Around Oz on a Battered Fish

ICONIC SALE

2010-07-24T12:59:00.009+10:00

Dear All,

To help finance a little one of our own, we have decided to put the Battered Fish and Barnacle up for SALE!

For many of you who have read our Blog, you have some idea of what the Battered Fish and Barnacle have achieved and what they are capable of.

The Battered Fish is a 1995 Toyota Landcruiser 4.2L 6 cylinder 5 speed 4WD fitted with all the equipment you need to take you to those remote places you always dreamed of, such as a snorkel, 10t winch, bull bar, driving and fog lights, heavy duty and raised suspension, towbar and dual fuel tanks (approximately 270L), new injector pump. It is registered until March 2011 and has a full service history.

The Battered Fish is fully equipped for you to start your adventure tomorrow, as it has all the recovery gear - air compressor, bottle jacks, x-jack inflated bag, axe, shovel, solar panel for the dual battery system, 60L engel fridge, storage draw system, 60L stainless steel water tank, 6 wheels with Cooper ATR tyres (4 are only 10,000km old), HF radio, CB radio, roof rack, camping lights, trailer brakes, as well as numerous other features.

The Battered Fish is somewhat of a veteran having travelled some 414,000 kms, around and throughout Australia proving its capabilities with us and its previous owner.

The Barnacle, registered until April 2011, is a Kangaroo Tent City Kangaroo 9 Off Road Trailer, with all the features (refer to www.kangarootentcity.com.au) plus numerous extras including:
Cooper ATR tyres (all interchangeable with the Landcruiser), Full canvas sunroom, 360 degree treg coupling, gas bottle and jerry can holders, spare wheel and vertical mount, electric brakes, AL-KO independent suspension, 60L underfloor water tank, removable platform step for easy access to the bed area, Drifta DPO Slide out kitchen kit - storage box, kitchen and storage box (refer to www.drifta.com.au) as well as all the tarps, flooring, ropes, pegs and plastic storage boxes.

We are pleased to offer the Battered Fish and Barnacle together or separately for $23,000 ono and $8,000 ono respectively. Call us on 0410 633 530 or email gedmimmo@hotmail.com.

Make your dreams come true and set off tomorrow on your adventures.

The Battered Fish Survey

2009-06-18T10:03:00.006+10:00

We are undertaking a very short survey of 5 questions (it will take you a maximum time of one minute to complete!) using SurveyMonkey. We would greatly appreciate you taking the time to help us with the survey so that we can provide you with the information you want to see. To complete the survey, please click here. A new window should open on your screen. Thank you so much for your time.

Illawarra Caravan Camping 4WD Fish & Boat Show this weekend

2009-02-25T08:57:00.002+11:00

The Battered Fish will be at the Illawarra show this weekend. We will be displaying photos and videos of our adventure and providing demonstrations of how we filtered oil whilst travelling.

The Illawarra Caravan Camping 4WD & Fish Show has over 170 exhibitors displaying everything you will ever need for Caravan, Camping, 4WDs & Fishing. The show is at Kembla Grange Racecourse, Kembla Grange from Friday 27 February until Sunday 1 March, open 9am until 5pm daily.

We look forward to seeing you at the show and discussing your adventures!

Rachel and Gerard

Sustainable Living Festival - this weekend

2009-02-19T07:30:00.010+11:00

The Sustainable Living Festival (SLF), "...showcases a huge range of exhibitors, talks, workshops, art, films and performances celebrating and inspiring sustainable communities...", it is on in Melbourne this weekend.

We will be delivering a talk at 2pm (NOT 10am) on Sunday 22 February in the THINK tent.

Held in Melbourne's city centre at Federation Square, it starts on Friday 20 February and finishes Sunday afternoon. They have a voluntary ticket system where you either choose to purchase a ticket or not.

We encourage everyone to come and listen to our adventures and explore the SLF. For more information about the SLF go to the website www.slf.org.au/festival.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

Rachel and Gerard

Come and meet the Battered Fish

2009-01-22T16:04:00.015+11:00

Our very good friends at Kangaroo Tent City are having us present our adventures at their North Parramatta store in Sydney on Wendesday 4 February from 6pm.

They are offering a 20% OFF storewide sale on the night between 7pm and 9pm for all those who attend.

We encourage everyone to come and listen to our adventures, see the Battered Fish and Barnacle for yourselves and take the opportunity to start your own adventure at Kangaroo Tent City.

Kangaroo Tent City - 596A Church St, North Parramatta, NSW 2151 - Telephone +61 2 9630 2888 - Website http://www.kangarootentcity.com.au/

Looking forward to seeing you there.

Rachel and Gerard

We made it!

2009-01-08T11:27:00.006+11:00

On 22 December 2008, at 10.30am, the Battered Fish and Barnacle triumphantly drove into Sydney CBD to complete an epic 225 day adventure around Australia. We had made it the whole way around Australia (with the odd detour through the middle of Australia) on used cooking oil, making it to the Eastern, Northern, Western and Southern most points of mainland Australia. We had travelled a distance of more than 36,000 kms, over notoriously corrugated roads, through creek crossings, up and over steep sand dunes, seeing amazing places, fauna and flora and meeting with the characters of the outback. Boy had it been an adventure of a lifetime, one that we will cherish for a long, long time.

Even writing about our trip now, several weeks after the finish date, it has not fully sunk in that the trip is over. It was a huge part of our lives for so long that it is hard to get back into reality. The camper trailer is currently sitting in the drive way with red dust on, itching for its next adventure, and the Battered Fish is being driven around Sydney on waste cooking oil. It is almost as if we are stocking up on food and oil in the City and will be ready to get going on our next leg of the journey in a few days. The reality is, we may be physically and mentally ready to keep on travelling, but we both need to look for jobs!

Since being back in Sydney, we have once again slept in a proper bed, been able to cook using an oven, grill, hob etc, had a hot shower, had drinking water whenever we needed it, used a washing machine and used electricity for lighting. All of this I took for granted before our trip. I never thought I would say this but I am missing the life of camping and having to work physically hard to drink, eat, sleep etc. For example, to cook food, we had to find wood, usually chop this up and then start a fire. To wash clothes, we had to heat a bucket of water (either over the fire or using the solar shower), add biodegradable soap to the water and scrub the clothes clean. To sleep, we had to find a level, shaded area and set the camper trailer up. I can remember during the trip that all of the things above at some point annoyed the hell out of me, for example, in some places you could not find wood for a fire, or other places it rained so hard that the camper trailer leaked. At these times, all I wished for was a warm, dry bed to sleep in and have some home comforts. Now, I am wishing for the exact opposite!

You may have thought, like me, that as we are staying in a house and are in a city, we would have finished seeing "dangerous" animals. This is not true. Only last night, we went around to Gerard's sisters house for drinks and as we arrived, we saw a red back spider on the ceiling inside the house. We had not seen a red-back our whole time on the trip. Also, we found a spider inside the house where we are staying and as Gerard went to move it outside using some newspaper, the spider exploded and around 50 plus baby spiders started crawling around the floor. Further, our brother-in-law went to play golf at a local course and saw two snakes - one in the car park and one on the green! We are surrounded by poisonous species!

Over the next few weeks, we will be slowly adjusting back into life, as well as looking for jobs and places to rent. We are aiming to keep up our camping and go out as much as possible at weekends to National Parks around New South Wales and enjoy basic living once more.

I will carry on blogging about how we are settling into life in Sydney, so stay tuned as the Battered Fish will swim again!

All the best,

Rachel and Gerard x

Days 211 - 223

2008-12-21T21:00:00.006+11:00

Tonight is a time for reflection. It is our last night camping on our trip, "Around Oz on a Battered Fish." Tomorrow, we will be arriving in Sydney at 10.30 am in Sydney Square. This will mark the end of our wonderful adventure. I am feeling a mix of emotions - excitement about seeing family and friends again, relief that we will finally be able to stop living out of a backpack but mainly, a huge sense of disappointment - disappointment that it will be over if I go to sleep tonight, disappointment that there are no more hidden gems of Australia to find on this trip and disappointment that we have to stop what we have loved doing for the last 7 months.

We have had a great final few weeks. It was fantastic seeing a lot of Gerard's relatives and friends in Melbourne and catching up with what they have been doing since we last saw them 3 years ago. We were spoilt rotten by Gerard's Uncle and Aunt who own an Italian restaurant, Casavini's in Doncaster, Melbourne. Each day, our plates would be bulging with gorgeous Italian food and Gerard and I would gobble everything up like two Labradors after 7 months without lasagne, gnocchi etc. We were also very relieved that we were staying in a house rather than being in the camper trailer as it rained non-stop for 3 days. We would have been soaking. All of the locals were extremely grateful for the rain as Melbourne is going through a drought and people are limited to 150 litres of water a day. To us, (we use about 15 litres of water a day for washing, cooking, drinking etc), 150 litres a day seems like a generous amount but just the fact that everyone is restricted proves how desperate the situation is.

From Melbourne, we went to the Southern Most point of mainland Australia and completed our 45 km hike to get to the Southern Most point of mainland Australia (see blog below for further details) and after a stop over at Lakes Entrance, we left Victoria and crossed into New South Wales ("NSW"), and then into Australia Capital Territory ("ACT") to visit Australia's capital, Canberra. Canberra surprised us. It is an entirely purpose built city, with lots of greenery, parks and waterways giving it a bush feel. Compared to Melbourne, there was little traffic on the roads and a healthy feel to the place, with cycle trails everywhere. We attended a media day at Old Parliament House, visited new Parliament House and went to Black Mountain. All in all, we enjoyed our visit to Canberra.

From Canberra, we headed back to the coast and met up with Gerard's sister, Theresa, her son and two nephews, who were joining us for their first weekend of camping. We arrived during a thunderstorm but thankfully, they arrived a day later to sunshine. The weather was great and we enjoyed lazy days on the beach (well, as lazy as you can get with 3 boys aged 5, 6 and 8) playing cricket, football and fishing. It was great to show them where we had been living for the last 7 months and how we had been living.

Our final night is at Royal National Park, the oldest National Park in Australia. We could not have wished for a better place for our last evening as the scenery is stunning, with our camp spot looking right out over the water. This will be a place we will come back to for a weekend trip out of Sydney, as it is only about 40 kms out of the City. It is strange to say that this is our last night and I guess I had better make the most of it rather than being on the computer. One more night only of lingering over the sky filled with stars and hearing the water lapping close by. I don't want to leave!

I will blog over the next few days and let you all know how arriving in Sydney went and what we will be doing next.

I have included some photos of the view of Canberra from the Black Mountain lookout tower, the Battered Fish and Barnacle in front of Old Parliament House, me looking very exhausted nearing the end of our 45 km hike to the Southern Most point of Mainland Australia, Gerard at the ACT Border, kangaroos taking a rest at dusk and the thunderstorm at Batemans Bay.

Take care everyone,

An emotional Rachel and Gerard x

We made it to the Southern Most Point of mainland Australia

2008-12-17T09:22:00.006+11:00

After being spoilt rotten and fed to near bursting point with gorgeous Italian food by Gerard's relatives in Melbourne, we set off on our mammoth walking hike to the Southern Most Point of mainland Australia in Wilson's Promontory, VIC.

The trek was 45 kms return and involved two overnight stays along the way. Although we had completed numerous long treks throughout our journey, we had not yet done any overnight hikes. It did not bode well when we both put on our backpacks filled with water, dried food, sleeping bags, tent etc and Gerard nose planted to the floor and I could hardly walk. A bit of readjustment to the packs allowed us to atleast walk but neither of us thought we could walk with this weight on our backs for 13 kms to our camp.

It was a tough trek and our legs and shoulders were really feeling it after the first 4 kms. We munched our way through many brunch bars (chocolate coated of course for the energy, not to make them taste better) and after what seemed like a year, we made it to our camp site. It was a huge relief to take our backpacks off and rest. To celebrate our first achievement, we ripped opened a pack of chicken flavoured noodles - yum yum! Who said camping food was bland.

The next day, with less weight in our backpacks, we treked to the Southern Most Point of Mainland Australia. WE HAD MADE IT! Battling against 75 kmph gusts at the point, we took some photos of us looking rather wind swept at the point (see above).

The journey home was again a really tough trek. By this time, my calf's had completely seized up and my shoulders had been rubbed roar from the weight of the backpack. To top it all off, the rain started and I was wishing that every corner or hill we came to would be our last. I have never been so happy to see the Battered Fish and Barnacle when I reached the car park after completing our trek.

Looking back on the trek now (after a good nights sleep, hiking shoes off my feet, dry clothes etc), I am really pleased we made it and I can now say that we enjoyed it. We had a fantastic remote camp spot in the middle of the forest, saw some echidna's (which we had not previously seen), some snakes on the hiking trail and the scenery was great.

We can now proudly say that we have made it to the Eastern, Northern, Western and Southern most points of mainland Australia, all in one year.

I have included some pictures of Gerard hiking to the point, Gerard and I at the point and the South Point sign.

Days 197 - 210

2008-12-07T12:59:00.011+11:00

In the words of Bon Jovi, (que appropriate music and air guitar), “it’s the final countdown”. We have 15 sleeps left in our little traveller’s world before we hit Sydney, civilisation, hot showers and proper toilets. Are we looking forward to this? NO, long live the Battered Fish adventure we say.

Time is now precious and we have been making the most of each day since we left Adelaide. During our time in Adelaide, we visited the Fleurieu Peninsula, taking in yet more beautiful wineries in Maclaren Vale and the seaside towns of Victor Harbour, Port Elliott and Goowlah, made a visit to Parliament House (see blog posted on 27 November), had a press conference in Botanical Park and caught up with our friends, Noel and Shelia. It was a very hectic 3 days but great fun. Whilst in Victor Harbour, we caught a horse drawn tram (a slower mode of transport compared to the Fish but still sustainable) pulled by a Clydesdale horse called Carmen (so the poster entitled "horse talk" told us) over to Granite Island.

From Adelaide, we headed inland to the Grampians, a stunning area for keen bush walkers and nature lovers alike. We set up camp in an idyllic spot, with only black wallabies (that at first sight we thought were puma’s) for company. We spent our time bush walking in preparation for our hike to the most Southern point of mainland Australia and learnt quite a bit about the rating of certain treks. For instance, when they say something is classed as “moderate - hard, with some parts of the track being difficult to identify”, they actually mean you have to scramble over fallen down trees, over large boulders and wade through bracken to keep on the track. Also, when something has a “Mt” in front of it, one way is going to be purely up hill and the other purely down hill. We amateur bush walkers learnt the hard way, but had a great time in the process and are very much looking forward to our first overnight hikes in Wilsons Promontory next week.

From the Grampians, we headed for the coast and stayed in Great Otway National Park, about 5 kms behind the seaside town of Lorne. Again, we were spoilt with the beautiful location of our bush camp. We had wanted to see wild koala’s for some time and thought that we would get viewings of these adorable creatures in the Grampians. However, the devastating bush fires in Christmas 2006 had claimed the lives of a lot of the koala population and we did not see any. As we were setting up camp in Great Otway, we heard a scrambling noise to the left of us. There, no more than 10 ft away from us, was a koala about to climb its home, a eucalyptus tree. About half way up the tree, it looked down at us and started making a noise like an ape makes. I could not believe that such a small animal could make such a large and strange noise. It pacified itself for a good hour munching on the leaves of the tree before it started up its strange noise again. Was it mating season we wondered? Would we witness something you only see on the discovery channel? Alas not, but we were woken up several times during the night to the koala’s calls.

We drove along the Great Ocean Road and saw the 12 Apostles and other rock formations. On the drive to the coast, the Battered Fish had her birthday. She turned the ripe old age of 400,000 kms. Thanks to the juice she has been drinking since we set out on our trip in May, she is working perfectly and still looks no older than the day she was born. We celebrated her birthday with some good friends of ours, the Vanderkellens. Have a look at the pictures we posted on the 4 December of the morning after. Bear and Rabbit really did overdo it!

The waste cooking oil is going well thanks to the help of some generous people Gerard met through a forum specialising in alternative fuels. Before we left on our trip in May, Gerard posted a message on the forum setting out our adventure and if anyone around Australia could help us out with some waste veggie oil as we visit different places. Many people replied to the message and once again, we have been overwhelmed by the generosity of the Australian people. Thanks goes to Sandy and Bob from Victor Harbour, John at Morphett Vale and Matt and Barb in the Grampians for supplying us with some good quality WVO to help the Battered Fish on its adventure. Also, thanks to Matt and Barb for dinner and allowing us to use your shower after a long stint without hot water!! We did not know these people but each invited us into their homes. It goes to show that the Aussie generosity is still out there.

