Tuesday, 21st December 2004
Made It To Darwin
Location: Darwin
Weather: Hot n'Humid
Was good to get to Darwin and a real bed after driving about 2200kms in 4 days. Checked into the highly recommended Meleleuca on Mitchell backpackers. It was located right in the city centre and has apparently only been open a few months. Had a swimming pool, big kitchen and balcony area. It was very clean and had good rooms/beds except for some reason they put me in a 6 bed dorm(4 bed dorms were the same price) and even though there weren't that many people staying in the place they insisited on filling our room up to the brim 
Well Darwin...better than Broome and Perth, but considering it is supposed to be a city it is more like a small town. There's a nice esplanade that looks out onto the sea and this leads to the colonial looking Parliament House and there is a wharf area where I went fishing a couple of times(didn't catch anything) but not much else. In fact the only highlight of the town other than the Aboriginal Artwork outlets is the Aqua Scene Fish Feeding, where they have been feeding the fish in the sea for 40 years and so hundreds of them appear at high-tide! you pay to go in and get some bread and you can feed the fish, which is great fun. Almost everything else is out of town, such as the giant Casurina shopping mall and even the Botannical Gardens (which aren't bad) are 20mins walk away. Being Wet Season it also rained a lot during my time there, like every other hour, which didn't help.
hmmm! what else? ah yes, as is customary in almost every North WA and Northern Territory town there were a large number of alcoholic Aborigine's hanging around Darwin. Allegedly all the bad Abo's get sent to the towns whilst the good ones stay in their reservation areas, so many tourists get a very bad impression of them, which is understandable when you're constantly shouted "OI!" at or sworn at or asked for $4 for a 'bus ticket' (translation: for a beer) and when you say NO they say "hey we got some real tight fisted people round here". However, after a time they can become more entertaining than annoying to some of us travellers, you hear/see something new from them every day, usually something totally unbelievable, talk about a different culture. Wish I'd had the guts to take some photos of them in Darwin, if you've not been to these areas you'll have no idea what I mean and most of them aren't that bad.
By JamesReed on 21.12.04 @ 06:52 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]
Journey to Darwin - Another Epic
Location: Darwin
Weather: Hot n'Humid
Saturday 18th December 2004
After collapsing in the room around 2am and getting up at mid-day with a huge hangover and being rather annoyed with myself about the night before, missing my appointment with the van woman didn't help. But phoning her up, apologising and downing an energy drink did! I was eventually given the keys at 3:30pm! This van was owned by the Wicked Van Company (check out the features, it even has a portable TV) - one famous amongst travellers here, because the vans are all painted with different logos and my one had Finding Nemo!
Cool eh! As you can guess I was very popular on my journey - I got asked and shouted at in loads of places. HEY NEMO all the kids would say. Your van is cool...Did you paint it yourself others would ask. I think it saved me from getting robbed by delinquent kids quite a few times to be honest!
Anyways, I stocked up on supplies in Broome and spent the night down a dirt road near the Broome Bird Observatory. I then set off, without any maps, except for the Lonely Planet and having heard people say that Highway One led to Darwin. The first landmark was a place called Fitzroy Crossing. The scenary to here was extremely boring, ok, so the odd Boab Tree and the thousands of large Termite mounds were interesting for a while, but not after 3 hours! it was mostly just plain scrub land. Considering this is part of the famed Kimberley Region I was disappointed. But from here on it improved, some mountains and rocks appeared.
Perhaps a short detour to Alice Springs only 1040kms?
Finding nothing much in Fitzroy Crossing, I continued onto the small town of Halls Creek. This was a small town mostly populated by Aborigines, many of them drunk on the streets and two handy petrol stations. After driving down the highway a bit more and seeing a bush fire on the way I spent the night in a parking spot. 700km clocked today!
After returning to Halls Creek to get petrol and to be abused by a drunken Aborigine and then apologised to by him after I said I was from London (seems they don't mind us white fellas from London), I drove a few km's down a dirt road (the van did not like this much) and visited China Wall - a wall of white quartz upon red sandstone rocks. It looks like a man made wall, but it's a natural formation. I then left Halls Creek and proceeded to Turkey Creek then Kununurra.
Doon Doon Roadhouse and Surrounds (about 60kms south of Halls Ck)
I got there just in time to do some swimming in the River Ord as the sun went down. This was very pleasant.
