bruised temples , sore legs, red-eyed and feeling like a herd of wildebeest were rampaging through our heads, but all the better for it.

This photo and the following photos none of us can remember taking, they were all found on the following day, mementos of what happened after our memories failed us

Blurred, out of focus and underexposed pictures taken by who knows who but the carnage is noticable anyway

We were very well looked after in Esperance and the two day hangover that came after our night in Sin City was symbolic and apt. Stuart and Bruce had also collected supplies for us: food, clothing, beer, soft drinks, jerry cans, and we were overwhelmed by their generosity. From our visit to the Bay Rotary and Rotary clubs, we made more friends and more donations, helping out at the Relay for Life, serving brekkie, and receiving another $250 from Lee McKenna, Rotary President, and later fuel from the rascally lovable rogue Jock 'The Wrecker' Murray before we left.

The Rotary Club meeting

Staying with the Seatons was a lot of fun. With their three energetic children keeping us entertained there was never a dull moment.

Laury riding his horse

It was a truly amazing experience in Esperance, and that word is not here used lightly. From the scheming of Derek, to the generosity of Stuart and Bruce, to the charm of the Seaton's, and the warmth and gregariousness of everyone else, we had been treated to a real community's efforts to welcome us, and help us raise the money. That we had to strip down and smuggle-up to benefit from this overwhelming tide of positivity and munificence was the least we could do. Frostbite yer todger? In a heartbeat.

Rachel, one of the most energetic ladies we have met

Rowan

Sarah

Liam

We start work at 5am to help make 500 breakfasts for Relay for Life participants, well done to all those who participated

Phil with Rotary Club president, Lee

Brian and Paul of Brumbys Esperance donate bread for our Nullarbor trek

Read about us in Esperance local paper here

Smuggling Budgies in Esperance

2009-04-29T20:23:00.000-07:00

Passed along the Apex Australia grapevine, we were put in touch with Derek Clarke in Esperance. Esperance is on West Australia's southern coast and a short drive from Ravensthorpe where we were staying with friends of Derek's sister Mazz, Jenny and Andrew Chambers, on their wheat farm. Over dinner at the Chambers' the night before we set off for Esperance, Mazz had warned us about Derek, "he's not like me at all, I don't know where he gets it from". Gets what, we asked. "He's very... dramatic" was all she would say.

View from Frenchman's Peak Hill

Dramatic? True enough. We had received this text message from him the day before: Do you guys know what Budgie Smugglers are? With no further elaboration, we tried to put the squeeze on Mazz, to see if she knew what her brother was up to. Clearly under orders not to reveal more and spoil the surprise, all she would say was that "my brother has a real taste for the dramatic. I'm not supposed to tell you any more. He..." and she tailed off as we hung our fork-fulls mid air, mouths agape, wondering what in the name of dancing Beelzebubs we had gotten ourselves into.

Budgie Smugglers? Errant, flair-for-the-dramatic brothers swearing their sisters to secrecy? This was all very cloak-and-dagger, too Mr Mustard in the Drawing Room with a gold chandelier. What pact had we entered into when we accepted the offer of assistance from the Apex Australia club? Would we ever be the same again? Who supplied the budgies and where were we to smuggle them to? Would Phil, who regularly sleeps with one eye open, now keep watch with two? Our fate was out of our hands and an enigmatic riddle was unfolding. We had no choice but to walk smack-bang into it.

Climbing up Frenchman's Peak was not the easy stroll we first thought it would be

We drove smack-band into Derek’s scheming by early afternoon (regular subscribers to our blogsite will undoubtedly know by now the regularity with which we arrive places ‘early/late evening’, as intrepidity may be a full-time state of mind, but it doesn’t really kick in until the fourth or fifth cup of coffee after waking up. This note is for all you who take notice, who really care, and who take pride in pointing these things out). He had contacted us as we approached Esperance, telling us to meet him in a lay-by, outside the town, in the Information Bay, and to ring him when we were there.

What? Why are we? Uh? He said what? And we just wait and? Ah? That’s what he said to what? Eh? These words and more like them we inarticulated as we waited for Derek “Drama” Clarke to meet us. It was all very Mission Impossible – enigmatic Budgie Smuggler codewords, secret itineraries, secure location ‘meets’ - who was this man, this Dr Strangelove who orchestrated all this? (You exshpect ush to talk? - No, Cheekyasyoucants, I expect you to die!)

Barry Wroth and Laury Seaton make sure Phil doesn't forget his bucket

Half-expecting a blacked out anonymous-looking car to glide along the gravel path towards us and for a besuited bowler-hat wearing, stocky, strong-arm Chinaman killer-assassin-chauffeur to open the passenger door and for an egg-headed oddball scar-faced evil genius to emerge to tell us our fate, we were surprised when Derek drove up to us in a perky white car, and emerged from it smiling, looking normal, but smiling a smile all the time.

We make it to the top. Anne now has more to worry about than her fear of heights

He introduced himself then handed us our itinerary; a map of Esperance; directions to the Seton's whose house we would be staying in; a voucher to buy some lunch at the Jetty Café; and our activities for the next two days, starting with the Apex meeting that night, where we would have explained to us what the list of challenges intricately associated with Budgie Smugglers and enigmatically entitled Wash a Beret, Scrub a Seal and Clean a Car actually meant. Still smiling, he laughed, then abruptly said goodbye, and left us in the lay-by, waving us off, still smiling, and laughing, and we felt worried, confused, and deeply, deeply concerned that Derek was some kind of sick twisted sicko. As it turns out we were only half right.

Stood Half Naked on Frenchmans Peak we celebrate that Challenge 1 is Completed

We parked up at Laurie and Rachel Seton's home, greeted enthusiastically by Rachel, as Laurie, Apex Club President, and Policeman, was working. She showed us to the annexed building which was to be our home for the next week, and we settled in, then went to the Apex meeting to discover our fate and see what all this clandestine maneuvering had been leading us towards. We had heard of the secretism and furtiveness of the Masons, but also of the covert and hidden nature of the Ku Klux Klan. Was this somewhere in between? What did they have against budgies anyway?

Well, now we know what budgie smugglers are!

We found out soon enough though. Arriving at the meeting in the Bay of Isles Hotel for the 6.30pm rendezvous we were met by Derek, who took us inside and put us at our ease, introducing us to members Stewart Ward and Ross Beckett, who in turn introduced us to the others. Before long we were taken into the meeting room, and introduced to everyone else, as they went through the procedural and practical machinations of running a service club.

We wash a Frenchman's Peak Hill

Apex is the only Australian made service club, being founded in Geelong, Victoria, during the 1930s depression by three young architects. The three, sons of Rotarians, had wanted to join a Rotary club but because they shared the same profession, were not allowed. So they formed Apex. Now an Australia wide organization Apex clubs are made up of members aged 18 to 45, of both men and women, and youth clubs consisting of young Australians aged up to 18.

At the beginning of the meeting acting President Ross Beckett (Laurie was on duty, catching perps) asked Derek to voice the Ideals of Apex, that summarise the aims and aspirations of the Apexians. He stood and repeated verbatim that it was their goal: "To make the ideal of service the basis of all enterprise; To develop by example a more intelligent and aggressive citizenship; To provide a means of forming enduring friendships, rendering altruistic service and building better communities; To promote international understanding and friendship". Then asked as a matter of protocol to repeat the mission statement, he declared, with a smile in our direction, that it was "To grow, learn, make friends, and have fun, while helping others".

Gareth working away at task number two

He then sat down and the meeting went through its motions. After dinner was served we were asked to speak, and after the explaining was done, we sat and answered questions. Then it was time to reveal what it was we were to be doing, and what the mystery had been all about. Individual envelopes were handed to the three of us, and one by one, we were asked to open them to reveal our challenges.

Challenge 1: Wash a Beret. Sponsored to the tune of $250 by the Esperance Apex Club. We were to climb to the top of Frenchman's Peak, a hilltop lookout, and, with only a bucket and a toothbrush, clean the top of it, wearing only a pair of Budgie Smugglers

Challenge 2: Clean a car. Sponsored for $250 by the Bay Automotive Group. We were to clean all the cars in their used car lot, again, wearing only the Budgie Smugglers.

Challenge 3: Scrub a Seal. Sponsored for $250 by Bay of Isles Computers. We were to scrub, using only toothbrushes, all the birdshit off the seal statues in the fountain in the roundabout in the middle of town, wearing, again, only the Budgie Smugglers.

By then, of course, we had a fair idea what 'Budgie Smugglers' were, so when Derek produced from a goody bag a pair of (brand new, thank god) skin-tight swimming trunks (bathers? cossies? togs?) for Phil and I, we were not surprised, but imagining ourselves in them in public took some doing and was an image best pushed aside. We were learning that we were going to have to earn our donations. The date for the challenge was set for early the following day, so, presumably, we could not scarper and do a runner.

On the Thursday, Laurie had a day off, and he suggested we take a drive around the beach to Cape la Grande, and up Frenchman's Peak, where we could complete Challenge 1. As promised, we packed our budgie smugglers. Unloading the cars we were then loaded with the buckets, the water, the toothbrushes and (for those of us endowed by nature with one) our budgies, which were tucked away snugly, and we ascended Frenchman's Peak. The view top was breathtaking, with a panorama of Esperance Bay and beyond. In the matter of minutes, though, the view was a whole lot less pleasant, as bare flesh goosepimpled by the biting wind, and wedgie-snapped milk white cheeks punched each other inside over-tight speedos, and the budgie in us withered and shrank away, as we cleaned and clenched then through gritted teeth performed our task, completing our challenge, and abandoning our dignity.

The day of the challenges and we were ready and waiting, willing and wanting to get it all over and done with, asap, no-questions-asked, get-in get-out, no messing around up and attem. We arrived gingerly at the Bay Automotive Group. Stuart and Bruce showed us their used car lot, and all 50 vehicles waiting to be cleaned and took the piss. Stuart then introduced us to Brownie, who usually does the job alone and fully-clothed, and to his credit, he took it in his stride.

We were both of us smuggling before long and as the traffic swerved and veered to catch sight of us (or having caught sight been blinded by the reflection off a gleaming 'ttock) and whistled and jeered and put protective palms over innocent kiddies eyes, we were lathering up a storm, washing the cars with both efficiency and sexiness, showing more thigh than a Butcher's shop window, with more bounce than a seal rookery during the mating season.

After being presented with our cheque by Stuart and Bruce, we drove off to out next challenge in a courtesy car, our van being given a full service by the mechanics at Bay Automotive, much to Stuart's chagrin as he joked "they're givin ya the works, I told em to check the oil and change a windscreen wiper for ya, but they never bloody listen to me", and waited for Derek Clarke at the Roundabout on the intersection of Andrew St and The Esplanade.

Sarah, an Apexian collects extra donations in the form of viewing the nutters tax

We had lost one of the toothbrushes we were to use to clean the seal statues, presented to us at the Apex Meeting (the vortex that is the inside of the van swirls at a rate three hundred thousand times faster than even the fastest of washing machines - that is: fast - nothing is where you put it, even if you say you put it there, which you probably did, but three dimension changes ago. The Vortex ) and told Derek that, drat, golly-darn, and oh, no, we're one peg-brush down, and ..tch.. ooh.

We scrub away at the seagull poo with our toothbrushes

"Not to worry" says a beaming Derek 'Drama' Clarke, "I took the precaution of bringing an extra one each, just in case, so you can all get stuck in. Here you go", and he presented us with a choice selection. I took one with the double-brush-action with the thick-set tubi-grip and smiling through my teeth at Drama we proceeded to the roundabout, got semi-nakeed in public and clambered into the middle of it, took up a seal each and scrubbed.

To say that it was humiliating would be to assume we had much shame or sense of self-worth remaining in us after the two previous challenges. There was a steady stream of cars passing by. Some circled and drove circuits to get a better look, others were visibly disgusted, some laughed and cheered us on, the hoot-tooting of car horns continuous. Sarah and Ross Beckett stopped drivers and shook the tin collecting donations for us. Any ideas we may have harboured about this being a publicity stunt for five minutes for the local paper were swiftly banished, as Derek, still smiling, took picture after picture, reminding us at one stage that "you only have another forty-five minutes left guys, well done". Only?

We laugh at the expressions of drivers passing by as they see us at work

We scrubbed and cleaned and got stuck in. Now we're not sure why he did it, but Drama told us half-way through the challenge that "it's lucky you're doing this today, because on Monday the council are cleaning it all with power washers, and then there'd be no birdshit left for you guys to clean eh". Lucky wasn't the word that immediately sprang to mind really.

Toothbrushes in the air, Challenge 3 is completed

Paul Wenegal, from Bay of Isles Computers, who sponsored us for this challenge arrived just as we were finishing up our Indignity Hour, having scrubbed all the crap we could find. It felt strange being back in clothing. And although it was cold us budgie smugglers are a toughened breed, but our budgies were withering and needed a nice warm bed.

Paul, the man responsible for challenge number 3

Two minutes after we finish cleaning the seagull poo the birds are back undoing our work, laughing at us with their caws.

Our two Death Filled Encounters with Whales - Beaching and Hunting

2009-04-28T05:52:00.000-07:00

The Cheynes Whalechaser

'To see whales', this was always up there on our wish list for Aussie experiences. But I could never have guessed the way I would be first introduced to them would be so dissapointing and sad.

Unfortunately, our first encounter with with whales wasn't exactly a happy affair, nor a real encounter. We were in Margaret River when we heard the news over the radio. More than 70 whales and dolphins had been stranded just down the coast at Hamelin Bay in a mass stranding. The survivors were to be moved to a new location and all the dead whales were to be moved out of the water to stop sharks coming inland to feast on the dead and even those still fighting for life.

We decided to go and help try to save the remaining eleven that survived the initial stranding, driving as fast as we could given our strict 80km/h economising speed limit. Heading straight to the beach armed with towels, we thought about what kind of work we would probably have to do as a volunteer. But it wasn't to be. The road to the beach was blocked.

Given 3D glasses we watched the underwater world come to life during a film shown in one of their old whale oil storage tanks.

Informed by a steward that we could only volunteer our services if we had full length wet suits we were stopped in our tracks and told to turn around and go back. Dejected, feeling a little uselesss, and sad about hearing that more of the whales didn't make it, we returned to Margaret River with somewhat less of our precious fuel, all towels dry.

Volunteers who did have the proper whale saving wear showed great perserverance saving those few that made it. The dead whales are fairly scratched up because they washed in over rocks and we watched news footage of volunteers crying over those that couldn't be saved. The dead whales were transported to a waste disposal area within the Shire of Augusta-Margaret River. The Shire provided resources and equipment for this process.

Earlier in the year, 194 pilot whales and seven dolphins became stranded on a sandbar in Tasmania and only 54 whales and five dolphins were able to be saved. In January, 45 sperm whales died after becoming beached on a different Tasmanian sandbar. The reasons behind these mass strandings are still a mystery. It was sad that this happened - we are still yet to see a live whale.

Along with mass beaching in the area effecting whale numbers, the whales around here were once hunted to near extinction. Albany was once the home of whaling and sealing in Australia, the first recognized industry in the young country in those days. Gradually, from the beginning of the 1800s the local whaling ventures were joined in the seas around Albany by American, French and British whaling ships, with the Norwagians joining in later too to chase firstly the Southern Right, then the Humpback and Sperm whales, and it continued until 1978, when legal changes made the operation untenable.

All the original equipment are on display at Whale World

We visited Whale World, Albany where we were donated with free entrance tickets to find out more. Although learning about whaling was hardly a sustitute for seeing live whales migrate along the Australian coast, it was a surprisingly enthralling experience.

Situated on the site of the old Cheynes Beach Whaling Station, located on the picturesque southern coast of King George Sound in Albany, Western Australia. The station ceased whaling operations and was decommissioned in 1978. Now an international tourist icon, it is also acknowledged as one of the State's most significant tourist attractions.

This old whaling station turned whaling museum with help from the Lottery Foundation was gave us a great insight into the whaling trade. With an actual whaling ship beached on the shores open to the public, along with exhibitions show casing all aspects of the trade, from the flensing deck where the whales were cut up to enormous full skeletons where you can feel their grand size.

Parasites plague whale skins, here are a few that can be seen in pickling jars

Informative photos of the whaling trade found at Whale World

Denmark, Albany and Ravensthorpe -

2009-04-27T02:45:00.000-07:00

Denmark, a safe haven for lovely blouses and pinched cheeks

We made it to Denmark before the day was out, and the quaint English countryside feeling continued to grow. Gone were the days of the grizzled Aussie sausage-sizzle, this was a place of pate, and wine, riverside picnics and oh-my-don't-you-look-well-in-that-smashing-blouse conversations. But, of course, Denmark's past grew out of harsher soil.

Ghost gum tree branches look beautiful against a blue sky

It grew out of the timber industry in the 1870s, and the railway that interlinked it with the logging towns of Albany and Torbay which produced timber to send to the goldmine in Kalgoorlie, as the demand for timber grew significantly while the mine expanded. Settlers to Denmark were given the herculean task of clearing the land for pasture, which, of course, meant chopping the giant Karri and Tingle trees down. The timber industry has slowed dramatically over the years though, and it is with relief that we heard this.

Greens Pool ,Denmark is a shelter of calm clear waters

Because the loveliness of south-west WA is really, well, lovely. It is very easy to love the landscape, with none of the harshness of the vast Outback. It certainly is a picture: the pastures, fields, little hills, vineyards and forests of huge, elegant trees in an autumnal hue, a cool breeze and swaying grasses; the rolling Indian Ocean o'er yonder hillock, and the sand-carpeted beaches and granite outcrops that lie ever so invitingly and not too far away.

Arriving in Albany next day the breeziness continued. Invited to dinner at his restaurant, Nonna's, later that evening by Michael John Delli-Bendetti, we were also assured of a morning's work next day, helping him build a wall. Joanna, owner of the YHA Backpackers could not do enough for us, and Wayne, owner of the local pub, decided we were worth the donation of a "carton of piss", ('case of beer' in English). It seemed that Albany had deicided to join in with the lovely-theme of the past few days.

Elephant Rocks; it's clear to see the reasons for the moniker

We stayed in Albany over the weekend, earning donations while there, and enjoying the friendliness and ease of being there.

Albany

The natural bridge in Torndirrup, Albany

Next stop, we stayed with Jenny and Andrew Chambers, at Yoorooga Farm, in Ravensthorpe, about 300 kilometres from Albany. We had been put in touch with Jenny via Derek Clarke in Esperance, an Apex man contacted by Mike Gilbert in Perth. Derek's sister, Mazz, was a neighbour of the Chambers' and it was a lovely home cooked roast that greeted us as we arrived.

Gareth and Phil with the lovely Jenny Chambers

The chambers family, Maz and friends

Phil and Gareth accidentally lock themselves out on the veranda while they were washing windows, a passer by had to rescue them

Jenny had organised some work for us the next day at the Ravensthorpe Community Centre where she works, for which we were handsomely paid, squeezing in a gardening job with Jessie and Geoff Fairhead, who read of our trip in the local paper.

We're becoming dab hands at gardening

Phil sweeps away the cobwebs in a grand old room at Ravensthorpe community centre

Leaving Ravensthorpe, en route to Esperance, we were warned by Mazz that Derek had something planned for us, something grand and steeped in mischief, a flourish of activities and to-doings, and we drove towards his scheme, with but the words "budgie-smugglers", his only clue, reverberating in our heads.

