Western Australia 15/03/08 - 29/03/08There are a few ways of doing this trip, you can do a hop on - hop off bus ride up the coast, or an organized tour where all of you accommodation etc is sorted out for you… or you could just fly straight to Broome and miss out everything inbetween.As we wanted to see the places inbetween, flying didn't seem like a very good option and as we don't like being told when and what to do we ended up hiring a car.This was a few hundred dollars cheaper each, but to avoid a huge relocation fee did mean we had to drive back to Perth, although as flights out of Perth were cheaper this wasn't such a bad thing.The drive was around 6600klms (which by my reckoning is just under 5000 miles) and I did all of it so we could avoid additional driver costs… although in hindsight it might have been nice to share some of the at times 12hr p/day drives on the most boring roads ever created.We could literally go for hundreds of kilometers with nothing…. It's crazy!!!!Some days we wouldn't even see one other car… which makes you worry about what would happen if you broke down… especially seeing as we didn't have phone reception for pretty much the whole trip.Another downside was that neither of us have any cd's with us and there was no radio reception for a lot of the journey too... which meant that Mel had to put up with a lot of out of tune singing from me and basically means that we are now both officially insane from cabin (should that be car?) fever!At one point we finally got radio reception just as YMCA came on and Mel had to remind me to keep my hands on the wheel when it got to the chorus… I've never been so excited!The drive was so dull that we started to pay close attention to the roadkill… emus, cows, kangaroos and wallaby's, etc… It's really weird but at a certain stage after death cow's begin to inflate and sort of look like weird fat grounded balloons… we're not sure why, but it looks very strange and we did wonder what would happen if one of them popped when we were on our way past.We also saw a decapitated kangaroo whose head was on one side of the road and his body the other (luckily I was able to drive in the middle of him so I didn't cause any further damage!).I was very lucky to avoid killing anything myself… as between a big roo and our tiny compact car I think we'd have come off worst! …Although I did nearly avenge Rod Hull's death on several occasions when emus ran out in front of me…Another thing that we noticed was that when people talk about the bush… that's exactly what they mean… it's just masses of dry desert land with bushes on it… weird!We had a good time on the trip and there are some really nice places between Perth and Broome (coral bay, the dolphin's in Monkey Mia), but in all honesty even these places weren't worth the drive and I wouldn't recommend the trip to anyone else.It would have been easier to do an organized trip as you could sleep on the bus… but even then they are really expensive and still not worth the hassle.Anyway, I've written a bit about each place below… happy reading!Nambung National Park (The Pinnacles)You can actually do this as a day trip from Perth and it would be well worth it.The Pinnacles are natural sand/rock formations which are like pillars coming out of the ground.You get to drive or walk around a sandy track in the desert to view them all and it is like nothing I have ever seen, it's also a completely random bit of landscape in the middle of WA.KalbarriWe drove from the Pinnacles along the 'Surf-side Road' (that really wasn't surfside) and drove through a pretty village called Dongara, stopping at an Irish Bar in Geraldton for some tea.The drive to Kalbarri took longer than expected (although that might be because we got lost just outside of Perth) and the last part was really scary as we had to drive through a national park in the dark.We arrived around 9pm but couldn't check into the YHA we booked as it closes at 8pm (oops!) so ended up at the Lola-Rose guest house, owned by the loveliest couple ever who make THE best breakfast.The following day we visited the pink-lakes (not just a clever name) and the Z-Bend Gorge at Murchison River (very pretty but too many flies and an awful unsealed road for the last 30k or so).Monkey MiaSaw Shell Beach… a beach with shells instead of sand which was surprisingly pretty and we also got to hand-feed wild dolphins on the beach.The locals have been going down to feed them every morning since the 70's (I think it was the 70's) and so now the dolphins come into the bay of their own accord and if you're lucky (like us) you get to feed them a fish or two.Coral BayAbsolutely stunning… such beautiful beaches and turquoise water.Ningaloo reef is so close to the shore that you can just swim a few meters out and then snorkel and even just paddling you can see the shoals of fish.Tiny place though and not a great deal to do if you can't afford all the glass-bottom boat trips, etc.We were there for St Paddy's but weren't allowed alcohol in the hostel so we were like kids again smuggling it in and hiding in our room or going to sit on the beach with a few cold ones.ExmouthEmus everywhere… just walking around the resort! Not very good if you're scared of them like me!The thing to do in Exmouth is swim with the whale-sharks… which I wouldn't have fancied as they grow up to 18ft long…. But we were also out of season for that and we aren't keen golfers there wasn't a great deal else to do.We heard that there was a fun bar in town and finally managed to find it (it's very well hidden!) but it was dead so we gave it a miss and went to hang out with the people at the hostel.Here we learnt the downside of hop off-hop on bus tickets as one girl was stuck there for 9 days until she could next get a place on the bus! …Oh I also got bitten by something while sleeping that made the left side of my face