Wednesday 19th December

Our taxi driver was waiting in reception for us at 6am to drop us at the airport for the much anticipated Perth flight!! Woohoo!! When you book a taxi, you expect the driver to have a licence. This guy clearly didn't. He obviously had no idea what the white lines are for on the motorway, what the numbers in red circles on the side of the road are for & that a manual gearbox means you manually have to change the gears.

Amazingly we arrived at the airport unscathed. It was a tiny airport, only a small number of international flights operate out of LCCT, most fly from the bigger airport, KLIA. We had a few hours wait as check-in was quick & painless. A bite to eat & some duty free booze for our next landlords before boarding the plane. It was a good flight for a budget airline & Nick was waiting at Perth airport when we arrived which was great.

A 2 hour drive to Bunbury & a massive catch up with both Nick & Helen was about as much as we could manage. Our bedroom was decorated with Xmas trimmings to get us in the mood, which was ace! Helen cooked us a bbq too!

Thursday 20th December

Nick had made us 2 appointments to view campervans today, both a fair distance South so he decided to show us a few sites on the way. Several gorgeous beaches, including 'Smith's Beach'. The first appointment was in Margaret River & Nick thought we'd like to try a kebab at one of his new clients. We did, it was immense! A Turkish bread wrap, stuffed with doner meat, olives, onions, lettuce, cucumber & chilli sauce.

The first van was a real disappointment because we had seen the pictures online a couple weeks before & it seemed immaculate, the reality was that 2 smoking Dutch had stank & stained the whole thing out & didn't deem it necessary to clean the van for inspection. Big mistake with us clean freaks around. It was worse than any guesthouse we'd stayed in in Asia! I wasn't rude, just said I'd call if I wanted to make an offer.

The 2nd van was a surprise really, we hadn't seen it before, Nick had passed it a couple times & decided to book a viewing for us in case the first was a let down. Good move Nick, we are forever in your debt. The van was immaculate, half the miles, newer, $1,000 cheaper & drove a lot better. We offered on the spot & got it for $500 under asking price.

It has a base for a mattress to rest on for our bed & we can slide boxes under for storage. Other than that, it's just a van, we will be doing some serious shopping to get this thing liveable for the long journey ahead!

We transferred the money from the UK in a very round-a-bout way (thanks Jo!), then just had to wait for it to clear before we could collect it.

Friday 21st December

Helen took us out shopping today to kit out our van. They have already donated a ton of camping gear to get us started but we needed, a bed, bedding, storage, music & lots of other bits. We managed to get most of what we needed for less than $100 so we couldn't be happier. The van is going to be cosy, clean & the contents will be new which is great. We took Helen for lunch to say thanks & sorted a sim card out so we can contact people if we need to when we venture across the voids between cities.

As Nick was finishing work today for the Xmas break, we decided to celebrate with a night out in Bunbury. We hopped in a taxi & stopped in at Nick's office to watch the news being recorded & broadcasted live to the entire state. A really cool thing to see as it's not done like that by many TV stations in the world any more. We got to see Nick's own private ocean view office which made us wonder how he actually did any work! Stunning views.

We walked the rest of the way into town & that's where it got seriously messy.....fights, police, Scotsmen, queue jumpers, kebabs & lots of Guinness are all I can remember.

Saturday 22nd December

I woke up in my own bed, next to my wife, so none of the above could have affected me/us directly!!

We sat on the terrace having breakfast discussing the previous nights events with Nick & things gradually became clearer....including my head which was good as the drive to collect the van today is a fairly long one. The money had cleared & the van was ours to take!

Nick took us down at 11am, we filled out the paper work & off we went with our new home on wheels for the next month or so. The lady that sold it to us, filled it with fuel & ran it through the car wash. Imagine that happening in the UK. People still wonder why we like it better here...

Freedom!! We did a bit of a recky around town, picked up some grog, food, camping gear & generally loved being able to go where we wanted to go, when we wanted to go. 3 months without independence is too long.

Nick cooked his now famous Nando's BBQ chicken wraps, which were the finest wraps I've ever had. I'll attempt to re-create those when I have my own kitchen & a job so I can afford the ingredients!

Sunday 23rd December

Today we used part of our early Xmas present from Nick & Helen. We had 2 passes to the Busselton Jetty Underwater Observatory & lunch at the Equinox Cafe.

The jetty seems endless, 1.7km, the second longest in the World after Southend! Luckily there was a train to take us to the Observatory which is right at the end!

The Observatory was very well designed, built over 4 levels so that you get different views & perspectives depending on the tide level. It was a very informative tour & well worth a look.

We decided to walk back to the shore, getting some rays & burning some calories in preparation for the imminent lunch. The cafe had just introduced a new menu that day apparently - which was of no consequence to us as we didn't know what to expect anyway. I went for the obvious - burger & chips, Carly went for fish & chips as we were by the sea! The meals were enormous & very tasty, the views were great & we enjoyed the whole experience.

