Click here to be taken to the latest batch of images. Please note that images go onto Pages 8 and 9 as well. There are about 14 new files so do enjoy. File 71 is the place to start. Thanks Chris.

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PART ONE

‘MARK, MARK, MARK’ the guy yelled at me from the little Orange rubber boat that was bouncing through the surf with BP Lifeguard emblazoned on the sides. Of course I duly ignored the fellow as I’m not called Mark until, he started waving that was. Being typically British and not one to want to offend anyone I duly waved back at the nice chap and carried on my waist deep paddle in the warm Western Australia waters of Perth’s City beach. However, the chappie did seem a bit concerned that I did not recognise him and persisted on waving and calling me Mark, now pointing at the water in front of me. I could not really hear what he was saying as there was a wailing siren noise coming from the beach. And that’s when it hit me! It wasn’t ‘MARK’, I wasn’t some long lost friend of his, and yes, there was no one else left in the water apart from, yes you’ve guessed it - me. He was in fact yelling ‘SHARK - SHARK - SHARK’ and the siren I now discover is the Great White, Bull Shark or Tiger Shark alarm. New Board Shorts please.

Okay so, look Australia is a big place and we have been here 4 weeks so it’s a big story this time but possibly the best yet. So it’s in Two parts. Let me skip back about 4 weeks to when we arrived in Sydney, Australia from Fiji. By the way it is pronounced ‘OAR-STRAY-YAH’ in true Uncle Albert style. It is everything that you can imagine that Australia (Oz from now on as it’s easier to type) is. They all say ‘G’day mate, G’day Cobber, How-Ya-Goin’ and so on. We arrived in Sydney right on the weekend of Mardi Gras so the City was full of men ‘who like men’ and women ‘who like women’. Sad to say that there were no Jennifer Aniston lookalikes getting it on with Anna Kournikova lookalikes rather a group of short Oz men snogging all over the place and the closest we saw of any ‘hot action’ was a couple of big and I mean BIG women who looked about as happy and gay as Kirsty Alley at an ‘All-You-Can-Eat’ Sea-food buffet.

However, as a result of it all being so busy we managed to wangle a deal at a place a few doors down the street from the Prime Minister of Oz’s house! Kind of attune to staying at No 17 Downing Street, London. We ventured into Sydney a few times and even had a wonder and a wander at the Opera House. It is actually quite a lot smaller than you think but still impressive nonetheless. Interesting fact - the guy that designed it had a falling out with the builders and has never actually seen it with his own eyes.

So, we headed off on a flight to Western Australia (WA). Now people who describe Oz and it’s sheer size fail to really mention just how big the place is. Yes, we all know it’s big, but what they miss out is just how big. It is bigger than the United States. England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, plus Italy, Spain, France, Portugal ALL FIT into WA alone and the entirety of Europe also fits into all of Oz easily. Okay, let me put that into perspective here. Get on an aircraft in London at the same time we board in Sydney and both fly for 5 hours. We arrive in Perth WA, you would arrive in either Egypt or Cyprus! Yes that is a distance of something like 4500kms. To give you a better idea we saw a map of someone who drove around the coast of Oz (missing off a few bits) it took the 365 days and they covered 45,500kms!! Staggeringly big but I will come onto distances a bit later.

We were met from the airport by Jo Ciastula from Animal and Airush kiteboarding who very kindly showed us around and made us feel at home. Bizarrely, Jo’s house is next to a Bournemouth Crescent in Perth. We hung out in Perth for a week doing the tourist thing and even went to Perth Zoo where Karen shouted at the Kangaroos to ‘Get up and do stuff’. We even used Public Peasant Carriers aka buses! The images were really fun to get as the Aussie rules are so chilled that they just leave the cages open and let you wonder around yourself. The Zoo was deserted so we just spent an afternoon poking sticks at big Lions and generally having fun.

Jo sold us his car, a Ford Falcon 4.0i Auto, sort of like a Granada Estate car, so we were mobile within a week and were heading North up the west coast with the windows down and Tom Jones ‘Delihla’ blaring out of the stereo as we hurtled North at about 120 kmh with a brick balanced on the throttle to act like cruise control whilst driving with my knees. When I opened up our International Drivers Permits the instructions stated, ‘Tear Along The Dotted Line’ so that is exactly what we did and some 2000kms later we arrive at a place called Exmouth.

  Jo Ciastula - Animal & Airush Kiteboarding

Along the way we did spot our first Aborigine, who was drunk, very drunk. He was so drunk infact that he was standing in the middle of the road waving a fish at us. We smiled and waved and drove on by with the windows up and doors locked. Now for people who have driven this road this will bring a wry smile to their faces but for those of you that haven’t I shall explain. This road is called The 1 or Highway 1 and it just goes from the bottom left to the top left of Oz and it’s about 4500kms long (that would take about 10 days to drive at a good pace). Well it is just mile after mile of bush, red road, heat haze, more bush, heat haze and so on. Thundering along this road to break the monotony are what they call ROAD TRAINS. These thing are lorries but are no ordinary lorries. They are an incredible 37 metres long and normally come in 4 bits, cab, and three trailers. That is like having a 100 foot long lorry, most UK ones are about 45 foot. To overtake these thundering monstrosities who travel at 110 kmh requires balls and about 2 miles of clear road, something of which there is plenty of. But when you reach the cab there is a huge buffet of wind that at 120kmh scares the bejemus out of you as one dipped wheel on the off road and you are spinning like Amy Winehouse at a Glaxo Smith-Klyne drugs conference.