As it got dark I went up to the lookout on Kelly's Knob (Knob is a popular Aussie term for a hill, hehe). There was a major electric storm approaching Kununurra and it was spectacular to watch this. Fork and horizontal lightning every 10 seconds and huge crashes of thunder. I later went down to the lake for another view.
After buying some food from the Coles supermarket and seeing yet more Aborigine kids generally causing trouble, I slept the night down the road in a parking spot, yet again! Stopping here meant I had only done 400kms this day, so it was an early start and a visit to Hidden Valley - part of the Mirima National Park - and home to the Mini Bungle Bungles - the Bungle Bungles are circular rocks formations and are famous as Helen Daniels from Neighbours always used to disappear to them whenever she went on holiday. It was a very nice in this place and there were black cockatoos in the trees and stuff.
It was then 300km to Timber Creek, crossing the Western Australia border and into the Northern Territory - HOORAY!
In The Second Photo One Foot Is In The NT And The Other Is In WA
Timber Creek isn't much except a servo, so it was then another 300km to Katherine - the first bonefide large town of the journey! Katherine is a very nice place in a beautiful setting and is very popular in the dry season as there are lots of activities to do there. I managed to have time to go swimming in the Katherine HotPools - a bathing place that was much like a small river really, rather than a group of pools, but very nice none the less.
As I still had a fair way to go and had to return the van by 10am the next day, I decided to do a bit of night driving. Discovering this was the only bit of road in Australia that didn't have a Parking spot for over 40kms, I did eventually find one and cooked dinner on the van stove. This was not a great experience as the van got infested with about 10million horrible flying insects thanks to the inside lights.
I stopped for a cup of tea at a road house where I was asked for drugs from a truck driver because "don't all you backpackers carry drugs" (I think he was joking) and spent the night somewhere about 30km outside of Adelaide River.
Awaking with about 5000 insect bites I had a quick look around the 'town' of Adelaide River and then speeded down the road to Darwin. I even turned the A/C on full blast to desperately burn petrol so the van company wouldn't get any for free, well I still had about 3 quarters of a tank left and it cost me a fortune to buy that stuff from those roadhouses! Approaching Darwin it was good to see some kind of civilisation again and I dropped the van off exactly at 10am!
In summary this wasn't a bad trip, it's a shame I didn't get an extra couple of days. The van ruled. Not only was it like driving around in the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine, but you could literally live in that thing - it had a good stereo and sleeping in the back wasn't bad. The only annoying thing was that the engine stayed hot for ages and with the very humid climate and extremely hot sun - I've decided the weather here is officially now way too hot, even for me - it was like trying to sleep in a sauna most nights and I've never drunk so much water in my life - around 4 litres a day. Even worse further north, I had to keep the windows closed unless I wanted to be eaten alive by insects. It was like being a roasted chestnut the last night.
P.S. Interestingly enough Broome->Darwin has the longest stops between fuel - twice I had to drive over 200kms between service stations! that's longer than the Nullarbor's 186km one, strange considering the Nullarbor is supposed to be THE outback road trip.
The Famous Car Eating Cow Road Sign
Map Of The Journey
Tuesday 21st December 2004
By JamesReed on 21.12.04 @ 06:46 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]
Off To Broome
Location: Darwin
Weather: Hot n'Humid
Well selling the car now became a priority as I only had less than 24 hours left in Perth. The main problem with flogging the car was that it had South Australia plates and therefore no dealers in Western Australia would buy it, because it wasn't licensed or something. And since my previous backpacker adverts were no success, I ended up with the radical policy of knocking the price down to $300. Just as I was about to take the thing to the Fremantle breakers yard where I would have got $60 minus a taxi fare back to Perth, some English blokes phoned up and I gave it to them for $100. It was quite a relief to get rid of it to be honest and to improve the situation as I was walking back to the town I met some blonde girl Reese Wetherspoon.
It was about 10minutes after that, that I started being inundated with phone calls wanting to buy the car! oh well.
After taking a look at King's Park - Perth's well known botannic gardens - where you got a great overhead view of the Swan River and the city itself, I spent a night in the not so good Grand Central Backpackers, in a dorm room with about 10 other blokes, a couple of them the loudest snorers in the entire universe, this is the first time in a year of backpacking where I've found it impossible to sleep due to the noise, I wish I'd had a decibel meter. Also they closed the kitchen in this joint at the ridiculous time of 8pm.
