A devil of a time in Tasmania...

Hi Guys...

Its been a long time since I last posted I know... but I do have an excuse...

It's Tasmanias fault... Not that I'm saying that Tasmania is backwards or anything, but it is certainly more difficult to get onto the information superhighway here... Add to that the fact that I'm working 7 days a week (weather allowing) and you can understand the predicament that I'm in!

(Note: I've been forced to post this blog without having all of the photos uploaded (damn Tasmania), but keep your eyes on this album for the rest of the pictures...)

However.... I've made it online now, so here is my story...

We left you last on our way out of Wentworth, having just finished working on a grape farm, and heading south towards Tasmania. Before we went to Melbourne we visited Wilsons Promontory for a couple of days, stopping off at Happy Jacks rest stop on the way... As we headed south we could feel it getting colder, and it seemed that this led directly to a proliferation of millipedes the further south we went...

Wilsons Promontory was very nice, with lots of beautiful views, walks and beaches close by, and absolutely loads of wild life including bright red parrots, a kangaroo called "dude" and wombats! Also giant mushrooms...

We stayed in Melbourne for a couple of nights... on the first night we met up with Phil and Ffion again (see last post), and on the second day we met up with one of Nams friends from her university days… we also saw a fashion show and went back to the museum of moving images and played with all of the displays, including making a rotoscope video of me knocking Nam about Matrix styleeee!

Early on the morning of the second day in Melbourne we made our way to the ferry terminal and prepared ourselves for the 8 hour ferry ride over to Tasmania! The ferry was pretty huge and comfortable, and we kept ourselves amused pretty well, apart from Nam feeling queasy for the majority of the journey!

The first couple of days in Tasmania we went around all of the job agencies that we could find looking for jobs. We were slightly apprehensive about this as we had been told by many people that it was difficult to find a job in Tasmania… Figuring that we had a few days to spare before anything showed up we decided to take a small tour of the island.

We drove to Port Arthur (very nice area of Tasmania with crazy rock beaches and a chocolate factory!) and promptly got two phone calls from different agencies offering us jobs! So much for work being difficult to find!

We took a job on a potato harvester and have been doing that ever since, with a couple of days of for bad weather and a couple off for Easter, one of which we spent picking broccoli instead. We were told that the smallest acceptable size for broccoli was "about a C  cup"... so I spent the whole day groping broccoli... My psychiatrist may hear about this in the future...

Worthy of note in this time was staying in Poatina resort village, which sounds like it would be an expensive place to stay, but which turned out to be very cheap, and to have all sorts of additional bonuses including a maze and a Thomas the tank engine that you could ride round the village on!

The plan for now is to work for another few days, and then to tour round Tasmania and see the sights before heading back to the mainland and Sydney for Nams flight home… more on that in the next post…

The Rhythm of Life.... Mildura...

In the spirit of fairness I feel that I should add that I don't really like Guinness... But I do like this advert...

On to the matter of my travels.

This last month I have been settled down in one place, working once again. This month has been one of changes... watching the seasons change, watching some things grow up, and some things fall apart...

It doesn't seem like a month ago that we moved to Wentworth. The memory is still fresh in my mind. We had visited the farm where we would be working just the day before, and found that the nearest camp site was in a sleepy little village, about 10 km away, called Wentworth. So we arrived in the mid afternoon and started setting up camp.

The cast for our next month of life was already assembled. In the camp spot next to us were a Welsh trio, Ffion, Phil and Dave that immediately introduced themselves; one camp spot over from them was a French guy called Maxim, who we later found out was to be working at the same farm as us; paddling about were some tiny little cute ducklings; and though we didn't know it, sleeping in the tree just above our tent were a whole family of possums... the scene was set!

We enjoyed our time in Wentworth very much. Our neighbours were great. Phil and Ffion were a lovely couple... Phil was a very chatty guy whose twin passions were rugby and fishing. In fact he would spend up to 8 hours a day fishing on his days off... in spite of the fact that all that he ever caught were carp. Ffion was a bubbly girl who only ever stopped talking when she was reading or being artistic. Dave only stayed for a week, but in that time we came to enjoy his chat very much. As for Max... Even though he was French we found him to be a modest, inteligent, warm guy who was quiet at first, but really funny when you got to know him.

