hittin' the dusty trail...

Sorry it’s been a while since we wrote, but there was money to be made, and a lot of drinking time to catch up on…

So we have been working hard as always (me as a milkman and roz as a waitress) and after a couple of months there we had the obligatory leaving shin dig/s which was great fun, and t’was nice to see everyone off. We had a final night round in our garden with a few friends, our housemate sarah, and plenty of cheap grog! New drinking games were discovered that night which will be brought home as long as we can remember them.. that’s a bit of a sticking point with drinking games; you’re always pissed when you play them so rules are always difficult to remember!!

So we set off for Perth in Bessie the car, on Monday the 3rd of May with the plan to get about 400ks under our belt, but after fannying around for ages getting last minute shopping and packing the car we left at 2pm and only got as far as Torquay (200ks!). It’s a nice little place with some good surf, but we were to late to make any use of that so we just pulled into a caravan park and went to watch the sun go down with a bottle of wine. We got tea on the go and were soon mobbed by a massive possum, who got a clout round the head with a wooden spoon when he put his nose in the saucepan! And then an owl landed in the tree above us and just sat watching for ages, and the stars were truly beautiful!! We then settled into the cosy bed in the back of the car for a well deserved sleep.

Next day we set off pretty early along the great ocean road for Apollo bay where we stopped in a little café which had a mural on the wall by my old uni housemate jilly! The weather was pretty dire so we just hopped back in the car and headed to the twelve apostles for the night. If you don’t know the 12 apostles is a load of big rocks sticking out of the sea along the ocean road, amazing to see, but there aren’t actually 12 of them anymore because of coastal erosion.. but the 9 or so that were there were cool enough! So we did about 250k today, nice and steady again as the weather was bad.

After the night in Port Campbell, we got up at 7 to hit the road nice and early to Kingston SE which is at the end of the ocean road, getting on toward Adelaide. We covered a good 450k so that made a bit more of a mark on the map, and we just camped for free on the side of the road with a couple of Aussie lads, 4 frenchies and a Canadian crazy lady…! It was cold again so we decided to go to the pub for tea and beer, and they had a roaring log burner on the go so we just nestled in amongst that to warm our cockles!

Again we got up early on the next day (Thursday) with the intention to get to Adelaide, but Bessie isn’t great in the mornings but refused to budge on this particular day so we had to crack out the jump starter kit our mate had advised we buy (thanks Barry!) to get her going. With that worry on our mind we called ahead to a contact in a town just south of Adelaide for some mechanical help. Luckily Mark and Wendy knew a decent honest mechanic so we changed course slightly and headed to McLaren Vale, which is a really, REALLY beautiful little town surrounded by wineries, rolling hills and the sea. After dropping Bessie off at the garage, Mark and Wendy took us round their winery (Hassle & Lightfoot) and then back to theirs for a slap up mediteranean style feast! Of course we sampled some of their local brew which was a very cheeky little Chardonnay! Then we went kangaroo spotting and there was a mob of about 12 grazing in amongst the vines in their back garden! Roz was most delighted to see her first wild roos and got some great photos, and some great shots of an amazing rainbow across the vale. We had a call a little later on saying he could find nothing wrong with the car, and so we decided to power on past Adelaide to a place called Port Wakefield about 200k north.

We did another early rise because we wanted to try and hit about 700k and get to Ceduna which is one of the last stops before the open desert road. We made it in record time, even having time to stop for supplies shopping in Port Augusta. Ceduna seemed nice enough but is full of bogans (Australian hill-billies) and it just so happens that most of them seem to live in the camp sight we stayed in… The guy next to us spent most of his night throwing tins of beer down his neck, listening to hiphop and yelling obscenities at the sport on tv! Delightful!! We thought one of the bogans was moving his caravan until we realised it was actually a woman waddling to the toilet who was the size of a small caravan… I think she has made her dress from a bed sheet.. a double king size one!!

Anyway, that’s enough slagging off of the locals for now… on the road again tomorrow and hopefully get to Western Australia for more fun bogan adventures…!