I got up at 7am and caught my penultimate Qantas flight to Broome. I was well impressed with the service on this flight, considering it was only 2 hours. Free newspaper, food, drinks and a cinema film was shown - ! You don't get that on Jetstar and Virgin Blue.
It's a shame I couldn't have stayed on the flight as upon arriving in Broome, there was literally nobody about and stepping off the plane was like walking into an oven. Perth was hot, apparently it hit 41 degrees the day before, you HAD to walk in the shadows beacuse of the burning sun, but that was dry heat, here it was extremely humid, which is very tiring, you cannot do anything much. I got a taxi about 200meters down the road to the nearest backpackers - Klub Kimberly. This place is claimed to be a resort and yes it does have a nice swimming pool, BUT - it is quite a way from town, not a good feature considering the heat. Also the room was awful, it had no air-conditioning and the 2nd worst snorers ever - only the previous night rates higher. So I checked out the next morning and went to Roebuck Bay Backpackers. This was more like it, friendly staff, right in the centre of town and because it was so empty I even got my own room and it had A/C.
After walking around Broome again, I came to the conclusion that other than a few drunken Aborigines, the entire place was dead, yes, I'd describe Broome as much like the proverbial parrot in Monty Python at this 'wet season' time of year!
To make matters worse my mobile phone decided it did not like the extreme humidity and promptly stopped working. Therefore I decided I must get out of this place, but after a bit of research it turns out that there are no tours running to Darwin during December and you can only get there on the 26 hour Greyhound bus. As luck would have it though, on the noticeboard at the Roebuck Backpackers there was an advert for a $10 a day relocation to Darwin in a Wicked van. This is where you do the rental company a favour by relocating the vehicle to a more popular location and they only charge you a very low rate. The only downside to this is that you are usually time limited. After a couple of phone calls and a bit of trouble, due to being uncontactable thanks to having no mobile phone, I managed to book the van - I would have 4 days to get to Darwin!
That night a big exciting lightning storm hit Broome - As I was walking back to the hostel I had the most amusing experience of one of the drunken local Aborigines hollering at me "THIS IS BROOME! THIS IS BROOME!". The storm only last about half an hour, but it was seriously torrential rain and more lightning strikes than I've ever seen before. Thursday night is also obviously the highlight of the week at the Roebuck, I very stupidly ended up going to the "Oasis" bar, got very drunk and went to some local's house about 5km away for some more beers. I know it was about 5km because I got bored, asked for a lift back to town, was refused it and ended up staggering back on my own. Not something I would ever choose to do again, as Broome is not big on road signs.
By JamesReed on 21.12.04 @ 06:46 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]
Fremantle
Location: Darwin
Weather: Hot n'Humid
well after not being too impressed with Perth and generally the problems of parking, I put up some adverts to try to sell the car(I only want $1100 bucks for it guvnor) and then headed down the road to Fremantle. This place has a reputation for being much more laid back that Perth and indeed it is. I checked into the Freo YHA which was quite an excellent place. I wandered around the town, a nice relaxing place, saw some of the old convict built buildings such as the Round House and went fishing by the docks. I caught a puffer fish, but apparently these things are a major pest and poisonous, so I had to miss dinner that night.
Also went to Rottnest Island, about 30mins by ferry from Fremantle. This was a really good place, I hired a bike and cycled around the entire island, only about 30kms. Lots of beachs and places to go swimming. The most famous thing on Rottnest though are the Quokkas, these are small friendly kangaroo type animals that the Dutch mistook for rats (hence the name Rottnest).
How could you mistake one of these things for a rat!? typical Dutch!! 
Was a very nice place indeed. The sea on the way back though was very rough and the ferry trip back was quite crazy.
