D-day had finally arrived. It was time for us to pick up the camper. We were all up bright and early to check out and to take our taxi ride to the camper pick up place. there were all sorts of campers there...but I don't think we prepared ourselves enough for the size of the thing we would be driving! It was huge, like a tank in fact! When I saw it all that went through my mind was 'how the bloody hell am I going to be able to drive that thing?' I held back on volunteering to drive first, Justine stepped up to the plate! First we had to watch Curly attempt and fail to drive it out of the parking space! She must have lasted 6 seconds before the guy started shouting 'Stop!' as she was about to hit, not one...but two vehicles! Luckily Steve was there to lend us a hand! He came to the rescue. After seeing curlys failed attempt we offered Steve to join us on our travels, well to be our driver. He laughed...I don't think he believed we were being serious!

Justine set us off on our journey. First stop...Coles! A food and more importantly, alcohol stop! We'd all decided to have a camper kitty, which meant we had $600 to spend for our first week on the road! With that much money food shopping was actually fun! We did have a shopping list but that went out the window! As soon as we hit the aisles it was like supermarket sweep...everyone split to get what they fancied.

Two trolleys full, 6 boxes of goon, 2 crates of cider and a crate of beer later we were done. Walking back to the camper with our goodies we tried to come up with names for the camper. It's so big we were coming up with names like big mama, and big berta oh and big bird...for some reason we had a big black woman image in our heads or a big yellow bird haha. But we have yet to agree on a name!  I'll keep you updated! J'sLS is the cool name for it but curly wanted curly and the J's featuring Liam! What is that name all about? Its a bit of a mouthful! Haha.

Still pondering over names the drive began. Margaret river was the first stop on our list. We were taking a detour south to visit some winery's and some forests. There were a few fag breaks and a driver change so Joe could drive and we played monopoly deal over and over again until we finally got there. It was too dark to go an explore so we found a campsite and set camp for the night.  We cooked our first meal and chilled for the evening.

Curly's turn came drive in the morning as we set off to see a forest somewhere. She was Maverick and I was goose her co-pilot/navigator! I guided us safely to
The Boranup karri forests where we parked up and took a stroll. Apparently this was supposed to be a beautiful forest but I have to admit it wasn't the greatest. Most trees had fallen and it just looked messy not pretty!  Justine, Joe and Liam walked ahead, they were speeding through. Me, curly and Janis had huge sticks for walking sticks and strolled on behind. It got pretty boring so curly and me decided to have a fake sword fight with our walking sticks to amuse us. It was like a scene from Game of Thrones. By the time we'd finished the other guys ha made their way back to us and we made our way back to the camper. Thank god, the sounds in the forest were starting to freak me out!

The next intention was to go and look at a cave but as soon as we go there we changed our minds and went to Edwards wineary for some wine tasting instead! But as I'm co-pilot I chose not to drink...I know! that's the only time you'll ver hear me turn down free alcohol! At the winery we made some friends with an ugly alpaca and an extremely fat sheep...they must have been the goonies in their families so just shoved together in this field to be kept away! Bless them!  We also made a stop at cheeky monkey brewery and cidery hoping there were cider tastings there (again not for me) unfortunately there wasn't so we continued on our journey!

There was Simmo's icecremery On the way north so of course we made a stop for some delicious Ice cream. We were going to play some goofy crazy golf as well but the course wasn't crazy enough for us! There were no hills or windmills or even real water, just patches of blue material acting as water! What kind of crazy golf was this? They had some funny signs around though which entertained us: 'children left unattended will be fed espresso and given a puppy!' it made me laugh.

We were slowly running out of fuel and needed to find a petrol station fast! Lukily as we continued driving we finally found one, along with a Kmart. Jackpot! The only problem was that the petrol station and car parks around it were small and were only designed for cars I think...well they definately weren't designed for the bloody thing we were driving. Justine volunteered to drive it but I think she regretted that as soon as some woman took her space. That resulted in her having to drive around the tiny car park shouting at all the little cars, because they could easily manoeuvre their way around. She almost hit The KFC colonel sign on her way back into the petrol station. When she got back in there for the second time some other car drive right into the space. Round again we went stopping at K-mart first for a break where Justine parked across five parking spaces. Back in the Monster to go for round 3. This time she approached it differently...she parked on the road opposite, blocking 3 parked cars and building a queue behind but she didn't care and just said 'they'll have to wait!' haha. She then told Curly to get out and stand in the spot to guard it and that's how we finally got our petrol! Woooo! Thank god I'd filmed it all though it was hysterical!

I took over from driving after the little incident. I hadn't driven the thing before and I'd chosen to take over at night. A bit silly really but ah well. It wasn't actually that bad...when you're driving you forget the size if the thing.

We drove a bit further and tried to find a rest area to pull up for the night. We passed so many parking lay-bys but not ones we could stay at, as they were right on the motorway. The places we could actually stay we kept bloody missing because they were on the right hand side! And the signs didn't give us enough notice to change lanes. Not cool!

We eventually came to a circular parking area and just said f*** it well stay here, and camped up for the night!

Me and liam volunteered to cook dinner. We made lemon chicken and all sat on our camper chairs outside in this little parking area to eat. There were a few drinks as well.  

The stars were beautiful where we were parked. You could literally see the milky way it was incredible. Everything was so clear. It was the most beautiful I'd ever seen the stars in my life. I sat outside most of the night star gazing before bed time.

Off we go. We were finally heading North. My shift continued driving and we drove and drove for miles passing through Perth again. Perth skyline is pitiful it must be said! Poor effort! Its nothing compared to New York!