Gloucester Tree, Pemberton and The Valley of the Giants - Climb at your our Peril

2009-04-26T03:08:00.000-07:00

The boys get to the top of Glouchester Tree

We got to Pemberton early evening, settled into the Pemberton Motel and upon a little investigation found ourselves deep in the splendour of the Karri forests. It was with no small sense of wonder that we explored, head tilted, mouth open and eyes wide. Growing up to 90 metres high, the Karri trees (eucalyptus diversicolour) are one of the tallest hardwoods in the world, the Californian Redwood, at more than 100 metres, is thought to be the tallest. The main belt of Karri forest grows south from Nannup to Manjimup, through Pemberton, then east towards Denmark, and Torbay, near Albany and is a truly wonderful sight.

Phil climbing Glouchester Tree

Having spent so long in the treeless wonder of the Outback, that vast expanse of struggling shrubs and hardy, wizened vegetation, the experience of the Karri forests was exhilirating and staggering. They are beautiful trees and the wonder of the South-West. They have a straight trunk with perfectly smooth bark, which is shed each year. The outer bark changes colour as it matures, so that the trunks are multi-coloured in different shade of pink, orange, and silver-white.

This tree has a 61m climb to the top, I'm 3m off the ground here, this is as high as I got

In Pemberton, the Gloucester National Park is the home of the Gloucester Tree, a 61 metre tree that was once a fire lookout, one of many in a network of lookouts built in the Karri forests between 1937 and 1952, and the only one surviving, if only as a lookout for tourists. It is a hair-rising climb by hand and foot up the steel pegs that coil their way upward, but the view at the top is breathtaking as you look over the canopy. It occured to a few of us, as we stood at its base and looked at the sign, that more or less told everyone not to climb if they thought they might fall, that in the minefield of hidden hazards and potential dangers even the simplest of activities contain, and the surge of rules, guidelines and Health and Safety instructions about everything and anything from fitting a lightbulb (working at heights) to picking your nose (unlicensed mining) that there would be more fuss, shall we say, over ascending on jabbed-in steel pegs a 61 metre tree. But, as it was "Don't Fall, Mate", covered it pretty well and quite succinctly we thought.

Nornalup Countryside

Franklin River

We give thanks to Tony and Marge who run, own and manage, with aplomb and joi'de verve, the Nornalup Riverside Chalets, and who not only gave us a place to stay but a canoe with which to explore the Frankland river, a hop skip and a jump away.

The next day and it was to the Walpole-Nornalup National Park and the Valley of the Giants. Just east of Pemberton a tree top walk has been constructed around the the giant Tingle Tree forest. Home also to the graceful Yellow Tingle (eucalyptus guilfoylei) and the grizzled, mighty Red Tingle (eucalyptus jacksoni) the Tingle trees are native to and grow only in this corner of south-west WA, with the high rainfall providing the perfect conditions for them. They are tall, elegant trees, growing up to 75 metres. The Red Tingle notable because of the thickness of its base, with a buttressed circumference of up to 20 metres as it roots in shallow soil and spreads the weight. Some of the Red Tingle trees have hollows in the trunk, making them look like they stand on two legs. A famous picture there shows a car parked inside one, as people picnic beside it.

Walpole-Nornalup National Park Valley of the Giants walkway

To protect the forest from the ravages of cars parked in tree trunks, a canopy walkway was erected in the 1990s. Occupying only 4 square metres of the forest floor, it is a boardwalk, up to 40 metres high at points, that loops through the forest, and was erected with pulleys, hoists and hydraulic jacks, and supported by steel pylons. The walk meanders through the Tingle and Karri trees, and is a memorable experience as you realize that you are far up and looking at a part of a tree that you do not usually see in such up-close proximity.

Anne walks through a Red Tingle notable because of the thickness of its base, with a buttressed circumference

A fallen tree in the Valley of the Giants

Many of the Red Tingles survive fires which eat through the centre of the tree leaving a charred walkway through the butressed base

Ngilgi Caves, Yallingup - A Subterranean Wonderland

2009-04-25T00:17:00.000-07:00

Invited to browse around Ngilgi cave we entered, appreciative of the freebie but not quite understanding how thrilled we would be to have walked through the most amazing subterranean wonderland we have ever seen.

Lying on the floor of the main chamber, gazing up at the ceiling was the closest I have ever felt to being in space. It was an incredible experience to look up at a million sharp stalagmites all seemingly pointed at my face. It brought on excitement I never expected to feel from a few rocks in a dark place. Sounds take on another quality in the chamber, the air moves in a different way, and while I lay there, noticing more and more of what the ceiling had to offer in terms of spectacular cave decoration, I was transported to another planet.

Within the cave we found an extremely enthusiastic speleologist who gladly answered questions, informing us that the age of the cave is approximately 500,000 years old and that the tiny stalagmite I was pointing at would take approximately 3000 years to form. “Many have been dated at 318,000 years old”, she said, “If you don’t mind please don’t take any souvenirs with you.”

Spaghetti style cave formations

It is possible to get really close up to most of the cave decorations, some of which you have to duck and dive around within the huge underground world.
I love the Australian way of doing things, if this cave was in the UK we would have to remain behind barriers and see from afar.

Wave formations in Ngilgi Cave

Listening to the zealous speleologist we learned of the Aboriginal legend which describes a battle between good and evil spirits. "The Story of Ngilgi" describes Ngilgi, a good warrior spirit who lived near the sea and Wolgine, an evil spirit who lived in the cave. Concerned for the welfare of his people, Ngilgi gathered together the spirits of the waves, lightning, rain, thunder and wind and they created a huge storm. Ngilgi attacked Wolgine and he gradually drove Wolgine back through the cave. So fierce was the battle that a tunnel collapsed, cutting the cave off from the sea. With my limited photography equipment and lack of tripod it was impossible to capture the magnificence of Ngilgi Cavern, if the chance come along that you are in the area, make sue you visit this magical place.

Blue Botle Jelly Fish - Man of War

2009-04-24T20:57:00.000-07:00

The Blue Bottle, or Portuguese Man o’ War, is a common, if unwelcome, visitor of Australian beaches. At the mercy of the wind, they are sometimes blown into shallow waters, and often wash up onto the beach. As I walked along the sands around the Margaret River area I took many a picture of these unusual jelly fish, ignorant of their identity. Although they have a bright colour some of them are quite small and their tentacles can reach up to 10 meters in length so it is easy to get caught out and stand on them on the beach.

I asked a local guy, who was fishing on the beach, about the jelly fish.
“Is it OK to swim here?”
“Yeh, no worries.”
Long pause as I look at the hundreds of jelly fish washed up on the beach.
“Well what about these jelly fish, don’t they sting?”
“The Bluebottles? Yeh! They sting like a bastard, don’t touch them.”
“Do they sting you when they’re dead?”
“Yep”
“But, it’s OK to swim here?”
“Yep, just that if you get stung, you’re gonna know about it fast.” He chuckles.

Although many beaches have emergency stations with vinegar for jelly fish stings, blue bottle stings are not treated with vinegar as this makes it worse. Just remove any parts still touching your skin and wash with water.

Interestingly, this blue bottle is not a true jellyfish. It is actually made up of zooids and is not a single organism. Each zooid has a specific role and together they function as if it were an animal. For example a number of zooids will make up the stinging tentacles, others will make up the feeding tentacles, etcetera.

The gas-filled float supports a number of specialised tentacles, which are actually members of a complicated colony.

The individual members, or ‘zooids’, cooperate to form what looks as if they are one animal-a jellyfish. Some zooids are specialised for stinging and capturing fishes and other marine animals, some are specialised for eating prey, and some are the reproductive members of the colony. Even the gas float itself is a modified colony member. In an amazing evolutionary survival too the floats are of two sorts, ones that face left and others that are angled toward the right. This means that the same wind will push the two variations in different directions, avoiding all the colonies becoming washed up on the beach and dying.

Bussleton, Margaret River and Augusta - Surfing, Snot and Sunday Roast

2009-04-23T23:32:00.000-07:00

The perpetual task of explaining ourselves to different people every day, the up-and-at-them of the fundraising in the pubs and clubs and the persistence of collecting in the Marinas and Shopping Centres was starting to show itself in a little tetchiness and belligerence that belied our otherwise sunny exteriors. While we had succeeded in Perth through our contact with Mike Gilbert and Apex in raising over $4000, it had been an event.

From being a smashed window away from leaving town and missing out, our luck had come in and the most was made of our good fortune, but two weeks is a long time in the world of repeating yourself all the time, and we were looking forward to being on the road again.

With the fuel situation at maximum capacity we bade farewell to Perth and drove south through Freemantle towards Rockingham, stopping there for the night with Norm and Jean who run the Apex Members Holiday Park at Cape Peron. Located on a promontory by the sea, again we tried to fish, getting out the old rods given to us in Darwin, and casting them out into the sea with the vim and verve of exuberant landlubbers whose salty-seadoggedness in these matters consists of trusting solely to hope, then casting, swearing, detangling the tangled line, casting, recasting, detangling, then retiring. It can be fun, but no fish will ever be caught this way.

Still heading south we were Bunbury bound the next day, and determined too, as it was St Paddy's day, to find a kindly publican to suffuse us with some Guinness. We succeeded in finding a place to stay at the Parade Hotel, and as soon as we had time to ditch our bags we headed out into town and found Mitch at the Prince of Wales who donated to the cause a few pints as we recollected Ireland and sat by the bar.

Phil and Gareth try to untangle seaweed from their lines

Pausing next day at Bussleton we were then on our way through to Margaret River, the famous wine region, to stay in Metricup, at the Willy Bay Resort, having been put touch with Caroline and Dale there who run it by Ryan in Bussleton who fed us when we stayed there, and they rang us up and offered us a chalet for the weekend.

Ngilgi Caves, Yallingup

On our way there we stopped briefly in Ngilgi Caves, a short distance north of Yallingup, and Pete, the manager there donated the tour round to us. Aboriginal legend has it that it was the battle between a good spirit, Ngilgi and an evil spirit, Wolgine, that formed these impressive limestone caves. It was certainly another world that we walked into, with the beautiful and strange formations of stalactites, stalagmites, helictites, cave crystal pillars and columns, arresting our eyes.

Bussleton Jetty at Dusk

Then it was on to Willy Bay. Now Willy Bay Resort as we discovered with amazement, is a AAA rated 4.5 star self-catering luxury resort set amidst 75 acres of beautiful natural bush and parkland with lake and vineyard views, sitting beside thousands of hectares of state forest situated in the heart of the world famous Margaret River Wine Region and we, in our road-weary dirt-smeared Wicked van parked up and made it our home for a weekend.

We experience luxury at Willy Bay Resort for the weekend

It was secluded and ideal for recharging the old batteries. The Margaret River region is very pastoral, more like a pleasing Mediterranean-English countryside than fair-dinkum Aussie Bushland; with its rolling hills, lush fields, dense forests, tree-lined winding roads, and lined with vineyard after vineyard, your internal monologue is punctuated with remarks like 'isn't this nice' or 'ooh, look at that tree, I wonder if a squirrel lives there'. It is that bucolic and pleasant. That there are hordes of middle-aged and aged visitors and inhabitants attests to the fact of its appealingness and bustling sense of rural quietude. We liked it immensely.

Margaret River region

On Monday we were invited to stay in Gnarabup at the Margarets Beach Resort, a ten minute drive from the township of Margaret River itself. That night Anthony Jansen, manager of the restaurant at the resort, The Gnarabar, invited us to dinner. It was a pleasure and though we are fortunate to have benefited from much generosity on our travels so far, we are constantly taken aback by the friendliness and warm welcome that we receive, and keep receiving, by so many different people.

The next morning we had arranged with Keith, owner of the Margaret River Surf School to go to nearby Redgate Beach for a surf lesson. We met there Jarred, our teacher and were given our boards and taken to the beach. After an introductory tutorial in 'popping' onto the board from the prone position, and, bending at the knees, swaying with the motion of the sea, man, we thought, 'this is easy, no problem this time.

When we surfed in Caloundra, we were ignorant, we didn't know how to do it. Point break hang ten, yeah' and we ran into the sea like jubilant seals. But, as they say, the proof is in the pudding, and in our case in the plodding. We plodded on. Plugged away. Gave it a shot. What more could they ask of us?

We toiled and travailed. What they neglect to mention on Bondi Surf or what you never see on Baywatch as Hasselhoff pectorially dances up the beach and bounds into the sea to 'scue (short for 'rescue' - no time for full enunciation when you're 'scuing someone from danger, capiche?) is the sheer amount of salt-water snot and strings of briny mucus that hang around and cover your face as you get pounded by the surf, or while trying to try to surf, and it is a bit hard, if you ask me, to look cool, and gnarl like a dude, if you have tentacles of salty phlegm glued to your upper lip and face.

Jarred, to his credit ignored all this, and did a great job looking after us. Looking after five others also, he was like a Bluefin gliding through the water, as he helped one then another of us, diving, gliding through the water, appearing by your side all at once, advising you how to do it, offering advice, telling you where you were going wrong, pushing you off, and with a splash, he was off, like a Merman, into the water, appearing a hundred yards away, helping someone else.

A seagull dives for fish

He tried with me, oh how he tried. Phil managed to stand on his board a couple of times, but the best I managed was a knee-raise, or a topple-ride a couple of times, not forgetting the starfish-glide I managed to pull off, and while not strictly 'pro-terms' that you would find 'on the tour', they were pretty representative of my style and ability, in that I had none.

Possessed with no natural coordination and an innate ability for disorientation it was always going to be a struggle. With Jarred's help though, I did manage to ride it like a hot potato once.

Some kids show us how it should be done

Heading off after our lesson, we took the road south to Augusta, ate fish and chips (the only meal that truly gets to the nub of the matter when by the sea) courtesy of Stewart and Noelene Grayson's Fresh Fish n' Chips Shop there, and followed the coast south-east then inland to Pemberton. Leaving the sea for the time being it was to the Land of the Giants that we were next destined.

Cheffy's Cafe, Yallingup donates an incredibly delicious Sunday roast

Perth- The Principles of Serendipity

2009-04-21T20:02:00.000-07:00

The side window of our van was smashed in while we slept

Back when everything was new and exciting, when the world was largely unknown and unexplored, and life was fresh. A giddy freedom, loosened and unshackled and open - anything was possible; undaunted and inspired individuals broke the trail and into what future endeavoured to move. These sentiments and more occupied our thoughts as we finally left Geraldton, or "Bloody Geraldton" as it had affectionately become known, though at times less affectionately than bitterly. It had been bad timing; we got stuck, were almost waylaid by circumstance, and had to wait it out. But Perth, good old Perth, the capital of WA was where we were now heading, our next destination, and as the skyscrapers loomed signalling that we were approaching we were confident our days of fruitless endeavour were behind us.

Emergency assembly point outside the Indie Club is for the nimble only

We arrived early evening (note: we always seem to arrive places early evening. Research has shown that life is made more difficult the later we arrive places. However, studies have concluded that he who rises the wrong side of ten and drives at snails pace stopping intermittently for food and fuel, will never in a month of Sundays arrive any earlier) and were jubilant and excited.

Some works of art found on Cottesloe Beach during a free exhibition we enjoyed

This fools paradise persisted until ten that night, when we realized that it was a fruitless and pointless thing to be driving around trying to find a place to stay. No managers were around to talk to and the Night Porters lacked the authority to give us a room, the backpackers were locked tight and secure, motels were closed for the day, No Vacancy signs were everywhere lit, and we could not find a caravan park for love nor money (not that we had any of one or much of the other by then) and we were tired and hungry. We found a place to park up out of the city, beside South Trigg Beach, in the suburb of Scarbrough, and I made a swag out of blankets and double-sided sticky tape and slept on the deserted moonlit beach. Perth would get better, we knew. Bloody Geraldton!

A young flaming gallah squaks until a parent regurgitates its food

Waking early (come on! early is early if you believe it is!) my bleary eyes poked out from beneath the blankets and adjusted themselves to the fact that my ingenious swag was attracting no attention from the seven thousand people now running, surfing, sun-baking, and strolling along the beach and all around me. Emerging chrysalis-like from my snug and insulated cocoon I could not find my thongs (we have been through this already, thongs is what the Aussies call flip-flops) and discovered one, twenty yards away, following the cavorting tracks of a dog, and bitten through with evident glee. The other, I never found (I had not really liked these thongs anyway, and the dog-chewed remains seemed a fitting end to the matter).

Left: Barchetta restaurant, Cottesloe overlooking te beach fed us sumptuous eggs benedict
Right: A Cottesloe Beach sculpture

We found accommodation for the night thanks to Tanya at the YHA Backpackers in Scarbrough, but only as a kindness-of-her-heart gesture to us, as the hostel was pretty full and filling up. We had a meal at Zanders Restaurant that night, then went fundraising at Bex Open Mic Night in the Indi Bar, and felt more confident that the curse of Bloody Geraldton was over, and that we would be fine and dandy next day.

The act that followed Anne's explanation of the Cheeky as you Can't trip during open mic night at the Indie Bar (Anne's favourite bar to date in Australia)

Fine and/or dandy we were not. With an old pair of broken thongs found amidst the wrackage of the bottom-of-the-van (don't go there, things live there, please, I can hear them scuttle!) repaired firstly with safety pins then with three entwined elastic bands on my feet, any notions of finery and dandery were swiftly cast aside as another fruitless day was spent trying to find a place to stay. Firstly Scarbrough, then Cottesloe failed to turn up anything, then towards the city, still nothing, and south into Freemantle likewise was barren and devoid of the fine-stuff an dandy-things we set out that morning to find.

So we opted to camp out again. By this time we were south of Freemantle by a place called Woodman Point, 25 kilometres out of the city and beside a boat ramp. Opted is not really the word for it, as we had little choice and it was the only place we could stop, and so did. Not confident we could find a place in Perth anymore, and feeling the pinch of engaging in fruitless searching, we decided next morning to head south on the road from Woodman Point to Bunbury 200 kilometres away, and try our luck there.

A Lady suns herself amongst Cottesloe Beach's colourful art exhibition items

I got my swag system working and lay in the lee of the dunes snug as a bug in my homemade Swag (design patent pending). My stay in the Starlight Hotel was interrupted around midnight by Phil, ushering I rise and go immediately as we had been attacked, the van window had been smashed through by a beer bottle, the shards dropping on a shocked Anne as she slept, presumably wielded by one of those drinking by the boat ramp. Bloody Geraldton!

With Anne's Geordie fighting instincts urging we go down there to 'talk' to them, we persuaded her under duress to vacate the scene, to leave the perps alone (you cannot talk like that unless you know how the system works) and so we drove, eventually, back towards the city and to Trigg Beach, which we knew was safe, and camped there for the night, shaken, stirred and not a little upset by the incident.

An anonymous benefactor comes to our aid at a fuel station

Now with a van window to repair, we had to stay in Perth. We had been given the name of Mike Gilbert, of Apex Australia, by Phil, Kathy and Kelly, at the S-Bend Roadhouse, as we were approaching Perth, and so, in our hour of need, we contacted him. To say that he leapt into action and bounded in a just-in-the-nick-of-time style in the manner of a not-a-moment-too-soon hero, would be to underestimate the credentials of the man they call Mike 'Mick the Man' Gilbert. 'Of course, stay with me', his thunderous call came. 'I live in Mindarie, just out of the city, come to me, rest, and stay a while'. What a guy, we cooed!