By JamesReed on 21.12.04 @ 06:46 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]
Nullarbor Part 4 - The End Is Nigh
Location: Darwin
Weather: Hot n'Humid
After leaving Nullarbor services it was 186km to the next stop Border Village servo AND Welcome to Western Australia! on the way I visited ALL 6 rest stops where you could view the coastline of the Great Australian Bight - it was mainly vertical cliffs going into the ocean. After Border Village it was a mere 12km to the 'town' of Eucla. There isn't much here, except a hotel/motel and a side trip to see a telegraph station burried in the sand dunes, fun because you could jump off the roof into the sand! the travellers cross (which lights up at night) and a memorial to explorer Edward Eyre, where he camped on his epic journey to Albany. After this it was 66km of RoadKill Alley to Mundrabilla - yes, I'd seen the odd dead animal here and there, but on this stretch of road there were squashed critters every 20m's or so! and the stink when you stopped near one was unboleevable. I even saw a big emu that had been run over! For everybody's viewing pleasure here's what I mean:
It also actually rained a bit round here, I even took a photo, to prove it does rain in the desert! Another 115km and I stopped for the night at Madura services - did about 400kms that day. 1879kms clocked up in total. Getting up early - 8am - I headed for Cocklebiddy, this stretch of road broke the previous record for roadkill! must be because they don't have many fences around or something. Then Caiguna, passing the 2000kms mark. Then onto Balladonia services. Despite all this driving there really isn't that much to see along these roads, except errm - road, bushland, roadkill, crows eating the roadkill and huge roadtrains plus the odd car here and there. There are a few outback tracks, but they are unsealed roads and you need a 4WD. The stops are small roadhouses, mainly for fuel and food, but they some do have good services. I actually managed to have a shower at Caiguna and Balladonia which was most welcome. 50kms outside Balladonia was interesting though - Newman Rocks - a stunning view of the outback terrain - a salt lake in the distance and bush much greener and picturesque than I had expected. Also there was a water hole and emus were drinking there! there was also a rockhole by the side of the road, an underground cave in the limestone.
More driving and now I was at goal 3 or rather the beginning of the end of the trip - Norseman - another small town, but gateway/junction to Perth and the south-west. I stayed the night at the Gateway Caravan park, got my own room again(only $15 this tmie) and had a proper cooked meal of pasta (how exotic)! The next day I went to Norseman Info Bureau and purchased a permit to go fossicking. It's all the rage around this area. I bought a hammer from the hardware store, drove to a secret location down the road and set out to find my fortune. This involved scavaging in pre-dug pits and smashing bits of earth/rocks with the hammer in a hunt for gemstones! I did have some luck, I've sent some green stones home for analysis. But the heat of the sun now was getting too much, so I only tried for about 45mins.
Passing through more scenic bushland, Western Australia does have some great views, Widgemootha services, petrol was starting to drop in price now. I then made it to Kalgoorlie - I really enjoyed this place. A major town, for once. I went to see the Super Pitt, which is like a 7th wonder of the world - it is incredible to see, a gigantic open surface gold mine. $4million trucks with $26000 tyres mine the gold 24 hours a day and you can see them driving down the pit, but it is so big they look like minature toys. You need binoculars to see the men surveying the pit. I also watched the sunset at Mt Charlotte reservoir, where you get an amazing 360degree panarama of the outback. This reservoir is part of the Golden Pipeline system, an amazing feat of engineering, built in the 1900's, a 550km long pipeline that pumps water from Mundaring Weir (near Perth) to Kalgoorlie - it's thanks to this that the goldfields exist.
But time was running out, so I had to leave and drove the 40k's odd to Coolgardie, where I had a kip. This was another single street town, but with a few interesting looking buildings. Apparently at one time it was a major successful mining town and the architecture was very classical.
My final day of the Nullarbor trip was a real rush - around 600kms in one day - went from Coolgardie, to Caiguna, to Meredin. I got random breath tested in Northam. We had now officially entered civilisation again! Rolling into Perth I wasn't immediately impressed with the place - lots of traffic, a few tall buildings - just another city really - maybe going from the middle of nowhere to a city takes a bit of adjusting. I'd previously been told that Perth was like a countrytown, it wasn't. Parking also became a bit of a nightmare now that you had to pay for it. At least I got to see the most enjoyable National Treasure at the cinema that night. Wandered around town a bit, then had a most heinous time finding somewhere to sleep in the car thanks to all the street lights.
