Go West

So here I am in Western Australia. Since leaving Melbourne on monday it's been pretty action packed, starting with a 2 day tour of the great ocean road and the Grampians.

After getting up at 5:30am, we met our tour group which consisted of only 6 people, although we were somewhat disconcerted by the fact that one of those was a woman in her 70s. (When backpacking you get so used to everyone being young that sometimes you forget that people of over 35 actually exist at all). She was really sweet, though, and only occasionally showed her age with comments like "These Aborigines have beautiful natures", etc.

The Great Ocean Road is a lovely bit of coastline. We saw koalas in the wild, beaches, and the Twelve Apostles which are hyped as one of Victoria's greatest attractions (although hilariously, they just lost in a public vote on "Victoria's biggest attraction" to the Palace, which is a club/gig venue in St Kilda, Melbourne: it was a stunt on the part of the club's organisers who want to stop it being closed down). Anyway, the Twelve Apostles are limestone towers in the sea, just off the shore, rather like the pancake rocks in NZ. They are a pretty cool sight, though Mike was grumbling about them being overhyped the whole time which is probably true. They say it's impossible to take a bad photo of the Twelve Apostles. We took this as a challenge, and one which I think we rose to admirably. I will post our efforts at some point when I have a USB cable with me.

We then proceeded to leave the coast for the Grampians - a mountain range/national park area which was recently devastated by a bushfire. Although I'm sure it's a beautfiul area when not all burnt out, the blackened landscape of charcoal-coated, leafless tree skeletons was so interesting to visit - eerie to view and to walk through. It reminded me of the kids' book "The Paper Bag Princess" after the dragon has burnt everything down - does anyone apart from me remember that book? Really incredible views from the look out points and cliffs.

We stayed the night in a little town called Hall's Gap - our guide (who talked all the time, like, ALL the time, about bizarre and disconnected things) had told us it was 5km from anywhere, so we were expecting to be really isolated, but it was actually a proper town. OK, maybe the next town was 5km away, but it didn't exactly feel like the middle of nowhere. Our disappointment at this was tempered by the fact that when we went for a walk in the evening we saw loads of real live wild kangaroos bouncing around the place...Mike got some excellent photos. They're so cute! (these are little grey ones, not as big as the red ones in the centre). And so different in shape from other mammals...really funny movements. We also saw some deer, rather randomly.

The next day involved a bit more exploring of the Grampians, followed by finishing the trip to Adelaide by coach. While waiting at the coach stop in some small Victorian town we had the dubious honour of witnessing the Queen's Baton procession going past - the Commonwealth games is in Melbourne very soon. It wasn't much of a procession, I have to say - a couple of joggers who are, presumably, famous Australian athletes, holding the baton which looks a bit crazy and space-age, like a toy. Nothing on that time we saw the Queen processing down Whitehall to open Parliament...now THAT was a procession.

So on to Adelaide, which was cute. A very small, clean city, with wide tree lined roads and no litter. Or hills. Very nice, but I suspect a bit bland most of the time - luckily our arrival coincided with the arts festival, so there was lots going on in the form of plays and concerts everywhere, as well as loads of buskers, art exhibitions, sculptures lying around and groups of crazily dressed people embracing and calling each other "darling". Very enjoyable. Admittedly we only went to one photography exhibition, but we soaked up the atmosphere, and also visited the Botanic Gardens, the Wine Centre (so space age, you could conduct a "virtual interview" with a wine maker!) and the Adelaide Gaol - quite a good amount of sightseeing compared to what I usually manage.

Then yesterday we flew - yes, flew, as in a plane, it felt like such a failure after all this overland travel, but was the cheapest option - the 3 hours to Perth. So here we are. Feeling slightly confused and disoriented now - we've crossed 2 time zones (South Australia is, bizarrely, half an hour behind Victoria) so now I believe we're only 8 hours different from the UK. We've checked into a VERY cheap hostel with a crazy proprieter - like, seriously crazy, he talks all the time and doesn't really make sense, and he put us BOTH into rooms which turned out not to have any spare beds, which caused alot of confusion. The bathroom facilities at this hostel are AWFUL, which I guess explains why it's so cheap, but apart from that it is ok, with lots of communal space, and there's some kind of barbeque/party going on tonight which could be fun.

We just went into a place called the JobShop looking for jobs, only to be roundly rejected - apparently they have mostly country work, ie harvest and farm jobs, outside the city. We have to wait in the city for a week or so at least, as Mike needs to meet Chris and Laura in order to sort out what they're going to do about selling the car, so now we're looking at exploring other recruitment options...I'm hoping for a fantastic job as one of the people I worked with at Multiplex has recommended me to the CBRE office in Perth: fingers crossed.