West Australia Apex Club Pesident Mike Gilbert changes our perceptions of Perth and its residents

Mike is President of the Hamersley Apex Group in Perth, and was only too pleased to harken to our plea. He was having, in the hero-jargon of ye olde lore, "a pretty shit day", with a-things a-going a-wrong a-all over the place, and he figured, luckily for us, that if he helped others turn around their shit day, his own luck would change. Mighty reasoning from a mighty man. So from that moment our luck turned. From a broken van, the curse of Bloody Geraldton, dog-chewed thongs and sleeping rough, we now had access to a fridge full of beer, a jacuzzi, a swimming pool and the unending pleasure of the company of Mick the Man and his lovely family. Our fortunes had not just turned, Lady Luck had raced full-pelt towards us carrying a twelve ounce porterhouse and wearing a tiara.

Some of last Apexians standing at Mike's merry welcome BBQ

The courage of his convictions shining through, he invited the other Apex members around to his house for a barbecue, and we got to know how the Apex club works, the community work they do, and also got told that with Apex Clubs nationwide, we had now potential contact with some very useful people on the rest of our way round. The past three days futile running and chasing around melted away in the beer and pork chop haze of contentment as Mike and the rest of the crew threw beer down our necks like we were thirsty camels in a desert oasis.

A government inititiative at one of the festivals we were fund raising in. (Not the least conspicuous way I have seen to entice people to give up their drugs, what with TV and media photographers waiting for the first person to make use of this Drug Disposal bin)

Waking with a hump on the inside of my head, we were greeted by the cheery Mike making a breakfast of barbecue leftovers, and I tucked in like the carnivorous beast that I am and slavered all over my brekkie steaks like a caveman. That evening we took Mike up on his suggestion of fundraising at the Marina down the road, and the next few days were spent variously plundering the Shopping Centres and Marinas collecting, finding time to work for Apexian Shaun Wright, at the home he shares with his lovely wife, Sarah.

Sarah and Shaun, two Apexians we did some gardening for

Our appearance on Perth television news programme A Current Affair was useful to us (oi, binbag, have a tenner, good on ya) and so we took Apexian Carlo Formentin, hard drinking, hard smoking gentleman that he is, up on his offer of finding some accommodation for us in Perth city. We stayed not far from Northbridge, the city night life epicentre, and tried to take advantage of the media coverage collecting round the city's pubs and clubs.

Morgan and Aisha are hard at work making posters for our display

The girls (Morgan, Amy and Aisha) had us making fools of ourselves on their skateboards

Taking the van with us to maximise our exposure and announce that we were in town, we parked up on the main drag (having been on tv we feel compelled to use its most colloquial terms) on Murray Street. Anne and Phil trawled the pubs for the donations our recognizable faces were likely to have thrown at us, while I stayed with the van, displaying our new 'As Seen On TV' posters (courtesy of Mike Gilbert's printing friend) awaiting the throngs of passersby eager to talk to us after our four minutes of fame.

Phil looking pretty in pink as he scrubs clean an oven

A drunk Scotsman recognised us, and greeted us, as presumably he greets everyone, with a resounding "wankers!", before telling us to "piss off" in a friendly way, and after fumbling in his pockets for a donation failed to produce a note small enough to give us, and left catcalling promises of a fiver, "wheen I geet sum change", which in Scottish means "when I sprout wings and shit gold sovereigns", which literally speaking means never.

Phil hold up the thongs he has worn holes in. Core Surf Shop on the marina donate a new pair

A vagrant did stop by, but not because of my famous face, but for a chat about his being a direct descendant to Mary Magdalen "not one word of a lie", and to ask for $2 for something to eat. That aside, we did well out of the weekend when we decided to ditch the van and trawl the pubs irrespective of whether or not people knew who we were.

Thank you Maya Masala for providing this delicious Indian banquet

It can be fun talking to people and it can also be exhausting. The later it gets, the drunker they are, they more they expect you to dance for your donation. But it is rewarding endeavour, and between the three of us we managed to collect a tidy sum. The banter is welcome and people are by-and-large willing to give after a gentle haranguing to fill in the time.

Some of the supplies friend of Mike Gilbert collected for us

Next day and we were up and at them anew, driving to the Range View Hotel out of town, where we had been put in touch with Karinde, who organises the Australian Poker League in Perth, and who had a tournament there. We had been invited to fundraise and tell our story and as we arrived we saw a room full of gamblers, hell-bent on that Royal Flush. This may not be the Textbooks first recommendation for a bit of a fundraiser, but rewrite that outmoded manual, because we did very nicely thank you very much.

Kath, Megan and Iestyn

Collecting donations at the interval, after having been introduced over the mic by Karinde, we then mingled. I sidled up to six guys sitting around a blue table, the only one still playing as everyone else munched on sandwiches, or stood talking or watching, as I was, this game. Having recently seen Oceans Twelve with John Clooney and Eartha Pitt I was confident I had the consummate repartee for the occasion. "Hey", I asked the tall, lanky biker, "is this the high-rollers and whales table?" imagining my in-the-know shop-talk would give him confidence that I was not the uninformed half-wit I really was. "Erm, no, mate" he managed to stammer, "this is the..normal...peoples table", and duly cussed I walked away.

One of Perths crowed beaches

Returning to Mikes place for the Sunday night, we spent the evening with him and his wife Cath, and their kids Megan and Iestyn. He had been busy on our behalf while we were away in the city, contacting various other Apex members further on down the way and telling them about us. We were to leave the next morning, and it was with renewed confidence in our ability to circumnavigate this great country that we departed, having made the acquaintance of Mike, of Apex and befriending yet again that lovely mistress of Destiny and Toyer of Emotions, good old Serendipity.

The Apex logo now graces our trailer

Hamelin Pool Stromatolites - Interesting Stuff if you Take a Leap of Faith

2009-04-20T22:53:00.000-07:00

A seagull sits on top of a stromatolite

There is more to the rocks than meets the eye in the super salty water of Hamelin Pool; the rocks here are alive. Not only are these seemingly innocuous formations living and breathing, they are also believed to be the oldest life forms on earth. Stromatalite fossils have been found to be at least 3.5 billion years old. So what are these seemingly lifeless yet life giving organisms?

Unspectacular glory - but stromatolites made the earth breathable

Knowing a little about these rocks from reading Bill Brysons Down Under we were eager to see them for ourselves and made the short walk from the campsite to the shore across the shell strewn landscape.

Our crunching footpath had been created by the Hamelin Cockle – a shell species so prolific in the Hamelin Pool area, that the sheer volume of shells has been compacted into a solid mass able to be cut into blocks.

Hamelin cockle beach

We walked past the old quarry, where huge blocks of this material had been cut out of the earth to be used as building blocks in the town of nearby Denham, where the church and a couple of other buildings have been made entirely from this material. At the beach a long jetty has now been constructed for the public to view the stromatalites without damaging them irreparably. It is possible to still see tracks in the rock made by cart wheels, a by product of the wool trade years ago . The carts would pull right up to the waters edge to unload their cargo onto the waiting boats. But back then nobody knew just how significant the rocks were beneath their feet.

Hamelin cockle quarry

A number of information points along the shore and jetty allow you to better interpret the strange formations before your eyes. However the stromatalites are not much to look at. Through a geologists or perhaps even a botanists eyes they are perhaps things of rare beauty. But to the untrained eye they...... well they just look like rocks. However whilst their appearance won't induce your jaw to drop with wonder and veneration, their sheer age and importance to life as we know it should elicit some response.

A live stromatolite which can be seen in the Hamelin Pool museum

There are very few known places where Stromatalites (or Sdromadalydes as they are called in Australia) still live on today. They are formed by cyanobacteria and other forms of algae. These single celled organisms bind sedimentary particles together in successive layers which eventually harden to form rock.

We gaze at the oxygen bubbles, trapped by algae, created by stromatolites

We were given a flagon of wine by our generous hosts and we gladly drank while we listened to stories of the area. Shane, a man with quick wit and the story telling ability of an Aussied up Hans Christian Anderson invited us to tour the museum.

Specimens found at Hamelin Pool museum

Tim got the keys and we all put our drinks down on the table. “No, no. You’re alright, take your drinks in with ya.” Walking around the many valuable objects of long ago, I couldn’t believe the casualness in a place where if it had been in England we would be behind a prohibiting fence, never mind being able to pick things up and walk around with red wine.

I wanted to have a closer look at some of the fossils so I put my wine down on one of the tables, as I did so I noticed that one of the very old museum pieces, a bottle, was full of cigarette butts, it was used as an ashtray. Part of me was astounded by the lack of respect in a place which holds such treasures but another part of me loved the unBritishness of the experience, the laid-back accessibility of everything I would elsewhere never be allowed to touch.

Bullet holes add a sinister touch to the Hamelin Pool sign

The naked guy up a telegraph pole that Bill Brysons talks of in his book

We love Hamelin Pool museum!

So much beauty can be found in Hamelin Pool's surrounding areas

Coral Bay to Geraldton - Another Meagre Public Holiday

2009-04-20T01:54:00.000-07:00

Gareth is full of excitement about the prospect of visiting the town which has is own Welsh town's name

Back on the road after our short beach holiday and we only just had enough fuel to reach Carnarvon. The outback had become all wide open grassy plains, and with no trees or hills anywhere to gauge any perspective the land looked bigger and wider than I can remember. It was late in the day by the time we arrived in Carnarvon and we tried in vain to find somewhere to lay our heads. Everywhere we went to ask for work was met with incredulous looks and tuts of indignation. At one point I was even ushered into the middle of a group of sitting pensioners who forced me to explain what we were doing. After what seemed like an age the Alpha elder gleefully told me I had no chance. It seemed like nobody wanted to help, and we were on our last and final option when Simon and Tiffany at the Wintersun Caravan Park kindly acquiesced. We were given a campsite for the night, however we knew we would be lucky to get any fuel and without this precious resource, we would be stuck. There was no work to be found anywhere in the town and with the recent floods in the area damaging a lot of property most residents had understandably tightened their purse strings. This meant we would have to rely on a charitable donation of fuel and things weren't looking too good.

Dean Rowe donates fuel and helps us get out of Canarvon

It has most often been the case when turning up at the Roadhouses and Servo's of Australia, that even when we offer to work in exchange for fuel the owners insist on giving it as a donation. Without this generosity it may not have been possible and certainly would have taken us a lot longer to get around the country. This kindness never goes unappreciated and we never dare take it for granted that this astounding generosity will continue.

The proprieters of the S Bend Caravan Park fuel us up and give us what would turn out to be one of the most important contacts on the journey so far

We set out in the morning ever hopeful that somebody may be interested enough in what we are trying to achieve. That is, interested enough to donate some fuel. The process followed a similar pattern to the previous day and we arrived at the last servo in town with all our digits crossed. The saviour here was Dean Rowe, who came to our aid with a full tank of fuel. We have found ourselves in situations like these a few times in the last few months, and the sense of relief when we avoid getting completely stuck is palpable. We could now keep heading south.

During the first few weeks of the trip we had all keenly studied Bill Bryson’s laugh-out-loud account of his time in Australia, 'Down Under'. This had given us a few ideas of places in Australia that we wanted to visit, and it just so happened that one of these was only a short distance off the highway on which we were currently travelling.

Clare and Tim, who work at Hamelin Pool camp ground and museum show us around and feed us cream teas

Hamelin Pool is located in the Shark Bay World Heritage Site and is home to the earliest examples of life on earth, a form of cyanobacteria termed Stromatalites. There is a campsite and museum next to the former Hamlin Pool Telegraph Station and the engaging Shane, Clare and Tim who run the place agreed that we should stay with them for the night. They were more than accommodating, sorting us out with food, wine and a place to pull up for the night making sure that we wanted for nothing.

We sat and talked together for hours and we were shown round the museum. All three of our hosts had travelled widely and they had interesting tales to tell about the rest of Australia as well as stories of the local area. Apparently it is mainly us foreigners who are interested in the Stromatalites. Most Aussie's who turn up asking ''where are those bloody rocks mate?''.

It's Februrary 26th and we finally get a piece of Christmas Cake! Long live longlife cakes!

It was a great night and we also had the pleasure to meet Dafi and Gili, two Israeli girls who were on their way to Perth. We had to tear ourselves away the next day and we agreed that Dafi and Gili would come with us to Hutt River Province. Shane called up the Prince and as a knight of the realm himself, secured us somewhere to stay and a free tour of the principality. We were very sad to leave, but needing to keep up our momentum. Intrigued at the prospect of visiting a little known country within a country, we departed.

Stromatolites, 3.5 billion year old fossilised examples have been found, not much to look at but impressive nontheless

We journeyed towards The Hutt River Province (See next post) curious as to what and who we would find there. It was good to have fresh company, as we three had been with each other non-stop for way too long and knew all too well each others' stories. We stopped only to refuel at the Billabong Roadhouse (thanks to Shane who had phoned ahead and arranged it with a friend). Arriving at the principality we were given somewhere to camp and free use of the showers. We heated up the contents of a few tins of food and tried to mix it in proportions that might look or taste appealing. Dafi and Gili looked on nauseously, vehemently refusing all our attempts to share the concoction and insisting that we have some of their salad. We drank the dregs of the previous nights wine and talked about life outside 'the trip'- a pleasant and refreshing change. We were up early for the guided tour and then parted ways shortly after as the girls were in a rush to get down to Perth. Our next port of call was only a short drive away at Geraldton, but with it being Labour Day weekend arriving early would work in our favour; or so we thought.

The industrial skyline of Geraldton

Public holidays often result in harder times for us. They are a good time for fundraising, as people are more laid back and approachable, but nationwide during the holidays there seems to be a complete absence of people who have the power to make any decisions. This makes it exceptionally difficult to find work, fuel, accomodation, food or anything else we may be in need of. We should have learned by now not land somewhere new over a holiday periods, but we had no idea what Labour Day was let alone that it was that particular weekend.

We were not exactly given the warm welcome we had hoped for in Geraldton, the pictures taken during our first few days summed up our mood well.

Labour Day (originally called 8 hour day) is an Australian public holiday that celebrates the achievements of organised labour on behalf of the worker to bring about the 8-hour day. As this was achieved at different times in different states each state celebrates on a different day of the year. Many of the union buildings across Australia have 888 inscribed on their fronts in support of British socialist Robert Owen who believed that people should have 8 hours to work, 8 hours for recreation and 8 hours to sleep. It was this philosophy helped foster The Eight Hours Movement. Marked by various parades and festivities it is a notoriously difficult time to find accommodation in any town or city.

Geraldton looks brighter and friendlier once the holiday weekend passes

We needed fuel to move on and knew we would have to wait till Tuesday, a normal working day, to get some - we were stuck. By the skin of our teeth we managed just to find somewhere to stay each day whilst subsisting on a diet of dried noodles and donated junk food. When Tuesday came round, people returned our phone calls and within half a day we had the means with which we could leave for Perth. In what would turn out to be one of our most useful and rewarding chance encounters, we stopped at the S-Bend Caravan Park and Roadhouse on our way out of town. Here we met Phil, Kathy and Kelly who, very enthusiastic about what we were doing, donated some more fuel and fresh fruit and veg to us. They also told us about an organisation called Apex, giving us the contact name and number for one of the club presidents in Perth. They themselves were also in Apex. Little did we know it then but very soon we would need the information they gave us. Apex would play a huge part in trip from here on end.

Geraldton beach

A seagull enjoying the kid's water play area along the shore front, Geraldton

A part of the wonderful play area for children complete with water area and climbing jungle funded by Variety Club

Francis Xavier Church, Geraldton

Thanks to Batavia, the Christian hostel which donated a room and laundry facilities to us

The girls at Adam's takeaway happily donate food to three very hungry and grateful people

Sand dunes blowing their tops off

Broome to Coral Bay - A Brucie Bonus

2009-04-19T02:42:00.000-07:00

Phil walks toward the pristine 80 Mile Beach

We were leaving Broome with three full bellies and a tank full of fuel, the next stop would be Port Hedland over 600kms away. Rising early for a local radio interview we managed to leave town before 2pm, so with only a few hours of daylight left we stopped overnight at Eighty Mile Beach. The campsite here is the only way to access this vast expanse of sand for miles in each direction, we arrived just in time to watch the fading light in the most peaceful of settings. We just had time before the light disappeared to discover that the beach was covered in little white Sand Dollars. Sand Dollars are a type of sea urchin specially adapted to burrowing in sand. After the urchin dies the rigid skeleton often washes up on the beach and with five rows of paired pores arranged like petals the shells make beautiful souvenirs.

An 80 Mile Beach sand dollar
In the morning we ventured down to the beach again and were met by the local customs officer whose job it was to patrol the 110km beach every day, a task that he has been performing for decades as a volunteer. He was in his sixties and we got a surprise when he opened his mouth and sounded exactly like George Formby. He informed us that somebody had been stung by a bluebottle jellyfish only a few minutes ago but said we should still be alright to go swimming as he swims there everyday and only gets stung a few times a year. Apparently the pain from the sting goes away after a couple of days and once the affected skin has died and fallen off new skin grows back leaving no scar. Before leaving we waded in heroically, at least up to our knees, before convincing each other that it was time to press on in the direction of Port Headland. We were now leaving the Kimberly region and entering the Pilbara.

80 Mile Beach Volunteer Coast Guard

A washed up jelly fish and sand dollar

Known as the engine room of Australia the Pilbara area is home to a massive mining industry in crude oil, salt, natural gas and iron ore. To cater for the huge workforce the mining companies themselves run accommodation facilities. Huge numbers of workers fly in to work and then fly out again going back to their families whenever possible. The Fortescue Metals Group is one such company and is one of the world leaders in iron ore production. FMG run a huge operation in the Pilbara area and whilst in Port Hedland we were lucky enough to stay in one of their motels.

A huge salt mound in Port Hedland

It was getting late and we had had no luck at any of the other motels in the town. We pulled up outside a featureless building we were hoping might be a hotel, after asking a few questions
things were starting to look up. It was in fact the Hamilton Motel, however, it was owned by a huge mining company and they weren't quite sure who we should explain our cause to. After a brief conference it was decided Kathy would be the most helpful and we were taken out the back to another separate office. A very busy woman, Kathy Barrett-Lennard made some time to listen to us explain what we were doing. Her response was unbelievable. She not only offered us a Motel room each with ensuite bathroom and 394 channel gogglebox to unwind in, she also offered dinner that evening, breakfast the next morning and a packed lunch for the next day.

Phil and Gareth stand at the office of the Port Headland Mitchell Fuel Group

Thankful, we retired to our respective rooms for a cup of tea and a shower returning later to the canteen for what was to be our most amazing meal to date. We were spoiled for choice. There was an endless selection of meat, fish and vegetables cooked in every conceivable way. There were salads, cheeses, fruit and deserts, and you could have as much as you could possibly eat. We did, and after eating enough food for ten people we rolled back to our rooms considering a possible career in the mining industry and looking forward to breakfast at five the next morning. Work around here starts early and the canteen closes before seven. Like early birds we got up and whilst still digesting last night’s meal, ate breakfast. I guess the novelty wears off if you are allowed to eat like that all the time but we put away breakfast like three people who didn't know where there next meal was coming from, and after packing our lunch went back to bed to sleep it off. Whilst we were asleep Kathy had contacted their fuel suppliers and arranged for us to fill our fuel tank and jerry cans before leaving. We enquired about the possibility of work in or around the mines but sadly it was not possible due to the never ending amount of health and safety training which would be needed. Humbled by the time and effort she had gone to on our behalf we went in search of more accommodation.

