And so the story begins...
Trip Start
Sep 03, 2008
1
56
117
Trip End
??? ??, 2009
Exmouth,
Western Australia,
Australia
Thursday, January 15, 2009
ok so it's monday 15th december, at the very early hour of six, i believe, and we're just getting up at nava's place, in singapore, creeping about, while all the other lucky buggers, including the supposed night security person, are all asleep, to get ourselves ready for our next flight to australia. so there we are rummaging in the cupboards for plates and knives and cups etc, and coffee sachets and toast and jam etc, to have breakfast before it's time for showers and to pack up our belongings to race to the airport. now, despite getting up at the worst hour imaginable, we still seem to leave late, so there we are running through the streets, lugging those bloody heavy backpacks, toward the underground, where here before we can do anything, we have the dilemma of whether to bother cashing in our last day's underground tickets to get money back, even though we're running late already. well, we decide we will, every penny counts and all, but the ticket machine won't work, so now it's a race over to the kiosk to discuss the problem with the lady behind the desk, who quickly cashes in our tickets and hands us the money and we're away. if you can imagine, by now, what with the weight of the bags and singapore's humidity, i am literally sweating buckets and definitely not feeling my most clean for the big flight. jesus, i mean how would you feel if you're stood on the platform waiting for the tube and all around you are singaporean women, all looking freshly manicured and pedicured, smelling sweetly of whatever expensive perfume they might have on today, while you're stood there in a basketball style vest, baggy combats, sweaty trainers and still ever the sweaty mess! anyway, after a short time, we're on the first tube. next stop, we have to change, so it's another panic-stricken wait on another platform for another train. panic, panic, panic, but before long, this next train has arrived and we're on and speeding toward the airport, where here we must wait for another train to take us to the right terminal, where here it's a sickening run to the right check-in desk, where bitchy quantas rep looks at us disapprovingly, despite our running to him, like we've taken all the time in the world. anyway, after all this 'you're running very late' and 'you can't be late to departures', we're running to departures just in time to be the last ones on the plane and in time for the man at the desk to phone through to whoever to say 'oh yes, the last passengers are now onboard'! and we're off, and it is THE best flight i've ever had. there i am, a party in my seat! while sean's watching no end of movies, i'm sat there, the music cranked up in my headset, having some small rnb party in my chair! it was wicked, though i don't know if anyone was that impressed with my banging around in my seat, the hand gestures and head movements, but i was having fun! anyway, what else to say about the flight? the food was good, we were given bananas and ice cream too, tea and coffee etc, and the camp hosts and hostesses were lovely! good flight, for me anyway, as there was a moment back there when sean thought our plane was going to fall out the sky, but this isn't 'final destination' - i'd checked the tray infront of me already! do it everytime! anyway, so after many, many hours in the air, we finally arrive in perth, downunder!
perth...
we grab our bags, feel that heat, i try and fail to withdraw any money - looks like natwest's playing up again with their fraud detection team doing a hell of a good job to stop anyone getting my money! i sit and have a good cry after hearing one too many christmas carols, reminding me of home. oh yes, this will probably be my only christmas away from home, or at least away from the cold. christmas really is not christmas without the cold and possible chance of snow! anyway, after sean managed to get some money out for us, it was time to pick up a cheap shuttle bus ride through town to the suburb of northbridge, where we would be staying for the next week or so to pick up a campervan. during the ride, there was an english women who so clearly wanted to tell the driver everything about where she lived in england and how it differed from australia. obviously, home was better! anyway, after being dropped in northbridge, an extremely quiet suburb of perth - the quietest city on the planet - we walked around for about an hour trying to find a suitable hostel, which wouldn't break the bank, but after seeing one too many of them, we came to realise that maybe we should just accept the fact that australia would be as expensive as england. no more five p beer like in vietnam! anyway, in the end, we finally settled for a room at the underground backpackers hostel, a place frequented by all the townies from way back home, all out here to work, drink and bbq, before getting a flight over to sydney to do more work, drink more beer, have more bbqs, sun themselves, pick up birds and party, but never actually getting to see anything that australia really has to offer! anyway, perth... what to say about it? perth is a city in western australia, populated by very few people so almost feeling like a ghost town in places around the suburbs. it rests beside a lake and has a beach, though we never got to see this, this first time around, and like all good cities, has plenty of bars, clubs, shops, restaurants, and office blocks for the few worker monkeys dotted around the place! we spent a week in perth, sleeping at the underground, watching too many episodes of ellen and oprah, on my part, and crap films on his! we spent much of the time out of the hostel so avoiding the townie types, especially those that looked like they'd been in one too many fights since being out here. in the day, we spent our time eating out at the dome cafe, which did some amazing, huge, bloody good