Every day the ducklings would come round, guarded by their mother, begging for bread; and then later on, around dusk, the possums would venture from their tree and get among us. Taking bread from our hands, and taking any other food that we were foolish enough to leave lying around overnight!

As for the work we were doing... We were both working on a grape farm, producing sultanas and raisins. Nam was doing the picking side of things (not too difficult work, though not very well paid) and I was a cart-man. My job basically involved riding around on the back of a tractor, picking up all of the buckets of grapes that the pickers had produced, and piling them onto the back of the tractor. We then had to tip all of these buckets of grapes onto racks so that they could dry.

The best thing about my job was that I got to drive the tractor! The worst thing was the bees that liked to hang out on the drying fruit, and don't take too kindly when we had to spread out the fruit so that it could dry better... I got stung 4 times! Luckily I'm not allergic! As well as the bees there was the usual assortment of spiders, flies, spiders, lizards, wasps and spiders... some of them deadly!

Now our job is drawing to a close... we are in our last week of picking... The ducklings have grown up and been replaced by new ducklings that are even smaller and even cuter... our neighbours have started moving away...

All in all it feels like things are winding down in Wentworth... I guess that is all part of the rhythm of life...

Zen Rock

The instant that I saw this rock it sent me into a kind of zen trance.

The first thing that it made me think of was impermanance... After all, the rock has the look of something ancient. It has clearly been in existance for millions of years. And long after I am gone and forgotten (barring human intervention, or barring sudden breakthroughs in longevity treatments in my lifetime) it will still be sat there, in the sea, being battered by the waves in much the same way...

On the other hand... the rock is clearly being battered by the sea. It isn't hard to imagine it being broken down into sand in just a few millenium. It just made me very aware of the impermanence of all things, and especially myself...

The second thought that came to me was how everything changes, but everything stays the same. For maybe hundreds of years the water had been splashing over this rock in much the same way, filling the pool at the top, and then running out of the pool back into the sea below. Unchanging for hundreds of years...

The flip-side of this is that no two waves, washing over this rock, will have ever been exactly the same... Hundreds and tousands of waves, all breaking over this rock, and each one slightly different from all of the others... Possibly due to the different timing, size or direction of the wave, or down to slight changes in the shape of the rock, or maybe even due to the presence of sea life on the rock, altering the wave slightly, making each one unique...

Melbourne to Sydney and the Sydney week! (Including my birthday!!!)

The last I wrote was to tell you about my day in Melbourne... Well, we left Melbourne shortly after that, but not before performing the obligatory pilgrimage to the place that every British ex-student in Australia has to visit... We went to …. the Neighbours Street!
 

It was exactly as awesome as you would imagine. The outside shots of Neighbours are actually filmed on Pin Oak Court. I made the pilgrimage early in the morning, and was rewarded by managing to catch the end of a tour that some people had paid to go on! The tour also brought a “Ramsay Street” sign with them! I of course took full advantage of this!

After that we headed north and east, towards Canberra. It took two days, of pretty uneventful driving, to get there. Freeway all the way! We made one stop-off at Glenrowan, which is apparently the birthplace of Ned Kelly.

Canberra was nice. Quiet... but nice. We arrived the day before Australia day, which seemed pretty fitting! We visited the War Memorial, which was very interesting, and then headed over to Parliament House for the free Australia Day concert that was being held there... The concert was fun. Lots of Australian bands that we had never heard of... but we chilled out for a while, and then headed to the front, near the stage to do some bouncing....

The next day we made the long trip to Sydney. Actually... it wasn't that long. We arrived there around 11am and as it was Australia Day we proceeded to do the most Australian thing we could think of... We had a picnic in the park! After this we headed to North Sydney to Josephine's house, which would be our residence for the next five days.