The manager of the All Seasons Hotel, Port Hedland takes time to sign our book

We managed to find somewhere to stop for one more night and as we could find nobody in need of three willing workers we did some fundraising for the charity. The next day we headed further down the coast and spent the night in Karratha before moving on the next day. Similar to Port Hedland, Karratha was developed in the 1960's to serve the needs of the mining industry and in the 1980's was expanded to deal with the North West Shelf Venture concerning natural Gas. Feeling the need to press on and with flooding likely in the area we spent little time here. We were however well looked after and before leaving managed to raise some money for Book Aid. After eating lunch we left for Carnarvon along what would be one of the most barren stretches of road that we had travelled so far.

With very little to break up the monotony of the journey and with the need for some fuel we stopped at the Nanutarra Roadhouse. We had been warned by a couple of people that the fella who owned the roadhouse ''wouldn't give you the steam off his shit'' but needs must as the three idiots ride. Our spirits were lifted upon discovering that his name was Bruce Forsyth, however he certainly didn't think it was 'nice to see us, to see us nice'. Obviously not entirely understanding our challenge of working and handing over our wages to Book Aid, he gave us a lecture on the value of an honest days work and told us to come back when we had done one. However his lovely assistant behind the counter, presumably Miss Ford, told us we should head for Coral Bay as we could camp there and there were less flies. Sounding like a much better option than spending the night with Bruce we followed her advice.

Coral Bay

Coral Bay exists purely for tourism but that takes very little away from its charm. It is largely undeveloped and the Ningaloo Reef is right on the beach. It is a very quiet relaxed place and when we arrived on a Saturday evening there was very little going on. Within an hour of being there we had been offered a room at the local hotel and a meal of the freshest fish and chips at a local cafe. Heath who worked at the hotel also offered us a couple of jugs of beer and after inhaling our food this is where we headed. After lovingly and slowly sipping our cold frosty beer in fear that we would soon have to stop drinking, salvation reared its glorious head in the forms of Scott and Blake.

A long long time ago in a Queensland now increasingly far away we had visited a town on the coast there called 1770. We had gone to meet a man called Don Growcott who was one of two people to have heard our pre trip cries for help. He had offered a bed for the night and a free scuba dive but had also given us some t-shirts advertising his dive company in the town. As divine inspiration would have it one of us chose to wear this particular t-shirt to the hotel bar on the very night that 1770 residents Scott and Blake would walk into the bar. What ensued can only be described as a hazy memory; within half an hour of meeting them we were invited to get into 'a carton of piss' with them back at their campsite. You couldn't wish to meet two more archetypal and generous aussies than these fellas anywhere in this vast and wonderful country. When not slating each other and telling stories they would heckle anybody who would listen.

The coral bay fish swim through your legs unafraid, there are fishing laws prohibiting fishing. Hungry as we are, and to date yet to catch a fish on the trip, this cheeky fellow couldn't resist rubbing it in by mouthing 'ner nerr ner ner nerrrrrr'

A sea cucumber in the shallows at Coral Bay

''Hey Mate, get into it''
‘‘Pardon?''
''Go on - get into it.''
''Get into what?''
''Whatever you're into, just get into it.''
''Alright.''
''That’s it. Good on yer mate, get on it.''

We had a brilliant night and they invited us to go with them on a three day fishing trip up the coast. We drunkenly agreed but arose the next day with sore heads and reluctantly decided that we couldn't really go, Anne and Gareth had come down with infections and had to be seen by the resident nurse, who helped them with some free medicine and advice. We couldn't help but feel that we had missed out on an amazing aussie experience, especially with those two for company. To console ourselves we went snorkelling for the day with some snorkels and flippers also donated by Heath. We swam with Sting Rays, huge Coral Trout and a giant unidentified shadow that swept past only metres from us (most probably a Tiger Shark). I guess we have to thank Bruce Forsyth and the lovely Rosemary Ford for inadvertently sending us to a wonderful place that otherwise we would have missed out on. Thanks also to Scott and Blake for the good time. Get into it!

Hutt River Principality - A Landlocked Micronation in Australia!!!!!

2009-04-18T01:26:00.000-07:00

Playing Trivial Pursuit in a hostel one day, we stumbled across two puzzling questions seen above in blue and yellow. (Well, truthfully, I came across a number of questions that eluded me. I am rubbish at Trivial Pursuit but I justified my poor performance by telling myself that any non Australian native would do badly with all the Australian pop culture references, the copyright date on the questions was perhaps a little before my time and I was automatically one down on each card as my chances on getting any sports questions correct, if the answer is not either Ian Botham or Frank Bruno, is next to zero. The lighting wasn’t conducive to proper thinking, the chair I was sat on was too hard to allow proper circulation of blood to my brain, I had other things on my mind and a mosquito was buzzing around my ears. And I had probably had too little sugar. And not enough sleep. And it was too warm to think……. That Phil did consistently better than me must have something to do with the better chair he was sitting on, or something….hum…Phrump!)

Who is Australia’s Princess Shirley married to?
Princess Shirley? Surely the royalty of Australia is that of my own country, right? A Princess Anne, yes, but to my knowledge of the British Monarchy there is no Princess Shirley!
What is this Hutt River Province?

After a little internet research we set off to find this land locked country within Australia. With an appointment to keep, which had been arranged with the Prince via our new found friend at Hamelin Pool, ‘The Prince is expecting us’, I said to our two Israeli travelling girls as we passed their Wicked camper van on the way to Hutt River Province together.
I think the rest of this post starts with the cliché, ‘A long time ago, in a land far away……….’ so here we go. This true story is amazing.

A long time ago in a land far away, on April 21st 1970, on a large farming property 517kms north of Perth, there lived a physicist turned farmer who then turned Prince.

Prince Leonard Casley

Leonard Casley, who had once worked for NASA, bought a 75 square kilometre wheat farm in Hutt River in the 1960s. In November 1969 he received a wheat Quota of 1647 bushels for their 18,500 acre property, which was jointly owned by five families. With this production quota, set by the government to control the supply of goods in order to maintain a certain price level, it would have taken five hundred years to crop the same amount of average wheat that would have been harvested in the previous twenty years. Leonard Casley, thinking this quota draconian, states on his website ‘the gross proceeds would not have even allowed any return for maintenance.’ I was also told by sources, which have to remain unnamed, that of the number of farmers around exceeding their quota, there was one who had managed to find an underhand buyer for the grain. This was great for the one farmer with the connection but for the other farmers it meant selling to the farmer with the connection. Anne is happy to meet the inspiring Prince Leonard
This was not the honest living Leonard had hoped for; surely there must be a way to sell the grain. Of course, he appealed to the government to amend the quota but at the time there was a Wheat Quota Bill before parliament being discussed which contained two clauses: no appeals would be allowed against the wheat quotas; no compensation would be allowed for losses due to quotas. If there was anything to be done about his grave situation it would have to be done before this bill became law.
A learned man, he trawled through the law books to find a way to fight for a right to make a living from his land, but each time he thought he found a loop hole he was yet again advised by the Governor that no changes would be made to the Wheat Quota. He put in a claim for compensation before the clauses became law.
From Leonard’s website:
The Wheat Quota ratio was used to calculate the damage. Under this Quota it would be necessary to purchase an additional 1,800,000 acres of land to be able to crop wheat to the total acreage that could otherwise have been done without the Quota. This additional vast acreage would have cost approximately $52,000,000.
Leonard was not filing this claim for compensation in order to gain money; he simply wanted to draw attention to his case.
The Ministerial moves to counter Leonard’s were to introduce a bill two weeks later whereby the government would have the power to resume his rural lands.

A Giant Stone Carving of Prince Leonard of Hutt River Principality
Leonard was now not only fighting for his right to an income, but to keep his home and land. However - and here comes the real ingenious guarantee that he would get the attention he deserved for his case - he decided to appeal to Queen Elizabeth for independence using a law which states that a self-preservation government may be formed if a threat to the loss of land exists - and he served a formal notice of secession. He had now blocked any resumption of his lands as administrative laws did now not apply to him now and must be re-legislated. The government convened about this potential land locked country. The Governor wrote to Leonard asking that he do nothing until they heard from the Commonwealth of Australia, then the Prime Minister wrote to say he could not intervene and that it was unconstitutional for the Commonwealth to intervene in the secession. Two years passed without anything being done or said and so Leonard Casely formed a government and a board of administrators and he was duly elected to govern the seceded area named Hutt River Province. Leonard Casely coined himself ‘His Royal Highness Prince Leonard I’.

Austeo Secret document from the Department of Territories to a Minister

I'm not sure whether the current Prime Minister has commented about Hutt River, but former Prime Ministers have not acknowledged Hutt River Principality. However, it is nonetheless a micronation which has to be taken seriously, the laws protect Prince Leonard's right to his kingdom and he is recognised by Australia and other nations, whether they want to admit it or not. Just read the above secret document! Those who need clarification about the ambiguity of Prince Leonard’s kingdom can read for themelves just how hazy the Australian government are on the situation.

A whole wall of yearly tax returns shows Prince Leonard exempt from income tax

Prince Leonard, now an old man, greeted us as we arrived in his Province. He advised us that he would be giving a tour of the kingdom first thing in the morning when a tour bus arrives and said we could join the tour then. In the mean time we were to make ourselves comfortable on the grounds and make use of their camping facilities. Dining with the Israeli girls we exchanged many interesting stories of our different upbringings and I probed many questions about experiences of growing up in a kibbutz, a community which pretty much lives based on the principles of communism.

In the morning Prince Leonard took the tour group to his immigration office and stamped their passports, showing us some of the security measures imbedded into our passport pictures under the UV lights and the differences between the passports belonging to different nationalities within the group. He then took us to a display room where the walls were scattered with medals, certificates and communications from royalty and heads of state around the world. Prince Leonard has been recognised around the world by various nations, being given rare gifts and invitations by the leaders of other nations. He proudly shows us his tax receipts which state zero tax to be paid. He is exempt from tax. He has his own stamps made and his royal mint makes Hutt River Principality currency.

Outside the Hutt River Government Offices with Israeli girls Gili and Dafi

After the tour group left he pulled me to one side and showed me some of the work he was currently working on, he has a fascination with numbers and has found some interesting correlations between the numbers of the Fibonacci series see his paper on The Holistic Nature of Reality here

Prince Leonard has captured the hearts of many who understand the hard fight against laws and bureaucracy, the small guy who won a fight against the government and won. He receives letters and phone calls from university professors who wish to learn about the starting of a nation from him and the most incredible thing is he studied the law on this matter so much that he is now considered the vanguard of micronations.
We left Hutt River Principality feeling happy for the guy who won his long fight with the unfair hand he was dealt by the Australian government; it is always nice to hear the underdog winning against all odds.

The Hutt River Principality Church of Nain holds many portraits of Prince Leonard in the back room

A Prince Leonard portrait

Gareth looking regal in Prince Leonards throne

The Casely family tree

Hutt River Principality is a working farm. Visitors are welcome between the hours of 8am and 4pm. There is a basic camp site with abolution block. For more details and to head to Prince Leonard's Webpage please visit the official home site here

A strange blow up santa on a bike in a field near the Hutt River Province turn off

Broome is Closed - We count the stings from sand fly pee

2009-04-17T01:35:00.000-07:00

The answer to the question we found ourselves asking many Australians, 'Where is your favourite place in Australia?' was often Broome. "You simply must go to Broome." "Make sure you stop at Broome!" so we eagerly headed for the Western coast in expectation of a warm and inviting place.

A snake Phil jogged over on Cable Beach

We landed, we exclaimed our arrival, we held our hands like cups to the back of our our ears waiting for a response..... but nobody replied. Broome was closed. Streets full of luring window displays and posters invited us in to leer, but every door was bolted shut, the cold and cheerless signs shouted the word 'CLOSED'. Our high expectations were shattered as the daily showers showed no signs of submission. The off season meteorological lows kept the shop keeper's income low and the general mood of the place was also pretty low. It seems this tourist town's population is largely here for the trade the holiday goers bring in, many business owners simply shut up shop and live elsewhere during the off season.

With our past week's wages going to the Bush Fire Appeal we were adamant about making up the money for Book Aid to help us get nearer to our £10,000 total but we couldn't find anyone to ask for a job, everywhere we went seemed like a desolate ghost town. Even an interview with the local ABC brought us no replies to our pleas for work of any nature.

Giving up on the look for work we decided to sleep out Valentine's Day in this quiet town and spend a little time on the famed Cable Beach. With such a busy time of year for the few restaurants and cafes that were still open for business we had little chance of speaking to owners to see if they could help with food, so we thought walking off our cravings along the sea front would be our only chance of getting through another day without the use of money.

Phil and I had decided to go and try to find some accommodation for the following evening on the way to the beach so we took the van out with us. 'Meet you at the beach in a short while' Gareth said, as he walked off in the opposite direction to the sea. He must be off to have a look around before meeting us for the sunset, I thought.

Snake prints in the sand

The beach, long and wide, camel trains walking in amongst the rocks, was as beautiful as I had imagined. The heavenly light reflecting off the wet sand was magical, giving the ground beneath our feet a depth of light, simulating a sensation of floating on clouds. At first the wet air soaked in the colours of a moody brewing blue and then as the sun hid behind the horizon a smorgasbord of vibrant fiery hot reds was brushed across the skies.

Phil went off for a barefoot run, (the only time we can go for a run is when we are on the beach due to lack of shoes) Gareth was still nowhere to be seen but I had my camera and stayed on the beach until I could no longer stand the biting of march flies and mosquitoes, taking a multitude of sunset pictures.

Later that evening Gareth was found back at the hostel we were lucky enough to be put up in. It seems his unbelievably bad sense of direction had failed him again and he had thought he was heading toward the beach when we saw him walking off in the wrong direction. At least he is consistent. Whenever you are in doubt just ask Gareth the way, face the direction he is pointing at, then turn around 180 degrees and walk away from his pointing arm, you will undoubtedly end up where you want to be. Left to his own devices, Gareth's internal compass would have us heading back in the direction we just came from every time we pulled into a fuel station for a bathroom break. If it wasn't for Phil's navigation and inability to sleep while I count the zzzzzz's on Gareth's driving shift, then we would probably be carcasses somewhere in the outback by now.

Broome's beauty came to life on the morning we left, the skies were blue and as we trawled the town for fuel we saw the emerald sea cradling sailing boats where men looked relaxed and happy as they fished. With the skies no longer grey, the town took on a new light and life seemed to be blossoming, people were found on the streets and we were wanting for nothing as those around us gave a cheery 'Nice work folks!' and patted us on the back.

As I counted the number of red spots all over my body caused by sand flies and started getting into the fifties I gave up. Checking the first aid book to see if there was anything I could put on the bites I found out that the spots were nothing to worry about but saw a note added to the bottom of the page. 'Did you know that sand flies do not actually bite you, they pee on you? The uric acid burns into your skin leaving you with a red spot'. Puke! Now my legs are a veritable tossed salad of allergic reactions to mosquitoes, spots from sand fly pee and marks from ant bites. It's not pretty.

The Diver's Tavern donated a wonderful meal of gigantic proportions

Broome is a beautiful place but if I were a tourist I would wait until the holiday season starts before I headed out to this far away town.

We Donate One Week's Wages to the Victorian Bush Fire Appeal

2009-04-16T01:50:00.001-07:00

Image from Guardian.co.uk

With news of the Victorian Bushfires dominating the news and views of the whole of Australia for most of February, it was with incredulity and awe that we listened to it all. The great extremes of the climate produced by this continent were asserting themselves dramatically. As we were experiencing the Wet season in the Top End, and the mighty river systems rose and flowed in flood and deluge, with creeks torrential and the floodplains vast, in the south of the country, in Victoria, they were having the worst, the most destructive and devastating Bushfires in Australian history.

Around the same time in Ingham, on Queensland's coast, the rain fell uninterrupted for 33 straight days, flooding many out of their homes, and drowning the crops the farmers rely on for their living. Not a drop of this vast deluge touched the southern end of the island, instead a drought, that had been constant for nearly seven years, culminated this year in record temperatures soaring into the mid-forties as a scorching heat-wave sent the state of Victoria into full alert; residents were warned of the potential for Bushfires; the bone-dry dense scrub surrounding the populated areas was like tinder, and coupled with high winds gusting through, a state-wide fire ban was called and extreme caution urged.

When the first fires broke out, some, we found out later, deliberately, they erupted and consumed and burnt with an intensity that no one anticipated. Black Saturday, February 7th, saw more than four hundred bushfires variously burning with degrees of ferocity as the wind fanned and spread the flames. The policies towards Bushfires propose that citizens in the path of one choose one of two options: to escape and take with you what you can, or to stay, prepare a defence, and fight. The fires were so intense and furious that some people had neither time nor warning to do either. 120 people died that day alone.

Over 175 people died all told, more than 500 injured, over 3,500 buildings were razed completely, with damage to thousands more. Entire communities were burnt to a cinder, the bodies of families trying to flee the inferno were found in their cars, still in their driveway, unable to escape in time. Those that survived talked of a 'Tsunami of fire' that roared through the hillside, hurled along by 100 kilometre and hour winds, giving those that had made all the proper preparations to protect their homes no opportunity to as much as think of defending themselves. Fire-breaks were rendered useless, new fires erupted from the smouldering ash, igniting the dense layers of scrub, as firemen backtracked and worked furiously trying to contend with it all, and as the wind threw it along.

Listening to the reports as they came in on the radio, we were horrified to learn of the carnage, as daily it got worse. More fires started as the wind carried with it spark and cinder, fanning the blaze over large distances and areas. It was terrible. Utter helplessness and total loss followed in its wake as home after home and family after family were affected. The series of fires consumed many towns north-east of the state capital Melbourne and most were badly damaged or almost completely destroyed - Kinglake, Marysville, Narbethong, Strathewen and Flowerdale among those towns that no longer exist. The fires affected 78 individual townships in total and left an estimated 7,500 people homeless.

Those unaffected, and those elsewhere in Australia, however, quickly sprang into action; providing temporary accommodation, in the form of spare rooms, and caravans, tents and beds in community relief centres. Clothing was sent by the truckload, food and water brought in also. Fodder and hay for the animals was found. By the fifth day, with fires still burning, over $88 million had been raised, by the end of the week over $200 million, as individuals, businesses and the Australian nation rallied behind the ravaged state of Victoria and dug deep to help out.

The culture of mateship, and helping others that we have had experience of ourselves was now fully behind the survivors; people from all over were taking a personal responsibility to raise as much as they could, taking it upon themselves to organize matters and do whatever they could. This very Australian of characteristics, borne of an ingrained can-do willingness to help the underdog, to aid where possible when needed and to do it all briskly, robustly and totally naturally, was taking from the adversity and giving those whose lives had been reduced to ash, some hope that things may get better.

