Hello again everyone!! At last, im back in civilisation!! As usual I've been busy in the last couple of weeks since I last wrote on here, but I've been in the outback of late, and while it was fun its good to see people and civilised society again! Let me first just say that Ive finally put up photos! They span from our first entry to Malaysia on the night ferry to pictures we took of karaoke last night! So give em a look! Anyway, I think the last I left it with you guys was pretty much that I'd made it to Perth, the capital city of Western Australia. I didnt do a great deal in Perth, its just a nice but quiet city, but somehow i spent 2 weeks there! I was getting used to Australia and i found myself in one of those 'go out and drink then spend the next day hung over till u drink again' cycles which are hard to get out of. But Sam and I did go to Freemantle for a night, a suburb of Perth. Its there that we saw a bit of history of the area in the form of Freemantle prison. This is where the Brits sent the early convicts and detained the Aboriginal people who caused them trouble. It was really interesting, and the layout of the prison reminded me very much of the one in the Shawshank Redemption. It was often the case that the British would arrive and kill or take much of the cattle and kangaroos etc in the area. This left the Aboriginals without any animals of their own, forcing them to steal the British cattle. This is what saw a lot of the Aboriginal population incarcerated in Freemantle prison. Good old western imperialism eh. The day after Freemantle we went to Rottnest island for the day. The island has a large population of Quokkas (see photos) which look a little bit like big rats. Hence when the first dutch explorers returned from the island they named it Rottnest, or Rats nest. Other than those 2 excursions from Perth, the rest was mainly spent socialising and frequenting bars! Perth is strange in that it has high rise buildings and yet its really really quiet. The roads are often empty, which puzzled me in such a modern built up urban area. A welcomed change from the nausiating traffic and crowds of Hanoi, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur perhaps. So after 2 weeks I decided it was time to move onwards and, geographically, upwards. Or North as its sometimes known. As u no doubt know its coming up to winter in the southern hemisphere, though u wouldnt know it from the cloudless skies of Perth. I wasnt sure whether to go north or east, but one day it rained and i thought 'sod this, i get enough rain in England, im going North'. And here I am! It has been an eventful and interesting 12 days or so that its taken to get up here though. Here being Broome on the North West coast, by the way. I paid for a tour which covers the 3,500 km trip from Perth to Broome, stopping along the way at various towns and villages. The first couple of days passed without much of note (apart from abseling forwards down a 25 metre gorge!), but it was our drivers last tour, and on the way to Denham he was brilliantly pranked. As we drove across the immense nothingness that is outback Australia, we came across a biker waving at us. He appeared to have a flat tyre, and when our Enzo our driver got out to help him, 5 or 6 guys in masks ran out from the bush and grabbed him! They tied up his hands and feet and pelted him with raw eggs!! Rather than appear concerned or panicked, our bus load of travellers all reached for our cameras to photograph the hilarious scene! Enzo was bundled into a van, and another man (who we later found out owned the hostel we were to stay at) drove us to Denham! Denham was again a quiet town with not much to do. On the first night we had a big night to congratulate Enzo on his last tour. Enzo had showered for 45 mins but still had dried egg yoke stuck to his ear! This big night involved driving us out to the bush and the setting up a camp fire and drinking. There was also a hot tub there, with water pumped in naturally heated by the earths core; pretty cool. The next night we has a quiet one and we watched woolf creek. For anyone who doesnt know, its about a crazed man in outback australia who tortured and kills backpackers, and is partly based on a true story!! Some of the girls couldnt watch! After Denham was coral bay where we stayed for a couple of days. I did a couple of scuba dives here and went snorkelling too. Saw some stingrays and a 1.5 metre long reef shark! Pretty cool! There was a wedding while we were in Coral bay, and the population of the village is only about 200, so everyone turned up to celebrate. We turned up for a quiet drink but ended up leaving after being shouted at by the bride!! One of the girls in our group had nicked a piece of the wedding cake! Pretty cheeky i know, but ud have thought the bride might have had other things to think about that day!! From Coral Bay to Broome we then came straight here, stopping only for for nights along the way. We got a really cool driver for the last few days of the journey who made it a lot more fun. At one point we all put money in a hat and guessed how many bouncing kangaroos we'd see in a certain stretch of road! It came up to 25 in the end, they were everywhere! He also took to calling me craig david, and i played up to it to humour him on a number of occassions. This kinda backfired yesterday though, cos he insisted on getting me and this other girl to do a duet! We sat on the coach and did our own version of Craig Davids 7 days, replacing the days with things we;d done on our tour! It was brilliantly awful, but helped us pass time on the bus and turned out to be pretty funny! Then last night the whole bus went out for a drink or 7 and went to a Karaoke bar. The night ended with us all hugging trees on our way back home, instigated by the fun but crazy Bart, our driver. So thats it i think! Im here in Broome for a week before flying to Darwin on june 5th. Broome's pretty cool, its hot and by the beach, with enough to do at night to keep u entertained. Some strange locals though, our first introduction to them was as we entered the town and saw an Aboriginal man sitting down in the middle of the road for no apparent reason! So thats all for now! Take care, keep posting on the message board and ill speak to u all soon!