7th September to 16th September - Darwin to Perth tour with Western Xposure.

7th September.

Started the tour with an early morning again - was supposed to be picked up at 6.30, but our tour guide was a little late picking us up! We had to check in with our guide, Mat, and when I was introducing myself I as usual said - "Hi, my name is Bhavisha, but most people call me Bea." However, Mat heard me say "babe" have no idea how he heard that and from then on to Mat I was known as babe - oh the fun.

After having a bit of a tour of Darwin (we went down the same street 4 times) and then nearly loosing someones bag out of the back of the truck, we headed off to Katherine to Edith Falls again. We did an introduction to the group in which we had to tell a lie - just to make things a little interesting! For the rest of the day, we all were trying to work out what people's lies were. It was a great way for everyone to get talking. After lunch we headed to another thermal spring which was really good fun. Sanna entertained us all by falling over the edge of the falls!

We got to our campsite at Victoria river, just before nightfall and were taught by Mat how to set up camp. We were introduced to all the essentials - Louise and Thelma (the two big torches), Duggie the digger (for the bush toilet), Trevor the trailer (were all our food was kept), our swags (how to use and more importantly how to role them) and most importantly, Tammy - our truck - she's a bit of an old girl so we had to treat her with loving care.

That night we spent some time around the fire just chatting and getting to know the group. I then spent my first night out under the stars and it was very cool!

8th September.

Today we were heading over the boarder to western australia. Before we headed over the boarder we had to ensure that all the food had been eaten - we couldn't take fruit and veg into western oz as they don't want any bugs from other states. We were also going to have a cane toad check on the way in. For those who don't know, Cane toads were introduced to Queensland to kill the cane beetle, however, they have breed out of control and have spread across the country and are killing the wild life of the country and eating everything in site! Great! As we were crossing the boarder - a boarder control officer came on the bus, asking if anyone had any fruit or anything else that isn't allowed into western Oz. Mark (one of the Irish guys) piped up and said "so, what about matter-robin's? are we allowed matter-robin's?" and the officer replied "what's a matter robin" and Mark came back with "nothing batman!". The officer wasn't exactly happy and requested that Mark come off the bus! Don't think that the officer has ever been embarassed by a bus full of tourists before!

The walk for today was a ecarment walk - which is probably one of the hardest walks we did just for the simple fact that it never seemed like it was going to be over! We also visited Lake Argyle - the largest man made lake in Australia.