We picked up some Xmas presents for Nick & Helen on the way home & tried to use our dolphin experience voucher, the other part of our present. They were just closing & said to come back in the morning for the best chance of seeing dolphins.

Helen cooked us some Singapore noodles & steak for dinner, which was superb.

Monday 24th December

We set off to the Dolphin Discovery Centre for 8am & 3 of the dolphins were darting around & inspecting the few spectators that were there to see them. It was ace. Compared to Monkey Mia (we went 4 years ago), this was a far better experience & less tourists so you could get very close to the dolphins & actually get some decent photos.

A day of shopping for Xmas day groceries & booze followed before our afternoon of tie-dye t-shirt making that Helen had arranged for us. She does it as a hobby on occasion & let us use all her equipment & even provided the clothing.

It was genius, I thought it would be a disaster but all our efforts were good & we now have Australian Xmas jumper equivalents!!!

On the evening we got a bit tipsy on cocktails & beer ready for XMAS DAY!!!!!!

Tuesday 25th December

Merry Xmas everybody!!! We woke up this morning & headed straight for the kitchen, we were on breakfast duty. Eggs Benedict was our meal of choice, with a homemade hollandaise sauce. Not to brag but it was incredible!

With our tummies full, we set off to the beach for a swim & sunbake. It was scorching hot today, even at 10am we were up in the 30's. We managed an hour of riding waves & drying off before the heat got too much, you can feel your skin cooking.

Back at the house we exchanged presents & opened the gifts sent over from the UK (thank you guys), put some films on & Helen started the roast dinner. Gotta love air-con in the house because roasts would be impossible without it!

Lunch was incredible when it arrived, we had turkey & stuffing with all the trimmings, including the biggest sprouts you will ever see. We spent most of yesterday trying to buy sprouts so their sheer size represented our efforts quite nicely!

More films, Margarita's, ciders, beers & lots of Skyping back home saw us into the evening. It was a great Xmas day, another sunny celebration for the memory bank & hopefully the 2nd of many, plus we got to see our families. Happy days.

Wednesday 26th December

Nick cooked a full English for brekkie & told us about a place called Gnomesville on the edge of Bunbury. We decided we would check it out as it's our last chance to explore this region before we head off on our camping trip tomorrow.

Assuming there will be a petrol station on the way to anywhere is a huge mistake over here & I can't believe that we got that relaxed considering we've done all this before. The fuel tank drained more quickly than expected & suddenly the trip became stressful. Thank God for TomTom on this occasion. I was driving extra slow as only Captain Slow can & losing my temper at everything because I thought we might get stranded!!

We eventually made it to Gnomesville as it was on the way to the nearest petrol station - our destination had changed from tourist attraction to petrol. The place is plain weird but amazing at the same time. As we approached, we could see the attraction from a distance - thousands of garden gnomes littered the forest on the road side, stretching for hundreds of metres. We took a closer look on foot & soon realised that these weren't just gnomes, lots of them were custom made with messages & names on. A lot of effort had gone into this by thousands of people all over the world, it's amazing - pick this place up & put it in Ashton Court & you've got a whole pile of broken porcelain but here it's respected & untouched. Check our photos to see the craziness!

We carried on at a modest pace until we reached the petrol station, we weren't close to running out after all, the needle was playing tricks! All the same, it was good to have a full tank again.

On the way back home we stopped at the local beach, it was gorgeous today; clear, calm turquoise water & as always the sun was blazing. We swam for an hour & went home for some shade & air conditioning!

In the evening we headed to the Speedway track - Nick had arranged a corporate box through his work for the 4 of us to watch the sprint cars championship, with all food & drink included. It was awesome, 60 beers & 2 platters of food between 4 - they catered for 10 but 6 people flaked. It was great to have the best view, seats & a toilet in the box, saved us moving which meant more time eating & drinking!

The races themselves were great entertainment, seriously high speed stuff with a lot of contact & several big crashes. A few ambulances rolled in & out sad to say but they all escaped without serious injury according to the MC. We each chose a car for each race so that we had someone to cheer on but they'd either finish last or crash more often than not!

Sorry for the massive blog, we won't be offended if you don't read it all, it's been a while. Our next one won't be for some time as we are on the road with no WiFi or services. Free camping all the way, with the ocean as our shower!!!

We hope you all had a great Xmas & have a wonderful New Year, whatever you get up to.

Loads of love from us both. xxx

Modes of Transport so far - 4 planes, 3 Taxis, 11 Tuk Tuks, 6 VIP Bus, 3 shared taxis, 6 minivans, 3 speed boat, 2 slow boats, 5 ferries, 3 pickup trucks, 6 sleeper bus, 1 kayak, 1 moto

Countries Visited - Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Australia

Beers Sampled - Chang, Tiger, Leo, BeerLao, Namkhong, Angkor, Anchor, Klang, Green Saigon, Red Saigon, 333, Larue, Caroune, Hanoi, Singha, Acha, VB & Tooheys Extra Dry

Miles Travelled - 14,943