Anyway that was my long drive OVER - in summary I really enjoyed this trip and it was definitely worth it. I must admit the car was very good, except for a slight few problems. You will all be glad to know I drove over 1000km's with a flat spare tyre(thanks to that 360 spin incident) and lights that only turned off when they felt like it, because there was some loose connection on the steering wheel switch. This must've been temperature related as once the car was cold the switch worked perfectly. Still, several nights I had to disconnect the battery to turn them off...hey what a great added security feature. Also I think I drove most of the way with a fuel leak. I only discovered this about 500km's outside Norseman. The fuel hose beneath the rear wheel was perished and dripped fuel whenever I parked anywhere. It seemed to stop occasionally and/or when it reached a quarter of a tank, which was odd. I got quoted from $80-300 to fix this at various places, but would have done it myself if I had time.
The spare tyre was most annoying, it didn't seem to have a real puncture. After cleaning the surface gravel that was embeded in the rim several times I discovered that it could be inflated, but there was obviously gravel stuck inside (or on the bead as it is technically known) and it deflated over a couple of hours. This became a bit of a nightmare and I got a little paranoid, but after many attempts on the journey I finally took it to Fremantle Beaurepair and they fixed it for only $15.
Ironically at all the places along the journey where I enquired about what to do about this tyre, the mechanic knew exactly what happened and said "oh mate, you mean you fell asleep at the wheel and swerved off the road didn't ya! you can be honest with me! HAHA!". This was quite funny.
For a decent map of the Nullarbor CLICK HERE - http://www.nullarbornet.com.au/maps/nullarborM.html
To get an idea of the Driving Distances CLICK HERE - http://www.nullarbornet.com.au/planners/adelaideTripper.html
By JamesReed on 21.12.04 @ 06:46 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]
Nullarbor Part 3 - Dingos and All Sorts
Location: Darwin
Weather: Hot n'Humid
Well after that minor mishap, it was time to start on my journey again. On my way out of Kimba I had a quick stop at the local IGA supermarket and met this Japanese dude who was cycling all the way across the Nullarbor. What a nutcase, I don't know how he could even manage 10km's in that heat and all he was wearing was a headscarf over his helmet to shield him from the sun! He was a bit upset that the IGA was closed, because he couldn't buy any bread, sadly I didn't have any to give him.
Drove to Kyancutta, Wudina, Minipa, Poochera and Wirrula. All tiny places with a roadhouse to buy petrol at. It was now at $1.20 a litre! The scenary was still mainly wheat fields interspersed with grain silos or the odd bit of freight railway line. I was now only a few km's from my next goal Ceduna - the real start of the Nullarbor and a reasonable sized town ie. it had a few shops and a fair sized supermarket. Only this far to go now...
Rolling into Ceduna I had fish n'chips, wrote my diary in the 24 hour Shell servo there and slept in the car by some field! The next day I did a bit of fishing on the pier, but didn't catch anything. Leaving Ceduna, I drove through Penong, Nundroo and Yalata. Yalata is a stretch of road on Aboriginal community land. As it happened I came across a crashed car at the side of the road and considered nicking the stereo, because I was having so many problems with the one in my car. Just as it dawned on me that this would be impossible anyways, because I didn't have any tools, some locals pulled up and told me the dude was waiting to have it fixed, so I left the scene. At Yalata roadhouse there was an exhibition of some Aboriginal artwork and stuff. Next main town from here is Norseman...
I also went to see ''Head of Bight'' park, to see the coastline and Bunda cliffs of the Great Australian Bight. During June-October whales go there to mate and apparently it's popular with toursts, but it was totally deserted when I went there. It was much like the Great Ocean Road, rocks in a very blue sea.
My final stop for the day was the Nullarbor services roadhouse! I was now at the start of the true fabeled Nullarbor Plain - HOORAY! the biggest limestone plain in the world devoid of trees (Nullarbor is bad latin for [nullis]Without [arbor]Trees). Despite all the hype there is really only 29kms without any trees whatsoever, but it is very odd to happen upon this area, going from bushland covered with trees. It was quite eerie and strange to be honest.