Every town we passed through from Kununurra to Port Headland, had their own Bushfire Appeal and were intent on helping out. As small as our contribution was, we hoped that through contributing we could give back a little of the amazing kindness and generosity Australians have shown to us. The fires of Black Saturday and the following days, were of a magnitude scarcely credible, but so too was the response to it.......

Kununurra to Broome - Phil's Birthday Behind Bars

2009-04-15T21:57:00.000-07:00

A forgotten fuel cap is replaced (again)by Argyle Toyota

The day was hot and damp and steadily, not spectacularly, raining as we left Kununurra and made our way along the Great Northern Highway for our next intended stay in Broome. It had been a hot night in Kununurra. Sweat and rain intermingled. We had seen the night sky turn from dark blue to a deeply bruised purple as its ominous growling and churning yielded to spectacular sheet-lightning and the growling boom of thunder.

The strobe-like illuminations of an electric storm had flashed intermittent and when the threatened rain came it rattled the corrugated iron roofs with an assaulting drum-roll, cascading down, overspilling gutters within seconds, while the drains lustily drank the deluge.

The air that morning was still heavy and damp, the build up continuing. It had been raining a lot and would yet for another two months. It may be this fact, or it may not, that contributed to the story circulating that neatly encapsulates how small town Australia, small town anywhere really, works.

Kununurra is the Aboriginal word for "meeting of big waters", and where the waters meet they have been diverted into the Lake Argyle Dam. Lake Argyle covers an area 18 times the size of Sydney harbour, 1000 square kilometres. At full flood level that area increases to 2100 square kilometres and with 150,000 litres every second pouring into it from its catchments during the flood, it is a mighty contribution to the towns water supply and irrigation.

Told, undoubtedly as a joke it quickly became the rumour which caused a lot of stress for the residents of the Mirima community in Kununurra. The story spread that the Lake Argyle dam wall had cracked, was cracking, had breached, was spilling and in the way of all that pent up water waiting to burst its way down was firstly the Aboriginal settlement of Mirima then the town of Kununurra itself.

The Police received a number a calls from concerned residents, the locals were terrified and with the heavy, heavy rain still falling they were concerned the whole wall would break. According to the local paper one resident said that: "I was sleeping in my house, when I got a shock one night because one lady comes up and told me; "get up, get, up, get up" the dam is going to bust. So I got up, wake my brother in law, wake my grandson, I got a shock that night."

The Water Corporation, the Police, their experts and engineers, all concluded there was no foundation to the rumour, and while the locals concerned themselves with the foundation of the dam, the rumour grew and more worried calls flooded in.

Notice was issued by those experts and engineers, refuting completely the whole affair; the rumour was the work of malignant drunks or innocent fools, and that there was absolutely no evidence to support it. It was completely, unequivocally untrue. But the fact that they sent all those people there to look at what they claimed to be a blatant lie seemed to signify there had to be a problem.

Panic ensued. If a drunken yarn, or tall story it really was, then the Water Authority and Police would not be so involved or so worked up about it. Stricken locals, unable to get through to the overloaded switchboards, and driven to fever-pitch by their own hysteria, considered evacuating, those that had one took to their cars, others barricaded their homes, boats were readied, supplies stored away, the boatless residents demanding something be done to save them as they could not even swim (a dam bursts, the front end of 10,763,000 megalitres starts coming towards you, but you're ok, you have your water wings inflated and rubber ring on) and the more it was denied there was anything the matter, the more they demanded something be done, and the rumour ran riot as their imaginations worst nightmare struggled to contain itself and idle conjecture turned to solid fact.

It reached its height with tales of the dam having already broken and with witnesses reporting a concerned engineer conducting emergency repairs (150,000 litres per second pouring in one end, an engineer's thumb blocking up the other?) and with that the Police got on air and on radio and told everyone to stop it! just calm down ok! And as far as we know, they did, but that crack there, hairline, you can barely see it....

We spent the day driving and it became clear that we would make it no further than Halls Creek. The Roadhouses and Service Stations we stopped and asked at along the way could not help and it was with a diminishing supply of fuel that we approached. By the time we got there we had emptied the second of our three Jerry cans into the thirsty tank and still had 600 kilometres or so to go until Broome.

Halls Creek is not much. In fact as far as not much goes it is probably a little less. We did bump into Bernie though, Lou's other half, on his route through from Karratha in his Road Train. He could not talk long and we had to find someplace to sleep. We shook him by the hand and thanked him again for all he and Lou had done for us.

We found some accommodation quickly enough at a Motel. Phil did the talking then we settled in and I was startled to discover that the price of the room was my presence in the kitchen of the adjoining restaurant, washing up, as I was the only one with 'proper' shoes, and it had anyway already been arranged. I took it for the team, though it was hard to watch all the steaks and chops disappear from view out the swinging door, while I had instant noodles and cold beans for tea.

The job for the morning, before we could really head off anywhere, was to find some fuel. With limited choice we had to find it at one of two places on the main strip we had been told were the only Servos in town. Both said they could not help. But undeterred as only the truly desperate can be, we asked again whether there were any more, and hold on, said one fella, hang-yer-hat, if there isn't another one just down the way, round that corner and on the left.

We saw the Toyota Garage, parked up, went in, and asked. Delia the bosslady said yes, of course, no worries. Relief. Just use that diesel pump there, number five. Anxiety. We're on unleaded, we said. We have no unleaded left, Delia answered. A bitten fingernail, a chew of the lip, attested to the tricky spot. But I'll get on the phone to my husband and see what we can do. Hope. Good old Diego, he and Delia agreed to donate to us $90 for fuel, here you go have it. Anxiety again. Erm, we can't actually handle the cash we murmured, any cash we are given must go to Book Aid. Back on the phone to Diego, and it was agreed that Delia would accompany us to the Servo and pay for us after we filled-her-up. That we made everything as hard as possible for them and that they still came through it testament to the good nature of these small towns and its people.

It was Phil's birthday today, and as usual we all forgot. Or were we unsure, and not wanting to admit we didn't know (erm, I thought it was last week..?) and besides who knew how old he was? either 19 or 27, possibly 29, what with his mercurial existence making him elusive to the confines of chronological ageing and all (I'm a name not a number!) but we pretended we knew all along as Phil made subtle then not so subtle hints as to the specialness of this special day. Special boy that he is he was duly awarded the pride of place window seat position in the van.

We had been warned that the Fitzroy River was liable to flood at any time but that it had been crossable for the past couple of days, but not to delay much, as it rose quite quickly. Reports came to us via various sources (yarns, everyone loves telling travellers these yarns, especially one with a dramatic twist) that the River had at one point been ten metres above the bridge, and in danger of flooding the town. Equally dramatic had been the assertion that it rose some forty metres in under an hour, when the rains came and drowned out the dry.

In Fitzroy Crossing we discovered these claims to be true. The Fitzroy River can be one of the fastest flowing in the world. Its flow rate down the 15 kilometre wide flood plain has been estimated to be 30,000 cubic metres per second. In flood, it is probably the largest river in Australia. Fact, for those who like them. It was, thankfully for our safe passage over, probably ten metres under the bridge when we passed through and into Fitzroy Crossing itself.

We headed for the Crossing Inn, the local pub/hotel/motel/restaurant, figuring that we should probably try to find somewhere to stay in which we could toast Phil's (alleged) birthday with a couple of schooners of the cold stuff. Terry the manager gave us a donga (Australian word for a basic unit, or cabin, transportable, but not on wheels) and as Phil demanded we make him birthday tea, I went to talk with Terry alone, to bargain for some beers, and he agreed to a few each if I wash his car. Duly done, Terry fed us, and the beers came, and we toasted Phil's (possible) birthday with as much joy as people who-are-not-even-sure-if-it-is-his-real-birthday-at-all-but-that-are-going-along-with-it-because-Phil-is-making-such-a-fuss can be.

The pub was teeming with life as the seemingly all the Aboriginals in the area were having a party. I asked the barlady, Hilda, if it was a busy night an she said 'nah', in a way that made me think of the response Capitain Ahab would give if you went fishing with him and exclaimed as he pulled up a Spanish Mackerel that it was 'a big fish eh'. Hilda had seen worse, or better, I don't know.

Lulled into a false sense of drinking comfort and security, we sit at the bar, swaying away to the harmonica playing on the duke box. We are just getting merry with our third drinks and then all of a sudden the jovialities are cut to a prompt finish with the sound of a loud siren. The girl behind the counter shouts last orders and we quickly get our last green cans and rum cokes. I still have one drink to get but I’m not allowed to get it. Can I get two? No, you can only have one because it is one drink per person. Can’t I drink it really quickly and get another? No. Can you just give me a double then? No.
Ten minutes after the last order is called everyone is booted out the bar, metal cages come down around us as we are asked to move our drinks. I notice the signs behind the bars stating no spitting, fighting or humbugging. Left sat on stools, stunned at the change of scenery around us in the space of ten minutes we are asked to drink faster in a firm tone.
I am in no position to complain, I haven’t exactly paid for the beer, Gareth has worked for it but we had no money crossing palms. If I was a paying customer I would have had some words to say to the boss.
The staff left and the lights were turned off.
It is eight thirty five. Apparently the day ends early here.

Phil is stunned. Happy birthday.

The mossies were busy that night, situated as we were not far from the Fitzroy River, but we were by the time we got back to the Donga, merrily inebriated (Anne had oonl ha-d two drinks- hic!) and prepared to admit that it was Phil's birthday if he were prepared to take the joke this far.

We were up and-at-them the next morning with 400 kilometres to Broome, along country that it is hard to describe the barrenness of. With no trees in all four directions, as far as the horizon blank and featureless, without even an undulation pretending to be a hill. But it was all verdant and lush thanks to all the rain, with the deep rich red-ochre earth framing the picture of the thirstily thriving flora.

Presenters of Fitzroy Crossing local radio gave us Tshirts and caps, showing us around their station as the signal was down

With much water still on the roads, we were careful to avoid being too reckless as we drove over the flooded roads (cautionary yarns by well-meaning Aussies, of wheels snapping! and axles breaking! and people stranded! in the middle of nowhere! for days! because they didn't know the road was not there anymore under all the water) with care and made it to Broome around five o'clock, heading for Cable Beach besides that other vast tract of water the Indian Ocean.

What is listed as a Class 1 drug, has a nation watching its invading front and is used to play baseball and cricket? The Cane Toad

2009-04-01T20:07:00.000-07:00

The chemical Bufotenin excreted from the glands behind the eyes of a cane toad is classified, just as heroin, as a Class 1 drug under Australian drug laws. Toad licking could result in serious illness or death and many a pet dog has fell prey to these unappetising poison bags. Apparently the toxic skin has been smoked to obtain hallucinogenic effects, but after seeing a multitude of these vulgar cretins with white puss squirting out, it is certainly not something I have ever found myself compelled to do. Pets and animals eating the creatures become sick and die and so the cane toad has become something of a national focus for hatred and disgust. Thriving in conditions where they have no natural predators, and with the ability to kill most native wildlife in Australia when ingested, this introduced species has become one of Australia’s biggest mistakes.

The cane toad front is something that has been closely watched by a nation, especially farmers and nature conservationists can be watched on Australian TV after the weather. Native to Central and South America, the cane toad was introduced to Australia to help eradicate the cane beetle in 1935, the idea being they would eat all the cane beetles leaving the crops pest free without the use of pesticides. However, the cane beetles live on the top of the crops and guess what, because of its voracious and unselective appetite, the cane beetle is too fat to climb up and get them.

The migration of the cane toad from its introduction area in Queensland has been rapid. As we passed through quarantine at the state boarder for Western Australia we saw signs all over advising that vehicles must be checked for cane toads. On the table by the checkpoint a fat, sorrowful pickled specimen squashed into a large yet still too small jar is on show for those who don’t know what a cane toad looks like. As I asked the boarder security guys about the cane toad they advised me that it would not be long now before the cane toad is upon them anyway, they are merely kilometres away from the check point. As it happens, we were in Western Australia a matter of days before there was a report on the evening news showing a lowly single cane toad hoping over the state boarder before it was caught and put in a jar next to the one I had asked about, the first of many to come crossing through to Western Australia.
“The impact of the cane toad, if allowed to happen, will literally destroy one of the last unique biodiversity wilderness frontiers in Australia," Lee Scott-Virtue. Kimberley Specialists in Research.

In April 2005, in an attempt to give Australian native species a fighting chance against the cane toads, Dave Tollner, a Northern Territory Member of Parliament, called for legalisation of attacking cane toads.

People were encouraged to kill as many as they could and even though many animal and conservation groups criticised the inhumane way of killing, I have seen detol being poured over them, cars swerving all over the road to run over those cane toads that sit on the bitumen, I have seen farmers tossing and kicking toads against walls, and I witnessed the axing of a toad in half. And in those states where the cane toad is common, and with parents positively encouraging their children to eradicate the cane toads from their gardens, some rather cruel 'sports' have developed, such as cane toad golf, baseball and cricket, where cane toads are used as balls. A bounty of 40c per toad has even been discussed in some areas. But with one adult female laying up to 20,000 eggs, and with some people telling of the toads strange ability to vomit their guts out and then swallow them back again they have so far beaten any attempts of eradication.

Queensland has galvanised residents into taking part in mass culls.Townsville council encouraged people to track down and bag up the toads in an event called Toad Day Out, where live animals were taken to a collection point the following day, weighed and either frozen or gassed to death, with the carcasses turned into fertiliser.

"The cane toad is probably the most disgusting creature and the most destructive creature," said Queensland politician Shane Knuth, who came up with the Toad Day Out idea. "They're killing our native wildlife, they're taking over our habitat and they're hopping all through this country." Those who criticise claim that freezing is a more humane way to kill cane toads rather than hitting them with cricket bats, but as I watched a conscientious member of the public collect dozens of toads from around his house in plastic bags and place them in a bucket, the odd plastic bag escaping the bucket, hopping off blindly around the kitchen until the fish fingers were moved over to make room in the freezer, I couldn’t help but wonder if freezing was actually any kinder at all.

Wa Border and What do you Eat when you have No Money?

2009-03-18T18:54:00.000-07:00

Anything and everything!

Sorry but this is going to be a little bit of a four month without money fuelled whinge. One thing we have prepared ourselves for is to go hungry. We knew right from the start that with no ability to purchase food that we would sometimes have to go without. However, we are yet to starve, and although we are eating strange things, we are well enough.

Flies plague our food

We had been on the road all day, stopping only for a camping stove tea and stale biscuit break and we were all famished. Phil is cooking. I was hovering around the stove with little patience, willing the food to be ready with the fortitude of a girl in a toilet queue on New Years Eve; time drags, the minutes canter the wrong way up the down escalators.
Without seasoning, oil or proper cooking implements Phil tries to make something of the meagre ingredients, mostly being pulled from aluminium tins, squelching as the cylindrical food matter, falls out of its self made vacuum and slides into the pan with a big plop. We are so hungry it really doesn’t matter what we eat, anything will do, but we are looking forward to the meal to come due to the lavish way Phil is sprinkling things to the pan and for the amount of time he is spending on food preparations. Unfortunately, to call Phil’s culinary repertoire limited would be boastful, and the only thing we could do to get the fodder he prepared down our necks was to cover it in the fish flavoured sauce we had. It is, I think, the first time I have eaten anything which you could honestly describe as being gruel.

As a test of our will power people eat ice-cream in our wake in the midday sun, eat T-bone steaks on cloth covered tables to the left and drink cold beer that we can’t get our hands on to the right. It is hard sometimes, it has definitely been brought home to me just how much I rely on my ability to go out and buy myself anything I want to eat or snack on, anytime I like [in my normal life], to cope with different situations: something cold and icy when I’m hot; something stodgy and comforting when I’m cold; something full of grease and carbohydrates when I want to veg out; fresh fruit and vegetables when I need a detox; something chocolate covered when I’m feeling a little down.

Tempting......

Now that we can’t do that we have to be inventive about keeping our mind, and our eyes for that matter, off those food and drink items we covet. With little in the form of provisions in the Cheeky Camper we often have to work for a feed. We have opened packets to find food crawling with weevils, opened long life milk to find it curdled after a few hours in the immense heat and taken mouthfuls of water to find it putrid and eggy, yes, sometimes it is tough.

Flies suck the moisture from you

I can’t remember the last time I had a piece of chocolate, a big deal for a girl, a piece of gateaux or an ice-cream, gees what I wouldn’t give sometimes for an ice-lolly in the heat of the day in the desert when I’m surrounded on all sides by hoards of tourists in service stations deciding if they should go for the orange or lemonade flavoured ices. We can’t have cereal and milk because we have no milk, or cereal for that matter. Meals have little distinction except for what time of day we eat them, breakfast containing pretty much the same substance as what lunch and dinner will contain the only difference being lunch is eaten cold out of a can, smothered in its own tomato sauce and dinner will be heated over the camping stove if there is any gas, which at the moment we also do not have. So, on the road without the money to purchase a beer after a hard days graft, nor the money for a soda or basics like bread, us three Brits don’t even have the means to make a cup of tea, a very big deal, which anyone from the UK can sympathise with.

Gareth checking out what food supplies we have left in the van

While we would love to have a larder filled with goodies and a refrigerator full to the brim of fresh produce, we don’t. We make do with what is donated to us along our travels and look forward to home made food at the homes of those who invite us for a feed, or to those restaurants and cafes which take pity on us. Sometimes we eat like kings and other times we open the tin of Christmas chick peas and the last can of spaghetti hoops.

We hadn’t had any fresh food supplies for a while, but Tony Milhinos, the guy in Darwin who had done so much for us, paid for our supermarket sweep and we carefully selected fresh fruit and vegetable we thought would last though out our long trip to the West Australian coast. We ate a few grapes and apples, rationing the rest of the fruit to last the journey. Unfortunately, we were completely unprepared for what was to happen to us next. We arrived at the Northern Territory/Western Australia (WA) border and we were told to hand over everything! Most of the food items we had been rationing were on their quarantine list, we had to give up our fruit, our onions, our vegetables, garlic, honey, coconuts and nuts, in fact, everything that wasn’t dried or in a tin. We sat at the border control, for a while, eating as much fruit as we could cram in.
We really regretted our previous rationing.

The Wet and The Smell - Katherine to WA Border

2009-03-17T21:00:00.000-07:00

Phil checks the water level as we drive through a flooded road

After a soggy, damp night, we moved on from Katherine. The dash down the day before had delayed dinner, and we hardly ate, and we woke hungry and sullen next morning. That aside, we were looking forward to getting a move on and see what all the fuss was about. The Victoria River had been a thorn in our side, an obstacle immovable and for many, the talk of the town. It was the Vic River this, Vic River that. ‘You’ll never make it across… you’ll be at least 6 weeks marooned… might as well go another way (there is no other way)… I remember a time when it was up to the nostril of every man-jack this side of the Nullarbor…’ and we listened and nodded much the way we did when they (a different ‘they’) forewarned us about these floods that have a tendency to occur up here.

Phil takes a picture of the bushland turned raging river

Blithely we vie for having our heads in the clouds or stuck firmly in the sand. It isn’t easy living like that, but necessary, and productive. Had we listened to the ‘they’ we would not have been able to see what all the fuss was about when the Wet hits, nor being so daring to at the drop of a hat dash down daredevil fashion and attempt a bold crossing of this behemoth river during flood season.

