Happy New Year everyone!

As I look back over 2009, I have to say that it has been a good year. In fact all of the years seem to be pretty good at the moment!

First of all a bit of news! I have decided to move to weekly updates... I'm sure some of you are bored enough of monthly updates, never mind weekly ones, but this way I feel I can keep the length of the posts down, without having to skip over any of the interesting details of the things that happen to me in my travels...

I was going to make this post about the last week of travelling, over christmas and the lead up to new year, but it seems fitting to do a little review of the year, looking back over 2009, and looking forward to 2010!

It has been a funny old year. At the start of the year I was still in south east Asia, in Singapore, officially the most anal city in the world!

For most of the rest of the year I have been in Australia. I have travelled around 3/4 of Australia. Met some old friends, and made some new ones! I have had many different jobs. The first one was in sales... Not something I'd expect to excel at, but what do you know... it turns out that I can do any job that I set my mind to... It took a good 2 months to get any good at it, and i can't say that I'd recommend it as a job for travelers. Especially if you are wanting to save up any money at all... On the positive side, it came with a built in social life...

The other jobs this year were all farming related. Sometimes hard, sometimes unrewarding, but I managed to enjoy even most of these jobs. I especially enjoyed meeting people from many countries (mostly Germans,French and Koreans).

Aside from the work I have seen lots of stuff. I have been diving and snorkelling in the great barrier reef, an unforgettable experience. I have seen many interesting animals for the first time, and even (accidentally) run some of them over!

Apart from that I have of course been in a (semi) long term relationship of over 6 months... a first for me, and I have to thank Nam for putting up with all of my nonsense over the last year... I think she enjoyed it all really though... ;)

All in all it has been a fantastic year, and as we leave the noughties I realise that I couldn't have had it without all of you, so thank you.

Have a great 2010, and keep on keeping on!

Trev

PS, next week I'll update you on my Christmas and New Year shenanigans... not to be missed!

Merry Sunny Christmas 2009!!

First things first...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

That is to all of those of you that are following my travels. Thanks for your support. It means a lot to me whenever one of you tells me that you are reading this stuff...

So, on with the travelling update...

At the end of the last update I had just started work in Kunnunura. I liked it in Kunnunura. The people were friendly, the work was not too difficult and easy to find, and though the weather was very hot, and very sweaty, it didn't rain too much... We also saw our first wild snake here!

Pictures of Kunnunura can be found here...

Eventually we had to leave Kunnunura and head west... again! We left on the 4th of December... I think... Whenever it was, we left just in time. From what we hear, it started raining in Kunnunura just after we left, and hasn't stopped since...

The journey west was fairly uneventful. We arrived in Derby 2 days later and made ourselves comfortable. There wasn't too much to do in Derby. We got some fish and chips, and checked out the sunset. We also checked out the jetty, which was pretty around sunset...

Broome was next after Derby. Broome was mostly about Macdonalds... Our first Macdonalds in over a month, and we were mostly interested in te free wifi... In fact we spent over 5 hours in Macdonalds, eating only an ice cream and an apple pie...

Broome also had a chinatown, and Roebuck bay... It is somehow the most popular tourist resort on the west coast... but I'm not sure how....

Heading furter south we came upon 80 mile beach... The name is a little misleading, as the beach is actually 220 km long... It was absolutely exquisite. There were very few people around, and the beach was also a turtle hatchery... In fact we saw turtles laying eggs there the night that we were there! Very cool!

The next place we stayed couldn't have been more different... Port Hedland was a dump... It had 3 caravan parks. All of them more expensive then we were used to paying, and all of them without the facilities that we were used to... There were flies everywhere... all the time... The peak of Port Hedland was the Kmart as evidenced by this job advert we saw...

We left Port Hedland as early as possible (about 5am) and headed onwards to Point Samson. This was fairly nice, with some historical sites nearby (historical by Australian standards anyway). I liked honeymoon bay as well. It had some crazy rock formations in it, as well as one rock in particular that sent me into a little zen trance. There might be more to follow about that on my blog...

It was also near Point Samson that I had my surgery! I had an infected sucutaneous cyst which had to be sliced open. I only had to wait for 3 hours in hospital, and they dealt with it there and then! Very efficient...

After the eventful Point Samson we headed south to Exmouth. This is in te Ningaloo national park, and is mostly notable for the snorkelling. The coral reef comes right up to the beaches here, and we took full advantage of this. The pictures of this snorkelling will have to wait though, our underwater camera takes films, so we have to get them developed somewhere...

Coral bay was next. This is a beautiful little town also in the Ningaloo national park, and also with excellent snorkelling. Highlights here were seeing a sea turtle and also some rays. There is also a reef shark nursery in the shallow water just offshore, so we got to see sharks as well!

It was in Coral Bay that we heard about the cylone that had been following us down the coast! Cyclone Laurence is a category 5 storm and had visited Darby, Broome, and 80 Mile beach less then a week after we left. It is currently heading inland, so we managed to out-run it, but if we'd have set off even a week later it would have caused us lots of trouble.

That brings us to where I am now. We are currently in Carnarvon. It has some cool beaches... of course, but we are mostly here for the shopping. We are currently stocking up on food and presents in preperation for christmas. Later today we are setting off to Shark Bay, which is where we plan to spend christmas. It is also supposed to have great beaches, and awesome snorkelling. We have a cabin booked for a couple of nights over xmas, so we will be very comfortable.

I'll let you know how it went next time, but until then, have a very merry christmas, wherever you are... and be sure to let me know how it went... :)

Trev x