To finish up our Aussie experience, we backtracked it to WA to stay with Doris and India in the seaside city of Fremantle or Freo to her now she's a local. Lovely old place, lots of character and a lovely local brew called Little Creatures. Tasty.

Dor's got herself sorted with a 'character home' and we spent hours on her front porch area talking crap and breathing in incense sticks while she watered her plants. Very Freo. I put in the Godmother hours with darling India Rose who still sounds as English as she did when she left. It gave me an excuse to catch up on Roald Dahl and the Mr Men as well.

Now for the last few weeks all the radio DJs have talked about is Australia Day. And on 26 January, it arrived - just as all those convicts did back in the day. And from an outsider's point of view, it seems to be celebrated by doing all things Australian - i.e. not working, driving around in utes, waving flags, putting meat on the barbie and drinking. Er, isn't that like everyday then? We packed the day in celebrating with my cousin Bec and her boyfriend Stu (who used to live in Perth but now live in NZ), Dor and her friend Cesca and the Phez and his fiance Bec (who live to the north of Perth). Not a bad little get-together for a pair of nomads.

Spent some more time with Phez at his and Bec's flash pad (thanks guys for the meat feast), had a wander around the little city that is Perth and then hired a car for a few days to cram in as much of WA as we could. Which basically meant we went about a millimetre on the map. Ant loved the west coast when he travelled here 8 years ago so we started with a trip over to Rottnest Island - so called for the giant rat/mini roo creatures that inhabit it. Went on an epic cycle around the island battling with the wind as we went. Perhaps it wasn't such a good idea to go with the cheaper single speed bikes...

We then headed 'down south' to the vineyard territory of Margaret River, gorgeous empty beaches and amazing coastal walks. Beautiful country down there. Ended up in Pemberton and on down to the Valley of Giants - home of big trees. And I mean BIG. Some nutter years ago decided it would be fun to stick loads of metal spikes up the biggest of these to allow other nutters to climb to the tops. And years later, we were 2 of those nutters. We arrived at The Gloucester Tree and before he could change his mind, Ant started up the first of its 60 metres. Feeling the pressure, I followed a short while later. Don't look down don't look down was all I kept saying (amongst the odd what the 'f' am I doing, oh 'f', 'f', 'f'). I was a shaking wreck by the time I got to the tiny platform at the top and I only just composed myself before realising I had to do it all again to get down. And I'd forgotten that you have to look down to find the next spike in order to actually get down. More 'f's' followed. And speaking of 'f's' - thanks to the Fat man for deciding to start coming up whilst I was coming down.