Though I'd add in a few photos to liven things up a bit. One of the highlights of the trip was going on a jumping Croc tour in Darwin. Here is a pic....

This is the gang at The Olgas or Kata Tjuta as it's native name goes.

One of the many confidence inspiring signs around Coober Peedy.

and then....

Oi Oi,

Sorry I've been a bit slack on the old updates recently. The rest of the tour report will have to wait (possibly for ever) as I haven't got the tim or inclination to write. To be honest it'd probably bore most of you anyway, no one likes just reading reems of 'and then we saw this and it was brilliant' which is basically what it would involve.

Anyway, I've been in Perth for about a month now and managed to get myself two jobs within a day and somehwere to live within a week.
I've been working six days a week delivering the White Pages (telephone directory) to house around Perth. In many ways it's quite hard getting up at 6:30 every morning and working six days a week but, in manys ways it isn't. We basically just get sent out in a van with a map and get fling, or supposedly place, books at peoples letter boxes. With a bit of application you can earn nearly $1000 dollars a week which isn't chicken feed.

That's finished now however so I'll be falling back on my other job which is barwork where I'm quite predicatably working at the Elephant and Wheelbarrow in Perth... who would have guessed!

As for travel updates it looks like I'll be leaving Australia in about a month to visit New Zealand for a few weeks before flying back in to Melbourne for a couple of months to earn some money. Then it's off to live in Texas for three months probably followed by a mooch around Canada... there's no stopping me now!

I'll have to go my money is running out on the internet... take it easy everyone.

Tour Report

Well, things have finally settled down enough so I can write up a little synopsis of our tour around half of Australia.

We left Melbourne early morning on the 20th of August all full of the joys of spring and excited about the trip ahead. Well... that had been the plan but due to there being a bit of a going away party held the night before we kind of all staggered out of bed a few hours later than planned and wandered around aimlessly like freshly resurrected corpses before finally getting it together enough to leave at about 10am. We sailed out of South Melbourne to the melodious crooning of John Denver's leaving on a Jet Plane with a few tears thinking how we'd probabaly never see ther plkace again. Then we came back about an hour later to pick up all the stuff that we'd forgotten!

Anyway, we odidn't kame great time that first day but we were on the road which is the important thing. After travelling a few hundred km's we decided to camp for the night at Apollo Bay a lovely little spot just on the coast just before the Great Ocean road. It was so calm and such a lovely evening the tents were just casually pitched, not bothering with guides ropes or any of that malarky, before bedding down for an early night. As most people who have been camping have learnt, always peg down you tent properly. Out of nowhere a gale force wind appeared and proceeded to thrash our tents around for the whole night. Our tent proceeded to blow in so hard that the poles kept smacking me in the face and waking me up while Tony and Lyn awoke to rain on their faces as the outer cover had blown completely off. We all learnt a valuable lesson for the rest of the trip that night!

I'll speed things up a bit. After that we travelled the Great Ocean Road and did a helicopter tyour over the Twelve Apostles As pictured below.

We arrived in Adelaide later that day and decided to stay a couple of days in a hostel in Glenelg which is just out of town on the Coast.

Fully rested up we set off to our next stop up throught the middle of Australia, Coober Peedy. This is mad little town which is about 50% under ground and firmly rooted in the 1950's. Famous for it's Opals or as the setting for Mad Max III 'Beyond the Thunderdrome', depending on what impresses you most. Our camp was a little more successful this time although we were starting to discover that trying to hammer pegs into dirt that has been baked hard over a few millenia is far from easy.

Next, up Ayers Rock or Uluru. Not mcuh to say, it's a big rock and we went and looked at it, for the second time on this blog I'll include a token sunset shot. I'll leave the rest of the trip for another day as I'm getting a mite peckish.