It turns out the group was due to get a whole lot bigger!! Rene had meet a load more people at the hostel in Perth and they were all planning on doing the same journey so we all decided to convoy the coast!! We met up with the others Luke and Hayley, a brummy couple applying for permanent visas, Jay and Pete mess heads from Holland and Ireland respectively and Claire from Uk looking for teaching work. We all had a get to know each other goon session and headed off the next morning for Kalbarri in our first convoy.

Kalbarri was really pretty, only a small town but had a nice feel to it. The weather just gets better and better the further north you travel up the West coast, the seasons here are more wet and humid summers with dry and cool winters (cool being 30degs instead of 40+ in winter!! Madness!!) We spent a few days here, Steve and I went to the bird sanctuary which was really enjoyable then headed to the beach for a dip and mooch about. Rog and the others did a bit off fishing, looks like they're all a bunch of fishing freaks, oh dear God no!!

We went to Kalbarri national park, which main attraction is the huge gorges and a well sculpted rock known as the "Window to Nature". The roads in the national park were awfully corrugated and even with the van in 4WD everything was falling all over the place, dust engulfing all our things, rattling everywhere, god knows how Rog's van made it! The others had proper 4WD cars so had no bother hurtling down the tracks.

The flies are a major pain in the 'arris, you just can't get rid of them it's infuriating, flying into your, mouth, nostrils, ears just constantly buzzing all around, hate them, hate them, hate them!! We managed to endure them enough to swim in the gorges and enjoy the impressive views. Thoroughly enjoyable. All of us gorged out we found a free campsite and set up for the night which turned out to be the most hilarious night we'd had in a long, long while. Free campsites are great, you don't get a lot, you'd be lucky to get a bush dunny (highly smelly much rather find a bush!) you are allowed to make fires, make noise and that was lucky because we did both those things with great enthusiasm that night!!