Perh to Exmouth 9th - 15th Jan 09

I was picked up from Billabong hostel at 7.00am Friday morning to start my trip to Exmouth with Western xposure.

The mini bus dropped me off at the coach station where I caught my bus and started my awesome trip.

Our tour guide was a great guy called Phil Collins, who was a cool, but a bit of a party boy. The tour was to explore the Southwest coast of Australia. It covered a lot of miles in the seven days but it was really great fun. The first day we drove North to Nambung National park to see the Pinnacles. These are thousands of limestone pillars which rise mysteriously from the dune sands and look very eerie. Then we drove to some amazing sand dunes to go sand boarding, this was fun, but very hard to climb up the hills. Its was quite windy and we were all covered in Sand. My first run down was great, I went all the way down without falling off the board...must have been beginners luck, because on my second run, I fell off twice, but still really enjoyed it. We then travelled to our first nights accommodation which was a hostel with dorms, where the seven girls stayed in one dorm and the eight guys in another. We all helped unload the equipment off our bus, before helping to cook dinner( which was a nice chicken stir fry). Most of us sat around having a few drinks after dinner chatting and getting to know one another, before we went off to bed.

Every day we stopped off at a bottle shop, to buy some drink, because in Aussie that is the only place where you can buy alcohol.

Our second day we headed off to Murchison River Gorge at Kalbarri, we set off early again, 7am so that we didn't have to hike in the Gorge in the heat of the day. We also had the chance to abseil down the rock face, which of course I did and really enjoyed. Later that day we arrived at Monkey Mia, where we had a BBQ.

Monkey Mia is a world famous for its Dolphins. After dinner we sat on the great beach and had quite a few drinks, played a few drinking games before having a midnight swim. While we were in the water swimming dolphins came right up to us, it was fantastic. I managed to stay up until 4.30 before I went off to bed, where I had been locked out of the girls dorm and it took me 5Min's to wake Marina up to get into the room.

Most of us got up to see the Dolphins being fed at 7.30. At Monkey Mia there is a special programme where they are doing research on the Dolphins and usually twice a day and occasionally they feed them three times a day. Only three of the female dolphins are feed and this is the same ones always. Members of the public are chosen to help feed them, but unfortunately I wasn't one of the lucky ones. Although Thomas( a German from our group) was.We had a relaxing morning on the beach then a nice BBQ lunch before our long drive to coral Bay.I was chosen to be the new Co-driver on the bus, whose job was to keep the driver awake and alert. Jonny was the first co-pilot, but slept most of the time, so wasn't very good and as Phil had been up all night partying we wanted someone next to the driver who would stay awake. I managed to do a good job and occasionally had to squirt Phil with cold water to keep him wake.

We stayed in a nice hostel which had a Table Tennis table where we played a few games and I luckily ended up as the champion.

We had a yummy breakfast of pancakes, before we all chose what we wanted to do for our free day. There was quad biking, a glass bottom boat trip, a days boat trip with snorkeling or chilling by the pool. Ten of us went on the days boat trip with snorkeling including me. It was amazing, the amount of fish and Turtles we saw. The only bad thing was the weather, it was 50c....way to hot...and our 5 young Scottish lads all ended up with sun burn. We were suppose to be back from our boat trip at 3.30pm, but got back about an hour late, then it was straight back on the bus and headed off to Exmouth, where we spent the next two nights.We had fish and chips from a restaurant for dinner, which was nice.

Yet again an early start 7.30 to first go and see an old lighthouse and an information centre, before visiting Coral bay, which is a stunningly beautiful beach. We stayed here about four hours to relax, swim and snorkel. The snorkeling was great, lots of beautiful green blue and purple coral, Turtles swimming around, a Shark and lots of fish. We all headed back to our hostel, where Aya ( a Japanese girl) and I had to pick up our passports and head straight off to go scuba diving. We booked the dive the day before, it was expensive, but one of the top ten shore dives from land. The dive was really amazing with white tipped nose sharks swimming under me,really large cod and lots of other fish. My dive was slightly spoilt by having a leaky mask, I should have checked it properly before i dived. By the time we were dropped back to the hostel it was just a quick shower before dinner which was spaghetti Bologna's cooked by Stefano(who was an Italian guy on the trip). It was delicious. After a few drinks we all went off to bed.

We set off the next morning at 6am,as we had a long day of travelling ahead,we were starting to head back to Perth,where we travelled all day and stayed at Northbrook Farm stay. This was a nice place with a pool, where most of us had a nice swim before dinner. Our dinner was cooked by the farmer(whose name i have forgotten) but the food was good,Kangaroo stew, veg table curry or a sea food dish and rice. I tried them all and they were all very tasty.

We had the opportunity to sleep out under the star in swags, it was a beautiful night with lots of stars shinning, but only the four Scottish lads did. the rest of us went to our beds,hopefully away from all the Aussie creepy crawlies.

We left the farm at 7.30 and set off to the Hut River Provence,this is the only Provence in Australia. We then drove on to Greenough Wildlife Park, where we look and feed some animals. We also got the chance to hold some small snakes and I actually held one and it was OK, but I didn't want to put it around my neck.

We stopped for a picnic lunch by the beach and all had some Birthday cake as it was Kevin's 23rd Birthday.Then it was back on the bus to travel back to Perth.

All in all I had an absolutely wonderful week....