We are currently in Sorrento for a few days before we head over to Phillip Island to see the penguin parade at dusk – where little penguins come waddling up the beach from the ocean to their home. From here, we are going to Melbourne to catch up with some of Gerard’s relatives.

I have included some photos of Gerard and I at the 12 Apostles, the view of Great Ocean Road, the noisy Koala we saw at Great Otway NP, the view from one of the "Mt" walks we did in the Grampians, some vines at Maclaren Vale and Carmen the Clydesdale horse pulling the tram.

We hope everyone is well and as always, thanks for your messages and comments. One of our favourite comments has been “never mind about Gerard’s clothing, what has happened to his hair?” Fair point I say!

Rachel and Gerard

Happy Birthday to ...

2008-12-04T10:24:00.005+11:00

The Battered Fish!

That's right, the Battered Fish has turned 400,000km.

After such a milestone it was only right to celebrate. Fortunately, we had caught up with our good friends, the Vanderkellen's, who joined in the celebrations.

After last nights celebrations, The Battered Fish is resting up today with his friends Bear & Rabbit - who seemed to have enjoyed themselves a bit too much.

In a week and as a present, we have arranged a day spa for the Battered Fish at one of Melbourne's finest mechanics where the Batttered Fish will receive a full service.

The photos are of the Battered Fish's odometer, the celebrations and the morning after.

Ranger Ged and Rachel meet the Minister

2008-11-27T22:21:00.004+11:00

On Thursday 27 November, Ranger Ged (check out his clothing - never let a man go off shopping by himself) and I were invited to the South Australian Parliament House and met with the Hon Jay Weatherill, Environment Minister of South Australia and Hon Jack Snelling, Speaker Parliament of South Australia.

We spent time explaining to the Minister and Speaker of our adventure. We pointed out that using waste cooking oil to power our vehicle significantly reduces our emissions, particularly our carbon footprint. The use of WVO is actually recycling what is generally a waste product and as we have shown, any one could do it, especially Australians or overseas tourists.

The Minister was able to tell us that South Australia ("SA") has the best record of recycling water in Australia, was the first state of Australia to legislate permissible carbon emission levels and has reduced its carbon emissions by 7% in the last 5 year reporting period. Well done SA in leading Australia in many ways to significantly reducing our carbon footprint, keep up the good work!

We would like to express our gratitude to the Minister and the Speaker for giving us their time.

The photo is of, from left to right: Hon Jack Snelling, Rachel, Gerard the Ranger and the Hon Jay Weatherill.

Days 185 - 196

2008-11-23T10:35:00.009+11:00

We left Coober Pedy after collecting 120L of waste cooking oil (“WVO”) and headed for the outback. We took a 4WD track to Oodnadatta (known locally as the mail run), stopping off at the stunning Breakaways and Painted Desert (where Mad Max and Priscilla Queen of the Desert were filmed). After stopping for a chat to the owner at the Oodnadatta Pink Roadhouse, we followed the Oodnadatta Track to Marree (a total of about 600kms). The track conditions were relatively good considering the amount of rain we had encountered. We took our time and stopped off at small places along the way, including a thermal spa at Coward Springs, which was extremely refreshing in the 40 degree heat. It was a great feeling to be back in the outback again – the remoteness, wide open spaces, red sandhills glowing in the evening light, whistling kites and the deadly silence of the star lit night. Throughout our journey to Marree (which took us 3 days), we saw two other cars. Because of the remoteness, we would pull off the track and camp on the side of the road each night. Our only companions were kites sauntering over and the odd kangaroo. Each evening, we would set up our chairs to watch the outback sky change colours after the sunset. It never disappointed. Ah, life was good again!

We had a slight shock when we came to Marree and encountered traffic (ok, it was only four cars and a truck but still). We checked into a caravan park for a hot shower and to fill up on water and met two other campers; Darryl, who was travelling the outback tracks for a month; and Nick, Cath and family from Sydney, who were travelling for 3 months around SA and WA, not in your typical Troopie like us, but in a Merc (although they have been living in Sydney for 13 years, they are originally from Manchester, UK and are Man United football (“soccer” to you Aussies) supporters so this explained some things!) We chatted to Darryl and he informed us that he had wanted to come to Marree for some time to see Tom Cruise. I nearly choked on my ginger beer when he told me that Tom Cruise was here in little ol’ Marree. He asked Gerard if he knew who Tom was and Gerard said of course, the movie star. Darryl looked a little puzzled and said no, he was the postman for the area between the towns of Birdsville and Marree. We had obviously not done our Marree research. We went back to our camper and Nick and Cath came over for some beers. We had a great night with them and felt slightly better that they did not know who Tom “the postman” Kruze was either.

From Marree, we travelled South through the Gammon Ranges. We thought we had seen all of the landscape that there was to see in Australia until we reached this area. We were amazed by the mountainous scenery and winding tracks we encountered. We were stopped on the road by herds of feral goats and yellow tailed wallabies. It was absolutely stunning. Once again, we did not meet any traffic on the tracks until we reached further South in the Flinders Ranges and enjoyed some remote camping.

Once we left the Flinders Ranges, we hit the tarmac and said goodbye to the remote camping and never ending sky of the outback. We were a little sad as that would be the last proper 4WDriving we do on our adventure. To console ourselves, we headed to the wine region of Clare Valley for some wine tasting. We were told of two wineries that we must visit whilst in the region. We decided to hire some bikes and cycle along the Riesling Trail to these wineries. To take in the wineries, it would be a 55km round trip. The trail was described as “gently sloping” and we thought that this would be no problem for two fine young things such as ourselves. The way there was fantastic. We cycled through vineyards, green rolling hills and saw some beautiful stone chateaus. We got to our first winery, caught our breathe (and in Gerard’s case, wiped the sweat from his face) and went inside to start tasting. We walked inside and heard a couple talking with the wine attendant about the wine being “seriously good” and the “raspberry flavours of the wine coming through”. Oh dear, I feared that my knowledge on wine, or rather lack of knowledge, would be shown up. It probably didn’t help either that in the past 6 months, I had only drunk casked wine – best not to tell that to anyone at the winery. It is amazing how you suddenly become really interested in wine when you are at one of these places. I found myself asking about how the wine was stored, its best year to be drunk, the temperature of the wine etc. I thought I had successfully blagged my way through the wine tasting when the ultimate test was put in front of me – an $85 bottle of wine and an $18 one. Yeap, I choose the $18 one as being “far superior.” Nil points for Rachel.

After indulging in far too much food at a local cafe, it was time to get back on our bikes for the journey home. On the return journey, everything started to feel a bit more strenuous. With about 10kms left, the seat just got far too painful and I had to hover gingerly over it. The “gentle slopes” that we had encountered on the way there were certainly not “gentle” on the way back and the combination of eating too much and wine tasting started to take their toll. We did not have fun on the way back and were very grateful to see our campsite after riding for 55kms.

We learnt our lesson in Clare and decided to take the car around the wineries of the Barossa Valley. We were due to head to the Fleurieu Peninsula afterwards but were told that “schoolies week” was happening and to give the area a wide berth. On advice from a local, we headed to the Yorke Peninsula instead and enjoyed some scenic camping and walking in Innes National Park.

We are heading to Adelaide tomorrow where we are restocking on food and catching up with Noel and Shelia, whom we met at Exmouth in WA. We would usually be restocking on WVO but we hit the WVO Jackpot at Wilpena Pound Resort in the Flinders Ranges. One of the workers drove us around to where they stored the waste veggie oil and we could not believe our eyes. There was close to 600 litres of waste cooking oil sitting in 20L drums. We could not take all of it but spent the morning filtering the oil and filled up our tank and all of our storage. It was the biggest collection we had encountered on our trip so far.

I have included some photos of the Painted Desert, the outback sky after sunset, Gerard and I enjoying a thermal spa we came across in the middle of the outback, the scenery in Gammon Ranges NP, some feral goats climbing the mountains in Gammon Ranges NP, cycling through the vineyards at Clare Valley in happy times on the way, a Kangaroo with a Joey in its pouch and an emu and its children we saw at Innes National Park and the beach we camped by at Innes National Park.

Hope everyone is well and as always, thank you for your emails and comments we have received.

Rachel and Gerard.

Days 170 - 184

2008-11-10T21:12:00.005+11:00

Rain, rain and more rain. This summed up our time in Esperance, which is a shame as the scenery was stunning. The 4WD tracks that we wanted to take were all closed due to the rain and we decided to move on and start our crossing of the Nullabor Plain.

Many Australians that we had spoken to on our trip were really looking forward to their crossing of the Nullabor. They told me that you are not a true Aussie unless you have crossed it at least one. However, I hope that when they came to do their crossing, they could see out of their windscreens better than we could. The rain pelted down and we were pretty miserable. To top it all off, due to the weather, we could not filter all of the oil that we had collected for the crossing and kept on having to stop at roadhouses and asking if we could use their undercover forecourt for some filtering of the oil. While Gerard got stuck into filtering the oil, I mingled with the truckies and got stuck into some pies and toasted sandwiches. Each time Gerard had filtered 20 litres, we set off on our next 100 kms before we had to stop again and filter more oil.

It took us five days to cross and we passed through three different time zones – WA time, Central WA time (45 minutes ahead of WA time) and SA time (1.5 hours ahead of WA time.) It all got pretty confusing.

We passed signs that warned us of kangaroos, camels and wombats on the road. Unfortunately, our first sighting of a wombat was of the squashed variety on the side of the road. We also saw tons of skippies who had suffered a similar fate.

The road was always busy with both travellers and road trains. We had a “small” run in with a 3 carriaged road train (about 40 metres long). I told the driver on the two radio that I will slow down if he wanted to overtake me. I did not get a response and pulled off the road slightly for him to pass me. Over the two way radio, I heard a very angry driver saying “Fing 4WDrivers. How would you like it.” Not knowing what he meant, he overtook me and deliberately went over to the hard shoulder and flicked stones up at the car. I heard him saying “So, how did you like that, you punk. How Fing wide do you think you are.” I then realised that I had accidentally thrown stones up at him when I pulled over for him to pass. I apologised to him over the radio and told him I was having a fat day. Another lesson learnt.

Not long after we had crossed into SA, the sun started to shine. We drove into Ceduna, where the quarantine station was and were greeted with a cheery sign: “Welcome to Ceduna. Drowsy drivers die.” We stopped for a couple of days in a sleepy little beachside town called Streaky Bay on the Eyre Peninsula to recharge our batteries and restock on food. That whole peninsula is stunning, with golden hay fields backing onto sand dunes leading into the ocean. We did some cliff top drives around the peninsula and stopped off to see a sea lion colony. I had never seen sea lions before and it was great fun watching them play and swim in the ocean.

Further down the peninsula, we stopped off at a lookout and saw some surfers making their way down a rocky track on the cliff with their surfboards over their shoulders. We thought they must have been crazy to surf this area as the sea lion colony was not far away and is known for having great whites (or white pointers as they call them here) present in the waters. We sat down and watched the surfers, who managed to get some great waves. Whilst I was taking pictures, Gerard saw a single fin appear not far from where the surfers were. We looked around to see if we could see any more fins or jumping from the water as this would mean it is a dolphin. We could not see any of this and thought we were about to witness a horrible attack on the poor surfers. Gerard started to yell at the surfers about the fin he had seen but they could not hear us. All of a sudden, we saw about seven more fins appear and realised that there was nothing to worry about – it was just a pod of dolphins. Phew! We watched as the dolphins went right up to the surfers and started to surf the waves along side them. One or two dolphins would jump through the wave just as it was about to break. It was fantastic to see. The surfers eventually had enough and climbed back up the cliff. We asked them what they thought when they saw the fin. They replied that they had seen the fin and were extremely relieved when it made a beeline for them that it was only a dolphin.

From Eyre Peninsula, we made our way up to Port Augusta. Before we got to Port Augusta, we once again made the mistake of camping too close to the road in a roadside rest area and had the worst night’s sleep of our trip. It went a little something like this: we pulled into a free rest stop area at about 5pm. It was a nice spot, right by the beach, but was quite full and a huge thunderstorm had just started in the area so we decided to move on. The next road side rest area that was described as being not next to a road was another 200 kms on so we made our way to this. We arrived at 9pm in the pitch black and with the rain pelting down. We set up the camper trailer but the ground was rock hard so we could not put any tent pegs into the ground to secure the tent. We got into the trailer and all we could hear were road trains, one after the other. They did not stop all night. The wind picked up and before long, both Gerard and I had to get out of bed to stand on either side of the trailer to stop the tent from blowing inside out. As we got back into bed to try and get some sleep, the tent did blow inside out, twice, which involved us getting up each time to stand in the corners until the gusts died back down again. A huge thunderstorm broke out and the thunder was clapping right above our trailer, making the trailer rock. A road train then decided to come and stop right next to us to take off one of his trailers. He then drove away, only to be replaced about 30 minutes later with another road train picking up the trailer. The road train driver decided to play us some loud music, which was nice of him. When first light broke, we got out of the trailer, assessed where we were (we were literally 5 metres from the roadside) and got the hell out of there!

We headed inland from Port Augusta to Coober Pedy and the landscape quickly changed. We left the beautiful, lush, green grass and coast behind and came to low scrubland. The whole area looked extremely dry and there were eagles everywhere devouring their road kill. We stopped and watched one feeding frenzy of eagles and could not believe that they did not fly off as we drove slowly passed them. Times must be hard for them around here.

We are now in Coober Pedy, which is an opal mining town, and you will be pleased to hear we are back to the weather we enjoy, bright sunshine. It is an extremely strange but fascinating town. The weather gets so hot here that most of the locals live in underground houses called “dugouts”. We visited some of the “dugouts” and an underground church and hotel. There is absolutely no grass in the town and water is strictly limited. From here, we are heading Northwards to visit some sites where Mad Max and Priscilla Queen of the Desert were filmed. We are then going to the Gammon Ranges and Flinders Ranges before heading to Adelaide at the end of the month.

I have included some photos of the stormy but beautiful sea at Esperance, our crossing of the Nullabor, some sea lions we saw, the surfers with dolphins beside them, an outback sign warning of the flies, an eagle in mid flight, a picture of Coober Pedy from the local scenic spot “The Big Winch” and St. Peter and St. Paul's underground Catholic church.

Hope everyone is well and as always, thanks for all your emails and comments.

Rachel and Gerard x

Days 156 - 169

2008-10-27T21:41:00.006+11:00

After filling up with oil at Kalbarri, we hot footed it down to Perth, stopping off at a few roadside rest areas along the way. At one stop, we were so close to the road that not only could you hear those lovely road train drivers who felt it necessary to honk their horns as they passed at various stages of the night (which made us think that the road train was about to smash through the camper trailer), but the camper shook as they went passed.

With Perth came luxury – hot showers and proper toilets. It felt fantastic. We got to see quite a few suburbs of Perth as we stayed for the first two nights with Les and Carol (who we met up at Mitchell Plateau when we were having problems with the Battered Fish), two nights with Gordon and Sally (who we met at Francis Peron National Park), and two nights with Bob and Sal, the Aunt and Uncle of Angie Mount, a great friend of mine in England. We were totally spoilt in each place and are extremely grateful to everyone for accommodating, feeding and cleaning us!

We really liked Perth and found time to do a few touristy things. We ran around the foreshore of Cottesloe Beach admiring the ocean scenery and watching games of beach volleyball, visited Freemantle and its Saturday morning markets stopping for a lazy cup of coffee and had an afternoon at Hillary’s marina, (which, if you exchanged canal boats for yachts and speed boats, reminded me of Brindley Place in Birmingham on a nice summer’s day), where we finally caught up with Gerard’s cousin Anthony, who is working in the mines in WA, over a couple of coldies. The highlight was probably Rottnest Island. After the ferry ride over, we hired bikes and set off to explore. Little Salmon Bay was our first stop, where we snorkelled a snorkel trail of underwater plaques and saw some huge fish, which Gerard thought would go well on our barbie.