This night I slept at some parking spot down the road, on the way I saw a dingo that had been run over by one of the many roadtrains that were passing through that night. I had now clocked up 1481kms! Upon waking and getting some petrol from the Nullarbor servo costing $1.42 a litre now, I saw a couple more dingos, this time alive! they seemed quite friendly to be honest :
By the way it was also around this area that you come across the unique Nullarbor road signs - there are quite a lot of them, including this famous one:
By JamesReed on 21.12.04 @ 06:45 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]
Nullarbor Part 2 - Disaster Strikes
Location: Darwin
Weather: Hot n'Humid
After buying a few bits and pieces in Port Perrie and visiting the very friendly Information Bureau woman. I took a bit of a detour along a B-road to see some of the famous Flinders Range area. I visited several very small country towns - Gladstone(which had a jail you can actually stay the night in), Laura (bought a 2nd hand book about Winston Churchill here...and what a great name for a town, haha) and Wirraburra. Stopped at Melrose and considered climbing Mt Remarkable, but it was 12km's return and it was extremely hot, so I went on a fruitless 4km walk to try to find some mines instead. Most stuff in this area was only accessable by 4WD or you had to walk miles to get there, so I missed out on a few good things (oh for more time) such as Alligator Gorge and Wilmington Forest. Anyways, after heading back onto Highway 1 I made it to Port Augusta! Goal Uno of my journey achieved without problem - Port Augusta was a big dot on the map - it is also a crossroads to the famous outback mining town of Coober Pedy (where I had considered taking a detour to, but at 850km's I decided not to). Had quite a few shops and supermarkets, so I stocked up on food, water, beer and camping gas for my stove. Interestingly the price of petrol was now starting to climb. In Adelaide it was around $0.99 per litre, it was now about $1.059 per litre by now, no indication of what it would rocket to later. BUT the countryside was very pleasant and largely yellow wheatfields. Also there were a couple of huge salt flats outside Pt Augusta, I recall something about Donald Campbell breaking the landspeed record around here.
After spending in total a day and a half in Pt Augusta, it was time to move on. I drove all the way past Iron Knob and to the town of Kimba. A quick look in town revealed it was a regular reasonably sized country town.
OK, people who I've told about this trip, the time is here to TELL THE TRUTH! because you lot wouldn't have been able to handle the truth at the time!
I head out of Kimba in a most good mood. I am on schedule, it is still light at 7pm and I have even got the stereo in the car working (a minor miracle). Then DISASTER! one second I'm looking at the road and all is fine and dandy, the next I'm careening half way off the road, next the car is seriously out of control and skidding on the gravel and I dunno what on earth is going on or what to do, it did actually cross my mind that the car might flip over, but I guess for the 2nd time this year (see ski-ing earlier) I went into survival mode and after doing a 360 degree spin the car ground to a stop. Before the adrenaline had time to hit me, I got out and took a quick look. Upon inspection the only damage was to the back tyre that was letting air out at a rapid rate. It also struck me that it didn't actually matter for once if I had dented the car, because it wasn't really of the same condition as my Peugeot at home. BUT then I got a bit terrified when the beast refused to start. Luckily it turned out it was only because I wasn't in Park, so once I changed gear things were ok! PHEW! It was then I discovered that there was no spanner to undo the spare tyre with. doh! but some nice people driving to a country & western festival in a 4WD gave me a great help and swapped the spare tyre, these guys were well prepared and even had a tyre inflator! Now I've been in a fair few car crashes over the years, but this is the first one where it could possibly be attributed to me(of course I personally blame the road and the car, anything but myself). I think the reason I actually lived is because I was going quite slowly at the time, maybe 60kms(40mph), but I am still quite proud of the skid marks on the road! just look at them:
To be honest the only positive out of all this is that I got to stay the night in my own room in the excellent local pub/hotel and I got to see TV and sleep on a real bed for once. I also got to do my laundary for free! To be honest the damaged tyre became a bit of a pain and I'll comment on that later.
But I escaped this incident unscathed and ready to continue!
By JamesReed on 21.12.04 @ 06:45 AM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]
Friday, 10th December 2004
Adelaide
Location: Perth
Weather: Hot
Got the Overland train from Spencer Street to Adelaide Keswick. It was ok, but I didn't think it was as good as the standard Countrylink trains I've been travelling all year on to be honest. Everybody was packed into 1 carriage and I was sat next to a tall Dutch bloke, instead of having at least 5 seats to myself. At least the buffet car was most excellent, more like an airport lounge, so after sleeping for about 3 hours, I spent the rest of the morning drinking free tea in that place. At Adelaide station, there was literally nobody about, until this girl who looked like Jennifer Connelly turned up and took a couple of us to the Blue Galah hostel.
This place was very good, nice rooms, nice beds, small kitchen and best of all very centrally located.
