Christmas and New Years Shenanigans...

Hey guys...

Here as promised is the update on my festive season from this year. The last place I told you about was Carnarvon. I have one more thing to tell you about that place... The fish and chips are great there! If you ever happen to be in town then I recommend going to the fish and chip shop in the main shopping centre...

Now I've got that out of the way I can tell you about the next stage in the journey. From Carnarvon we drove south and west to Denham. This is in Shark Bay, which is a world heritage national park. We arrived in the caravan park pretty late, and proceeded to do our usual taking over of the camp fridge-freezers. We did an especially good job this time as we had gone shopping in Carnarvon to stock up for Xmas...

The next day (the 23rd) we drove the 25 km north to Monkey Mia. This is a resort in the national park itself and boasts gorgeous beaches, panoramic views, and most importantly.... dolphins!

We arrived in Monkey Mia just in time to catch the second dolphin feeding of the day (they only feed the dolphins 3 times a day, and even that only if the dolphins show up!). Namrin was lucky enough to be picked to feed a fish to the dolphins ... I wasn't! It seems that only women and children get picked to feed dolphins!

Once the dolphin shows were over we went snorkelling... After the amazing experiences at coral bay and Exmouth it was quite disappointing... mostly we saw sand and sea grass...

After Monkey Mia we drove back to town. We tried a little bit of fishing, but for the second time were hugely unsuccessful in catching anything!

The next day was xmas eve, and as early as possible we moved into our accommodation for the christmas period. It was a little cabin, nothing special, but after 6 months of living in a van it felt like luxury... Nam especially liked the TV!

Having our new facilities I proceeded to make some cheesecake, to an old family recipe... And then got nicely drunk...

The next day was Christmas day!!! Wooo!!

We woke up pretty early, and of course proceeded to open our presents! I got a shirt, a bottle of wine and some socks; and Nam got some jelly sweets, a giant bubble wand, an mp4 player and some headphones! Everyone was very happy, and we proceeded to wear our santa hats. These didn't come off for the rest of the day!

After the grand opening we decided to go and see dolphins again at Monkey Mia. Again we were just in time to see the second feeding (about 8am). This was lucky as the dolphins never showed up for another feeding. Obviously some fish gave them a better offer. They did show up with a baby though!

After the dolphins we wandered along the beach for a while, and met Santa Clause! Obviously taking a break after a heavy night! Then we had our xmas picnic on the beach... The picnic consisted of crackers, cheese (4 types), olives, sun dried tomatoes, smoked salmon, grapes, cherries, blueberries and to finish it all off... some of my cheesecake!

After eating our fill (christmas is after all mostly about eating as much as you can...) we headed back to the cabin for the second round of eating...

For dinner I made roast chicken breast, stuffed with blue cheese, sun dried tomato, and sage and onion stuffing, and wrapped in bacon. We had this with roasted potatoes and carrots, mashed potatoes, green beans and broccoli... and of course gravy. This was finished off with some more of the cheesecake...

I was by now unable to move from having eaten so much... so my xmas duties performed I proceeded to lie down and digest my food!

The next day we set off pretty early, much to the disgust of my hung over head... That will teach me to drink goon on xmas day! We travelled south to Kalbarri. Stopping off on the way to visit shelly beach, which is a massive stretch of coast consisting entirely of shells!

Kalbarri is very nice. It was possibly the closest to being picturesque that I had seen from a town in Australia! There was also an amazing sunset while we were there!

South from Kalbarri we saw a most unusual sight... It was a lake... quite large... and the colour of it was an unmistakeable pink!

South of here we arrived at Geraldton. Geraldton was fairly nice. It had cheap fish and chips, and a war memorial.

The day after Geraldton we visited the pinnacles... This was an almost eerie sight. In the middle of the desert were rows and rows of rocks, pointing towards the sky! From what I read geologists aren't sure how they formed, but the best guess is the petrified roots of a forest...