We also did and saw some non-touristy things such as watching Gordon and Sally’s pet sheep, “Lamby”, being sheered for the summer, joining Sal in a mixed doubles tennis tournament in Subiaco and going into the ABC studio’s for a radio interview, after a press interview in Kings Park. We really packed it in but had a great time.

From Perth, we headed South West, passing through lush, green fields, tall Karri trees, flowing rivers and something very pleasing to the eye, acres of vineyards. The scenery was in stark contrast to North WA, where all we saw for km after km was low scrub, road kill and empty rivers. We drove through a forest of karri trees dotted with beautiful wildflowers and putting all thoughts of The Blair Witch Project aside, we decided to camp in the forest for the night. The clouds came over and there was no moon or stars for light – it was pitch black and if I’m honest, a little bit scary. The next morning, we were not woken up by the birds, but by a huge thunder storm. For the first time in over 3 months, we heard the pitter patter of raindrops falling onto the canvas and quickly got up to shut the windows and doors, which we leave open during the night (we find this amusing as when we were living in both the UK and Sydney, we locked our doors and windows the whole time and here out in the bush, probably when you are at your most vulnerable, we leave everything open). The thunderstorm rumbled on for a while and much to our annoyance, the rain continued on and off throughout the day, and for the next four days and nights. Our camper trailer was sodden and leaking. I realise that my complaints about four day’s of rain in over 3 months will fall on rather deaf ears to those English folks but when you are camping, it sucks. Everything gets wet and small jobs such as lighting the camp fire take an age because the wood has to dry out first.

We decided to don our almost matching rain coats and brace the elements. The bad weather did have some huge advantages for us. We found an absolute gem of a place called Lake Jasper, where we had the entire lake, white sandy beaches and camping areas totally to ourselves. We got a huge bonfire going, cracked open a bottle of warming Frangellico and totally forgot about the rain. Many of the tourist attractions, such as the 61 metre tall Gloucester Tree, were also tourist free without a “wicked” camper van in sight.

Only in Australia could you be allowed to climb the Gloucester Tree. It is a 61 metre near vertical climb, with no ropes or bars holding you in. You just have to grip onto the iron stakes, which have been hammered into the tree, and climb. I climbed first and Gerard started just behind me. About 20 metres into the climb, I started feeling a little shaky and looked below me at Gerard. All of the colour had drained from his face and he informed me that he was not doing so well and needed to go down, he could not go up any further. He had frozen mid climb and clung onto the iron stakes. It was awful for me to watch but I could not do anything as I had started to feel queasy myself. We both regained our composure and rather shakily, made it to the top and back down again. I did not realise until the next morning that when I was climbing, I was so focused on holding for dear life onto the iron stakes and taking my time that I had only used one leg to push off for the next iron stake the whole time. My left bum muscle the next day was agony!

There were also some down sides to the rain – mozzies and flies were in almost plague proportions at Windy Harbour. At the camp, we were hassled by mossies who bit through your clothes. Down on the beach, we had to constantly wave our arms around like 70s disco junkies as flies landed on us like we were some uncovered food. They are the worst we have encountered on our trip so far.

We continued on in the rain to Albany, which was a town built around the now forbidden Whaling. The whaling stations shut down in 1978 and rather ironically, Albany now thrives as a town for watching migrating whales. We visited the old whaling station, where we learnt about whaling from some rather graphic video footage and pictures. The job of a Fleanser has to be the worst job in history (if you are eating at this very moment, you may want to put the food down as I describe the job of a Fleanser!). They were the ones who pulled off the whales skin using a winch and cut the thick blubber away from the whale. They would then feed the blubber into a pot of boiling liquid to extract the oil form the blubber. This would then be shipped of to the US and Europe. The job was so dangerous due to the boiling liquid and sharp instruments they used that no one would offer them job insurance. The museum was fascinating and well worth a visit if you are in Albany. It even has the last whaling boat used, Cheynes IV, for you to explore where you can impersonate Leo and Kate with your Titanic impressions. Of course, Gerard and I did not do anything so childish.

From Albany, we slowly made our way to Esperance, stopping off at small beach side towns along the way. The weather improved enough for the camper trailer to dry out and our moods improved significantly. We even had highs of 21 one day, which was positively freezing compared to the weather up North, but any sunshine was welcomed with open arms.

With the change of weather came wildlife. We continually had to dodge bobtail lizards and snakes on the road as they were coming out of their hiding places to bask in the sunshine. The birds also came out. We saw white-tailed black cockatoos, brightly coloured parrots, kookaburra's and owls in the evening time. We also heard on the radio about some recent sightings of some slightly bigger animals - a 6 metre great white shark just off the coast of Albany. I am definitely not getting in that water just yet!

We are currently in Esperance, where we will be staying for a few days before we go into Cape Le Grand National Park and Cape Arid. The roads are 4WDrive mud tracks so we are waiting until they dry out a little before we head in. Our next trip will be crossing the Nullarbor Plain to head into South Australia.

I have included some pictures of the bobtail lizards and other lizards we saw on the roads, some of the beautiful beaches on Rottnest Island, me climbing the Gloucester Tree, the flies at Windy Harbour on Gerard, the beach at Black Point (just before we reached Lake Jasper), a parrot we saw having his breakfast and the Elephant Rocks.

Hope you are all well and as always, thanks to all who have emailed and blogged.

Rach and Ged x

Days 142 - 155

2008-10-13T12:28:00.013+11:00

I know that the question on everyone’s lips has not been how will the financial market meltdown affect you, but what was wrong with the Fish. We got a few emails and comments with suggestions for what could possibly be wrong with the car, for which we were very grateful. However, what we have quickly learnt is that it is not easy trying to do mechanical repairs whilst on the road – we do not have a workshop to hand or as many of the tools as we would like. After going through all of the suggestions, it still boiled down to one vital part – the Injector Pump (“IP”). When we purchased the car, it had done 366,000 kms and still had its original IP. Due to time constraints and money, we decided not to change the IP before we left Sydney. Just under 24,000 kms later, we were slightly regretting that decision as this is what the problem with the Fish turned out to be. Once a new IP was freighted up to Exmouth from Perth, and then fitted, 8 days later, the Fish was back on working form once more and our trip could continue.

Continue it did for a few hundred kms until our next problem reared its ugly head. The veg oil fuel lift pump also decided to give up the ghost. This meant we had to travel on diesel until we got to Carnarvon, where we purchased a new one. We felt dirty using diesel for this time! Everything is running fine now and we are once more back on the sweet smelling WVO.

Once the Fish was fixed, we went back to Cape Range National Park, where we spent three very windy nights. We went snorkelling at some of the places we visited last time and also got to see hundreds of Loggerheads turtles up “very close”. When I say “very close”, I literally mean just that as we came across them at mating time! It really was an incredible sight for there were turtles everywhere – the majority were in the shallow surf but there were some big fellows having a rest on the beach after their morning’s exertions. It can’t be easy with a flat stomach and a rounded hump.

We left Cape Range (after the Fish gave the Vanderkellen’s car, “the white gerka”, a little kiss goodbye – sorry Vandi's) and headed South to the Quobba Coast. It was still blowing an absolute gale around Cape Range and we thought heading South may be less windy. We were very wrong. We drove to Red Bluff and could hardly open our doors to register for camping. The coastline was extremely dynamic, high cliffs and huge waves pounding the rocks and the beach, and the landscape was low scrub with few trees to shelter you from the wind. We camped in a beautiful spot right on the beach. When the wind died down a little, we could see hump back whales about 200 meters out to sea. I don’t think I will ever get bored of that sight.

Before leaving the Quobba Coast for the area of Shark Bay, we stopped off at the Blowholes. As the wind was still strong and the waves bigger than ever, the blowholes were fantastic, blowing water into the air a good 20 metres.

The area of Shark Bay is World Heritage Listed, and like every other part of the Western Australia coastline we have visited, absolutely stunning. We struck pure paradise for the second time on this trip when we drove over sand dunes and soft sand tracks to get to Francis Peron National Park. We were rewarded for our efforts by white sand beaches, bright orange sand dunes and turquoise waters teeming with sea life.

As soon as we finished putting the awning of the camper trailer up, the wind died down and the water became like glass. We went for a walk at low tide to see what seafood we could forage for dinner and saw turtles, cow-tail sting rays, black tip reef sharks, shovel nose sharks and dolphins, all in the shallow waters. Food wise, we picked up cockles, pipis and mussels and boiled them up for dinner with some garlic and wine.

Our camp spot was once again right on the beach with only one other couple, Sally and Gordon from Perth, sharing the whole stretch of beach with us. On our last day, they invited us out in their tinnie for some fishing. We went about 3 kms out and saw dolphins and the dugongs, which are apparently hard to see as they are so shy. I felt slightly embarrassed about my fishing skills, or more precisely, my lack of fishing skills, but Gordon assured me that you could not miss out here and even his mate, “who was such a bad fisherman he couldn’t even catch a cold” caught fish out there. Right, no pressure then!

On my first cast out, I forgot to free the reel so that the line could unwind on my throw. Bugger. Pretending it was a dummy throw (like a dummy swing in golf), I calmly freed the reel and casted out again. Much better this time as the line actually went in the water. I tried to get Gerard’s attention to ask him what I do if by some miracle, I actually do get something on my line, but before I could do this, I saw and felt my rod twitching and I was in for a fight with something. Everyone on the boat stopped fishing and looked at me fighting with this thing, shouting instructions about what to do. In the end, it turned out that there was nothing on my line, I had gotten snagged. Bugger again! Gerard caught the first fish of the day. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the pink snapper we were all hoping for, but the inedible, ugly looking toad fish. Things did get better throughout the morning with everyone catching snappers, Gerard catching a small lemon shark, Gordon catching a Spanish Mackerel and me catching my first fish ever, a stripey sea perch. Each fish we caught was identified using our trusty "guide to fish" book, measured to make sure it was the correct size and either thrown back, or kept for dinner if it was the right size. We had a fabulous morning with Sally and Gordon and I now have the bug for fishing.

We left Francis Peron after an hour of Gerard digging us out of some soft sand (my fault!). On the track out, we saw a lot of spotted Goanna’s and to our delight, a thorny devil (no, not Gerard, it’s a reptile). We headed on a 4WD track West to the most Western point of Australia, Steep Point. We travelled over huge sand dunes and corrugated tracks to what seemed like the end of the world. We eventually arrived at a homestead and registered. As I was registering, I noticed the lady sniff the air and go and check her kitchen as she thought she had left her frying pan on. I told her that we were running our car on waste cooking oil and she said that we were the first car to go out to Steep Point on WVO. Once we found the most Western point, we got out the car and were hammered by the wind. It looked as if there was a huge storm going on out to sea, with huge waves and swell.

We are currently in a beautiful little town called Kalbarri, where we are restocking on WVO before we head down to Perth for Wednesday/Thursday. We are hoping to catch up with a few people from our travels and some old friends.

I have included some pictures of the beautiful Francis Peron NP, the thorny devil we saw, dolphins, an exhausted looking turtle after its morning exertions, a pelican, a cow-tail sting ray, me with my first catch, Gerard and I at Steep Point, the view from the top of Red Bluff over the coast, the waves pounding against the rocks at Point Quobba, Gerard enjoying the blowholes and the Vanderkellen children, Clancey, Lilly and George on top of the Fish.

Hope you are all well and thank you to all who have emailed and blogged.

Rach and Ged x

The Battered Fish swims again

2008-09-30T15:53:00.006+10:00

Many thanks to Ningaloo Auto Repairs, Exmouth, for getting the Fish going again.

Days 129 - 141

2008-09-29T19:54:00.005+10:00

We nearly missed the staircase to the moon in Broome, not because we were late, but because we and hundreds of others were sitting in the wrong place. A call went out saying that the moon was rising on the other side of the jetty and a stampede of people started towards the jetty to see the moon rise from the ocean – an incredible sight.

We left Broome with roughly 400 litres of WVO and new brakes and bearings for the Barnacle. The roads really have taken there toll on our little friend. We headed South to Cape Keraudren along a very long and boring stretch of road that felt like it went on for ever. Cape Keraudren was a beautiful spot set in a conservation area, with kangaroos playing on the beach. The sea looked very inviting but we did not venture in. The ranger told us that there were crocs, sharks, sting rays and stonefish all present in the waters. Our camping neighbours went out fishing in their tinnie and they confirmed the number of sharks in the water by the bounty they brought back.

We are becoming very good at “catching” fish. I say “catching” because Gerard and I are not having much luck fishing from the shore, but we always seem to be in the right place when the boats come in. Any spare fish are thrown in our direction and we dutifully catch them. Bronze whaler shark was on the menu in Cape Keraudren and very nice it tasted too!

We left the coast and headed inland to Karijini NP. There were a couple of changes in landscape from the drive from Broome to Cape Keraudren – firstly, we saw (and unfortunately smelt) a huge amount of dead cows on the side of the road and secondly, we pulled off the road several times for oversize mining vehicles that were being hauled which took up both sides of the road. Mining is huge here and almost every car you encounter is a mine vehicle with their red sand flags on top.

We are extremely glad that we took the time to go inland to Karijini as the scenery was stunning. The walks were great too, our favourite being “the Spider Walk.” We got to it after clamouring over huge rocks and braving freezing cold water. The Spider Walk is a bend in the gorge where it is so narrow that you need all four limbs to push off the walls and walk forward. One slip and you could end up on the slippery rock under the shallow water below. The narrow gorge opens up into the blissful and refreshing Kermit's Pool. What the creators of this walk did not cater for were people with short arms and legs like me. I really struggled finding footholds and to get me safely through the walk, I started singing a song to lift my spirits. The song was “Spider Pig” sang by Homer Simpson in the movies “the Simpsons”. I merrily hummed along to “Spider Pig, Spider Pig, does whatever a Spider Pig does.” I have no idea why I started singing it but it got me through the walk!

Up until this point, we had been starting our car every morning by using aerostart (we have heard others refer to this as “start ya bastard”) and had been doing this since leaving Manning Gorge up on the Gibb River Road. As we were having no problems running on waste cooking oil once the car had started, our aim was to carry on until we got to Perth, where we could get the car properly checked out. However, lady luck ran out on us as we were leaving Karijini. Gerard was driving and felt the car losing power when he pressed the accelerator. This had happened to us previously and he immediately identified this as the waste oil fuel filter needing to be changed. He switched to using diesel and decided we would get to the next roadside rest area where we would allow the engine to cool down before changing the filter. Once the filter had been changed, we tried to start the car to test whether the filter was on properly. The car would not start, not even with aerostart. We tried several times during the day, but to no avail. As we were at a roadside rest area, we set up camp and chatted to our new camping neighbours – Noel and Shelia from Adelaide and Peter, Tracy and family from Boulder, Colorado, USA. Both kept our spirits high, (the Butterscotch Schnapps provided by Shelia defiantly helped), and said they would tow start us in the morning if the Battered Fish still would not start.

The morning came and Gerard and I nervously tried starting the car – nothing. We tried it with aerostart – again nothing. For the fourth time on our trip, we got our beautiful purple tow rope out and Peter gave us a tow start. The Battered Fish started and the idea now was to keep moving until we got to the next roadhouse, nearly 300 kms away. We managed to get there but as we needed to fill up on diesel at the roadhouse ($2.07 a litre – now we know why we don’t travel on diesel!), we turned the car off. Again, the car would not start and for the second time that day, the purple tow rope came out and Peter gave us another tow start. What a sight we must have looked being towed around the roadhouse’s car park with the Barnacle bobbing along behind. We got going and did not stop until we arrived at Exmouth, a seaside town which leads to the Ningaloo Reef (I know, there are worse places to be having mechanical problems.)

It is now merely a waiting game for us to find out what is wrong with the Battered Fish. Unfortunately for us, WA celebrates the Queens Birthday each year and this happens to coincide with us waiting to see what is wrong with our car. Deciding not to sit around and mope about the future of the Battered Fish, we have ventured out onto the reef for some snorkelling and exploration. All I can say is wow. The reef is literally 5 metres away from the beach and the array and colours of fish, reef sharks, turtles and manta rays we saw was amazing for something so close. Our favourite snorkelling place was called “Turquoise Bay”. As you can imagine with such a name, the sea was a brilliant turquoise colour and the sand a glimmering white. We snorkelled what was called the “Turquoise Drift”, where you get in one end of the beach and the current takes you down to the other. We were so engrossed with the shoals of fish that we almost forgot to get out.