Now everybody I've ever spoken to (except 2 people in the past 3 days funnily enough) do not like Adelaide - apparently there is NOTHING there. Personally I was looking forward to visiting the city...I've found Adelaide women to be the only Aussie's who are actually impressed by my English accent! 
And it turns out there are a few things there! a decent shopping mall for all your purchasing needs and quite a lot of amazing classical architecture. The Art Gallery, State Museum and Library are also first class. So are the botannical gardens, despite the fact that I was approached by some old bloke who was rather odd and specialised in discussing all kinds of x-rated topics. My advice is don't listen to people who diss Adelaide, it's worth it for the free internet in the library if anything.
By JamesReed on 10.12.04 @ 02:42 PM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]
Melbourne YET AGAIN
Location: Perth
Weather: Hot
Well I checked into the Flinders Station Hotel once more and saw the whole 3rd floor had been completely rennovated and actually looking surprisingly better - DVD + big screen TV's, re-felted free pool table, reception/bar area. OK, so the kitchen was exactly the same with its broken stoves and there won't be any more bin nights because da management is always around to check on any trouble now and the cold taps in the bogs still espouse hot water, but it WAS great to be back.
Maybe it's the river, maybe the perfect combination of shops, city size, maybe the people, maybe the vibe in the air, but I reckon Melbourne rocks. By the afternoon, I was in a darn good mood and I ended up hanging around for another 2 weeks. As it turend out, a surprisingly large number of my old friends were there - Colin, Troy, Luke, Damian, Geordi, Wiramu, Dorris, Pat and Niall, Heather. Also some new faces about. Didn't get up to anything too exciting, except buying a new pair of trainers - Nike trail runners - and at last a fine new Kodak digicam, but I did have a few big nights out...some of the cheapest this year, mainly due to free pint vouchers! and had a big send-off, I was leaving, so was Geordi and it was Luke's birthday, turned out to be a cool night and a big hangover the next day. 
By JamesReed on 10.12.04 @ 02:41 PM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]
Sydney One Last Time
Location: Perth
Weather: Hot
Well my schedule went awry once more when I ended up spending another 2 weeks in Sydney. Round at Paddy & Chrissie's gaf, not doing much really, just visiting the city, watching TV and getting re-addicted to various US/Aussie soaps thanks to Gemma.
oh! yes, one fun afternoon I got stuck on a train that did absolutely nothing, except wait outside Central Station for 25mins and then miss the station I was meant to get off at...oh how all the memories of London came flooding back. Although, as a consequence of this I discovered the local exciting Castle Hill shopping centre which had better shopping than the city itself. Also I found the West Pennant Hills express bus to the city - which instead of taking 1-10 hours to get into town by train, only takes about 40mins!
hmmm surely there was other stuff...oh I saw Wimbledon the Movie and my friend(and fellow extra) Amit in the crowd! I visited the Australian Museum one afternoon, which wasn't bad, lots of skeletons of dinosaurs and stuffed birds. Also did a weekend trip to Canberra to see Anne, Richard, Giles, William and Hilary. Richard and I ended up rescuing some old bloke who fell over in the Woolworths carpark.
Other highlights and good times...errrmm...
Going to the golf driving range with Paddy one Sunday arvo, been over a year since I've played golf.
Gemma taking me out to the legendary Epping Hotel with her friends. It's a legendary place because my tennis coach Ben comes from Epping and mentioned it once and their beer isn't bad either.
Seeing Melissa and her friends all dressed up to the nines for their 'formal' year 10 dance. Stunning was the word, could have a dig at English girls and say they really should get a clue about how to dress from Aussie girls, but perhaps I shouldn't.
Visiting my cousin Scott and his wife Larissa, that was pretty good. Hey! they're half the reason I'm here now, it was them that got married in Port Douglas last year.
Getting drunk a couple of highly amusing times with my friend Tim from Melbourne who's now moved to Sydney.
Anyways, time passed too quickly and I had to move on so I caught the night train to Melbourne. Felt quite sad leaving everybody behind, but as it happened this ex-homeless bloke and mystic new age woman ended up sitting next to me on the train and they cheered me up a lot. They were very good company for the trip and we had some great conversations!
We rolled into Melbourne after being delayed for about 3 hours, but at least that was better than what we were originally told about how we'd have to catch an 8 hour bus because they were working on the line.
By JamesReed on 10.12.04 @ 02:40 PM GMT [As Web Page] [Archives]
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