and my right hand swell up ridiculously… so I looked a bit like the elephant man (well, woman!). It's better now though!KarrathaWe only really stopped here because the drive straight to Broome was too far and we'd already been warned it was a bit of a dump.When we arrived the hostel looked a right state and was full of very strange people and drunks, but when we checked in the guy was really lovely (and the drunks were his friends).Plus there was one guy who looked like Saul from hollyoaks (is he Paul Danone?) and was less weird! The people staying were all really friendly so we sat and had a few beers with them while we watched tv.It was very funny, especially when some guy told us he was drinking a certain beer cos it was low carb, then tucked into a big pizza… er herro!There was only one other girl there and I think she was hoping we'd stay a bit longer… she even gave us an easter egg before we left, ahhh!BroomeThe drive to Broome was a beast and as usual there wasn't much along the way.We stopped at Port Hedland/South Hedland on the way and realized why the girl I worked with had told us not to stay there… it wasn't that pretty!We arrived at our hostel in Broome just in time for a couple of drinks.The hostel was more like a resort and was pretty nice but had the worst room layout ever…We were in a 6-bed dorm, but it was really more like a 24 bed dorm as the building was one big room with partitions across the middle that didn't reach the top.We had the worst guys ever in the room diagonal to us who were absolute morons and we had to constantly listen to them.Oh and one night we got to listen to one of them trying to talk some girl into bed, while she told him her whole life story… luckily he didn't get the result he was after!While in Broome we spent quite a bit of time at Cable Beach which is gorgeous with white sand and turquoise water.I got random breathalysed by the police (they're big on that here) and I think they were quite amused by how excited we were about it.We also tried to see the stairway to the moon, a natural phenomenon where the full moon on the mud plains looks like a staircase, but the sky was never clear enough and we went to see the dinosaur footprints.We didn't get to see the Kimberley's as most of the attractions there you need a 4-wheel drive to get to, plus we were a little bit scared about going to wolf creek… aaargh!We decided to take the short route (by which I mean 3 days solid driving!) back to Perth, which meant taking the inland route, which weirdly enough seemed to be a bit more interesting, or maybe just varied, when it came to the scenery…MunjinaWe had planned to stay in some weird asbestos-ridden town with a government health warning and population of 22, but after driving for hours in the middle of the scariest thunderstorm ever… I had no idea if I was even on the road still visibility was that bad… we decided to stop at the nearest place… Munjina.Obviously this involved quite a lot of childish giggling about the name… with lots of ladyboy and borat mankini references, hehehe!The plan here was to stay 2 nights in the area so that we could explore karijini national park, unfortunately the rain foiled our plans (again!) so we decided to carry on, despite the miners that I made friends with (one looked like Ted Theodore Logan of bill and Ted fame!) offering to take us in their truck to Hamersley gorge for a swim.Nallan StationThis was some random place I'd looked up on the internet and yes… it was very random and the scariest place I have ever slept in my life!We got there while it was still light and got warned about the power going off at 10pm and to make sure we had mossie spray on.The accommodation was old sheep-shearers quarters and was basically a big barn with rooms partitioned off down either side, there were around 12 rooms each with 2 beds in and creepy crawlies and spiders everywhere… as you can imagine I was a nervous wreck, but there was nowhere else to stay for miles and the people were lovely so we decided to brave it!Everything was fine while it was still light and we had planned an early night so we didn't have to struggle once the power was out, but once it got dark we were terrified.Not only were we sharing our room with every beastie you can imagine and listening to birds (or something) nesting in the barn, but we suddenly realized that we were in the middle of nowhere as the people who run the place were around a mile away down a dirt track and we were the only guests!Our car was parked outside so the serial killers would all know we were there and the barn and rooms didn't have locks… it was the stuff horror films are made of and to say we were scared doesn't cover it.I think we had about 10 mins sleep all night! HydenThe plan was to head straight back to Perth from Nallan Station, but after missing out on Karijini we decided to head to Hyden as while waiting to get the hire car I'd picked up a leaflet for a thing called Wave Rock which looked pretty cool.The drive was around 12hrs with stops and we arrived about 9pm, which was lucky as that's what time the caravan park we stayed at closed.We also just about had time to go to the bottlo (that's offy to you!) and pick up some well deserved toohey's extra dry.The caravan park was literally at the start of the walks around the rock and stuff so we went to have a look in the morning.The wave is basically a naturally formed rock that looks just like a huge wave… it was really cool.The hippo's yawn (another attraction) a rock that looks like a hippo's mouth was less impressive.We went on all of the walks on offer, which basically involved walking through what looked like a very bare desert but meant that we worked up an appetite for lunch at the Bush Bakehouse!We got back to Perth in time to go to the pub for a few cheeky ones (lemonade for me!) before heading to the airport bound for Sydney…