The evenings too were stunning as the wildlife really came to life. There were huge amounts of large, red kangaroos hopping along on the side of the road, goannas sitting on the road catching the last rays of sun and emus crossing the road with their chicks. Looking out towards the ocean, we watched the hump back whales putting on a great tail display for us, splashing their fins and tails against the ocean before resurfacing a few minutes later and repeating their performances.

I also discovered a new religion in Australia over the weekend – AFL or Aussie Rules Football. It was the grand final where two Victorian teams were playing each other – the Hawks v the Cats. We went along to watch the game at the local pub and I had my first taste of Aussie sporting mania. Not really knowing anything about aussie rules, I tried to blend in with the crowd so I didn’t stick out as a “pommie” and shouted out some of the comments I heard at what I deemed to be appropriate moments – “Through the Guts” was my favourite, closely followed by “knock ‘im down”. At one point, I really got into character and asked Gerard “what da youze wanna drink darl?’ (I thought using “hunk of spunk” instead of “darl” was going one step too far). The Hawks eventually won, much to most of the crowd's relief, and we had teary man hugging teary man, proud shouts of “that’s my boys” and general merriment. That night, we met up with the Vanderkellens, a family we met in Mitchell Plateau and then saw again in Manning Gorge and Broome, for pizza. It was their oldest son's 8th Birthday so they were celebrating. Camping is a very social life!

So life here in Exmouth has treated us very well whilst the Battered Fish has been hanging out at the mechanics. We will hear tomorrow the Fish’s diagnosis so fingers crossed.

I have added some photos of the sea at Cape Keraudren, our time at Karijini National Park including some of the stunning gorges and Gerard and I (aka as the Spider Pigs) on the Spider Walk, the warning sign at Cape Keraudren, a Goanna we saw crossing the road, the sunsetting at the Lighthouse, the Staircase to the Moon and the stunning Turquoise Bay.

We hope you are all well and please keep your fingers crossed for the Fish’s return!

Rach and Ged x

Days 116 - 128

2008-09-16T10:57:00.003+10:00

We left Derby with mixed feelings. On the plus side, Derby was a mecca for waste cooking oil and we managed to collect 420 litres in two days (this will enable us to travel around 2200 kms). On the down side, we took the Battered Fish to two different mechanics and neither one could fathom what was wrong with the car. We are finding that as soon as we mention that we are running on waste cooking oil to a mechanic, they automatically conclude that the problem must be something to do with that. The ironic thing is that it is running perfectly on the oil but still won’t work when we use diesel. As the weather is hot up here (between 35 – 40 degrees during the day), running only on oil is working well but we are praying that we do not hit a cool patch before the car is fixed.

We back tracked along the Gibb River Road to two awesome gorges – Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek. We walked along Windjana Gorge and saw hundreds of freshwater crocodiles, all lying on the banks of the gorge in the sun. Even though there were crocs everywhere, there were still some crazy people swimming in the gorge. Walking through Tunnel Creek was another amazing experience of the Kimberley. We scrambled over rocks with our head torches on to enter the tunnel and once inside, we waded through water in the pitch black to get to the other side. At one stage, we all turned off our head torches and stood in the pitch black listening to the numerous bats. I couldn’t resist the temptation and grabbed Gerard’s leg pretending to be a croc. He literally ran across the water.

From Tunnel Creek, we detoured to Geike Gorge before heading West to the coast. After a long, hot drive, we arrived at Paradise – an idyllic spot called Middle Lagoon. The indigenous owner “upgraded” us from camping to a beach shelter. The shelter was literally just that, with a palm frond roof and sides, a sand floor to sleep on, a window without any glass or netting and a door way without a door. It was simplicity at its best. By day, we swam, snorkeled and fished and each evening, we would have sundowners on “our” beach, look out to the coast where we saw hump back whales diving and hitting their fins against the water, fire up the wooden bbq and have dinner by moonlight. Going to bed with the stars and moon above us was an experience I will not forget in a hurry.

We left our paradise at Middle Lagoon and drove further up the coast to Cape Leveque, a place we had been looking forward to visiting for some time. Although it was undeniably beautiful with its red cliffs, brilliantly white sand beaches and turquoise waters, it lacked that carefree, laid back feeling that we adored at Middle Lagoon. It catered to a completely different set as it was primarily a resort with villas, safari tents for tour groups and a restaurant. Those “undesirables” with dusty clothes, such as Gerard and I, were squashed into a camp ground. Having said all of this, we spent two lovely nights at Cape Leveque and once again, fished, swam in the sea, whale watched and enjoyed the glorious sunsets setting over the ocean.

From Cape Leveque, we decided upon some bush camping at another gorgeous spot, James Price Point, about 50kms North of Broome. It was Sarah’s last few days and we wanted her to enjoy the solitude of camping before she flew back to Sydney. We could not have wished for a better spot as we had the beautiful beach to ourselves and enjoyed some cliff top camping overlooking the ocean – it really isn’t a bad life this camping malarkey!

We arrived in Broome, intent on one thing, alcohol! As we had been in Aboriginal communities for the last few weeks, once we had ran out of beer, there was nowhere we could restock. We all felt pretty thirsty and decided to go out in Broome, something that Gerard and I had not done since Darwin. Suddenly, vanity (or was it reality?) hit me and I had to go through my clothes and pick out the least dusty item (even though we are washing our clothes in our makeshift washing machine – a bin filled with water in the back of the car – red dust gets into everything). Poor Gerard did not have anything that was not stained with waste cooking oil. Dressed in the best attire I had (shorts, t-shirt and flip flops) and with brushed and washed hair, we hit Broome. Unfortunately, no one told my camping body clock that we were out for the night and we would defiantly not set any records for the amount we drank or how long we spent out!

The rest of our time in Broome was spent looking for waste cooking oil, going for walks along Cable Beach, enjoying the beautiful sunsets and consuming vast amounts of fresh food and drink.

We have included some pictures of the whales we saw on the North coast, some of the sunsets we enjoyed, Tunnel Creek, Windjana Gorge, our beach shelter at Middle Lagoon, the beautiful red cliffs at Cape Leveque and some of the wildlife.

We are staying in Broome to watch the Stairway to the Moon, a natural phenomenon caused by a full moon reflecting off the exposed mudflats at Roebuck Bay at extremely low tides to create an optical illusion of a staircase reaching to the moon, before heading South along the coast and slowly making our way to Perth. We hope everyone is well and enjoying their time. Thank you to all who have commented on our blog or sent emails. As always, it is great to hear from you.

Rachel and Gerard x

Days 103 - 115

2008-09-03T13:04:00.007+10:00

Days 103 – 115

BEWARE: a lot of mechanical terms are used in this blog which, of course, I understand completely!

We left Kununurra after collecting 80 litres of WVO and headed for an area called Diggers Rest. We arrived at Diggers Rest around 5pm WA time (that is 7pm Sydney time, 6.30pm Adelaide time and who knows what time Hong Kong time!!). We found that instead of it being a bush camp area, it was a working cattle station. Gerard got out of the car and spoke with the owner who told us we could camp in our “own paddock”. We drove around the corner and were greeted by 450 goats, numerous horses, chickens, bulls, heifers, emus and dogs in our “paddock”. It was a little surreal to say the least! For the first time in a while, I can honestly say it was not the birds that woke me up in the morning, but the call of some hungry kid goats “bleating” away quite merrily. We bade farewell to “Old McDonnell’s Farm” after taking a wander around the station and seeing the cars they use to muster and brand the bulls (the “Bull Catchers” as they call them), which had obviously seen a lot of action over their time.

We headed for the first gorges of what we hoped would be many, the beautiful Emma Gorge and El Questro, before we took the track leading up to Mitchell Plateau. Mitchell Plateau is a huge area with its main attractions being the largest waterfall in Australia and its untamed coastline with white beaches and turquoise sea. We stayed at a gorgeous bush camp called King Edward River, which had a series of waterholes and waterfalls that we could swim in that were deemed as “safe” – (“safe” up here means no salties, only fresh water crocs!).

The next day, we left early with our packed lunch and water to go and see the Falls. We had only got 10 kms up the road before the car stalled. Despite numerous efforts of trying to restart the car, the car would not start. Even though it was only 7am, the sun was already up and hot (the highs of the previous few days had been 42 degrees) and so I remembered the advice from Ray Mears survival programmes (!) and unpacked our picnic rug under the very little shade that there was, got hats out for everyone and set up camp to wait for the next car. Three hours past before the first car came up the track. I am not quite sure what we would have looked like to those people as Sarah was reading a book, Gerard was eating and I was plucking my eyebrows! Three aboriginals got out of the car and asked what was wrong. Before they examined under the bonnet, Pauley wanted to know which tribe I was from (apparently, I am the same colour as a local tribe near to them!). Niceties over with, they examined the car, tightening this and that, watching Gerard change the filter, pumping the air out of the fuel injector etc (I told you there were a lot of mechanic terms being used in this blog!). About 30 minutes past before the next car arrived, Les and Carol from Perth, closely followed by Julie and Alan from Townsville. They all asked what was wrong and pulled up in front of us to help out. Every car that past (6 in total) all got out and helped and we were very grateful to all for sparing their time to stop with us. At one stage, there were 10 people looking at the car (well, 4 blokes by the car, 6 women standing in the shade!) and Julie decided to get out her polished tea pot together with tea cosy to make everyone a cuppa on the side of the road! Despite everyone’s efforts, the Battered Fish would not get started and we unrolled our beautiful purple tow rope for the first time for Julie and Alan to tow the Fish back to our camp. Whilst Gerard sweated away in the Fish being towed, Sarah and I sat in Les and Carol’s air conned car – bliss after the heat of the day! Les and Carol were also staying at the same camp and in the afternoon, Les came over and he and Gerard spent the afternoon getting every spanner out of their respective tool boxes trying to fix the car. Eventually, the car started and we were once again extremely grateful to Les for spending so much of his time helping us out.

The next morning, it was a bit like ground hog day as we packed up lunch for the day, filled up water bottles and left early to go to the Falls. Thankfully, the car started first time and sounded healthy. We past “the hill of death” where we had stalled yesterday and got to the Falls no problem at all. First stop was to the scenic helicopter flight pad where we surprised Sarah with an early 30th birthday present of a hour helicopter flight over the coastline and to the Falls (the emissions from this will, of course, be offset!). All I can say is “Wow”! Neither of us had been in a helicopter before and after we got used to the noise and the fact that we had no doors, we sat back in silent amazement of the views. The pilot took us over the coast line where we not only saw white sands and turquoise seas, but also sharks, salties, turtles and stinger rays in the sea. On such sightings, he would take the helicopter down as near to the sea as possible so we got a good view of everything. I was not in a hurry to jump into the sea for a swim after the flight! The Falls were also great to see, although I am sure that in the Wet they are far more impressive with the amount of water that would flow through them.

After four days at King Edward River, we left to rejoin the Gibb River Road. The car had been running perfectly since it had stalled and we had travelled over 300 kms without a problem. We were within 2 kms of our next gorge when we switched the car over from oil to diesel. Suddenly, it stalled and once again, we had a waiting game on the side of the track as we could not get it started. (My eye brows didn’t need plucking this time so I wondered what to do!). Before long, Dave and Bernice from Derby came by and offered to help. Once again, we were overwhelmed by their generosity with their time as not only did they tow us to the nearest camp spot 37 kms away at Manning Gorge but stayed with us that night so that Dave could help Gerard with the car in the morning. This time, they drained out the diesel from the car as we were only having problems with the car when we ran first off on diesel or last thing at night. They (and others who had surrounded the car as the bonnet was up!) came to the conclusion that our so called “diesel” was actually kerosene. They held proper diesel in a clear jug up against our diesel in the car and the colour difference was noticeable even to me. With this new information in hand, we started the car up with some aerostart and drove 7 kms to the nearest roadhouse to use the public phone to phone a mechanic. We got 4 kms before the car stalled and guess what…..it wouldn’t start again, not even with aerostart. For the third time in as many days, we unravelled our beautiful purple tow rope and got a tow from the caretaker at the roadhouse back to our camp!

With the car not starting, we enquired how much a tow would be to Broome, as that is the first major town on this section of the road. To go 450 kms, it would cost us $4500 to be towed!! I told Gerard that I don’t care how he got the car started; we just had to get it going as there was no way we could afford $4500!!! Gerard studied his new bible (the Landcruiser manual) and the next day, he found where the fuel was leaking from and did a patch job on the car to get it started. To celebrate, we eventually took a walk to Manning Gorge, where we had been staying for the last three days. The gorge itself was stunning, with a waterfall cascading down into a deep, clear pool. We spent the day relaxing at the Gorge and doing rock jumps from the fall. Even though the jumps did not look high from across the pool, once you were up there, it felt really high!

With the help of some tape and aerostart, we have arrived safely in Derby, where we are getting all the electronics on the car looked at, before we drive the final 150kms to Broome. We are also restocking on oil and food for our next journey which will hopefully be “breakdown free”!

I have included some photos of our breakdown journey across the Gibb River Road (we are thinking of renaming the blog “Around Oz on a Tow”), the waterfall at Manning Gorge, Emma Gorge, the Bull Catchers, rock jumping at Manning Gorge, a picture of the boab tree that we are encountering now that we are in Western Australia, pictures from our flight of the coastline, crossing Pentecost River and Mitchell Falls.

We hope you are all well and thanks all for your emails and comments,

Rach and Ged x

Days 95 – 103

2008-08-22T20:47:00.003+10:00

After six long days of full trailer and car services, collecting and filtering oil in the freezing conditions in Alice Springs (tops of 18 during the day but zero at night) and attending our first outback rodeo, we chug, chug, chugged out of Alice Springs heading North West, back to the Tropics of Australia for some much needed heat and flies!

The reason for the “chug” is still unknown and still ongoing (you would think after spending over $1000 on a full car service that everything would be working fine but you would be wrong!). We initially thought it may have been our own fault as we forgot the night before to switch from oil back to diesel. When it would not start in the morning, we thought it was due to the cold conditions and our lovely camping neighbours, Jan and Rus from Western Port, Victoria, offered to lend us their electric blanket that they had been using in Alice to warm up the Battered Fish!!

You would not believe the crowd the sight of an open bonnet with a man peering underneath it in a camping ground can form. It truly is incredible. As soon as they heard the sound of a car not starting, the meerkat impressions started of men hoping up off their chairs and seeing where the noise was coming from. Then, very slowly edging their way forward towards the car, the first man arrived and the conversation started:
“That doesn’t sound good”
“No”, I replied
Then after several minutes of just standing there and me trying to start it, “Know what’s wrong?”
Through gritted teeth, I replied “no”.
Then the next man approached – “That doesn’t sound good – know what’s wrong”. AARRGGGGHHHHH!!

After six others crowded around the car and joined in the helpful conversation, eventually Bruce from the campground came to our rescue and got it started.

On the positive side, the rodeo that we attended in Alice was great fun. We saw Bronc riding (that is unbroken horses to the virgin rodeo goer!), steer roping, barrel riding (for the “cowgirls”) and my favourite, bull riding. The announcer introduced the “cowboys”, who came into the ring dressed in chaps and akubras, before we all stood to sing the national anthem. After this, the announcer did not stop speaking for the whole night, repeating over and over about the main sponsor, “Billy Buck” (seriously!) and coming up with some classic sayings, my favourite being the one to a slightly large “cowboy” - “he jumped on that steer like he was jumping on a hamburger”.

The transition from cold to hot came after driving for two days through the Tanami Desert. The road was “rough as guts”, as some Aussies we met described it, with corrugations for over 500 kms. We saw two cars pulled onto the side of the road changing their tyres after a puncture and a lot more tyres on the side of the road evidenced of punctures to previous travellers.

Crossing from the Northern Territory into Western Australia, we stopped one night in Wolfe Creek. For those of you who have seen the movie, we are very proud to say that we have stayed there in a flimsy camper trailer with just canvas separating us from all evil! The crater itself is impressive and the view it gives of the deserted outlook is quite eerie. We really did get the feeling there that we were in the middle of nowhere. The sky at night was fantastic – we were lucky enough to see a full moon rising from the crater, followed by a sky lit with thousands and thousands of bright stars.