Phil triumphantly raises his fists at being able to cross the Victoria river

Recent reports were that the Victoria River was now a metre under the bridge, which was passable, having been two metres over until two days ago, and passable only by boat, if you had the courage to fight not only the swift current but the hungry crocs too. Not knowing what to expect (“it [the river] goes down as fast as it goes up, but it can go up quicker!” they would say enigmatically to frighten us) and it was with some trepidation mingled with excitement that we approached, nervous that it had risen overnight (‘watch yer nostrils buddy!’) but eager all the same to see this huge surge of water in full flood.

We all walk over the Vic Bridge to imagine what the water line was like at its peak height of over 4 meters above the road

It was all clear to cross. The strewn debris and washed-up detritus along both sides of the bridge substantiated where the river had been, but it ran a metre or so beneath it. Submerging some of the ghost gum trees on the banks below, though, and maybe four hundred metres wide, the rich red ochre flood water raced down, and it was hard to imagine how much extra water could make it rise a further six metres to the level it was at its highest point over the bridge. Maybe ‘they’ had a point about the Wet season.

The Adelaide River Inn donates fuel to our cause

The actual bull that Crocodile Dundee hypnotises in the film!

It has to be done, we all did it.

One hundred percent humidity and the stifling heat keeps you wet at all times, the sweat pours down your back and pools around your arse soaking the seat. Legs sticking to the material on the chair and hair greased to your scalp, I mostly feel incredibly sticky, smelling about as attractive as I look and looking about as attractive as I feel under my layer of dirt.

A boab tree with climbing pegs hammered into it

Reflexions in the flooded bush make beautiful links between the skies and the land

A Wicked Camper signature painted door

Living in such a small space for such extended periods of time with two boys means that aromas fester, mutating into unbreathable, putrid, gaseous clouds if left unchecked. Our sleeping quarters, cooking area, washing area, larder and storage space, one unto itself, means that stray whiffs are unavoidable.

It hits you as soon as you open the van door, the smell of deodorant battling with the pungent smell of foist, sweat, feet and fart. Be it shoe, sock, a long forgotten rotten spud down the back of a seat, a soup spillage left to go mouldy, a damp dirty towel gone unwashed for an age or a lentil fuelled fart unable to escape the van due to rain forced closed windows, we have experienced it all. Add to that, the pong of the discernable flavour of carrion coming in from outside and the stifling heat to intensify all the stenches, you have a devils reek of a symphony for the nostrils.

Flooded in Darwin

2009-03-16T01:00:00.000-07:00

Picnicers at Mitchel Street Square

The final two weeks in Darwin were spent playing the old waiting game. We played it well, as it turns out, but we had no choice, we had to remain, we could not leave. We were well and truly trapped, caught in a jam, with nowhere to go.

The rain came every day keeping the Victoria River Bridge flooded It is as very simple tale to tell. You see, we did not listen to those who knew more than us. Or, if we did, we nodded, and thought it did not apply to us. At best we simply forgot to heed the (many and frequent) warnings to: "Make sure you get out of the Tropics before the Wet Season". Because: "You'll be stuck, flooded in". 'Oh, we will', we always replied, 'we will', we would agree, 'we'll be long gone before the rains come down, long gone'.

We were slap-bang in the middle of it all weren't we.

We got stuck, flooded in, like they said we would. To the south of us (then again, anywhere in Australia is south to the Darwin folk) towards Katherine the road was intermittently waterlogged, and west of Katherine towards the Western Australian border the road was closed. The Victoria River, 200 kilometres west along the Victoria Highway from the Mingaloo turn-off from Katherine had risen up and over the bridge, at one stage five metres over, a tremendous body of water in a great hurry to the sea and we were at its mercy.

A bird enjoys the flooded roads

We decided to stay put in Darwin while the monsoonal trough passed over the Top End depositing more water to feed the catchment areas that force the Victoria River to swell and burst its banks. The Bureau of Meteorology website was daily checked, thanks to the free internet time given us by Parliament House Library, which became our second home. There we updated the sorely neglected blogsite and scoured the collection.

The Vic River bridge just after the rains went down, the river actually came 2.4 meters avove the bridge! That is just under the top of the supports of the new bridge you can see in the background!

A fountain in the Parliament House gardens

After so long in Darwin (we were there nearly five weeks all told by the time we left), we were saved by the Library. They offer everyone one free hour per day, but were more than happy to allow us to work away uninterrupted as long as we liked. It became our office for those two weeks, the staff knew us, the coffee shop fed and watered us, and we got much done. We were also fortunate that the accomodation we found were sympathetic to our predicament. At first the Value Inn, then Meleleuka on Mitchell Hostel, followed by the Palms City Resort, who were amazingly supportive and gave us a luxurious apartment in paradise for nearly two weeks gratis, also doing our washing and giving us free internet access, and finally Ashton Lodge Backpackers, so we were able to have extended stays in the city centre.

The Parliament House building by day and by night

This convenient set-up allowed us to divide our time between the Library and organizing fundraising activities at the various pubs and bars in town, as well as at the Robertson and Larrakia Army Barracks. Deprived of the ease with which we were treated and the support of these people, we would have been severely hampered.

The Northern Territory flag

We were still being fed daily at the Vic Hotel thanks to the armfull of meal vouchers given to us when we arrived in Darwin by Chillies Backpackers, and despite spending so long in town we never went hungry for long. True, by the end we were asking some of the same people twice (unwittingly) and it became harder. Generosity is a finite resource to call upon, and so it became harder to gauge where we would find food next, especially when the meal vouchers ran out, but that was no major hardship and testament to the amount of businesses that readily came to our aid.

Australian army hats on racks outside the mess hall

All up we raised over $6,000 in Darwin. A very succesful time, and one we never felt wasted, even when flooded in. From bar to bar, pub to pub, we trundled with our jar, collecting donations, organizing raffles from the gifts donated by the local businesses, even appearing on local radio to auction some too. Finding ourselves on the front page on the NT News was very handy and we milked our celebrity for all it was worth.

Lieutenant Bill Heck of Robertson Barracks
There is a charm to Darwin that we warmed to, an ease we fell right into. We worked hard and were rewarded. The conviviality of the residents was disarmingly benevolent and readily helpful. The fact that we were on the front page of the NT News obviously helped a lot of people recognize us and dig a little deeper when donating on our periodical tour of the bars. But it was the amount of businesses that donated to us that helped us get that much more money in. From meal vouchers, to a Pearl Necklace and Earring Set, to MP3 players, to a free massage voucher, and much more, we were able to talk the pubs and clubs into allowing us to raffle some of them and make the fundraising easier, and more fun.

Tropical Spas donate voucher to raffle
Thinking about it later, while watching the news with all talk was centred on the Credit Crunch and the Global Financial Crisis, we could not have felt more removed from the situation. Not one person, even those who chose not to help, citing this as a reason for doing so. After all, the meltdown in the World Economy has been the hidden plotline to our trip, the grumbling underbelly of the world around us coughing up debt and disaster for many businesses and individuals. It would be all too easy for those we meet to be in the grip of it themselves, but so far either people are too good natured to use it as an excuse, or too busy getting on with things to worry us with their problems.

Jim Bancroft from Darwin Reef and Wrecks donates some fishing trips to raffle off

We are not oblivious to the circumstances, we hear of the closure of mines, the loss of jobs and the instability it is all generating, in or near some of the towns we pass through, but, as in the situation of the flood, when there is nothing you can do about it, you get on with things and keep working away. That is a very Aussie attitude also, I think. Get into it mate! So, as all we can do is ask, we kept asking, and people either obliged us or they didn't. More people helped out than not, though, and that made it easier to keep asking.

A skirted mushroom we food whilst clearin a rain forest

As February approached the Victoria River was still flowing over the bridge. Our friends Lou and Bernie were keeping us in the loop, as Bernie spends a lot of his days on the road, picking up and delivering goods westwards and, as there is only the one road west, he and Lou told us that as soon as he heard the bridge was passable, he would let us know. This was yet another situation we were to find ourselves in where serendipity smiled on us and allowed us the luxury of being able to use our time well. Bernie waited ten days beside the bridge at the Victoria River before getting through.

The flooded roads of the northern Territory

Had we not been privvy to this insider knowledge we too may have been forced to wing it and wait by the side of the road, instead of air conditioned and comfortable in the Palms City Resort, able to fundraise and bring in the money. Part of me wanted to be stuck by the road though. Waiting it out. And as it turns out they had a great time there too. Someone would daily drive the 200 kilometres to Katherine, Bernie told us later, to pick up the cartons of booze and the steaks, and they would play cards, cook a barbie, drink stubbies and go fishing, watching for the crocs on the bank, of course.

As week five was approaching we decided on leaving Darwin. We had to work for Jeremy and Michelle Barndon in Howard Springs, south of the city, so we figured this into our plans. Michelle had heard us on the radio and phoned in to offer a days work picking up palm fronds from their small rainforest. The river may rise five metres in an hour, but it is just as likely to fall by that too, we were told. The rain was abating a little and we felt the need to be nearer the action in case we only had a window of a day or so. We would make our way slowly out of Darwin and see what the river was doing each day.

Jeremy and Michelle stood in their rain forest after we cleared it

It was raining when we cleared the palm fronds for Jeremy and Michelle, and there were a lot of them to pick up, but the work was made that much easier when Jeremy asked the question "what beers do you lot like? I'll get a slab in for ya". We stayed there that night and got royally drunk too. On our way next day to Humpty Doo to see a lady called Fiona Scott, who has been in touch with us for many months now, who we had promised to visit since we were in Tully, on the east coast, we heard from Lou, who had just heard from Bernie, that the Victoria Bridge was passable, but for who knows how long, so get yer arses down there sharpish. A flying visit to Fiona Scott followed, long enough to have a chat and a cup of tea, and we were off to Katherine that night, to make for the bridge the next morning. Sorry we couldn't stay longer Fiona, we were gutted to run in and out like that, thanks for the biscuits and the donations!

The floods had subsided, and we could run but we could not hide, but for the moment we were on the road again, putting the slipper into it and at the drop of a hat heading to see the big fat load of water that had been in name only so far a very troublesome problem to us but a sight to behold we were sure. We were running out of time in the Northern Territory, but we had no time to stop and smell the roses. There were one thousand kilometres of floodplains to traverse until we were (apparently) safe in Broome, and the road was liable to flood again at any time.

Australia Day Creeps Upon us Signifying Failure

2009-03-15T06:00:00.000-07:00

Australians have such a sense of national pride that it is impossible to miss the immense number of flags flying over anything from a grand building to a push chair, the hoards of guys and girls donning the southern cross tattooed across various body parts and the proudly displayed Australia made products stacked across supermarket shelves throughout. So it comes to no surprise that January 26th, Australia Day, is the biggest holiday here, outside of the festive season.

The Australian emblem over Parliament House doors

"It's a chance to reflect on our sense of self-reliance, our support for others in times of need, our quirky humour, our glorious landscape, our perspective and our national personality." say official Australia webpages. And that pretty much sums up exactly what we find of Australia and Australians on our cheeky trip. On the receiving end of the support, the humour and the awe inspiring landscapes, we know for sure how derserving Australians are of this day of celebration. Experiencing first hand the national vibe and personality we three agreed that Australian's have many a reason to take a day off work in unison and celebrate this great nation.

Most humorously, in the lead up to Australia Day, TV commercials were shown at regular intervals throughout the day and night showing what I can only describe as an advert which had an underling message of ‘get pissed with your mates on Australia Day or else!’ but what were we going to do? We had no plans. As we listened to the twenty one gun salute by 8/12 Medium Regt and watched the FA18 flyover, Gareth receives a phone call from Lou, our friend in Palmerston, who in true Australian style asked us to come join her and friends at Tracy's house. A traditional Australia Day backyard gathering round the pool and sausage sizzle made for a lovely break from trying to find food and shelter.

Anne is introduced to children’s python on Australia Day

Caption competition. Enter caption here...............................

What a day; good food, great people and plenty of toasts. Gareth talked to Pearl, a Manx lady living in Darwin, about the Welsh characters on Little Britain whilst showing off the back of her tabard, which had the Manx flag on it, signifying her Isle of Man roots.

Our little friend Taylor showing us an Aussie Day traditional get up

For us, Australia Day had other great significance too, it was the projected target day of our return to Brisbane. Our initial goal and time frame for circumnavigating Australia, whilst raising $20,000. The date crept upon us while we were trapped in Darwin by the floods. By this stage we had imagined a tough but doable race to the finish line in Brisbane, but we had failed. Yet we didn’t feel like failures.

Feeling slightly foolish at our underestimation of the size of this country and of the grand scales between fuel stations in the outback, we laughed at our previous ignorance, but we didn’t feel ashamed at defeat. In fact, it didn’t even feel like the end of a journey, that is, because without us even discussing the thought, we each had known and decided a long time ago that no matter what happened we would complete the journey.

So, we carry on regardless, safe in the knowledge that we couldn’t fail any further and that children around the world would benefit from our failure nonetheless. So $7,000 short of our target of $20,000 and far from Brisbane we press on. Like those who carry on running toward the finishing line of a marathon hours after the adjudicators have retired, the Cheeky Trip would continue. Wicked Campers agreed to let us have the Cheeky Van a little longer and we took this as a sign of good things to come.

As we all thought we would be back to Brisbane by now this opened up another spanner in the works, Gareth’s visa was up. He had been in Australia for a year now on a working holiday visa and now that he had turned 31 he was ineligible to apply for a second year visa. Determined to carry on and contribute to the goal of £10,000 he jumped on a flight to Bali and returned a few days later on a tourist visa. Visa issues are something tedious all those wishing to stay for more than a short holiday in any country have to deal with. Gareth will have to hop skip and jump through the hoops to stay on the trip.

Robson Green Donates to the As Cheeky As You Can't gang!

2009-03-15T01:58:00.000-07:00

We really went to work hard on the fund-raising in Darwin hitting the pubs and bars with our tins. The people of Darwin, who now knew us as 'Those naked bin bag people!' because of the front page NT News article, responded wonderfully by throwing money our way and by giving us a pat on the back. We even bumped into Robson Green, a fellow Geordie, who was filming in Darwin at the time. Phil walked up to him and brashly said "Robson Green give me some money!" To which Mr Green dug deep into his pockets and threw in a few notes in our tin after writing on the reverse of a flyer; "To Anne, Phil and Gareth, with a passion that knows no shame, Robson Green" What a canny bloke!

photo from ABC.net

A restaurant along the marina during full moon, Darwin

While talking to the people of Darwin we were told by more than one person to talk to a gentleman called Tony Milhinos, the winner of the 2005 Senior Australian of the Year award. Nervous and unsure of our being able to even get an appointment with such a revered man, we tentatively went to seek him out in the centre management office of the large shopping centre he owned. Wandering around the whole complex without finding any office of any kind, we asked the assistance of a shop keeper to point us in the right direction, at which point we were ushered to a haberdashery and told he would usually be found in there. However, he was nowhere to be seen. Walking amongst the coloured threads and cross-stitch frames, we were introduced to his daughter, who said he would most likely be out sweeping the centre and cleaning the toilets. What a guy!

Phil talks to Tony Milhinos, winner of the prestigious award senior Australian of the year

Tony, a down to earth family man, with a welcoming smile and grandchild glued to his side, greeted us with warm welcome and a wish to know more about what we were doing. It seems our way of fund raising, actively earning donations and not just asking others to do the hard work appealed to his values and he made time to speak to Phil and myself. And very modestly though he was, he agreed to answer our questions about how he became such a well know celebrity in the Northern Territory in exchange of a few stories of our cheeky adventure. Tony, he informs us, landed in Australia many years ago with only $200 in his pocket and succeeded in making his fortunes. "Australia has been very good to me, I have been very lucky and now I just want to give something back to the community that has given me so much." He is well known in Darwin as a local philanthropist, donating to many charities and good causes. But what is so wonderful about this man is that he inspires the people around him to give as generously as he does. A day that he will always be remembered for in the community is when, during the fund raising for Black Wednesday, for the victims of the bush fires of 1983 was when he donated all profits for a full day and all his staff followed suite, working all day without any wage, raising around $25,000. On hearing about what us 'Crazy Poms' are doing he donated $1,000 worth of shopping vouchers for us to raffle, gave us a shopping trolley for a supermarket sweep on three separate occasions and filled our jerry cans with fuel. While we walked around his shopping centre with him, the staff cheerfully greeted him with familiarity and genuine friendliness. He has found a great balance between running his business and his family, obviously treating his employees as extended family. We left Nightcliffe feeling that we had met someone very special, a community man, who still gets embarrassed at any attention he receives for his good deeds. Tony believes that he is looked after so well in life because of good karma and perseverance. Thank you so much Tony for showing us how you can do well in life and still keep your feet on the ground.

Gareth climbs at The Adventure Academy Rock Centre Doctor's Gully

Surprisingly, as opposed to wasting away through lack of chocolate treats and beer we are actually much less active than our pre-cheeky trip selves, due to the amount of time we spend in the van. So when we were given the opportunity to release some stress at an indoor climbing wall we jumped at the chance. We took a few hours out of our fund-raising and were given instructions to warm up by going through the children’s jungle play area before we would be let loose on the wall. Whilst I would love to say that it was fun to run around and relive those youthful play times, I found my much less agile body clumsy and awkward, oversized and the next day, very bruised. I found the bright plastic tunnels cramped and claustrophobic; I perspired through frustration at my inability to get my legs through hoops or my bum down slides. Climbing however was such a much needed stress reliever and we climbed until our forearms bulged like Popeye's, straining to reach those dizzy heights on the ever decreasingly sized climbing holds. Thank you for the exercise! In a gigantic disused fuel storage tank, this wall has something for all levels. One thing which has really been hard for me as a girl with little in the way of girlie products, few tools or cosmetics to help me look and feel better if I am feeling a little run down, or little in the way of clothing which I think suit or fit me, is that I feel a little less attractive than I feel in my clothes. And when, for example, during my pub fund-raising boys comment on how they saw me in the paper but that I could have at least done my hair, it doesn't do great things for diminishing self confidence. Palace Hair Studio on Mitchell Street took one look at me whilst I came in to pick up vouchers to raffle at a fund raiser and told me to come in for a treat of a hair cut and colour. I walked into Palace Studio with a mop top, tatty through lack of comb and severely dry through lack of conditioner, but I walked out feeling like a million dollars. Catching glimpses of myself in shop windows, I swished my head from side to side, running my fingers through my healthy looking locks. But, as Sod's law would have it, a few minutes after walking out the door the heavens opened up and drenched me, we are not talking a little shower, we are talking perpetual buckets poured over my head sticking my hair to my face and drenching my clothes to the point of embarrassing transparency. And of course, after the wetting, my hair reverted to its same old unmanageable, messy birds nest. For the few minutes that I didn't feel like a scruff I whole-heartedly thank Dee Archibald and Caitlyn McLaughlin at Palace Hair Studio, a few minutes of glamour and a few hours pampering made my week!

Dee of Palace Hair Studio revamps Anne's tatty hair after seeing her messy mop on the front page of NT news

Phil is groomed by a Sunderland girl, Ally, who immigrated to Darwin

In fact, we ended up being in Darwin so long that Phil needed to get his hair cut again, this time Jess at Innovative Hair Designs help out with a quick whiz over with the shears.