After the pinnacles we continued further. We decided to have lunch in a small town called Dandaragan. As we arrived here we saw nothing out of the ordinary. We made our lunch... taking maybe an hour... and drove out of town the same way we drove in... It couldn't have been more different! In the hour or so it took us to make and eat lunch a fire had started in one of the fields adjacent to the road, it had burned all through that field, crossed over the road, and proceeded to burn as far as the eye could see on the other side of the road! As we were driving through there was still lots of smoke, so we couldn't even see further then a couple of meters!

Leaving this hell-scape behind us we finished the journey to Perth, and appropriately enough found our camp site, which was in the grounds of a seven day adventist church! This was all very well, apart from the no alcohol policy that they had! This meant that I had to disguise my drinking over the new year period!

Perth was nice, and was quite a nice place for to spend new year... The only problem was that Perth had cancelled all of the free public events for new year as last year there was “a bit of trouble”...

Facing a new year without any party, or any alcohol... myself and Nam decided to fall back on eating! We made full use of the kitchen at the church, and made some new years treats... We made some home made kfc, some thai style fish-cakes, and some chinese style dumpling things... I also secretly drunk quite a lot of alcohol... very secretly!

We also visited Fremantle while we were in Perth. It was also very nice. In fact all of the area of Perth was very nice. But you really need money to appreciate it properly. Lots of shops, lots of boutiques, lots of expensive restaurants... Not my kind of place right now then... Maybe later on in my life...

I think that is about enough for now... I'll tell you the story of how Nam and Myself started our journey back East, and all of the adventures that that involved...

Laters

Trev x

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!

2009.... a whole New Year!

Ok.... It seems like everyone is blogging some deep and meaningful new years blog... so like the sheep that I am I thought I'd write one of my own!

First of all I guess that I should look back on the year that has just passed...

I always had a strange feeling that 2008 was going to be a good year for me. 2007 was kind of a transitional year, (I have to admit that this was at least in part down to facebook,) I was chatting to lots of people through facebook, started going out a bit more, meeting and dating women (something that had never really happened in my life before), I gave up weed for a large part of the year (before one of the aforementioned women got me back onto it) and towards the end of the year I started approaching women in bars (something which I had never done previously, and which is still a pretty daunting prospect for me).

So with all of these things coming together in my life I felt a real buzz of energy coming up to 2008, and had a really good feeling that things were going to continue to get better...

With the new year last year I made some changes to my life. I stopped the pot pretty much, I started dancing salsa (why did I wait so long?), I started going out even more, and I started planning the next phase of my life... I call this phase Traveling...

The stopping pot was essential I think. I have nothing against the drug, and I know people that if they didn't have it would be unable to relax, but for me it just sapped my motivation to leave the house and talk to people. This also enabled me to start going out to various salsa nights, and going out to see my friends more often. The sociability that this gave me also let to me getting more dates, and enjoying myself even more!

The other part of the awesomeness of 2008 was of course the setting out around the world to go travelling. The fact that I had my salsa to give the travelling some shape, and a network of people around the world to meet from facebook gave me further purpose and has helped to make my travels unique and always fun. I have seen some amazing things in the last 6 months of 2008. I dived the Xenobia off the coast of Cyprus, I saw the Pyramids in Egypt from the back of a camel, I hiked in the Himalayas wearing a pair of beat up trainers, I saw Angkor Wat, I've dived off Koh Phi Phi and I've seen some awesome citys and met a really cool bunch of people while doing it.

Now as for 2009... I'm also feeling pretty good about that. And my hunches often turn out right... I'll be spending most of it in Australia... back in the world of work, as my cash will run out soon... I have a few people to meet there... as well as one special girl that i can't wait to meet in real life... you know who you are...

All in all i think my life is going to get better and better. I told Kathryn that life seems to be like a perabola these days, for her 2008 was the bottom point... for me I think it was 2007, but the line keeps on getting steeper and steeper, and life keeps on getting better and better...

So here's to 2009. May it bring you all happiness, and everything that you need...