After crossing the desert, our first stop in the Kimberleys was Bungle Bungle National Park. We arrived at the visitor centre to register that we were bush camping in the park. Gerard was on his way to the visitor centre when the lady behind the counter came out telling Gerard that she could smell burning. Gerard sniffed the air and replied that he could not smell anything unusual. She then commented that it smells more like someone cooking than burning. Gerard looked around and noticed that I still had the engine running on the Battered Fish. He told the lady that it may be our car which was causing the smell and not someone cooking. Her look was of total astonishment when we said that we were running the car on waste cooking oil – she had never heard of this before or realised that it was possible to do! She did seem slightly relieved that it was the car causing the smell and not burning as the park had an extreme fire danger rating and as she was new to the job, she would not have a clue what to do if something was burning! The road into the Park was extremely rough and took over 2.5 hours to travel 50 kms. It was well worth it though just to see the beehive domes with tiger stripes on – the colours up close are a fantastic burnt orange with black stripes. We went for sunset at a lookout which offered a fantastic 360 degree view of the Park. However, our attention was diverted away from the sunset by two young children who went away from their parents for a few moments with a camera to take some pictures of the sunset but came back, (much to our amusement but their parents disapproval), with pictures on of something much more interesting than a sunset, their bottoms!

We are now staying in Kununurra, which is the start of the Gibb River Road. We are restocking on oil as well as fruit and veg as we came across a quarantine section on the Western Australia/Northern Territory Border. It was not like the one we came across in Queensland on the weekend (which was closed as obviously fruit fly only works during the week days!), but it was more of an honesty bin. We, being very lawful citizens, tried as hard as we could to eat most of the fruit (Gerard won the prize as he ate 4 oranges and 2 grapefruits which resulted in some rather unpleasant consequences for Sarah and I in the car with him!!) and chucked the remaining fruit, veg, nuts and honey into the bin.

We are slightly confused with the time at the moment. Western Australia is 2 hours behind Sydney (NSW) time and 1.5 hours behind South Australia / Northern Territory time. However, when we turn on our mobile phone, it tells us we are on Hong Kong time! If we go by WA time, it means the sun sets at 5pm and rises at 3.30 am so we have not, as yet, put our clocks back to WA time but are wondering when we should. Any advice anyone?!

I have included some pictures of the Rodeo at Alice Springs (one of which is a photo of the "cowboys", none of whom met our expectations as a potential boyfriend for Sarah!), Gerard and I crossing into WA, Sarah and I at the Bungle Bungles, the domes of the Bungle Bungles and the deserted expanse at Wolfe Creek.

Thanks to all those who have blogged and emailed – as always, it is great hearing from you. If “Sweet Relief” are reading this, please write another post with an email address so we can answer your question about engine conversion.

Hope you are all well,

Rach and Ged (and Sarah, who is doing very well with the dirt and the flies that have appeared now it is hotter!!) x

Days 85 - 94

2008-08-13T09:44:00.008+10:00

Be warned, if you do not like rocks, gorges and walking, Central Australia may not be the place for you. These last ten days have been jam packed in terms of the sites we have seen (or more precisely, the amount of rocks we have seen), the amount of kms we have walked, the adjustment of life at a temperature below 30 degrees and also the adjustment of life with a third person travelling in the car and sharing the camper trailer.

That third person is my sister Sarah, who we met up with at Uluru (Connelian) Airport. It is fantastic having her with us and we are amazed at how well she has adjusted to life in the “bush”. However, like us at the beginning of our trip, she is struggling with how dirty everything gets, identifying the numerous noises of wildlife during the night, going to the toilet in the bush and wondering whether every spider she sees is poisonous or not (the answer to which we tell her is “definitely no” but in truth it is probably “yes” and “lets get the hell out of here pronto”). We gave her quite a steep learning curve into camping as we bush camped for the first three days in a beautiful but very dusty site with dingo’s howling during the night and a night temperature of 3.5 degrees, it was freezing!

Those that read the last blog will be pleased to hear that we eventually found Uluru (for those that haven’t yet caught up, we mistook Mt Connor for Uluru on first glance). Although it is such an iconic image of Australia and we are pleased that we have seen it, we were all a little disappointed with it and don’t quite understand why. One reason may be that for our liking, you could not get close enough to it. The climb of the rock was closed due to strong winds for both days that we were there (there was a list with at least 12 other reasons for why the climb can be closed) and the base walk that we did had a fenced off area between you and the rock of about 50 – 100 metres the majority of the way around. This is due to certain areas being sacred sites to the Aboriginal people where you cannot photograph or walk. Having said all of this, when we first saw the rock, we could not take our eyes off it due to its colour and size – it really has a presence. I also took over 50 photos of it at different times of day, including at sunset and sunrise, so it could not have been that bad.

On the other hand, we thoroughly enjoyed the Olgas and Kings Canyon. At both of these places, we did long walks taking you all the way through the sites. At Kings Canyon, we did a walk where we climbed to the top of the Canyon and then down into the middle where we found a lush oasis of paperbarks, palms and a swimming hole with glorious reflections of the trees and the Canyon in. Unfortunately for my legs, we then had to climb back out! The colours of Kings Canyon were very impressive and although I took a lot of photos, none of them do it justice.

We gave Sarah the experience of corrugations whilst driving to the MacDonnell Ranges along the Meerenie Loop. The road only gets graded once a year and that was 11 months ago. For 160 kms non-stop, Sarah had to endure being shaken around in the back of the car to a constant noise of d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d (say it as a child pronouncing “D”). The road conditions did not get any better once we left the Meerenie Loop and drove along the 4WD track to Palm Valley. Some of the pot holes we found in the ground would have been a great spot for fishing in. The rough drive was well worth it though for Palm Valley was stunning. The burnt orange colour of the sheer cliffs at sunset with white ghost gum trees set into the cliff and red cabbage palms fringing the waterhole was an incredible sight. We later found out during a ranger talk given around the camp fire at our camp spot that 99% of the Worlds red cabbage palm trees are within 5 kms of Palm Valley (a fascinating fact I am sure for all of you!). I admit that we initially only attended the ranger talk because of the prospect of a warm, blazing fire as we did not have any firewood of our own but found the talk to be extremely interesting, especially when the ranger spoke about the high proportion of mammals that have become extinct in Central Australia due to introduced animals by the Europeans (ok, I may have become a little bit of a geek!).

We left Palm Valley and drove to the MacDonnell Ranges, another stunning area with yet more rocks, gorges and walks to do! Some of our highlights of this area were the walk we did around the Pound at Ormiston Gorge, Ellerey Creek Big Hole for its peacefulness and Standley Chasm, a deep red cleft that rises 80 metres above the floor and glows from reflected sunlight creating a stunning display of rich colours. We also did some great bush camping in this area and had huge fires to keep warm.

On our first night in the MacDonnell Ranges, we did not bush camp but ended up camping at Glen Helen Resort, as the national park camp ground was full. I knew it was going to be an interesting night when I saw three tour buses pull up outside the reception and the guy at reception announcing there was a happy hour and karaoke that night. We went for happy hour to warm up a little and the karaoke started. The guy running the karaoke started singing his first number – it was painstakingly embarrassing how bad he was! As if that wasn’t bad enough, he then proceeded to do yet more numbers whilst two rather large German ladies stood up and started to dance not quite in time with the music!! It felt very surreal to be watching and listening to this after the peace and solitude we had experienced during the last three months!!

I have mentioned a few times about how cold it was during the nights. It really has been quite a shock to our bodies after we had come down so quickly from the Tropics to temperatures of no more than 20 degrees during the day, dropping down to zero at night. I have slept for the first time this trip in two fleeces, a woolly hat, gloves and the sleeping bag under the duvet.

Not only has the weather had an impact on how long we sit around the camp fire at night for, but it has also had an impact on the waste cooking oil. The filtering of the waste cooking oil is taking over twice as long as it normally does and the Battered Fish has taken longer to start in the mornings because the oil in the car has not heated up. This means we are running on diesel for longer in the mornings before we can switch to cooking oil.

We are now back in Alice Springs collecting more WVO for our journey North across the Tanami Desert to the Gibb River Road (we are not predicting there will be many takeaway restaurants in the Tanami Desert so need to stock up as much as possible!). We cannot wait to get out of the cold and back into the Tropics, which will hopefully be in the next week!

I have included some photos of Palm Valley, Kings Canyon, Uluru at sunset, Sarah and I at Uluru, Standley Chasm, Gerard and I at Ellery Creek Big Hole, Gerard and I at the Olgas at sunset and a Major Mitchell Cockatoo (a Pink Cockatoo) that we saw at Palm Valley.

Thank you to all who have emailed and blogged us – as always, it is great hearing your news.

Hope you are all well and enjoying your summer over in the Northern Hemisphere and your winter over in the Southern Hemisphere!

Rach and Ged x

Days 71 - 84

2008-08-04T12:04:00.003+10:00

Despite the sheer beauty of Katherine Gorge, we were so pleased to be leaving. The amount of people and cars on the road was quite a shock and we had not slept very well due to noisy neighbours and people using the facilities at all hours! It was in stark contrast to what we had been experiencing during our time along the Gulf Track and we yearned for some peace and solitude once again.

Due to this experience, we decided to get off the tar ASAP and get back onto some 4WDrive tracks to get to Litchfield National Park. We drove up the Reynolds River Track and the only person we met along the way was a New Zealand guy who had cycled from Darwin. We met him at a creek crossing where the rangers had just put up a crocodile warning sign (this meant that there must have been a croc sighting somewhere near this creek.) Understandably, he was nervous about crossing the creek on the bike as the creek was 0.7 metres deep and had murky water (a salties paradise). We offered to put his bike on our roof rack and give him a lift across. He did not want to do this but travel behind on foot pushing his bike in our wake so that the water was shallower. After trying to persuade him that this might not be the safest way to cross the creek, we gave in and Gerard set our video camera up on the roof in case anything happened!! It was an uneventful crossing and the Kiwi came out of the creek unscathed!

We carried onto where we were camping that night in Litchfield NP, Sandy Creek. We walked about 2 kms from the camp to Sandy Creek Falls where we were planning on having a swim and spending sunset. When we got there, we found a beautiful waterfall and best of all, it was completely deserted. The water was freezing but we had a quick swim and sat and watched the sunset over the waterfall - a beautiful way to end the day.

We spent two great days at Litchfield visiting all the waterfalls in the National Park and doing some bush walks. Each night, we would return to Sandy Creek for a much needed swim in the cooling waterfall after our hard days work at the office! Even though this is the Northern Territories cooler season, the days did not drop below 30 degrees and there was not a cloud in the sky.

We left Litchfield and drove to Darwin. Whenever we reach major towns or cities, we always have so little time as our main concern is to get waste cooking oil which involves a day asking all the takeaways and restaurants and then another day in the same spot filtering it. It is also a time where we restock on food, drink and do any repair work needed to either the Battered Fish or the Barnacle. Poor Barnacle, it again needed so more welding work in Darwin as once again, we had an accident with the gas cylinder falling off! The Battered Fish on the other hand is running very well and had a service in Darwin as we have travelled over 12,000 kms in three months! Mum – you will be pleased to hear that he handbrake has finally been mended so we now don’t have to deliberately stall the car if we need to park on a hill!

Darwin itself really surprised us. It is a modern city with lots of new development and city flats being built. Best of all, as we arrived at the start of the weekend, there are both day and night markets to enjoy all weekend. On the Thursday night, we went to the famous Mindil Markets. There are aboriginal art stalls, bands playing didgeridoos, a cowboy doing demonstrations with his whips (!) and best of all, thousands of food stalls selling everything from Roadkill (the slogan “you kill it, we cook it!”) to Asian foods. After 12 weeks of camp food, we could not resist the amazing aroma of the foods and we brought some Chinese nibbles and went down onto the beach with the hoards of other people and watched the sunset. Once the sun had set and bizarrely, everyone had clapped, we went and found main course and then pudding! The atmosphere was brilliant and it was a great night.

Over the course of the weekend, we visited every market going and probably gained about 10 kgs in weight due to having laksa for breakfast and curry for dinner each time! We met up with the Dunlop’s again and went with them for a sunset picnic on the cliff tops at East Point Reserve – another stunning spot. Unfortunately, we were not very organised and forgot to bring any lights with us so as soon as it got dark, it was a case of packing up by using feel rather than sight! We also met up with Gerard’s cousin Elisha and her husband Adam who had just had a baby, Isabella. Gerard’s Aunty and Uncle were also there and we had a great time catching up with everyone and telling our travelling stories.

We left Darwin after collecting close to 400 litres of WVO. We are still finding people who are totally unaware that your car can be fuelled by waste cooking oil and it is great speaking to these people about the Battered Fish and also about how they can power their cars on WVO.

Our next destination was Kakadu, a place that I had been looking forward to seeing for a long time. Before we got to Kakadu, we decided to camp near to Adelaide River in order that we could do the jumping crocodile tour the next morning. All though this was INCREDIBLY touristy, I really would recommend it to people who are wanting to look at saltwater crocodiles up close (by up close, I mean less than a metre away from you!). We boarded the boat and sat downstairs next to the open window. We found out that this is the best spot to sit as they dangle big slabs of meat down into the water right by this window. As soon as the first bit of meat was bobbing up and down in the water, the guide informed us to look to our right and there in the water we saw a slithering of a tail and some eyes coming towards the boat. Once the croc is by the boat, the meat is lifted up out of the water and the crocodile jumps directly up out of the water to get the meat – it really is an incredible sight to see a wild crocodile doing this. This was repeated about 8 times with different saltwater crocs, varying from 3 metres to 6 metres in length. As the crocs were so close to you, it really got your heart racing every time they were near the boat. What also amazed me was the sheer number of crocs we saw. You really would not want to be anywhere near this river in a small tinny (boat).

After getting over the adrenalin rush of the jumping crocs, we carried onto Kakadu where we spent 3 brilliant nights. Kakadu did not disappoint me at all and it is somewhere I would love to go back to in the wet season (November – May). The size of Kakadu, in comparison to Litchfield, surprised me and also the landscape. I had imagined it being a huge wetland (which I am sure in the Wet it is) but at this time of year, it is quite dry and dusty with huge open plains. We tried to squeeze in as much as possible but some of our highlights of Kakadu were Ubirr, our two hour sunrise boat cruise on Yellow Water and Gunlom Falls.

Ubirr was just incredibly beautiful. We climbed up to the top of the rocky escarpment and were blessed with a 360 degree view of Nardab Flood Plain. The only man made thing that I could see from up here was a dirt track, everything else was natural.

Yellow Water is Kakadu’s best known floodplain. We decided to take the sunrise cruise (starting at 6.45 am!) as we heard the wildlife would be best at this time. It really did not disappoint. We saw quite a few crocs, a pair of dancing brolgas, jabirus, water buffalo, egrets, magpie geese, darters, thousands of whistling ducks and sea eagles. It wasn’t only the wildlife that was incredible. The reflections of the great gum tress in the water at this time of day and the water lilies, which were closed when we first started the tour but opened up at the end, were also beautiful.

Gunlom Falls features rainforest and a large, deep plunge pool at the base of a high sandstone cliff where a waterfall flows (trickles might be a better expression!). We decided to climb up the cliff to the top of the waterfall where we got slight vertigo looking down from the start of the waterfalls into the pool below! Up at the top, we swam in the rock pools that had formed which looked as if we were swimming in an infinity pool as our view was directly out to the rainforest. The water was cold but after the steepness of the climb, it was very rewarding.

When we left Kakadu, we had four days to get down to Uluru (Ayers Rock) to meet my sister, Sarah, who will be travelling with us for the next 6 weeks. From Kakadu to Uluru, it was 2, 213 kms so we really had to motor it. We also had to stop at each roadhouse we came across to find WVO, something that became more and more difficult as we got closer to the Red Centre. We managed to find oil in Alice Springs but this is after being rejected by 22 places first!! One slightly embarrassing incident happened during our trip to Uluru. After the turn off from Stuart Highway (or Roadkill Highway as we have named it) to Uluru, it is about 300 kms to Uluru. To our left, we noticed a huge “rock” in the distance which we thought was Uluru as it looked exactly like it did in the pictures we have seen. Even getting out and taking pictures at a lookout called “Mt Connor Lookout”, we did not twig that this was not Uluru but Mt Connor. It was only when we actually drove past what we thought to be Uluru that we looked at the map and realised our mistake – doh!!

We will be exploring Uluru, Kings Canyon and MacDonnell Ranges with Sarah over the next 10 days before we head back to Alice to once again refuel on WVO. We are hoping that Uluru will be better than Mt Connor!

