Hi folks, It feels like a lot longer than a month since we were with Benny-boy in NZ but the time has flown by as well. On leaving the homely country of New Zealand we visited Tony and Ainsley in Melbourne and had a cross country adventure with them, before heading on to the organised chaos that is small-kiddie-cousins with Michele and Daminder. Hugo was a star and amazed us with his car ID skills, Priya cute and amazed us with her vocal chords! Then onwards to Adelaide to organise our lives with U.Tony and Brett. Another fantastic flight in Tony's Cessna took us to Port Lincoln where we had drinks on a millionaire's yacht and lunch before flying home again. We then hired our campervan and tootled off into the sunset. We spent 20 days rummaging our way around the outback, and covered 4500km + in getting from Adelaide to Perth in the most roundabout manner possible. Across the Nullabor Plain we saw a whole lot of nothing right up until we got to the West Australian border (where the border control man stole my Kangaroo Island honey!! boo hiss....I was not impressed, Pete had to forcibly restrain me at times!). As soon as we got into WA the most obvious difference between the 2 states was the sudden appearance of dead roos. They appeared in various states of decomposition (and odour - don't get me started here), every 2-3 metres for miles and miles. Now either WA has a mass suicidal kangaroo population - a problem that it really needs to look into, councilling and anger management courses might be recommended at this point - or it is relying on a tiny dingo population to do the clean up job for it. We saw 4 dingos in the whole of WA and literally thousands of dead roos, so they'll get fat trying. It took about 3 days to drive across the actual Nullabor itself. 3 days of driving and seeing the same view. This was an experience in itself. Luckily it was not too hot, otherwise it may have felt a bit like torture. Finally we arrived down at the coastal resort of Esperance. One of the most beautiful places we a have stayed. The beaches were white and endless and granite islands rose from a blue sea. After 3 days on the Nullabor it was bliss to swim in the sea again and a great place for Janet to spend her birthday. From then on we hit the densely populated beach areas on the south coast of Western Australia, at times there were as many as 2 other people on our beach of choice. I felt so hemmed in! Goodness only knows what it's going to be like in China, I think we're going to get a bit of a shock to the old system. The SW landscape of Oz is dominated by ancient forests of the most massive trees. We were able to walk in the canopies of these trees at the tree top reserve where Janet was very brave overcoming her fear of heights and walking the route 40m up in the trees. Further on I had a chance to climb one of the old fire lookout trees. I had presumed it would be all ropes and safety harnesses, but oh no, i had to climb on my own, no ropes, up the tree on the original metal spikes that they used in its former lookout days. 2 attempts that evening saw me only get half way up. It felt decidedly unsafe compared to rock climbing and i was gripped by fear both times. So after a bad nights sleep overcoming the demons, i woke at 6.30 and walked straight up to the tree and climbed the 60m to the top without having the chance to think about it. The view was amazing, overlooking miles of tree-tops,with hundreds of parrots screeching in my ears. Nearing Perth in a town called Rockingham we met a lovely man called Carl, who's son is a permanent traveller type and who wanted to repay the hospitality given to his son over the years by feeding us pizza and putting us on a red wine drip for the evening. Who were we to say no? He had just returned from Beijing (to be our first port of call in China) and couldn't get over the extreme number of people all living on top of each other. I think our personal space is going to be a thing of the past. We have just finished reading Paul Theroux's 'Riding the Iron Rooster' all about riding the trains through China - our current plan - and it seems to confirm that we're not going to be able to blink without everybody in sight peering over to find out what colour our eyes are. In Perth we were able to see the brilliant aquarium where we saw all the sharks up close and personal that we probably swam with in the previous 3 weeks. An absolute must-do in Perth is a visit to the museum to search for Megamouth, a type of basking shark and one of the ugliest, meanest looking creatures on earth. Only 9 of these beasts have ever been found. A few days of preparing for China and eating nice food in resaurants saw us flying off to Hong Kong. Perth felt busy, but now we are in Hong Kong we realise that Australian cities are very small and quiet indeed. xxxxx J and P