The next day we pretty much chilled out in preparation for the next day.... My Birthday!!! For my birthday we did touristy things! We visited Paddys Market, and Darling Harbour and then we went to the Sydney Aquarium... This was amazing and we saw... duck billed platypuses, turtles, sea-horses, octopusses, jelly fish, eels, penguins, sharks, rays, crocodiles, dugongs, many many fishes and corals and other small sea dwelling animals!

After this I had my birthday meal! Which was a lasagne which I prepared personally... and it was excellent... if I do say so myself!

On the 29th of January we did more tourist things. We walked across Sydney Harbour Bridge, and took a stroll around the city. It was at around this point that I started experimenting with more artistic modes on my camera!

That evening we went out into Sydney with Jo and some of er friends. We went to a few bars (including a very expensive one on a 47th floor that rotated!!) and ended up in a bar playing pool. Nam and Jo proceeded to wipe the floor with a couple of guys that challenged them to a game!

On Saturday we went into the city to meet some of Nams Thai friends for lunch, and then Jo came and met us and we went for a little walk from Bondi Beach to... Tamara Beach, a few kilometres up the coast. This was a very nice little walk. After this we had to rush back to Josephines to prepare for the Sydney salsa congress that we were going to that night.

We arrived at the congress just in time to get a seat near the front and to the right of the stage. The shows were amazing as expected, though it seemed like there wasn't going to be any salsa for a while! The videos are all on my youtube channel here...

After the shows was the salsa party. This was lots of fun, as I don't get to salsa too often any more. I met up with some old friends, and danced the night away. We didn't end up getting home until about 4am, and didn't get to sleep until even later!

Sunday was a restful day. We mainly did some shopping and prepared for leaving Sydney. We got an early night and said our goodbyes to Josephine.

The next morning we got our stuff together and finally left at around 11am. We headed West, towards Mildura...

That pretty much brings us up to date for now. We reached Mildura... stopping off along the way to put our names in to various job offices. We now have a job to start tomorrow. I am going to be lifting buckets, and Nam will be picking grapes. This will occupy us for most of the next month, so don't expect too many updates in that time.

Hopefully I'll see you in a month, a bit more tanned, slightly healthier, and a lot richer!

Laters

Trev

Adelaide to Melbourne... Featuring The Great Ocean Road!!!

What a couple of weeks it has been... We have driven more then a quarter of the way round the coast of Australia, seen some amazing sights, experienced weather from 47 degree sun to 15 degree driving rain.

The last stretch was the drive from Adelaide to Melbourne which, though it is not so long in distance, more then makes up for it with the sheer density of things to see and beautiful sights...

The first day after leaving Adelaide we drove down the coast to Robe, where we stayed in the Little Dip Natural Park... Robe was very nice and felt very peaceful.

Leaving Robe behind us on day two we travelled to Mount Gambier. This was a very interesting place, being built on an extinct volcano, and having lots of sinkholes, craters and lakes... one of them a striking shade of sapphire!

The next day we crossed the border into Victoria. We went for a walk in Portland, all in the cause of seeing seals... we saw them, but they were very far away. It was a nice walk regardless... We finished the day in Port Fairy... Not a name I'd imagine the sailors liked very much, though it is one of the oldest ports in Australia!

Day four saw us arrive onto the great ocean road. It was going to be hard for this road to live up to the hype... but it somehow delivered... in spite of the intermittent rain. I also managed to get sunburned in site of the intermittent rain!

On the great ocean road we saw the Bay of Islands, the Bay of Martyrs, The Grotto, London Bridge, The Arch, Loch Ard Gorge (featuring the Blowholes, Thunder Cave and Razorback Ridge) and finally the Twelve Apostles...

We stopped the night at Lavers Hill and set off for the rest of the great ocean road... There were many amazing views on this day... though they didn't have names like the ones the previous day... We continued driving after the great ocean road, through Melbourne city, and all the way to Phillip Island... Phillip Island is mostly famous for Penguins...

Fairy penguins to be precise. They are the smallest penguins in the world, being mostly less then 25cm tall, but they still walk in a very amusing fashion. We saw the penguin parade and then headed to San Remo for the night.