I have included some photos of jumping crocodiles, some waterfalls at Litchfield NP, sunsets in Darwin, views from the top of Ubirr and Gunlom Falls and some of the wildlife we saw on Yellow Waters.

Thank you to all who have emailed and blogged us, it is great reading about your news.

Rach and Ged x

Days 57 - 70

2008-07-19T20:09:00.004+10:00

We left Cairns, slightly disheartened, as we had only managed to collect 200 litres of WVO. To get across to Darwin along the Gulf Track, we would need nearly 600 litres of WVO and we knew that we would have to stop at every roadhouse, hotel and takeaway that we came across to try and get oil. On the plus side, the Barnacle had been mended and we restocked on meat, tins, fruit and veg for the next leg of our journey, as we had been told that the Gulf Track is a fairly desolate place with fresh food places few and far between.

About 200 kms into our journey, the cars started to thin out and we saw a car about every hour. The roads were sealed from Cairns to Normanton but from Normanton, the roads were unsealed the whole way to Mataranka. Although the unsealed roads and the creek crossings were no where near as rough as the roads we experienced in Cape York, the roads were generally loose gravel/rocks and we came across a number of travellers who had damaged their vehicles on these rocks.

Driving along the Gulf Track itself was unbelievably beautiful. Once we left the mountainous scenery of the stunning Atherton Tablelands behind, we encountered huge open plains from Normanton to Borroloola that carried on for miles and miles, with trees so far away in the distance that they appeared as if they were floating on water. The roads were also incredibly long and straight and all you could see in the distance was a mirage of the road. From Borroloola onwards, the scenery became scrubby with rocky outcrops, which was in stark contrast to what we had been experiencing up until this point. Some of the 4WDrive tracks we took went through cattle stations. Once again, I was amazed at the vastness of Australia for the one cattle station we travelled through went on for the whole day. As we were travelling through cattle stations, we would have to stop now and again to open and close gates. As Gerard and I take the driving in 2 hour shifts each, when it was my turn to open the gate, I got the gate that was labelled "the Bull Tank"! Needless to say, I did not hang around in that field as I was wearing a red vest top!

We covered about 400 kms each day for the first five days and although we were arriving at the bush camps around sunset, the advantage of this was the wildlife that we saw on the side of the road in the late afternoon. Once the day had cooled off a little, the animals would come from the plains onto the track and we ended up seeing hundreds of kangaroos, cattle, emus, water buffalo, brumbies (wild horses) and wild pigs. The bird life was incredible also. We managed to see birds of prey, mainly Kites, but at times, we were fortunate enough to see both black and brown Eagles. They were huge in comparison to the Kites. The circumstances where we saw a large amount of birds of prey was generally where there was roadkill. At one point, there was a roadkill every 30 seconds and not just poor Skippy and his friends, but also cattle and birds. With road trains coming screaming towards you carrying four carriages behind them (about 56 metres long), it is not surprising that there was so much road kill around.

Along the Gulf Track, the opportunity for bush camping is plentiful and we seized upon this. We ended up camping a lot of the time along the banks of creeks, lagoons and rivers and having a fire meters away from the water. The days were hot (averaging 33 degrees) without a cloud in the sky which meant the stars at night were plentiful and bright. We were also lucky enough to have a full moon for nearer enough the whole time of our trip and the natural light you got from the moon out in the bush was incredible.

Each morning, we would wake up, start the fire again and have breakfast watching the bird life on the creeks and rivers – it really was camping at its best. In some places, we had the entire river to ourselves but in others, there were a couple of other campers. Bush camping with other people around brings about a few “personal” problems! When nature calls, you take with you a shovel and try to walk as inconspicuously as possible to a large tree to give you some privacy, pretending that you are not actually carrying a shovel. I have seen some people whistling along carrying their shovel, pretending to use it as a walking stick! The most embarrassing time is when you come out from behind your tree and hurriedly walk back to your camp to bump into someone else walking in your direction also with a shovel. You just sort of knowingly nod to that person and hope they don’t dig in your “area”!!

Camping so close to the creeks and rivers gave us the opportunity to fish and when we didn't have any success with that (which was every night!), we would throw our crab nets in and excitedly check them each morning to see what we had caught the previous night. We mainly caught Cherapins (a freshwater prawn) which were fantastic eating for breakfast with a bit of garlic butter!

You will be pleased to hear that we did not just drive and fish for the whole time! We hired canoes in each of Lawn Hill National Park and Katherine Gorge, where we spent the days exploring the gorges and waterfalls. We also stopped off at Mataranka and went to the thermal spas at Bitter Springs and Mataranka Homestead, which was heaven after the long and dusty drive we had encountered. The water is naturally 34 degrees in these thermal spas and we spent a day snorkeling in the crystal clear waters where we saw turtles and tropical fish.

We took a detour from the track and went to see the Western Lost City, just outside Borroloola. The stone formations were pretty incredible and we spent a long time guessing what each rock looked like (I have included a picture of some of the rock formations so you can also have a guessing game!).

We crossed another state border, which was not very momentous, but it means we are now well and truly in Mick Dundee country!!! The Northern Territory is 30 minutes behind New South Wales and Queensland time which theoretically meant you could have an extra 30 minutes in bed but unfortunately for us, the sun and the birds do not follow this logic!

We also met some great people along the track. Barry and Helen, whose car brakes had broken so were using their hand adjusted caravan brakes to stop them when needed down the many steep dips; Richard and Macca, who we met in Roper Bar and whom were generous enough to supply us with beer and vodka when we had ran out (in return for their generosity, I baked them some blueberry muffins as a thank you. When I returned from giving them the muffins, I found the remaining muffin tins completely empty and on the floor and a fat kangaroo hopping off!); and Robbie and pals from South Australia.

We are now in Katherine and struggling to get used to the amount of cars and tourists we are seeing in comparison to the Gulf Track! We have managed to find more WVO here which means we will make it the whole way to Darwin from Cairns on WVO. Before we get to Darwin, we are heading to Litchfield National Park and after this to Kakadu National Park, where Croc Dundee was filmed, so as you can imagine, I am EXTREMELY excited!

I have included some photos of the scenery of the Gulf Track, the gorges of Lawn Hill, the rock formations at the Western Lost city, Gerard catching his first Cherapin, an eagle watching over his road kill, some pelicans in the morning on a lagoon and some of the bush camps we stayed in.

I would like to say a massive thank you to all those who have emailed and blogged us, it is so nice to hear your news and we hope you are all well.

We will blog next after I have met Mick, Wally, Donk and friends at the pub in walkabout creek!!

Rach and Ged x

Days 30 - 56

2008-07-06T21:19:00.004+10:00

After 26 days, 106 creek crossings, 5 snake sightings and 1 crocodile sighting, we are very proud to say that we are back in Cairns after making it to the Tip, the most northern part of Australia, and back. Boy, have we, the very dirty Battered Fish and slightly damaged mud splattered Barnacle, had an adventure. We have travelled on almost every driving surface possible – mud, clay, water, gravel, tar, grass and sand – and endured some of the worst corrugations and wash outs we could have imagined on so called ‘roads’! The bush camping has been unbelievably beautiful and tranquil and the scenery outstanding.

We have also met some fantastic people on our trip – Phil and Carole from Sorrento, Victoria, who kept our spirits high during the never ending wind and rain at Chilli Beach (more on that later!), and the lovely Dunlop Family from Gunnadah, NSW, whom we ended up travelling with for 10 days along the more difficult sections of the trip (again, more on them later!).

We left for our adventure on 13 June 2008 with 400 litres of filtered WVO – a record amount of oil we have collected and filtered in one place. We ended up having to collect oil on our journey as we used 560 litres of WVO in total and travelled 2,898 kms to the Tip and back – again, we had vastly underestimated the distances we would travel and the road conditions, which had a big effect on our kms per litre.

You will be pleased to hear that I have not set out every day or place that we visited in this post but have included some of the highlights/low lights of our trip to the Tip. Be warned, it is still a rather long post!

We travelled along the very steep Bloomfield Track and stopped for a night each in Cape Tribulation and Cooktown before heading to an Aboriginal Settlement called Hope Vale. The area of Hope Vale, like several other areas in the Cape, is an alcohol restricted area and each vehicle is not allowed to take more than 2 litres of wine and 24 cans of light beer with them. There were signs setting out the restrictions with steep penalties being imposed for breaching this – first offence fine $37,500, second offence, up to $75,000 and up to18 month’s imprisonment! We were not taking any chances. We arrived at the camp ground, Elim Beach, and could not have wished for a better setting. It was right on the beachfront amongst the palm trees with fantastic views and only two other campers. One camper was a guy from Nimbin who kept on saying “eh” after each sentence, such as “youze travelled far eh” or “nice spot eh”. At times, I did not know if his chat were questions or sentences so I usually answered all sentences as questions to save any embarrassment on my part! On arrival, we asked the indigenous owner, a fantastic guy called Eddie, about crocodiles (this became our standard question to everyone along the trip – we sometimes even tried to jazz up the question to make it appear as if we weren’t scared witless of crocodiles such as “seen any snappy handbags recently” and some other equally embarrassing sentences). When we asked Eddie about crocs, he told us that there were some “big buggers” out there, but he had not seen any since one chased him along the beach a few months ago!!!! We were not taking any chances and on our walks, I kept on thinking I saw two eyes and two nostrils staring at me from the mangroves!

The drive through Lakefield National Park was another highlight. The road was a bit corrugated (we were to experience far worse corrugations the further North we got!), but it was absolutely stunning. The roads turned from grey to orange dust and we were surrounded by green forest. The contrast of the blue sky, the green trees and the orange road was really something. The landscape then opened up into grassy plains with hundreds of termite hills on. We were also lucky enough to see a goanna, about 5ft long, in the middle of the road. We drove up to it and at first, I thought it was a large log. I then realised it was a goanna and thought I may have to do a Croc Dundee manoeuvre to get it out of the road, (like what Mick Dundee did with the buffalo!), but luckily for the goanna, it moved when we get up close to it. In Lakefield, we saw our first and only croc sighting - a freshwater crocodile sunbathing on rocks. It was much smaller than I thought it would be and to my surprise, I did not feel nervous about seeing a croc for the first time (perhaps because these were the non-man eating variety!).

The next part of our trip, the Overland Telegraph Line (“OTL”), was where the real challenge of the trip came for us and again, it was a major highlight of the trip. The OTL is well spoken about by travellers and the state of the creek crossings and the tracks themselves are legendary. After listening to many travellers accounts of the OTL, Gerard and I were pretty scarred of what we were going to find ahead us but we kept telling ourselves that if the track was too difficult, there was a bypass road that we could take instead. Even getting to the first creek caused us problems – the track was badly washed out in some places and the difference between this track and the “main road” became apparent from the very beginning. We eventually got through the wash outs and arrived at Palm Creek, where we found 3 cars winching each other out of the creek because of the steepness of its banks. Not a good sign for us! When they had finished winching each other out, two hired cars appeared behind them, who would also need winching out (the hired cars did not have a winch themselves). The people in front of them packed away their winches very quickly and did not offer to winch these people out – very un-Australian I am told! After several attempts by the hired cars to get out of the creek, it became clear to us that these people would not be able to get up the creek and if we wanted to get to the other side, we would have to winch them out ourselves. That was all well and good as we had a winch but how you used it was another matter – why isn’t there a manual that comes with these things! A lovely family called the Dunlop’s, who were also about to start the OTL, said that they would show us how to use our winch and help us winch the people out. The Battered Fish proved very successful, winching two cars out without a problem. Well, we did find a slight problem in that the handbrake on the Battered Fish failed and I had to sit in the car with my foot firmly on the brake whilst we were winching the cars out! Once the path was clear, we could then cross the creek. I looked at the creek - there was an extremely steep drop at the beginning of the creek, followed by huge rocks beneath this so placement of the wheels was everything. The Dunlop family crossed the creek first without any problems which then left us to cross. I looked at Gerard and thought he may be in a better state to do this than me – I was very anxious and an absolute bag of nerves! He started off and dropped down the steep section fine. He then took his foot off the brake and slid down the remaining part of the creek, just about missing the rocks on the way down. At one point, he had two wheels in the air and the trailer at a 90 degree angle to the car. I was terrified but Gerard got out the car on the other side with a huge smile on his face claiming “no worries”.

We decided to team up with the Dunlop’s and carry on with them for the rest of the OTL. We are so glad that we did as not only were they great company but they provided us the confidence we needed to do the remaining 12 creeks of the OTL. We even did the legendary Gunshot Creek, a creek that had a log bridge over it and a creek crossing where the water came up to the cars bonnet.

After smugly completing the OTL, we drove to the Tip of Australia. We checked in at Punsund Bay, another beautiful camping spot, unpacked and went to the Tip for sunset. Before we left, we asked our new camping neighbours how far it was to walk to the Tip from the car park - they replied "three beers!". I am not sure what I was expecting but when we arrived at the car park of the Tip, there was no one else around and no signposts pointing the way to “the Tip”! We walked along the beach and then started to climb up some rocks. After about 5 minutes of climbing North (where else would the Northern most point be we thought!), we came to the end of a rocky outcrop where we saw in the distance a signpost. The sign read “you are standing at the most Northern part of Australia”. We had made it! After several pictures and cracking open a bottle, we enjoyed the sunset.

A final highlight of our trip was the last few days we spent with the Dunlops at Vrilya Point. The road into the point, even compared to the OTL, was extremely corrugated and washed out – even the sand patches along the track were corrugated! When we arrived, we were so glad that we had roughed the road conditions as the setting was absolutely stunning. You were allowed to camp anywhere on the long sweep of beach amongst the trees for shades. We camped in a spot pointing directly North, where we could watch both the sunrise and the sunset from our camper trailers, with the water surrounding us (the water at high tide was literally lapping 5 metres away from the fire place) – it was superb. On our last night with the Dunlops, Scott and his son Tim went off spear-fishing (these waters are croc infested but this did not seem to put them off!). They came back (no croc marks on them you will be pleased to hear!) with 5 fish, 3 huge scallops and oysters. We had a fantastic seafood feast that night watching a gorgeous sunset to the West – this really is the life we thought.

Those green monsters amongst you will be pleased to hear that the Trip was not without some low moments. Even though we enjoyed immensely the company of Phil and Carole, Chilli Beach was one of those moments! The drive to Chilli Beach was a good 3 hours from the “main road”, or orange corrugated track as we called it, going through dip after dip and 24 creek crossings. Everyone had warned us about the wind at Chilli Beach as you are on the East side of Australia. We wished we had listened as the wind blew and blew for the whole time we were there. On the first night, we lay in bed listening to the wind. The rain then started and we felt as if we were some clothes in a washing machine, as the camper trailer rocked from side to side in the wind. The wind and rain pounded against the trailer so hard that we were really worried that it was going to blow away. As if that was not bad enough, throughout the night we heard a woman ranting and raving about something. The shouting started to get nearer to the tent and I thought for a good hour that this mad woman would be coming to pay Gerard and I a visit. Alas, she did not and we woke up, still to the sound of wind and rain, but unharmed! For the whole of the next day and night, the wind and the rain did not stop and we ended up leaving a day earlier than planned. It was a shame as Chilli Beach had so much potential to be a really special place - the beach itself really was stunning, a long stretch of sand with fringing coconut trees, and great camping tucked into the scrub.

Phil and Carol also shared with me some of my scary animal moments. We were sitting around the camp fire on the first night when I put a piece of timber on the fire. After about 30 minutes, I shone my torch on the timber as I saw something moving on it. To my absolute horror, there were scorpions coming out of the timber! That same day, I encountered my first snake sighting, which scarred the living daylights out of me. I was taking a walk in the afternoon up to the road and suddenly a snake slithered across my path just in front of me. I did completely the wrong thing and screamed and ran backwards. I think I gave the snake a bit of a scare as it then raised its head and spun round and round very quickly before scurrying back into the bush. There were also lots of green ants and huge spiders in their webs in the trees behind our camp, which Gerard had a huge amount of delight in showing me. I am slowly getting used to all these creatures and know it is something I should expect being out in the bush but it is still pretty daunting the first time you meet these things!