We watch Aussie guys being lifted meters into the air as they kite surf

Happy Garden Chinese Restaurant gave us free reign on their buffet banquet. Yummm... Eat all you want can be dangeous in our situation.

A fantastic spread for a buffet style, very reasonably priced meal.

Darwin offers some great spots to stroll along the coast. Fishing is Australia's most popular pastime so you will often see boastful pictures hung on pub walls or lounge tables of guys with wide grins holding onto large catches. But not everyone is after the same catch, during one of our relaxing walks along the beach front we came across a family who were dropping in hand lines for catfish. This very friendly boy offered some entertainment as he went off snapping pictures of his pacifying bottle, obviously his most prized possession, with my camera.

A very lovely and handsome family indeed. Funnily enough, we bumped into this clan again in Catherine. Small world this big place is.

A Darwin Sunset

Manoli’s a newly opened Greek restaurant in the city invited us in for the most delicious and enormous plate of spaghetti.
We never thought we would be so treated in a town, but I can honestly say that almost every business helped us out in some way or other. In fact, as you can see in the picture above, we were given so much spaghetti in one restaurant that for the first time on the trip I couldn’t lick my plate clean.

Before coming to Australia I had never heard of the Waifs. I was introduced to their live album in the cheeky van, where it became a daily food for the ears staple. A bluesy folk band, with a girl who really knows how to blast them out on her harmonica and vocals, we had pretty much learned the words to all the songs on the CD we were given, by George of the Magnetic Times, and after mailing their representative we were invited to come and watch them perform live at the Darwin Entertainment Centre.

Although the band themselves played well and we were more than impressed with how good they sounded and performed live, I will never really get my still body around these sit down venues. In frustration, the few people who managed to break free of their seats to give a little still footed, stood up, bum wiggle had only a short burst of enjoyment before the crowds behind them tutted loud enough to be heard. The restrains of seating gives for an unenthusiastic crowd and it seemed that this was the only complaint of all spectators. The night was a wonderful musical break from fund-raising and we have now pretty much adopted The Waifs ‘I’m in London Still’ as a theme tune to our travels. Thanks for a great performance!

Darwin, Sailing, Baz Luhrmann's Australia and Parap Markets

2009-03-14T00:48:00.000-07:00

A goanna we nearly ran over, Aboriginal traditional food

Having just arrived in Darwin we spent a couple of days searching for things to do and ways that we could possibly fund raise whilst in a heavily populated area for the first time since leaving Brisbane. We heard of a popular weekend market just outside Darwin centre and called the market manager to see if she would allow us to pitch up for free. Wendy was more than willing to help our cause and asked us if we could turn up bright and early so she could allocate us a space.

Our stall at Parap markets, eveything was given away for free, well for a donbation

The Parap Village Market is one of Darwin 's longest running markets and is a vibrant and colourful place to spend a morning, the atmosphere is busy but relaxed and there is a wide range of stalls selling food, arts and local crafts.

Our stall contained a strange mixture of donated goods including boxes of loofas and car belts

As we had done previously at a couple of other events we set up an eye catching display in an attempt to get peoples attention. Markets are always a good way of us lightening our load, as we can offer up any items that people have donated to our cause. In return we ask for donations and explain to people what it is we are attempting to do and how. We seldom have a negative response, indeed most people after learning what we are attempting to do around Australia, donate more than the item is worth. We left our first morning at Parap with over $250 dollars and an invitation to a barbecue the following day Andrew and Deb, a couple who were browsing the market as they had just moved to Darwin from Victoria. Thinking that we might be hungry they offered us a feed at their new home. We were overjoyed.

Andrew and Deb, a perfect example of Aussie hospitality and kindness

A good old Aussie barbie is a wondrous thing to behold. Having already been lucky enough to have sampled a few, we have found that they usually entail the eating of a mountain of perfectly cooked meat, washed down with a multitude of stubbies, and a good time is always had by all. This was certainly no exception and we returned to the city centre late at night relaxed, refreshed and very glad of their hospitality to complete strangers, sending us off on our way with a bag full of goodies and smiley faces.

Aboriginal guys singing poems and songs at Parap markets

Wendy invited us back to the market another two times. Each time we did the markets we raised a little more in funds than the previous time, especially after finding ourselves on the front page on the NT News. This was very handy and we milked our celebrity for all it was worth. After all, we didn't want to be pointed at in the street by strangers who shouted 'Look! It's the naked bin bag people', for nothing. We made valuable money for the charity and other stall holders always made sure we weren't going hungry.

A lady doing traditional Aboriginal painting

Wendy had a contact at Nightcliffe Market a little further out of town, so we headed there the following morning. Established in 1996 it has now become a weekly community event. It was here that we met Michael Allen, of NT Sailing and Adventures who offered us a sunset cruise that evening after passing our stall and deciding to give us a tour of the harbour.

We took him up on his exciting offer and at half five the same day we were leaving the pier on Daymirri 2, a luxury 10 metre sailing catamaran. NT Sailing and Adventures offer a variety of different tours depending on the season. Michael is a great entertainer, telling stories about Darwin and imparting delightful little titbits of sailing knowledge. Learning a lot about the area and the history of Darwin from Michael, we were intellectually stimulated and in addition overjoyed to be provided with food and drink too.

Michael Allen of NT Sailing Adventures

During our stay in Darwin the film Australia was showing, of which we were lucky enough to have been donated three complimentary tickets by Harry at Greater Union Cinema. We thoroughly enjoyed watching the film in Darwin, where the film was set. The Aboriginal casting was fantastic and who doesn't want to see Hugh showering with his jeans on like that? We enjoyed the light hearted comedy and excitedly compared our own experiences of the awe inspiring scenery, and although it wouldn't normally be a film of choice, it was great to see it whilst we were actually in the Northern Territory capital.

Greater Union Cinema donated tickets to the film Australia

We asked Michael what he thought of the film, Australia. He was annoyed about factual untruths. It seems that Baz used a bit of cinematic licence, the Japanese never actually landed on Australian soil and there was no Mission Island, nor magical cattle station called Faraway Downs. Michael was also not the only Australian we met who thought it ridiculous to give the drover the name 'Drover', ''it’s like naming a carpenter 'Carpenter' or an engineer 'Engineer'.

We chill out on Daymirri, ejoying the sunset views of Darwin harbour

We are well looked after by Darwins many cafes and restaurants

Wandering around Darwin you come across so many wonderful graffiti art pieces

At Parap markets we met a wonderful lady called Mette, who invited us to her home for a BBQ, gave us vouchers for her clothing store to raffle in a fund-raiser and filled us with a tank of fuel. She went out of her way to help. In many ways we owe a lot to Mette and her gorgeous daughter Tilly.

Mataranka to Palmerston, Darwin

2009-03-13T23:03:00.000-07:00

The rains brewing on the road from Mataranka to Darwin

At a steady 80kms an hour for six hours we made the 420km trip to Palmerston, Darwin, with the fuel we earned at Mataranka, in a quiet, uneventful manner. We were looking forward to once more seeing the boisterous family we had immediately loved during our work in the land of the Never Never. Arriving late in the evening we headed straight for the loud amplified electric guitar being played in a back yard we knew would belong to Bernie.

Lou greets Bernie at his Road Train

Bernie, wearer of humorous T-shirts, speaker of foul language, driver of road trains and drinker of Drambuie, is a bloke who consistently looks as if he needs to desperately have a kip and yet he has an energy for dirty yarns unlike any other man I have met. He has a passion for squeezing laughter out of serious faces, unashamedly using extreme toilet and x-rated humour, in order to keep a chuckle spreading around the table in waves.
Immediately, a stubby of beer was put into one hand and Bernie declared me ‘some kind of pufter’ for not immediately downing the shot of Drambuie he put in my other hand - all my pleas of not eating yet and losing my tolerance for alcohol since the lack of it on the trip only fuelling his look of disbelief as I said I would have it after my beer and delicious sausage salad - yes, we are spoiled sometimes.

Taylor and Jake gave us a warm welcome and immediately went about showing us their various treasures, such as their pet snakes, dogs, dolls and swimming pool. We were in amidst the noise of a family and it was nice to feel part of, if only for a short while. We stayed with Lou and Bernie for a few days, baby sitting the kids, not one of the easiest jobs so far on the trip. As we are moving around so much it is hard to keep track of what kind of bed in whose place we went to sleep in. Every day it is necessary to spend the first few moments of consciousness trying to remember where we are and in what situation. But at Lou and Bernie’s we were not to have those few moments to gather our thoughts, we were suddenly woken up by children bouncing on our chests and a cat who also wanted in on the action. Attention giving is never done with children and animals.

Gareth with Taylor in the road train cabin and Phil with Jake

In between the plethora of dirty jokes we were told stories of the road, stories of Japanese cyclists crashing into kangaroos taking all the skin off their backs. Stories of the things that up at height in a road train cabin you can see happening in the cars below and stories of the many kangaroos that Bernie runs over weekly in his 50m road train as if they were grasshoppers. He goes into great detail, telling of the kind of mess 'roos makes on impact, blood and guts everywhere, then eagerly tells us the boys next job. Washing the road train, of course! Bugs and 'roo juice, yuk!

The front Bernie's road train

Road train cock pit

Anne and Phil in the sparkling clean road train the boys just washed

Anne can't get enough of the big lorries

Lou, bus driver and mother, organiser of parties and chief laugher at jokes rules the household we grew very fond of. In this animated family of laughter and scolding, crying and cooing, cuddles and hair pulling, in between the buzzing of the busy parents, the giggling of kids and the squawking of frantic animals we surprisingly found a very relaxing place to be. Our heartfelt thanks go out to Lou and Bernie, who opened up their home and their family life to us.

Channel Nine Current Affairs Book Aid Cheeky Charity Trio

2009-03-12T08:04:00.000-07:00

Gareth, Anne and Phil are three friends from the UK who made a pact to travel to Australia and live off the goodwill of strangers. And in return donating any money they make to Charity.
It's some challenge these three have taken on, to travel right around Australia without spending a single cent, not one, not a bean, not even to feed themselves..........read more on Current Affairs

Exploring the Heart - John McDouall Stuart

2009-03-04T22:52:00.000-08:00

The thing about Australia is that, as a nation, it is still relatively young. As a continent it is, of course, eons old, and, if you count the Indigenous occupation, inhabited for the past 50,000 years. But, as the dates recorded by the European settlers who founded the Commonwealth of Australia, their history is an exciting one, a daring one; a brave and bold adventure, not without its mistakes, of course, and its triumphs, undoubtedly, but you don’t have to go too far back to find it, and, proud as they are of this history, it is not too difficult to find it either.

One of these triumphs, that incorporated some mistakes and misadventures, and that forged the Aussie spirit, that opened a giant land of barren expanse to the new settlers and pioneered a new chapter in the history of this sapling nation is the story of John McDouall Stuart and his role in connecting Australia to the rest of the world.

In 1839 HMS Beagle led by John Clements Wickham, who had on board a young naturalist called Charles Darwin, sailed around the north on a surveying trip, stopping at what he later named Port Darwin and the reports of this natural harbour obviously excited those who wished not only to explore the continent but to develop it, and to establish links to the rest of the world.

The Northern Territory was then linked to South Australia, governed from Adelaide, who were itching to expand their horizons into the vast blank space occupied by the Territory. By 1855 speculation had intensified about possible routes for the connection of Australia to the new telegraph cable in Java and thus Europe. Among the possible routes were either Ceylon to Albany in Western Australia, or Java to Darwin and on to either Burketown in north western Queensland, or across the dead heart to Adelaide.

Initiating what was later to become known as the indomitable Aussie spirit of fierce competitiveness and me-first rivalry Adelaide decided they wanted it. Competition between the colonies over the route was fierce. The Victorian government organised an expedition led by Burke and Wills to cross the continent from Menindee to the Gulf of Carpentaria in 1860. The South Australian government recognised the economic benefits that would result from becoming the centre of the telegraph network and so offered a reward of £2 000 to encourage an expedition to find a route between South Australia and Darwin.

If this were a film, there would be a lot of stuffy bureaucrats in overly-tight suits huffing and puffing inside a plush room thick with cigar smoke, curling impressive moustaches, vying for the top spot no matter what the cost. The hero, unknown to us at the beginning, would be drunk somewhere, possible fighting, certainly unkempt, swigging deeply from a long-neck bottle of whisky. ‘Where will we find this man to cross the heart of the continent, to go where no man before him has been?’ the stuffy men in the tight suits ask. The scene cuts, it is morning, the hero sits up in bed, takes a giant swig from his ever-present bottle and belches loudly.

Cue John McDouall Stuart. Born in 1815 in Fifeshire, Scotland, the son of William Stuart, an army captain. A slight, delicately built young man, standing about 5' 6" tall and weighing less than 9 stone. He arrived in South Australia in 1838 where he entered the government survey department. He gained experience with Captain Charles Sturt some of his expeditions, and had by 1859 established a reputation as a sterling explorer, brilliant surveyor and as a fellow who was rather fond of a drink.

Very fond of a drink. In fact, it could be said, that when he was not exploring he was drinking. This is not to denigrate the man, but he was a born explorer, a man for whom vast distances and a walk towards the horizon held nothing but the most delightful awe. In the cities, where big-wigs curled their moustaches and guffawed over brandies, he felt hemmed in, claustrophobic, and so drank to compensate, or maybe he ‘went bush’ to escape from loneliness and fear. Who knows. If Nicole Kidman were part of this plot she would figure him out alrite, but she’s not, so indulge me. He liked a drink and we don’t know why. And if those jerks up in City Hall don’t like it well they can….

In 1859, the South Australian Government were crying out for someone to cross Australia from south to north. Like the interior of Africa, inland Australia stood out as an embarrassing blank area on the map and although the long-held dreams of a fertile inland sea had faded, there was an intense desire to see the continent crossed. This was the apex of the age of heroic exploration. And a hero was waiting in the wings.

The proposed telegraph line made things more urgent still. Invented only a few decades earlier, the technology had matured rapidly and a global network of undersea and overland cables was taking shape. The line from England had already reached India and plans were being made to extend it to the major population centres of Australia in Victoria and New South Wales. Several of the mainland colonies were competing to host the Australian terminus of the telegraph: Western Australia and New South Wales proposed long undersea cables; South Australia proposed employing the shortest possible undersea cable bringing the telegraph ashore in Australia's Top End. From there it would run overland for 3000 kilometers south to Adelaide. The difficulty was obvious: the proposed route was not only remote and (as far as European settlers were concerned) uninhabited, it was simply a vast blank space on the map.

At much the same time, the wealthy rival colony Victoria was preparing the biggest and most lavishly equipped expedition in Australia's history. The South Australian government offered the reward of £2,000 to any person able to cross the continent and discover a suitable route for the telegraph from Adelaide to the north coast. Stuart's friends and sponsors, James & John Chambers and Finke, asked the government to put up £1,000 to equip an expedition to be led by Stuart. The South Australian government, however, ignored Stuart and instead sponsored an expedition led by the hapless Alexander Tolmer, which failed miserably, failing even to travel beyond the settled districts.

So, sponsored by James & John Chambers Finke he set out. From March 1860 until 1862 Stuart made three attempts to cross the continent. Travelling light and quick, avoiding the problems associated with a large expedition party, he knew the terrain and where to find water, but supplies were a problem, as were a hostile native mob, who attacked the party and stole from them. Stuart’s eye was a pain, the result of sandy blight from so much work surveying the desert, he was suffering from scurvy, and so they turned back, not without first venturing further than anyone had previously done. The Victorian Burke and Wills party had set off two months before he returned on October 1860.

In January 1861 he was ready to do it again. James Chambers once more put it to the government to support Stuart. The government prevaricated and quibbled about cost, personnel, and ultimate control of the expedition, twiddling moustaches and patting overfed stomachs, but eventually agreed to contribute ten armed men to guard against another attack by the native Aboriginals and a purse of £2500; and put Stuart in operational command. (In contrast, the Victorian government had provided Burke and Wills with the massive sum of £12,000. That expedition had already reached the Darling River in northern New South Wales).

When this expedition failed near the Victoria River only four hundred kilometers south of the top it was due to Bullwaddie Bush. A natural sort of razor wire it grew in a dense forest halting Stuart’s progress, ripping, tearing and puncturing clothing, flesh, saddle bags, and the animals. They tried to find an alternate way, but with supplies running low, and again, the native Aboriginals hostile to their presence, they turned back for home in September 1861, six months after they left Adelaide.

On their return they heard that Burke and Wills were missing. Stuart offered to help with the search party, but he was not needed, however, as news reached them that all but one of Australia’s most lavishly funded and equipped expeditions had expired on the trail and died. Stuart came back to a frosty reception, dark news and fell again into his old habit of drinking.

The public’s appetite for these expeditions was cooling too by now. Stuart wanted one more shot, godamitt, but the South Australian Government were reluctant to fund another effort, despite the fact that Stuart has led his men to within a few hundred miles of the top and back without losing one. However, the prospect of establishing a route for an overland telegraph line had the Government rubbing their hands in glee and they finally dug deep and provided Stuart with £2000 at the last minute on condition that Stuart took a scientist with him. James & John Chambers along with William Finke remained the principal private backers.

Only two months after he returned from his last effort to reach the Top End, he was off again. In October 1861 he and his loyal band of explorers set off and this time made it. In July 1862 he reached the beach at Chambers Bay, due east of where Darwin is today. In his notes he commented:

I believe this country (i.e., from the Roper to the Adelaide and thence to
the shores of the Gulf), to be well adapted for the settlement of an
European population, the climate being in every respect suitable, and the
surrounding country of excellent quality and of great extent. Timber,
stringy-bark, iron-bark, gum, etc., with bamboo fifty to sixty feet high on
the banks of the river, is abundant, and at convenient distances. The
country is intersected by numerous springs and watercourses in every
direction. In my journey across I was not fortunate in meeting with thunder
showers or heavy rains; but, with the exception of two nights, I was never
without a sufficient supply of water. (‘Explorations in Australia’, John
McDouall Stuart, Adelaide, Decmber 18, 1862)

Yet he did not linger there. Turning back at once for Adelaide they made it back to with Stuart almost skeletal in appearance, practically blind, suffering from scurvy, and carried for the last part on a makeshift stretcher, from which, when he entered Adelaide, and they saw who it was and the big-wigs came out, and saw Stuart stretcherd and wretched they patted their bellies, drew on their cigars, and tut-tutted, until a scrawny finger beckoned them hither, Stewart’s, and waddling over they went. ‘Closer’, whispered Stewart, ‘closer’, he whispered almost inaudibly until they were upon him.

The Big-Wigs indulged him, laughing, and as they leant in, with smirks on their big round fleshly faces, a thin haggard hand grabbed a lapel pulling a surprised face down until level with Stuart’s own, and his gaunt voice told them ‘we did it’, and as the penny dropped, the jowls of that surprised face drop to his knees as the news kicks in. The big-wigs begin to understand. Stuart had reached the Top End. It was 1862 and he was 47 years old.

This enabled the Governors of South Australia to proceed with the plans for the Overhead Telegraph Line with the same rapidity of intent and coming into fruition that saw them delay and hinder Stuart for so long. So a mere eight years of prevaricating, conniving and convincing later they finally contracted the linking of Adelaide to Darwin via 3200 kilometers of overhead telegraph line. The British-Australian Telegraph Company promised to lay the undersea cable from Java to Darwin by 31st December 1871, with severe penalties were to be applied if the connecting link was not ready.

