Archive for 'Australia'
Adelaide: Picnic in the park and the Barossa Valley
January 30th, 2009After a near constant four day drive crossing the Nullarbor from Kalgoorlie, we arrived at Adelaide. Named the city within a park for good reason: the compact central business district is flanked by parkland on all sides. We spent the first day familiarising ourselves with the city before treating each other to a posh picnic […]
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Eyre Highway: Crossing the Nullarbor
January 29th, 2009We left Kalgoorlie and pointed Don, our car, towards Adelaide in the adjoining state of South Australia; over two thousand kilometres away. It took us four days to get to Adelaide and I’ll spare you four fairly uninteresting journal entries by writing one fairly uninteresting one instead. As in Western Australia, the roads here are […]
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Kalgoorlie: Our third time in a brothel
January 28th, 2009Kalgoorlie is the gold mining capital of Western Australia. Being over six hundred kilometres from Perth and with a population of over thirty thousand, it rises out of the desert in the same way that Las Vegas just appears out of nowhere in Nevada. I gather from speaking to people that it used to be […]
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Kalgoorlie: Outback hospital visit
January 27th, 2009After returning to Perth/Fremantle and getting our car serviced again, we took off east towards Kalgoorlie, the gold-mining town in the desert famed for producing most of the world’s gold from within it’s kilometre-squared “Super Pit” mine. More on that tomorrow, once we’ve had a look around. It’s been a six days since we left […]
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Overlander and Billabong: Outback roadhouse/motel people are (mostly) weird
January 26th, 2009Fact: People who work in customer serving businesses in the outback are weird. So what is a roadhouse? Essentially, it’s a petrol station with a shop, cafe and possibly some overnight rooms situated slap-bang in the middle of nowhere. These much-needed pitstops know their worth and charge through-the-nose for everything they sell and who can […]
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Exmouth and Coral Bay: Diving and snorkelling the Ningaloo Reef
January 23rd, 2009A few years ago, my sister bought me the Lonely Planet Bluelist; an interesting compilation of peoples’ must-do travel itineraries. It was in this book that we found out about the Ningaloo Reef, where one can dive with Whale Sharks and giant Manta Rays. Naturally, we both added this attraction to our own lists. At […]
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Monkey Mia, Shark Bay: Dolphins up close
January 22nd, 2009My ice cream has melted before I’ve opened it… the car is like an oven… and the tent is unbearable. We’re braving the 46-48 degree heat to come and visit some of Western Australia’s most famous residents: the wild dolphins at Monkey Mia. On our way up to Exmouth we’ve ‘called-in’ at the resort, a […]
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Western Australia: The Sparselands
January 21st, 2009We’re two days into our roadtrip and I’m beginning to fear that this blog is about to become uninteresting and quite sparse — already, there’s really very little here to write about. We’re starting slowly, to put the car through its paces and confirm that it’s up to the job and so we’ve only covered […]
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Perth: The Trots
January 20th, 2009We both just spent our last night in Perth with the Trots; or harness racing as it’s more easily recognisable. Over here, New Year’s Day is celebrated in style with the majority of the town dressing up and spending a day drinking, dining and gambling at the Perth Cup horse races. Not us: at over […]
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Fremantle: Roadtrip preparation
January 19th, 2009We’re preparing for our roadtrip and we’re getting jolly excited. We’ve had the tent up for a spot of indoor camping. Good job too — the first one was badly stitched and had to go back. In contrast to the miniature five dollar tent that sheltered us in Africa, this time we’ve plumped for a […]
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