Due to the state of the roads, the Battered Fish and the Barnacle have not come out of our little trip unscathed. The Battered Fish has a cracked headlight and small crack in the windscreen from the stones. The Barnacle has a few more problems and he will be going to see a welder tomorrow! The frame that holds the gas cylinder onto the trailer completely snapped off, leaving the car behind us to pick up the gas cylinder. Where the gas cylinder snapped off, not only do we have a dented cylinder but that side of the trailer has cracks appearing. It really did get a good bash along the tracks.

We are now back in Cairns collecting oil once again. We have truly had a fantastic time in the Cape and our looking forward to our next adventure West across the Gulf Track to Darwin.

I have included quite a few photos in this blog. They are of the sunset at Vrilya Point, some of the Creek crossings on the OTL, the wash outs on the OTL, the scenery through Lakefield National Park, the beautiful but windswept beach at Chilli Beach, Gerard and I at the Tip, a signpost in the outback, a roadtrain coming screaming at us and our camp spot at Elim Beach.

If anyone is still reading this post, we hope you are well and keep us updated with your comments and news.

Rach and Ged x

Days 23 - 29

2008-06-09T18:57:00.003+10:00

We left Seaforth after spending 4 glorious days there – it was the longest we had spent so far on our trip in any one place and we felt that we had really made progress with the whole camping thing. Over the days we stayed there, we set our camper trailer up exactly the way we wanted it, cooked some gourmet meals (even if I do say so myself!), ran the fridge off the solar panel for the entire time and conquered the art of filtering vast amounts of WVO (180 litres in total – thank you Seaforth and Mackay!). We left, after managing to squeeze in one last sunrise and breakfast on the beach, feeling annoyed that we had to pack up and start again in the next place. It also didn’t help our moods that the camp next door was also packing up to move on. They sat there and watched us slaving away as they had breakfast and read. About half way into our packing up, they got up and announced that they too had to pack and with a couple of pulls and folding of tarps, their camper trailer was nicely folded away whilst we were nowhere near ready! They really did have a “Rolls Royce” of a camper trailer, which included a side annex for the shower!! Seaforth was our favourite camp spot so far on the trip and we thought we would be hard pushed to find another spot so tranquil.

We headed north, passing the Big Mango at Bowen!, to a camp spot in a national park called Bowling Green Bay NP, about 20kms south of Townsville. You can really tell now that we are in the tropics as the heat has really increased. The humidity gauge on one camper trailer read 91 percent and this is in the winter!! We stayed at Alligator Creek for two nights where we camped next to the creek and watched tiny freshwater turtles play. It was a little magnet for wildlife as on the grass behind our camp, we had wallabies, potoroos and bush turkeys. It was a pleasant spot for the two nights we stayed there but we didn’t manage to find any WVO for us in Townsville (for some reason, this always makes us not like a place as much – I think I am becoming far too keen on WVO!). It was the same old story with people already taking it the day before or takeaways having a contract with someone who pays them for the WVO. We also found a few takeaways who cook with animal fat rather than oil, which we are not using due to the fact that the animal fat would have to be heated first before it can be filtered.

We moved on further North towards Cairns and at the last moment, we decided to change our plans and headed inland to the Atherton Tableland region. We are so glad that we did as the region was absolutely stunning. The track inland wound its way right up to the top of a mountain and then the road opened out into dense forest on the one side and rolling countryside on the other. We headed into the forest and came to Lake Tinaroo, where we camped right on the lakeside. The views from our camper trailer were incredible. We spent 3 days simply relaxing, fishing and reading – again, another stunning camp spot and due to the fact that each camp spot had their own camp fire area (a very important commodity when rating camp spots!), probably nicer than Seaforth.

We are now in Cairns after travelling 4,726 kms in the Battered Fish! We will be here for a few days filling up with WVO and preparing ourselves for the journey we have ahead of us – Cape York. We have heard so many people talking about Cape York, some rate it as the best trip they have ever done in Australia, whilst others seem unfazed by it. For us, it will be a huge test of both our driving skills and the reliability of the car and the camper trailer as the roads are largely dirt tracks with hundreds of Creek crossings (for an example of a crossing, do a Google search of Gunshot Creek!). It is also the habitat of the dreaded saltwater crocodile, or "salties" as they call them here. Some advice we have received regarding creek crossings is always check the depth of the creek crossing before entering it – my thoughts are how are you to test the depth of the creek crossings with salties in them? Their reply to this is not all the crossings have crocs in them as some are freshwater. Again, apart from getting out of the car and tasting the water which will put you within pouncing distance of the croc (I’ve watched that scene in Croc Dundee!), how are you to know which ones are safe??!! Any volunteers want to come with us as our creek tester!! I am sure it will be fine and we have just built the area up into something it is not. We are not sure of how much reception we shall have in this region as it is pretty remote but hope to blog the next time at the Northern most point of Australia, the Tip, in 3 weeks time.

Regarding the Battered Fish herself, she is running like a dream and loves the WVO! The Barnacle is also behaving herself and we have not had any breakages/losses to report on this week. We have updated the blog with a running list of all items that have broken or we have lost throughout the trip. Some are being replaced as we go along whilst others have not been so lucky.

I have had a few emails from people enquiring about how we are getting on camping. The answer is we are slowly getting used to it. Sometimes it is very annoying that you cannot have a hot shower when you want one (the shower that we have is a solar shower which takes 3 – 6 hours to heat up) or just load up the washing machine with clothes (we are using a bucket with a lid that you fill up before you drive to your next destination and the vibration of the driving acts like a washing machine!) or use a dishwasher (I have Gerard!) but in a way, it is very liberating not having these things as you really do get back to nature. Some of the campsites have basic facilities such as cold showers and toilets but the last time I used the toilet, I flushed the chain and a frog appeared – I am not sure who was the more surprised
!!

Anyway, we hope you are all well and thank you for all your comments on the blog and emails. I have added a few photos of some of the sunrises and sunsets we experienced, the reflections of the trees in Alligator Creek, some of the wallabies we saw at Alligator Creek, our set up of the camper trailer at Lake Tinaroo and our view of Lake Tinaroo from our camper.

Until the Tip…..

Take care,

Rach and Ged x

Days 16 - 22

2008-06-02T17:01:00.005+10:00

Firstly, thank you to all of those who have commented on our blog - we really look forward to reading comments when we turn on the computer each week so thank you all for your time and effort. For some reason, we cannot answer the comments on the blog so if you drop us your email address with your comment, we shall try and get back to you.

Now, onto our week. Again, it has been mayhem but we have seen yet more fantastic places and met some extremely kind and generous people.

We went over to Great Keppel Island at the beginning of the week for 2 nights, 3 days. We stayed in a lovely place just off the beach in a "luxury" 2 man tent. This meant that we didn't have to put up the camper when we arrived at the place which was bliss! It was like a mini honeymoon away from the Battered Fish and the Barnacle (a name that we have given to our camper trailer after how much veg oil it consumed on fraser island)! Great Keppel itself is very quiet but nice, with great bush walks and snorkeling just off the beach. We saw fish, turtles and sting rays. Yet again, the beautiful sandy beaches were practically deserted and we sat each night having sundowners on the beach watching the sunset over the mainland. Perfect! However, the one down side to the island is the Birds - my word they were noisy. We had a crow "sqwarking" from about 5 in the morning, followed by another crow "sqwarking" in reply, then a kookaburra "laughing" again and again and again! It went something like "sqwark", "sqwark", "sqwark". "sqwark", "hhhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeee", "sqwark", "sqwark" etc etc. I wondered, listening to the crows sqwarking, if this is where the Australian expression "stone the flaming crows" came from?

We left Great Keppel and stayed back in Yeppoon where we collected 40 litres of WVO - thank you! Yet again we came across numerous fish and chip shops that already had a contract with someone or they had emptied their drums just the day before we arrived. Extremely frustrating but it is all part of our experiment. We drove inland to our next destination, Sapphire (about 400kms West of Yeppoon) and stopped at a town just before Sapphire called Emerald (if you haven't worked it out yet, they are both major fossicking places where you can dig for gems). Yet again, we got rejected in the fish and chip shops in Emerald which meant we would need to fill up with diesel. Before we did fill up with diesel, we pulled to the side of the road and did some roadside WVO refueling! A car that was passing stopped and asked if we needed any help as we must have looked a fairly strange sight with a drill, hose and invertor in our hands! We left the roadside, minus the new drill which we had purchased earlier that week for the filtering ( I am solely blaming Gerard - it definitely wasn't me!!!) and headed to Sapphire. We quickly noticed a difference between the roads inland and the roads on the coast. We started seeing Road Trains for the first time (huge trucks carrying 3-4 carriages behind them full of cattle or coal), cattle grazing on the side of the roads with no fences, and the straightness of the roads for miles and miles.

The reason we were going to Sapphire was to get a HF Radio fitted to the car. A HF radio is a high frequency radio that you can use in an emergency (you are connected to the Royal Flying Doctors) or just to chat to people all over Australia. The guy that was fitting the radio, Bob, and his partner Denise, welcomed us to their place and we set up the Barnacle in the garden. At exactly 4.30, Bob pulled out a "cold one", then his mate Les arrived at the house and even before he had swung his feet out of the 4WD door, he had opened a cold one too! We decided it was time to go to the off license to get some beers of our own as it might be a long night! We asked where the nearest off license was as we had only seen a general store and a RSL (a pub) in the town. Bob told us and we headed there. We arrived and it was just a tin shed with stacks of beer in. It was aptly named "the Tin Shed", well, that's what it was, why waste words? We spent 3 fantastic days with Bob and Denise in Sapphire. They had travelled around Australia in a bus so stories and photos were swapped over a lot of alcohol. During the day, Bob had a workshop and helped Gerard connect the solar panel, fit the driving lights (the ones that we needed in Fraser Island but found they didn't work!!) and mend the fridge and fridge slide. All things that we had needed to do for weeks but just had not had time. I took out all the equipment in the trailer and the car, replanned the distances of our trip as I have come to realise that the distances that we thought we could do in a day is just not possible, tried out the sunroom which fits to the Barnacle to give it an extension! and completely repacked everything. All in all, it was a very productive time.

We left Sapphire and headed back to the coast. The morning we left, it had absolutely pelted it down all night and we quickly learnt why they say the camper is "water resistant", not "waterproof". Leaks were springing in everywhere and we decided it was time to leave to go back to the coast for some better weather. We are still staying in a fantastic little place called "Seaforth", which is about 40kms North of Mackay, right on the seafront. We could wake up each morning with the sea at our front door. I say "could" as we do not have this view as we put the camper trailer around the wrong way on the first night we set up camp as you guessed it, it was dark when we set up! People keep on coming up to us and asking why we are facing around the wrong way. I am blaming it on the wind from the sea at night but now feel embarrassed about changing it round!

We also managed to get a further 150 litres of WVO from various fish and chip shops in Mackay so a massive thank you to everyone who gave us this as we desperately needed it. Gerard is busy filtering now.

Over the next week, we will slowly make our way up to Cairns and prepare ourselves for Cape York.

Please keep your messages and comments coming, it is really great to hear from everyone. I have added some photos of Great Keppel, all our recovery gear when we took it out of the Battered Fish, Bob and Denise, the Tin Shed and Gerard refuelling on the side of the road.

Take care

Rach and Ged x

Days 8 - 15

2008-05-24T19:53:00.008+10:00

This last week has been absolutely manic!!

We left Brisbane on Tuesday after spending a fantastic three days with the Hartleys and catching up with Gerard's aussie rules footy mates. The morning we left Brisbane, Richelle from Ibuyeco called and asked if we could attend a park in Brisbane for a media conference regarding our trip. We arrived thinking maybe there would be one or two people there but it was pretty busy with camera crew, presenters, photographers, interviewers etc. It reminded me a little of our wedding day as we were asked to pose for numerous photos, walk along the river holding hands (!) and then to circle the car around the park so that they could take pictures of us driving and the exhaust pipe (just to clarify, the driving the car around the park bit didn't remind me of the wedding day, just the pictures really!) You will be relieved to hear that the Battered Fish behaved herself and I did not stall the car once!

We then headed off to drive to Fraser Island, praying that we would get there before dark so we could set up camp without the dingos finding us! For those of you who haven't heard of Fraser Island (where have you been!), it is an island stretching over 123 kilometres along the southern coast of Queensland and is inhabited by a pure breed of dingos! After picking up our permits, letting our tyres down for sand driving and crossing the ocean on the barge, it was about 4.30pm. We felt quite smug that we might for once set up in daylight as we were camping about 70 kms up the beach which we were told would take about an hour. After checking the tide times (you can only drive on the island in some places 2 hours either side of low tide and you are advised not to travel at all 2 hours either side of high tide), we found that we were three hours away from high tide. No problems we thought. Oh how wrong could we have been! The drive started off well, there was a beautiful sunset over the ocean, which we stopped to take pictures for. It suddenly started to get dark pretty quickly and we were having problems to distinguish washouts on the beach and shadows. Bang, a wave had crept up on us and hit us as we were about to cross a washout. Windscreen wipers on full pelt, we proceeded to then come across Eli Creek, a fast flowing stream where you can float down the creek to the ocean. There was, as we found out, a deep channel. The Battered Fish and the trailer survived but we were pretty scared. (I later found this advice on researching Eli Creek - "Take care when driving through the creek on the beach, as its fast-flowing water can gouge out deep channels. At high tide it's best to take a break and go for a swim until you can cross the creek at the lower end of the beach.") We made it to our camp site 2.5 hours later, bang on high tide and definitely not in the light!! We have made a pact to each other that we will never be as stupid as that again and drive in the dark in places we just don't know.

We woke up in the morning, as usual, intrigued to see where we had camped the previous night. We were in a fantastic shaded spot just back from the beach. I went fo a wander around and found the following notice "Snakes - you might not see them but they will see you. Be careful when walking and always wear sturdy boots." I looked down to see my flip flops (or thongs as the aussies call them) on my feet and walked back to the camp very slowly to change my footwear! Mum - don't worry, I didn't see any snakes in our whole 4 days there. We saw some fantastic sites on Fraser, from beautiful inland pools that are a turquoise colour fringed with startling white sands, to shipwrecks and rocky outlooks, and we were both sorry to leave after this time.

Other than the first nights drive, some funny incidents occured. On my wander around the camp on the first morning, I heard someone saying my name. I looked over and saw Rob, the instructor from our 4WD course, along with some other instructors on their "holidays". They invited us to tag along with them to go around the island. After the previous nights little "incident", we jumped at the chance and spent three wonderful days with them. They call themselves the "RoughIt in Style" club and I soon found out why. On our first drive with them, they asked over the UHF Radio if I liked champagne. I informed them that I am partial to a little and that night, we sat by the camp fire drinking champagne followed by port. What a life!! We became honouree "RoughIt in Style" people and will defiantly keep on channel 16 to see where they are in the future!

When we returned from one drive, we found some "fishos" had camped pretty close to us. I got our the car and was greeted with "G'day, how ya goin'" from one of them, to which I replied " Morning, yes, very well thank you." This same ritual went on each morning! We had a look at their camp and saw 8 cases of beer and one case of Jim Bean for four of them. We asked them how long they were staying as some people stay for weeks on end here. 10 days they replied!

We have now driven to Yeppoon, ready to go over to the Great Keppel Island tomorrow for some snorkeling. Gerard managed to pick up a further 40 litres of WVO from a fish and chip shop and Chinese restaurant in the town. We are running very low on veg oil after our little trip on Fraser with a trailer consumed far more oil than we thought. We will be on Great Keppel for three days and then heading inland to Emerald before heading up to Airlie Beach. If anyone has any WVO for us in these places, please send us an email and we will come and pick it up from you!!

Regarding the WVO, we are still having to filter by hand as the drill that we purchased to filter the oil is not powerful enough. It takes between 30mins - 8 hours to filter 20 litres of WVO, depending on the condition of the oil (if its fatty, it takes longer) and the state of the filters. Gerard is extremely patient!

Righty, the next time I blog will be in a few weeks as we will be out of communication for a while. Hope you are all well and enjoying work!

I have posted some photos of fraser island, our camp and the roughit in style gang!

Rach and Ged x

Days 1 - 7

2008-05-14T20:36:00.014+10:00

"When will you be ready to go", I demanded of Gerard for the 7th time that day. It was Monday 12th May and today was suppose to be D-Day for our long awaited trip. But as per usual, there were a few "things" that still had to be finalised before we could go, "things" that I did not understand about and definately "things" that I did not understand why they were taking so long. "I will not leave today if we leave after 12.00" I shouted, " I do not want to be setting up camp in the dark." Gosh I had become a nagging wife!

