November/ Dec 2006

After picking up our 4WD and our basic food supplies we hit the open road excited about the adventure ahead!!!...unfortuantely the classic combo of an out of date map and my awesome sense of direction meant that we had to pull into a camping supply store (technially only about 20 mins out of Perth City centre in the suburbs!!!) to ask for directions...and a better map! The guys in the shop gave us loads of useful and encouraging hints like...."watch out that you don't get bitten by the mosquitos up north or you'll end up tired for 2 years", "if you hit a kangaroo it WILL go through the car radiator and it WILL cause $00000's of damage" etc etc...oh and the classic aussie directions - "you just drive in a straight line down the road for 20K's mate and you'll find it no worries"!!!!

After about four hours...and with the sunset fast approaching we decided that we would aim to set up camp in a town north of the swan valley. When driving in rural Western Australia you can only drive during the day as if you drive from dusk onwards you are likely to hit a kangaroo, which is bad news for skippy...and your vehicle!! So as we cruised along with the music playing and bantering about the adventures to come we all heard a load noise .... which turned out to be a flat tyre...classic! We all jumped out and slightly concerned that the sun was setting very fast Carl and Mike set about changing the tyre...the next issue came when we couldn't work out how to actually get the spare tyre out! Luckily a friendly local pulled over in his Ute and helped us out so we hit the road again...it was now dark though!...and I was wishing I'd never watched Wolf Creek!!!

We carefully drove to the next town (I'm using the term 'town' VERY loosely!) and set up camp in the dark near a random field near a 'deserted' gas station and road house. Not the best nights sleep...every noise we heard we assumed was a pack of dingo's...or worse!! We woke up the next morning to find that it acutally wasn't such a scary place and the gas station was now quite busy!!...and they were laughing at us as the guy with the ute had mentioned about the 'group of poms with the flattie' on his way through!!

Deciding it would be best to get an early start we packed up and hit the road....a day of getting lost, bad map reading, lots of 'it's 20k down the road" etc etc in the outback followed and we set up camp again a bit further north on a site next to a lovely beach.

After a slightly dodgy start we soon started to get in the swing of things and started to really enjoy the trip. We visited the Pinnacles Desert...an amazing (and bizarre) yellow quartz desert which you can off-road through and we saw wild kangaroos at dusk in the national park next to Kalbarri. Kalbarri had a really beautiful coast line and bay so we ended up staying there for 2 nights to spend a day making the most of the beach.

After Kalbarri our next stop North was Monkey Mia in Shark Bay, where we caught up with Rod a guy we new from the Billabong Hostel in Perth who was making his way north for work. Monkey Mia has one of the best dolphin research centres in Australia and every morning a group of dolphins come in to the bay...it was amazing to see them even if it was a bit of a touristy set up! Setting up camp wasn't the easiest though as tent poles don't hammer easily in to sand!! so we had to sleep with the food box and our rucksacks etc in our tents to hold them down!!!

The next day a few of us headed in convoy further north to Coral Bay. We arrived safely after a rather worrying "the gas is really low and it's 100k to the next stop" moment!!!....and me unleashing my driving skills...all involved were slightly scared!!!

We set up camp in Coral Bay which was really lovely and decided to book a manta ray snorkelling trip for the following day before hitting the local 'watering hol' for a couple of 'carlton coldies'!

The following day we had an early start and set off on the boat trip. We had a good group of people on the boat and I was very excited about snorkelling with manta rays. After our group had carefully got off the back of the boat to start following the manta ray we heard a yell behind us. Carl signalled for the boat to pick him up whilst the rest of us snorkelled with the manta ray. When we got back to the boat it turned out that Carl had been stung on the face by a jelly fish as soon as he had got in the water!! He was a really good sport and handled it really well...especially as once everyone was sure he was ok we kept falling in to fits of giggles and he became known a 'Lesley Ash' and 'Trout Pout' as his lips were so swollen! It also didn't help that every local we met, inlcuding the boat crew said "thats unbelievable, we rarely ever see jellyfish in these waters"!!

Whilst Carl recovered on the boat the rest of us went for another manta ray snorkell which was amazing...it was definitely the highlight of the trip. We also went snorkelling at Ningaloo Reef (a coral reef which locals reckon rivals the great barrier reef) which was fantastic and saw turtles too.

After a great few days in Coral Bay (although not for Carl!) we headed north to the Cape of Exmouth and set up camp. We were slightly wary of the emu's that were just wandering around the site though....there were 5 of them surrounding us whilst we put up the tents! After checking out the surrounding beaches we went to the lighthouse to watch the sunset which was amazing. We decided to head to one of the beaches that night with our torches to see if we could see the turtles...it was amazing we had the whole beach to ourselves and saw the turtles laying their eggs in the sand before heading back to the sea.

It was soon time to start making the journey back down south to Perth which we reckoned would take a couple days.

We arrived back in to Perth, dropped the 4WD drive back and checked back in to the Billabong hostel in Northbridge having had a fab time...but also looking forward to sleeping in a bed instead of a tent!