quality fry ups and pastries, eating at the local italian and indian, drinking at the british pub adorned with christmas decorations - one of the few places that did - as well as the hippie club, which had the standard backpacker, cheap drinks bash on, and the mustang bar, which on that particular night was holding it's weekly big bbq and pool competition evening. one thing you can say for these aussies, they sure can eat and drink! our bbq plate was loaded with steak and snags - sausages - and salad and bread, and our beer jugs were cheap and BIG! anyway, what to say about that night? well, sean decided to enter the competition, but unfortunately was posted up to play one hell of a sneaky pool player, who everyone said beforehand would not play fair and would only snooker sean at every chance going in order to win! well, they were right and the bugger did just that. he could play pool as well as i could, which is saying something - i am crap - but he could snooker with the best of them, and as the game progressed, with sean sinking balls and the crowd around the table showing their love for this sneaky git - most of them flipped him off at one time or another during the game - he finally won by having somehow placed all his balls right beside their respective pockets leaving sean with nowhere to go to sink his remaining few, while sneak wandered around the table casually potting in all of his! toss-pot! ah well, i suppose he won that one, but i'm sure in time, he'll come a cropper, if not at the table then out on the streets! he certainly wasn't making any friends that night! as for the rest of perth, the rest of our time in the city was spent walking the city, visiting the old tudor court shopping street, strolling along the river, watching the many seagulls flying in to scavange off unsuspecting tourists, watching people jogging along by the river after work, and play ball in the park, sampling huge pies, making calls back to england, sending christmas post home, organising ourselves for the coming months on the road, never once believing our eyes that a city could feel so deserted, and finally trying our damndest to find a blasted campervan so that at long last, we could ditch the expensive hostels for a life on the open road, cheap campsites and cheap dinners, courtesy of sean's mastery in the kitchen! one thing to say about trying to find a campervan, in our journey to find a decent one, we wandered the streets and searched in the hostels, looking at posters advertising ones for sale, and what we came to notice was that there were many posters that appeared very different on first glance, but on closer inspection would have a similar font or description for 'stuff' included with the van - always cutlery, plates, a table, chairs etc in that order! and would end up having been churned out by one dealer, but appearing like they'd been produced by many different backpackers, all with different contact numbers, but inevitably all campervans being owned by one scummy dealer, wanting to flog one poor, naive backpacker, one hell of a piece of crap camper! let me tell you, at that moment, we didn't believe we could be had too, but we would come to realise that all dealers are the same as our campervan would be put through it's paces at the garage, where a mechanic would come to tell us that, despite our engine running sweet as a nut, we'd too been sold a death-trap! oh yes, there will be words had mr dealer man! ps, don't worry parents out there, it's actually fine now! we are not driving a shit-tip and we will be fine too! x! ok so anyway, next stop, fremantle, just on the trainline...
fremantle...
and here is where i begin to try and sound like a lonely planet writer. i'm sure i won't succeed on all accounts, but i hope to at least try to give a lonely planet type overview for each place we visit, but with a twist, so including a few obscure descriptions, a few possibly defamatory comments and a few slurs on character, both in terms of what australia might not have to offer and people! definitely people! anyway, fremantle. a short train journey south lead us to fremantle, an old fishing town, filled with old colonial style buildings, boutique shops, bars and restaurants, wide, open spaces to play ball and walk the dog and a stretch of stunning waterfront, lined with grassy sands and relic old town walls. after arriving in fremantle and a struggle to find a bed for the night, we eventually had to settle for the YHA, where we were fortunate to whittle our already paid for three nights down to just the one after what was felt to be a very successful morning agreeing a price for an ideal 1983 toyota hiace from a very honest seeming dealer, but as i said before, all dealers are the same! anyway, so here we were, having paid our money and now we had a campervan, with ideal living arrangements, a sink, water pump, a stove, fridge, all running off gas, lots of storage space, a cd player, a/c, cheap as chips, a steal at just five K! we would later be told however that all number of things were going to be wrong with our beloved campervan and that we would have to pay for them to get them fixed and that we should probably call our 'honest' dealer to tell him just what state his camper was in when he actually told us that it was perfect for us! anyway, that's another story that i won't rant on about just yet as at this moment, here we are thinking we're made up, sorted, we've got a brilliant van, and so we're off around the shops, picking up cheap cutlery, plates, cups, chairs etc, all to kit our van so we're ready for the journey ahead of us. and after two, what we thought were, very successful days, we ended our time in fremantle, eating 'posh' fish and chips, admiring the fisherman statues, walking through the tree-lit parks, drinking at the bars and also being turned away from those bars not allowing flip flops - they might be chilled around here, but not enough to let you into a bar with flip flops!