At precisely 2.30, we left. First destination was Stockton Beach, which was about 3 hours North of Sydney. We chugged into Stockton (literally, yet more problems with the Battered Fish which we are hoping will be resolved with time!) and stopped in the entrance to let our tyres down to drive on the sand. 5.45 we were ready to rock and roll - only problem, it was dark and we had no idea where we should set up camp. The advice from a local "fisho" that we found wading in the sea was "camp anywhere along the beach, just make sure it is above high tide mark." Where precisely was the high tide mark I thought and great advice, seeing as the beach is 32 kms long. I jumped back into the Battered Fish and told Gerard to find a clearing in the dunes to camp. Reverse parking the trailer up a dune and down the other side in the dark was fun!! We went to bed that night with a totally clear night full of stars and the sound of the surf pounding the shore - it was perfect.

We woke up in the morning excited to see where we had set up camp the previous night! We were not disappointed, the beach was totally desrted as far as the eye could see and it was a beautiful morning. We spent two fantastic nights camping on the beach, totally remote from anyone or any facilties. The camper trailer even survived a huge thunderstorm one afternoon. We were wondering during the storm how safe we were as we were in the middle of a beach in a camper trailer with metal poles - maybe best not to think about it!

Our next scheduled stop was to be Ballina - about 600kms from Stockton. However, we made an unexpected stop into Coffs Harbour due to a few "instances" - the ones of note being the handbrake breaking on the camper trailer and the Battered Fish not going above 1600 revs after we had stopped at road works. Ho hum!!

We eventually arrived in Ballina - ah, Ballina - what a beautiful spot. A gorgeous coastal town where the river meets the sea. We camped in a fantasitc place about 5kms out of Ballina on a beach called Flat Rock. Each night we would light up a camp fire and sit back in our chairs looking at the stars with the surf pounding in the background. Again, we were extremely spoilt to be in such a beautiful location. From Ballina, we made a day trip to Byron Bay and Cape Byron, where we walked to the lighthouse and to the famous Watagoes beach, which is millionaire row. The houses on the beachfront were breathtaking. Mental note - need to work harder, a lot harder, to be able to afford something like this!

By the time we were ready to leave to head towards Brisbane, it was time to find some waste veg oil to fuel the Battered Fish. We had not been having much success on the way up to Ballina in regards to getting WVO from shops as we have found that most shops have contracts with people who turn the WVO into biodiesl. We had been rejected about 12 times when Gerard went and asked in a fish and chip shop in Lennox Head - bingo - we were given 20 litres of WVO. That then followed by success in Mi Thai in Lennox Head, who said we could take as much of the WVO as we like. That evening, Gerard spent the evening filtering the oil which is a long process, especially as he did not have a pump to pump the WVO through the filter and had to do the process by hand. Me on the other hand had a lovely evening toasting marshmallows in front of the camp fire!

We are now in Brisbane for the next 3 nights where we are catching up with some of Gerard's aussie rules football mates and doing yet more minor tweakes to the Battered Fish and the camper trailer.

We have seen some major icons of Australia - the big banana, the big prawn and the totally unclassless Surfers Paradise!! Fraser Island is our next stop on Tuesday.

I have added a few photos of where we have been staying and some of the places we have visted along our way.

Hope you are all well and keep us posted with your news.

Rach and Ged x

We are still in Sydney!!!

2008-05-06T18:03:00.009+10:00

Before I begin with why are are still in Sydney, I learnt a new "O" at the weekend -"houso" - meaning a person who lives in Social Housing accommodation. I really am getting down with the local lingo now (remember, if in doubt, add "O")!

Over the weekend, we went on a Vic Widman 4WD course about 3 hours South West of Sydney. We packed up the camper trailer with all our camping gear, filled up the dual fuel tanks and off we went to camp for the first time. On the way down, we decided to test out the rear fuel tank which holds 180 litres of fuel. We could not understand why it was averaging about 3kms per litre until we got out of the car at our camp site and the stench of diesel was gut renching. It had leaked diesel all over the back of the car, all over the camper trailer and we are guessing all over the road. Great - another problem with the Battered Fish. We ploughed on and set up camp - by this stage, it was past 9pm so we set up the camper trailer for the first time using the Battered Fish's driving lights (at least they worked!!). Not bad for the first effort - about 1 hour.

I had been warned before we went that when you go inland in Australia at this time of year, it could get cold. When Australians say this to you, you think they mean about 15 degrees as even now, they wear scarves and coats when I am in shorts and a t-shirt. However, this time, they were right - we woke up with frost outside!! I ran to the camp kitchen to have a coffee to warm up and found out that I needed a 20c coin to work the stove. Would you believe it that the only coin that I did not have was a 20c coin!

By the time I had gone to get change, we were running late and still had to pack up the trailer. 45 minutes later, we were on the road to go to our course. When we pulled up at the course, I did a quick scout around and all I could see were brand new 4WD's. I later found out that the Battered Fish was the oldest car by a few years!! However, she did not let herself down. We tackled river crossings, sand driving, steep corrugated hills and forest drives - everything was done very slowly but we managed everything, even the steepest of hills. The instructors thought the "big white shed" (as they called the Battered Fish) would be great for our trip which installed us with confidence after all the problems that we seemed to have encountered. On the Sunday, we were lucky enough to have one on one tuition with an instructor, Rob, who taught us how to drive the Battered Fish towing the camper trailer. The first challenge was to reverse the camper trailer into a camping spot. I "wasn't bad for a Shelia" according to Rob!!!!

We left the course Sunday evening after having a fantastic 3 days of 4WD driving. Not only did we learn so much about the car and what it is capable of, but yet again we met some fantastic people.

So, it was back at the mechanics on Monday morning where they tightened up a few hoses and drain points and so far, we have not encountered any further leakage problems. We then drove about one hour West of Sydney to have the car converted in order for us to be able to use waste vegetable oil on the journey. We picked the Battered Fish back up on Thursday evening and just to let all you cynics of veg oil out there know, the car is running brilliantly on veggie oil. Infact, we even got up to 120kmph in fourth gear!! The smell comning out of the exhaust is not too bad either - a distinct Nando's chicken smell at the moment!! A massive thanks to Fitian for doing the conversion and for all the effort he put in for getting us running on veggie oil.

Our D Day is now set for Monday so fingers crossed nothing goes wrong between now and then. First stop is still set for Stockton Beach.

For those lawyers amongst you, you will be pleased to hear that I have accepted a job at Corrs Chambers Westgarth. My start date is 19 January 2009!!

Take care everyone
Rach and Ged x

PS - Dotti and Steve - Bear and Rabbit, the mascots, are very much enjoying their trip! Photos will follow shortly.

Happy Anzac Day!

2008-04-25T09:59:00.002+10:00

Today is Anzac Day in Australia. Anzac Day marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War. It is one of the most important national occasions in Australia - dawn services and marches take place across the whole country, and it really is a very moving day.

Since I last blogged, things have been moving at a fast rate over here. We attended an outback first aid course, which was fantastic in terms of what we learnt and also the people we met. The bloke that taught the course was a real "ocker" as they call them here. This translated into English means a proper outback Australian male who abbreviates absolutely everything. Over here, everything seems to be abbreviated to end in an "o", for instance, an ambulance is an "ambo", a service station is a "servo", your vehicles registration is "rego" etc etc. Once I had gotten used to his terminology and him referring to something as like a "shag on a rock!!!" (meaning something very obvious!), I really enjoyed the course and would recommend it to anyone who is going travelling for an extensive period of time. The people on the course were all really great. Once they had gotten over the fact that I was a "pom" (as everyone likes to point out over here in case you had in fact forgotten that you were indeed English!), they all offered advice on travelling around Australia, lent us books on certain areas and gave us so much invaluable information.

Regarding the "battered fish" herself (photos will follow shortly), there have been a few concerns over her well being. We took her to get the engine converted so that we can use vegetable oil on the trip. The guy that was doing the conversion thought that she was a bit sluggish compared to some other troop carriers that he had converted of the same age. He was concerned that the engine may not make the trip and recommended a compression test be done before he did the conversion (for those of you like me who have no idea about cars, this basically tests the engine of the car). To cut a long story short, after 5 days of waiting, the compression test has come back fine so we can now go and get the engine converted. Although we have wasted a lot of time doing this, we now have peace of mind that the "battered fish" is mechanically sound for the trip. It would be a good thing for people to get the engine tested before they buy a second hand vehicle as a new engine would be pretty expensive.

One funny thing that happened during us taking the car back and forth to mechanics is the driving around Sydney. To get to the place where the car is being converted, you need to go over the Sydney Harbour bridge. When we went to pick the car up, the opera house was on our left, which meant when we were coming back (Gerard driving the Battered Fish and me driving a sister's car), the opera house was to be on our right. I lost Gerard when I was driving and was confident coming over the bridge on the way back because the opera house was indeed on my right. However, I then took a wrong turning off the bridge and found myself stuck in the one way system. I then came across the harbour bridge again, this time opera house on the left - bad sign as this meant I was going back into the city! I tried to get off the bridge to turn around and ended up checking out quite a few suburbs of Sydney before I found signs again for the harbour bridge. I then crossed it again (for the third time in the space of 30 minutes!!!) and luckily this time, the opera house was on my right so I was heading again in the right direction. The one bad thing is that you have to pay $5 when you cross the harbour bridge so I racked up a few dollars that night.

We have also been to pick up all our camping stuff and the camper trailer (which is to be our house for the next 8 months) from kangaroo tent city. We have SO much stuff that we are going to have to do a trial run with packing up the car and the trailer as I just don't know where we are going to put everything. It will also be very interesting setting everything up for the first time - the demo of opening the camper trailer and setting it up looked very simple but I am sure when it is our turn to set it up, it will be a very different story!! It has also been a bit showery here in the last few weeks and you can bet any money that the first day we try to set up, we will be setting up in the rain.

I have had a few emails from people asking me how I am fitting into Australia and the differences from "back home". It is still early days but I have noticed the following things already.

Pros
1) The mornings - it gets light really early here and everyone is up and about doing things as soon as it gets light. People are walking their dogs, going for a run or a surf and as the weather is generally good, you want to get out of bed and do things! Even though it has been a bit showery here and I am not known to be a morning person, I have been getting up really early and have been enjoying sitting outside with my toast (with Vegemite on of course!) and coffee and watching the world go by! Where Gerard's parents live, there is a pool and quite a few trees and it has been fantastic watching all the birds early in the morning duck diving into the pool. The smells too are fantastic - because of the weather and the trees, it smells really tropical here.
2) The food - you even notice the difference with the food in the supermarkets, it is fantastic. You have much more of a range and everything is so fresh as it has been grown here in Australia. You also get fantastic fish and seafood shops.
3) The scenery - every time I see the opera house and the harbour bridge, i get excited. Sydney really is a beautiful city. I am trying to think of something in Birmingham that I cold compare the opera house to but I am struggling!!!!!

Cons
1) It is expensive - I have noticed this already, not just London expensive, but a bit more. You have to pay for things such as getting money out of the hole in the wall ($2 each time), the roads (most roads are tolled) and even to be able to drive (about $300 for 3 years). I know this is not much, but it all adds up. Also, the interest rate is 9% so buying a house will be out of the question.
2) It goes without saying, my family and friends are over in England. We have been extremely busy so homesickness hasn't really kicked in yet but my family made me a CD with clips on of everyone saying goodbye and I still have not been able to bring myself to watch this yet! Gerard's family have been great with helping me fit in and there has not been a day yet where we have not seen some family or catching up with Gerard's school or footy friends.

I would love to come up with more cons and shall keep on thinking (!) but at the moment, everything is going really well here. In the next few days, we will be concentrating on getting last bits and pieces for the trip and practicing packing and unpacking the car and the trailer. We go on our 4WD course next Friday, 2 May and are hopefully leaving for the start of our trip on the 5 May providing everything between now and then goes well.

We would love to hear your news so send us a comment by going to the bottom of this post where it says "0 comments" and post a comment. Because of security, we have to read your comment first before it is put onto the site so you will not see your comment straight away.

Take care
Rach and Ged x

Arrived in Sydney!

2008-04-15T09:10:00.002+10:00

After all the farwell parties and the talking about it, you will be pleased to hear that we have finally arrived in Sydney and can now truly start the preparations for our trip! We would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who attended our numerous leaving parties all over the Country (!) and for those of you who phoned us before we left wishing us well - it really does mean a lot to us.

I can now also give you a word of advice if you are ever thinking of moving countries - do not go to the airport a) hungover or b) with your family! It was a really emotional farewell and I was extremely sad to be leaving my family and friends in the UK. The only good thing about having a tear stained face when we checked in was not having to pay the excess baggage fee of $300 that they were asking for!!! When they asked why we had so much baggage, I just could not control my emotions and ended up pouring my heart out to the poor check in attendant about the emotional farewell that I had just encountered with my family. Not only did he not charge us for the excess baggage but he also gave us a semi upgrade on the first leg from London to Singapore on Singapore Airlines new plane, the A380. It was a real shock on the second leg from Singapore to Sydney when we were hurded back into cattle class on a standard jumbo 747!!

Before we left the UK, there were some further developments regarding our trip. We heard from a carbon neutral car insurance company called "ibuyeco" regarding sponsorpship for our trip. I have attached the webiste link to ibuyeco under the heading Sponsorship - check it out!!!

We also received great support from a Shrewsbury (UK) business called "Castell", suppliers of Satelite phones to aid agencies, who very generously provided a satelite phone for our trip at a discount. This pleased Mum as she can now keep in contact with us even when we are in the outback!!

Thanks to ibuyeco and Castell for their genoristy and remember to look at their websites as they both do tremendous work.

Ok, enough of that - keep us posted with what you are doing and how work is going!! I am just about to go and jump in the pool at Gerard's parents house - I think I will get used to this Sydney lifestyle!!

The Route

2008-03-17T03:14:00.001+11:00

A map of where we will be travelling on our trip is shown at the bottom of the page!

PREPARATIONS AND FAREWELLS

2008-03-17T01:47:00.000+11:00

28 DAYS UNTIL LIFT OFF!

The realisation of how much we still have to do before we leave on April 13 2008 has hauled me out of bed (the reason why I was still in bed so late was completely self-inflicted - I played my last hockey match yesterday and all the team went out for 'some' end of season drinks and my farewell. I am now asking myself why I found it necessary to drink so many apple martini's!).

The preparations for the trip are finally starting. During the week, we heard that our offer on a 1995 Toyota Troop Carrier had been accepted and the process of turning this old beast into "the Battered Fish" for our adventure can now begin. Gerard's brother will be picking it up from Melbourne over the Easter bank holiday weekend and we can then get it to the mechanics to get it fitted out for the "outback". Until I started researching this, I never knew how much was involved in this process and also, how expensive it would be - first budget broken even before we have started the journey - not a good omen!

The Battered Fish currently has dual fuel tanks, one a 90 litre and the other a 180 litre. We will be filling the larger tank with used vegetable oil (more on that note later!) and the smaller tank with bio-diesel. We plan to get the used vegetable oil from road houses or fish and chip shops that we encounter on our travels. The 4WD will need to be converted in able to be fueled using used vegetable oil. It also has a 60 litre water tank fitted to it which we will use for drinking and also washing. We are fitting a shower to the vehicle so fear not friends and family, we will be washing (with bio-degradable soaps and shampoos of course) on our travels!

The Battered Fish will be towing a camper trailer, which will be our home for our 9 month adventure. This has a queen sized double bed in it and a pull out kitchen (well, drawers and a preparation area!).

Although I have done a bit of camping and travelling in my time, I have never driven a 4WD or done "serious" back to basic camping before. Many people have commented on what happens if nature calls during the evening - well, the answer is Iwill have to dig a hole and pray that I do not step on any snakes or spiders along my way!! It is all going to be completely alien to us to begin with but hopefully we will get used to it over time.

As part of the preparations for the trip, we are undertaking a 4WD course when we get to Sydney and also attending a remote outback first aid course. The 4WD course will teach us how to cross river crossings, drive through different terrain and use the recovery gear such as the winch and the high lift jack (I am sure I will find out what these are also on the course!).

We will be updating this blog whenever we reach towns with internet cafes to inform you of where we are and how we are getting on. Stay tuned for out next update..........