As it was in 1859, so the race was now on in 1870. The South Australian Superintendent of Telegraphs, Charles Todd, was appointed head of the project, had overseen its progress so far and worked tirelessly and devotedly to try to complete the immense project on schedule. He planned on dividing the route into three regions: the northern section from Darwin 1200 kilometres to Tennant’s Creek and the southern section from Port Augusta 800 kilometres across the treeless wastes of the gibber deserts were to be handled by private contractors, and a central section which would be constructed by his own department, under John Ross and Alfred Giles whose job it was to find a gap through the MacDonnell Ranges, which they eventually did, discovering a beautiful natural spring, an ideal location for a base camp, naming it Alice Springs, after Todd’s wife.

The telegraph line required more than 36,000 wooden poles, insulators, batteries, wire and other equipment, all ordered from England and all carried into the interior. It was a mammoth project and one that would not be an Australian project were it not beset by the problems associated with working in the conditions that the country provides; the northern contractors were hit hard by the onset of the tropical wet season in November 1870, with torrential rain and heavy flooding making work impossible and the men, riddled with scurvy, and, demoralised had progressed barely 400 kilometres by February 1871, and with 700 kilometres left to do, they went on strike, and the luckless contractor was sacked.

The southern and central sections were progressing well and it required an army of 500 workers led by engineer Robert Patterson arriving in July 1871 to rally the northern effort from Darwin. Running months behind schedule and with calls from the Queensland government to have the project aborted, in May 1872 Charles Todd moved into action, urging everyone involved to press on, visiting all the gangs working along the length of the line up to Darwin to lift their spirits and rally them alongside him. This call to arms from Todd spurred the workers on and they commenced furiously in an effort to realize the dream of connecting Australia to the rest of the world.

On 22nd of August 1872, the Overhead Telegraph Line was finally connected. Charles Todd, overseeing the project he thought of as his own, the man whose perseverance saw the project into fruition, was given the honour of sending the first message along the completed line to Adelaide:

"WE HAVE THIS DAY, WITHIN TWO YEARS, COMPLETED A LINE OF COMMUNICATIONS TWO
THOUSAND MILES LONG THROUGH THE VERY CENTRE OF AUSTRALIA, UNTIL A FEW YEARS AGO
A TERRA INCOGNITA BELIEVED TO BE A DESERT +++ "

The Overhead Telegraph Line was connected to the undersea cable, giving Australia the historical advantage of rapid communication with the outside world. The many months of travel and the years spent trying again and again by John McDouall Stuart to trace a way through the interior to the Top End, suffering along the way the ravages of thirst and hunger, scurvy, sand blindness and the depredation of expedition after expedition through the unyielding heart until he finally succeeded, is one of Australia’s most courageous stories.

This one man’s dogged perseverance, indomitable courage and brilliance, whose expertise saw to it that each man who went with him return home, who was an outsider to the big-wigs of the time who thought him a lush, is a classic Australian story, and wonderful folklore. The man who travelled light and quick and with trusted companions, when others were exploring with a cavalcade of equipment, made the journey that people thought impossible.

Is it ironic, or merely fitting, that when workers were digging the holes for the telegraph poles at Pine Creek they found gold, starting what was to become the Great Australian Gold Rush of the 1870s, filling the previously barren, empty Northern Territory with thousands of prospectors. More gold was found, at Tennant’s Creek. The Territory was now open.

The route John McDouall Stuart took, that the Overhead Telegraph Line followed, that linked Australia with the world, that they found all that gold along, is now the main route running from Port Augusta in the south, to Darwin in the north, and is named in his honour, the 3000 kilometer Stuart Highway. It is quite a story for one mans endeavours to enrich a country so much, and inadvertently so into the bargain.

He spent the intervening years until his death suffering from the hardships he endured, locked in a silence he never broke, in an alcoholism he never rid himself of, unaffected by the adulation of being the first to cross the interior of his adopted country. He was never to know of the opportunities he had created for others and in April 1864, after 24 years in Australia, he proceeded to England and died in London on 5 June 1866, aged 51. Five mourners attended his funeral and no mention was made of his epic endeavours.

The trail that Stuart found through the heart to the Top End owes as much to his extraordinary skill in finding water as it does to his bravery and ability to endure. For 3000 kilometers, from Adelaide to Darwin, he consistently found drinkable water; knowing where to look, what to look for and how to get it.

He recognized the land formations where a creek or a waterhole were to be found, he knew “the sight and sound of numerous diamond birds, a sure sign of the proximity of water” (“Explorations in Australia 1858-62”) even the insects, the native bees, wasps and ants that were indicators of an underground source. The desert succulents and other arid plants were made use of with “a great deal of moisture in the Pig Face (carpobrutus sp) which was a first rate thing for thirsty horses”.

Setting up camp wherever he found a good supply, at Alice Springs, Barrow Creek, Wycliffe Well, Tennant’s Creek, Daly Waters, Birdum, Mataranka (fed by the mighty Roper River), Pine Creek, Katherine (supplied by the Katherine River) and on up to Darwin, he found such regular and reliable sources of water that these places were subsequently used as Repeater Telegraph Stations for the Overhead Telegraph Line, then grew into the towns and townships that line the Stuart Highway today.

It should not be underestimated how reliable were his predictions. The history of settlement and exploration in the Outback is rife with examples of erroneous reports of a ripe and fruitful area with excellent potential and a reliable source of drinking water, only to settle there, or send a party through, and find the place parched, the water only temporary, or else subject to wild seasonal variations. Stuart was dead-on with his assertions and many people reaped the benefits of his acumen.

Stuart’s is a story of courage and bravery, of determination against adversity, of immense skill and judgment in the face of hardship and struggle, and ultimately one of loss in the face of triumph, but what stories worth remembering are ever anything but.

Back to Cheeky Homepage

History of Darwin

2009-03-01T22:58:00.000-08:00

If there were ever a place that deserved to be described as tough or uncompromising, that was blessed by a recalcitrant providence to suffer the slings and arrows of misfortune and that also happened to have a rather displeasing habit of being completely destroyed, then that place is Darwin. Not that I've heard the bathroom sink talking in tongues or seen Elvis pushing a bearded midget in a pram or anything, but Darwin has had its fair share of calamity, both natural and man made.

The Top End, as it is known, was just a dirty great big empty space for the settlers, and they vied to make it habitable from early on. Traversing the coast from the eastern colonies they tried repeatedly to set up outposts there, and repeatedly abandoned them. From 1824 to 1849 they made numerous attempts to settle along the coast and as each attempt disastrously failed, they took this as a sign to learn nothing from their mistakes and try again, failing every time.

This despite the local Aboriginal population, the Larrakia or 'saltwater' people finding in the area an abundance of marine life, game, rockpools and natural springs. Of course, notwithstanding the fact that the monsoonal rains during the 'wet' and prolonged drought during the 'dry' complicate things a little, but they sought no lessons from the native people, trusting their own methods, and, as a result, it took some mammoth endeavours and another twenty years before anyone tried to settle there again.

With the route to the Top End blazed by John McDouall Stuart in 1862, they decided to try this time to go overland to settle, but still could not quite get the hang of it, and abandoned the post again. They must have been scratching their heads at this, yet no one thought to seek some wisdom from the people who occupied the lands, and lived there comfortably, namely the Larrakia Aboriginals.

So, it was in 1869 that they tried again. You can almost hear the pen scratching through the paper onto the thick oak desk as the Government man sanctions another trip to the Top End and it would not have been without some grave words that they were dispatched to settle up there, this time for good. To the east of the point where Stuart and his crew first sighted the Timor Sea from land, they established a new town, and named it Palmerston.

Not a lot happened in Palmerston. They were over 3000 miles from their bosses in South Australia and probably feeling the pinch over privations, with supplies taking weeks to arrive. Any farming they did usually ended in failure as knowledge of the climate slowly, and I mean slowly, dawned on them. Fishing proved a little more successful, as did the Pearling industry, bringing incomers from Thursday Island, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Japan into Palmerston.

In 1872 the Overhead Telegraph Line, that linked Adelaide with Darwin and, via an undersea cable to Java, with London and thus the rest of the world, was completed and connected. While still small and remote, the new town of Palmerston gained something of note with this strategic placement, and was to benefit further from this when two workers, while digging the holes for the posts for the Overhead Telegraph discovered gold.

The Pine Creek Gold Rush in the 1880s brought in people from all over. Writing as a journalist at the time the great AB 'Banjo' Paterson wrote that:

"Palmerston is unique among Australian towns, insomuch as it is filled with the boilings over of the great cauldron of Oriental humanity. Here comes the vagrant population of all Eastern races. Here are gathered together Canton coolies, Japanese pearl divers, Malays, Manilamen, Portuguese from adjacent Timor, Cingalese, Zanzibar negroes looking for billets as stokers, frail (but not fair) damsels from Kobe, all sorts of conditions of men" ('Paterson', 1898, p.23)

So this pick-'n-mix population settled, Palmerston reaped the benefits of the gold rush as more people flocked to the territory, and continued to do so until 1897. How do we know this so precisely? Because that was the year a cyclone tore through the fledgling community, flattening everything, scattering the inhabitants, destroying their homes and buildings. There had been a few before, somewhat nasty, but this one took the biscuit, and hurled it at two hundred miles an hour into the sea. It gets pretty lively up Top End.

Maybe that is why in 1911 South Australia ceded control of the Northern Territory, allowing them to go it alone, and become part of the Commonwealth. Duly done, they promptly changed the name of Palmerston to that which most thought it was called anyway, and Darwin was born, and the town-formerly-known-as-Palmerston got on with it.

Darwin went about its business, encouraging more people, improving the town, expanding its boundaries, dealing with the Aborigines in typically robust style through placing them in camps, under curfew, prohibited moving freely. That aside, life was good for the Darwinians. As capital of the newly independent Northern Territory it received funding and grand buildings were erected to commemorate this honour.

An eminent architect called John George Knight came up from Adelaide and set to designing some of Darwin's most impressive buildings. He also had a novel, bright and quite liberated view on how to deal with life in the tropics, and one which had more in common with the locals, the Larrakia 'saltwater people', than maybe he realised, when he said that 'the great secret of maintaining health in a hot climate is to expose the naked body so much as possible to the direct rays of the sun'.

Darwin was burgeoning and it appeared as if even the white Europeans were adapting to life there, abandoning starched collars and greatcoats for some au naturel let-it-all-hang-out. It was too good to last though. So in 1942 the Japanese squadron that bomber Pearl Harbour let loose over Darwin and did to the Aussies what they did to the Americans. Darwin was flattened once more, the residents scattered, leaving en masse for the southern states in the months of worry leading up to the attack, or killed in the air raid itself, or left destitute and homeless. The damage was great, and the rebuild took its toll on those left behind.

But, the silver lining the Aussies are great at finding, was that occupation by the forces had improved much of the before non-existent infrastructure that had hindered Darwin's growth. The Army left behind a new improved wharf, had sealed the dirt road that was the Stuart Highway from Alice Springs and built and established the water and power sources. So Darwin flourished. In the ten years from the end of the war Darwin's population nearly doubled to 60,000, more coming, as the rebuild appealed not only to peoples sense of civic pride but to their nation building pioneering spirit too.

Darwin was the capital of the Northern Territory and proud of it. How happily they lived, these new Darwinians, the settlers building the schools that educated their children, the pubs and clubs that they sung and danced and indulged in the by now firmly entrenched true-blue Aussie tradition of 'getting on it', and drinking beer.

As they prepared for Christmas in 1974, some were indeed 'getting on it', others were simply asleep, or wide-eyed and waiting for Santa, but Christmas did not come, and Santa, if he had tried at all would have been hurtled at 250 miles an hour to Timbuktu. Cyclone Tracy arrived in Darwin at midnight on Christmas eve and in one night destroyed Darwin again.

There was a warning, issued in the weeks and days coming up to the event, that a cyclone was forming, and some decided to leave, heading south (everywhere is south from Darwin, ask any Darwinian where they go for a holiday and they invariably say 'south', be it to western or eastern Australia), and those that remained were, according to the reports "pretty sloshed" come the time the cyclone arrived.

The wind screamed in just after midnight. The anemometer, designed to record wind speeds, was damaged and stopped recording after reading a gust of 217 mph when the storm was still building. It was terrible. Families were airborne along with their homes, which just disintegrated. The roof came off, the rafters, the beams, then as the floorboards swirled violently they joined the fence posts, fridges and roof iron as projectiles.

What they woke up to on Christmas morning was a scene of total devastation. 90% of Darwin was utterly destroyed. There were 49 deaths, with 16 missing at sea. The wind was so ferocious that it stripped the paint off the boats, many of whom broke anchor and were tossed like toys around the harbour. 12,000 homes were completely destroyed.

Darwin was flattened and reduced to rubble once more. There would have been people living in Darwin in 1974 who remember the 1942 bombings, and who may have thought to themselves what was going on. But, indomitable as these people are, they roled up their sleves and got on with it.

The population in Darwin is around 101,000 now. It has a breezy, light feel to it, with the tropical palms and giant tamarind trees secluding shade from the insistant sun. It gets a fair bit of rain, and the weather gets a wee bit lively from January through to March, but the unhurried and laid back lifestyle is what people come to Darwin for. There are no airs and graces, you can still go to most pubs and bars in flip-flops and t-shirt, and the smoking ban has yet to be enforced.

Maybe, just maybe, having been through what the Darwin people have been through, they have realised somewhere along the way, that life's too short, permanence is illusory, so they don't worry, and take things as they come. Despite its habit of falling down, Darwin is a pretty stand-up place.

Spectacular Jumping Crocodiles, Adelaide River, Darwin

2009-02-28T21:35:00.000-08:00

Peter, owner of a Cruise company calls us during our stay in Darwin and on hearing that we were trapped there due to the floods said that we must come and see what the Adelaide river has to offer.

We board the pick up bus in Darwin City Centre and we head towards Jabiru, our friendly, informative driver talks away, tells us interesting tit bits of information about the things we can see to the left or the right, answering all questions thrown at him with confidence and ease. The land surrounding Darwin is lush and green, and with the wet season also comes the vast array fauna and flora, in fact, we are told that this area of the Northern Territory has more bio diversity than that of the Serengeti Plains. To see this much green and water around, especially after sleeping on the red earth of central Australia was astonishing. However, the most astonishing fact, and one which further explains our being trapped by the rains is that at one point over the last few years one part of the Adelaide river, normally 92m across expanded to engulf all surrounding land during ‘The Wet’ as it swelled to an incredible 14kms! The brief stop to the visitors centre gave us impressive aerial views of the land bellow us and offered explanations of some of the roles of the small creatures which help maintain the balance of the ecosystem.

On arriving at the jetty we were greeted with a snake around our shoulders much like an Aussie version of a flower lei and we shook hands with our skipper Peter himself, who promised us something a little different.

Very shortly after we set off Peter assures us that there is a croc of at least fours meters in length coming toward the boat. All the passengers quickly move to the right side of the boat, cameras at the ready, all pointing in different directions as we make wild guesses as to which ripple in the water is the croc. Eventually he has to verbally guide us to the exact location of the camouflaged killer so that our untrained eyes could focus in.

I’m leaning over the side of the boat; waiting for the shot I’ve been promised. Zoom lense ready, I’m waiting for the slight rippling of the water to give away the start of the jump. Suddenly he makes a giant, muscular, adrenalin fuelled jump. My zoom lense shows the teeth fast coming nearer to my face, he is really big. So startled by the swift movement I jump back, recoiling from the danger, I'm too surprised to react to the impressiveness of the beast in a professional manner and completely miss the shot.
Crooked, yellow, aging teeth amongst the fresh new nashers squeezed into a powerful jaw come closer and closer and closer as the prehistoric throw back lunges out of the muddy waters, opened mouthed, toward the crowd looking over the side of the boat. Up, up, up he jumps until two thirds of his tail is completely out of the water. Nothing had quite prepared me for the sight of the crocodile lunging so far out of the water bearing all its teeth. With my eyes only just back in their sockets. My exact words of exclamation were uncouth and unrepeatable so I will lie and say I said something along the lines of “Holy Cannoli!” followed by “Wow, he sure is a big old chap, how simply awe inspiring”. He snaps at the meat on a stick which has roused him but at the very last moment it is teased out of his reach and he disappears back into the water. The lure is lowered back within reach again and he makes another spectacular jump for it, this time clamping down on the bait and swallowing it whole after landing with a splash back into the depths, camouflaged once more.

The huge specimens we see today have recently been fighting one another, fresh scars over old ones leave white marks on their heads, apparently a six meter crocodile named ‘Hannibal the Cannibal’, who has recently moved into the area has been throwing his weight around and showing the other crocs who’s boss. Powerful, age old monsters, fierce and ruthless, persistently scout the Adelaide River, learning the habits of those who venture into the waters, either to moor a boat, empty crab pots or to swim. But why would anyone with a decent sense of life saving fear go anywhere near the river? It is crawling with these man eaters. Ruthless, without sympathy or remorse they guard their territory, patrolling the turf. If you are in, or nearby the water, and they are hungry, you haven’t got a chance. You can’t appeal to their better nature and whilst Croc Dundee fans would like to believe it is possible to talk your way out of becoming dinner, the reality is that it is the croc you don’t see that will get you and you won’t ever see it’s face to get a chance to stab it in the nose with your hunting knife. We’ve seen pictures of tourist in small boats being stalked by crocs and listened to countless tales of crocs from almost everyone we meet. But, the truth is you don’t meet people with croc scars, and after seeing the big ones up close and personal, I can clearly see how it would be impossible to survive to tell the tale.

The news is saturated with croc stories, one day a photo of a blurred croc in the distance graces the front page, the next, descriptions of a sandal being found on the banks near where the victim was last seen, or a hat found floating down stream. Croc attacks are not as uncommon as you would hope in the Northern Territory. Since our time in Oz we have followed the reporting of a man, a father and husband, who had been taken by a crocodile whilst he was checking his crab pots. He should have known better than to put his pots out in the same place three days in a row, say some, whilst others say kill the croc. An debate on the local radio stations about what should be done causes an outcry in the outback communities who believe things should be left as they are and people should stop interfering with the natural food chain.

What is so misleading about the media use of the croc sightings is that they print stories of crocs as if they are a rare occurrence. The truth is that they are everywhere, Phil and I couldn’t believe how many we saw and we know for sure there was a whole bunch more hiding in the waters that were not visible to us. A croc picture on the front page sells more papers, in fact, we find out that they tend to double or triple their sales whenever our prehistoric predators grace the front cover.

Croc Facts
They can leap so that 2/3rds of their tale is out of the water
They grow new teeth as and when they are needed
They swallow stones to aid with digestion and for balance
They bask in the sun with their mouths open so their brains don’t over heat.
If croc eggs are stored below 30degrees they usually become female, if stored below they become male.
They can become really big!!!

Birds of prey steal tit bits of meat as it is thrown in for the crocs

Phil and I were so thoroughly impressed with what we saw on this trip, it was something we were not expecting to ever see in the wild.

For bookings and information visit Spectacular Jumping Crocodile Cruises