The final day of our great drive we re-visited Phillip island to see the Nobbys... worth visiting for their funny name if nothing else. They also had a boardwalk over the cliffs with many interesting sights to see... including some seagull chicks!

After this we headed for Melbourne to our place of rest for the next few days...

And that is the tale of our trip from Adelaide to Melbourne... I hope you liked it...

Trev.







Epilogue...

I feel that it would be wrong to leave you without telling you about our day trip to Melbourne.. We set of early in the morning, in spite of Nams protests as I dragged her out of bed!

We took the bus, and then the train, into the center of the city, getting off at Flinders Street Station. We wandered around the city almost at random for a while, stopping off to check the internet and find things that caught our interest...

We ended up in the North of the city, near the Victoria Market.. so we decided to pay it a visit.

Victoria Market is a wonderful place. The non food section was ok. Just what you would expect from a market, but the food section of the market was a like a dream for me, with a vast array of food, from all over the world, all freshly prepared and smelling amazing. The only problem was that I was visiting it with literally zero cash to spare! If I had had any money, or if I lived in Melbourne, I could have spent a fortune in that place...

Leaving the market wistfully behind we resumed our wandering. Seeing one of the free tourist trams riding past we decided to take a ride round the circuit of the city. We saw many interesting sights around Melbourne on this before getting off pretty much where we got on...

We walked back south from here, down Swanston street. We visited Chinatown, which was less exciting then we thought it would be, and made our way to Federation Square, which was right next to where we set off...

Federation Square was filled with people watching the Australian Open tennis on a huge screen, and was backed by a huge striking building. This building turned out to be the Australian Museum of the Moving Image, so of course we decided to wander in and take a look...

This museum was lots of fun. Our only regret was that we hadn't spent the whole day there! We only had about an hour to wander around and play with all of the interactive displays (including some “classic” computer games!).

We left the Museum and headed back to the train station... satisfied with the day and thinking that we would definitely have to visit Melbourne city again some time... ()

After New Year... Perth to Adelaide

Hey Guys

I know... the last message was far too long... and I know... I'm still over two weeks behind on my posting! In this message I'll give you the bare essentials, and catch you up on a weeks travelling... with any luck I'll be able to give you another weeks worth in a couple of days and we'll be bang up to date!

So... when I left you last we had just finished New Years eve in Perth... The next week or so was dedicated to getting to Adelaide as quickly as possible, while still seeing a few sights along the way...

The first day we visited Rockingham, had lunch in Mandurah (and viewed a $1M apartment) and stopped the night in Bunbury.

The next day we headed inland. We visited Gnomeville, climbed a massive tree near Manjimup, visited Denmark (not the country) and stopped in a little caravan park between Denmark and Albany...

On the third day the first stop was Albany, which was very nice, then we headed inland again in a massive 300km detour to see the wave rock. I was a bit grumpy at all this extra driving, but it was worth it in the end...

Day four saw us head back to the coast and we finished the day in Esperance. Esperance is well worth a visit if you're in the area, and it has some exquisite beaches. The next three days were as if we were back on the outback. We headed north to Norseman (not much here, we went to the swimming pool), then set off along the Nullarbor Highway. This is notable partly for having the longest stretch of perfectly straight road in Australia... It ia also notable for a 200 km stretch of road, containing a few roadhouses, that has its own unique time-zone, completely separate from anywhere else in Australia!

After 3 days we finished this long stretch of outback and arrived in Ceduna. Ceduna was... nothing too exciting... The next day we headed down the coast. First of all we passed Smokey Bay... then Streaky Bay... All of this of course made me think of bacon! Streaky Bay was mostly notable for having a massive shark hung up in the petrol station...

We spent that night in Port Lincoln, and the night after that in Whyalla. Both of these places were notable for a lack of caravan parks, in spite of there being loads of tourists!

The next day, and only a few hours from Adelade now we decided to stop off in Crystal Brook and spend a night. It was a nice little town, and a nice little camp site.

Finally, after over a week on the road we arrived in Adelaide and settled ourselves down for a few days here...

That's it for now, look forward to the next instalment, Adelaide to Melbourne, The Great Ocean Road!

Bye folks

Trev

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