An hour or so later Justine thought she saw a sign for the leaning tower of gin gin so us girls decided to take a detour without saying anything. We went for miles and miles...the sign lead us to believe  it was just around the corner! Was it hell. There was nothing around at all just baron land! And areas where massive forest fires had been. It was strange because the roads had so many signs saying beware of kids...there's no bloody kids around. There's not even houses so why would there be kids? We finally got to Gin Gin where, unfortunately there was no leaning tower, but there was a beautiful little village which had a mill and a little park. It was adorable. We had apparently passed the leaning time miles before, I didn't see it though there were barely any buildings let alone towers. There were no buildings bigger than a tree around.

I continued to drive to our next stop, Lancelin, where we would give sand boarding a go. The roads all the way there were awesome to drive they were just long and bendy with no other cars in sight! It was sooooo much fun. It was only 45minutes away from Gin Gin so we were there in no time and we stopped to rent sone sand boards before heading to the dunes.

The dunes were awesome, it was just hills of sand that went for miles. Plus we were the only ones there which made it even better. It looked like a fresh layer of snow that was untouched! Curly described it like being on the moon...I'm not sure she's ever been there to make that comparison...haha.

Sand boarding is fun...when you're going down the hill but climbing back up...with the board is just a nightmare. They definately need some sort of lift to get you back to the top.  Because after a few goes on the board you're exhausted. When you eventually get back to the top you don't want another go because you know you have to climb again.  We lasted just over an hour I'd say...we were pretty drained and covered in sand. A camp site stop was definately needed for showers!

It was Liams turn to drive us out of the dunes with Janis as navigator. It was going to be and interesting journey as Liam hasn't driven in 6 years.

It started ok...with a stall of the vehicle. We were expecting it though...it's understandable after not being behind the wheel for so long.  On his second attempt he'd forgotten to put the handbreak down so once it was down we were off. But not where we wanted to go. We swung around pretty quickly and straight into a sand dune! What was even worse Janis the navigator said absolutely nothing as if going into  a sand dune was the correct way. We were stuck in the sand, the more he tried to reverse the deeper the hole got. Haha. Justine soon took charge and bailed us out with a little help from a man pushing the van. We were free again! She got us back onto the road then Liam took back the wheel, he got the hang of it pretty quickly and we were on route again. It was a Coastal route so we got to see the sun setting over the sea. Beautiful!

It was getting dark so we decided it was time for us to set up camp...at a campsite tonight though we needed a shower we'd pretty much brought the sand back to the camper with us.

Day 4 had arrived and we'd planned to see the Pinnacles. It wasn't too far away so we packed up and made our way there with Justine as driver. We parked up and locked up the van, to then realise we'd actually locked the keys inside. So far everyday there's been one big disaster. The van is pretty secure, the only way we could think of getting in was through the tiny little hatch on the roof. Liam climbed up to try and open the hatch while I tried picking the lock with a hair grip. Now why I thought I could do this I don't know...maybe because I'd seen it being done on TV many times. Let me tell you it's not as easy as it looks. I failed miserably! Our only hope was Liam. He was trying hard not to break the roof hatch as the roof is the only thing we are not covered for by insurance. Typical that ain't  it. We could have called 'Apollo' to bring us a spare set if keys out but typically the number we needed was on the keys. Well about 15 minutes later he'd opened it so Justine climbed on up to get through the little hatch. We'd succeeded on breaking into our own van! Brilliant!

The keys were back in our hands and we could finally venture off and see the Pinnacles. They're pretty strange to see to be honest. There's just hundreds and hundreds of rock formations going for miles in a dessert. It would a brilliant place to play hide and seek or have a game of paintballing. We would definately need boundaries though or the game of hide and seek would never finish. After about an hour it got pretty boring just seeing rock after rock so us girls tried making our way back to the van, Janis went for a run chasing kangaroos and Joe and Liam went for a walk. We got a little lost on the walk back, it was a silly idea not to follow the road tracks to be honest. We did eventually find it though. Janis had made it back before us...he must have been sprinting back. We were chilling for a good 20 minutes before Liam and Joe got back. They said they just went for a wander but I think they got lost as well but just didn't want to admit it.

We continued North on our journey to the little town of  Geralton. It's a lovely little seaside town. It looked quite posh in the day time we walked passed a huge police station and Justine said 'I'm not sure too much crime goes on around here.' We thought it would be nice to stay the night here on the sea front so we went and bought some BBQ stuff and had a BBQ on the beach watching the sun set. It was beautiful and quite chilled until some gobby little Abos walked over to us and trued steal out stuff'...such pikeys! They were only about 16 chatting s*** about them being old enough to drink alcohol. They were annoying. Well we managed to get rid of them, for a little while at least. In the meantime Janis, Justine, curly and me sat seagull watching, this doesn't sound that amusing but honestly it was brilliant. There was one seagull (we called Freddie) walking around patrolling his turf. I any orger seagull came close to the grass area he was at the ready to shoo them away. He was not having anyone hang around on his turf, especially when there was food involved. He actually did a pretty good job scaring the other seagulls away, there were 7 to start with and he was the only one left at the end. He did have trouble with one, who was trying to push the boundaries but Freddie sorted it.

After some lovely food the return of the idiot Abos came. Over they strolled mouthin off at us...one started flicking justines hair which was pissing her off massively. When she stood up they all ran away except this massive girl who probably would have taken us all out lookong at the size of her. She was a monster, mouthing off just asking for a slap which Justine almost gave her. She sat back down instead and as soon as Curly threatened to call the police they fled the scene. We now see why a police station is needed!

We soon moved the van and drove on towards the town of Northampton. We drove on for a good few miles until we stumbled across a rest area where we pulled up for the night. The stars were even more amazing here, I can't even describe how clear they were and they were only going to get better going North!

Well so much has happened in such little time and we've still got so much to go, so here's my little update or the time being. Enjoy!

Too be continued...

Mwah
J.L xxx