We named this highway ‘ROAD KILL ROAD’ as there are hundreds, possibly thousands of dead kangaroos all over the place. At the start of our journey North I said to Blondie that we would play a game and keep scores on who saw what first. It went like this, dead kangaroo on the left, dead kangaroo on the left, dead kangaroo on the right, dead kangaroo on the left all in about half a km. So I started to count and got to 194 dead kangaroos before I had to start again when, as luck should have it, Blondie yelled, ‘DEAD COW’ right at the point I was over taking a land train. Struggling to get hold of the car like Grace Kelly on a summers trip to the South coast of France I damn nearly pooped the old britches.

Sure enough, there was a very bloated and very dead cow at the side of Road Kill Road. So we started again but only just got into the 50’s before she yelled, ‘DEAD GOAT’ and so it continued km after km. To give you a clue, in a 1km section of road I counted 14 dead kangaroos in various states of decomp from fresh to, not so fresh..the stench in 43c of heat is quite incredible. A sad fact that so many Roo’s get hit and die every night that it is just too big a task to do anything about. From Dusk til Dawn they leap out in front of cars, lorries and buses. Our rule is that we do not drive at these times no matter what. This Kangaroo is only asleep and was not harmed in the capturing of this image.

Oh and cattle grids, these are so funny. Essentially, think driving through the New Forest or the Lake District and there is a cattle grid, well you would normally slow to 30kmh but oh no, not here, not unless you want a 37 metre long Road Train 3 inches from your bumper yelling ‘You Clupping Cupid Hommy Punt’….I’m not too sure what he meant but I don’t think he’d be inviting me round for tea. So, you shut your eyes and hit them at full whack. 120 kmh not a touch more or a touch less. WHAMMO, BURRRRR and it’s all over. 120kmh over a cattle grid! Ducking wheel trims with a closure speed of 250khm in the opposites direction is all part of the game on Road Kill Road.

To relieve the boredom I undertook a brief bit of medical science to bring into alignment a counteraction of the smell of the rotting dead things by, and I’m quite proud of this little experiment, hitting the smell with another smell. Like bouncing noise off noise to reduce the noise, I set out, single-handedly I might add on my project. PROJECT URANUS was born. Or actually more’s to the point PROJECT SORE ANUS as it should be known. The plan as you can tell was simple, the method lacked quite a lot of thought, and, well planning as well actually. Long on keenness but short on intellect. After purchasing a large jar of ‘Old Aunty May’s Best Pickled Onions’ and leaving them in the hot car for a day and a half, then the prior evening woffing down almost a bottle and a half of 14.5% WA Shiraz my plan began to unfold, after a breakfast of Veggiemite and Hard Boiled Eggs on toast, I was ready. LET THE EXPERIMENT BEGIN I yelled at Blondie who was just shaking her head (which was soon hanging out of the window like a dog on a hot summers day on the way to the beach gasping for breath).

Suffice to say, PROJECT URANUS was a complete and utter failure of quite shuddering magnitude and such dismal proportions the likes of which have not been seen since the Irish Space Program. Toilet stops are approximately 175 kms apart and we almost had to invoke the Bumper Dumper rule. (Grab hold of the cars bumper in a layby and well, you can imagine the rest) Sad to say that Project Uranus has been canned for social, political and health reasons.

We did have quite a scary driving moment the other day when a flock and I do mean a flock of about 50 White parrots (of which there are thousands flying wild here in WA ranging from small to full on ‘Pretty Polly sized Pirate sized ones) suddenly took off across the road at us as we were passing at 110kmh. Like a scene straight out of Alfred Hitchcocks ‘The Birds’ there were birds everywhere. I am glad to announce that despite the screaming (from me) and the swerve across the road that Mr Schummacher himself would have been proud of, we missed them all. I now know that that they were all male birds, and I know this because I definitely saw a Cockortwo amongst them. Seriously though, it was quite a scare.

Australia, sorry, Oar-stray-yah is really quite impressive by it’s sheer nothingness and immense size. It isn’t like New Zealand that sort of leaps down your throat the moment you get on the road and demands that you fall in love with it immediately, rather OZ sort of creeps up on you in a way that you don’t expect. I think that because we have chosen the west coast over the tourism conveyer belt that is the east coast, we are seeing a different side to Oz. The people are really quite friendly and genuinely want to talk to you. Try that next time you are walking to the office along the embankment and you will either have an umbrella thrust in your right eye or be arrested for being a freak. It really is quite nice. I mean the Boggan people, sort of like Chavs are a lot nicer are all really keen to say hello and give advice where they can and they seem really genuine. By the way, what is the name for a posh Chav? A Chav with money?

PART TWO

The coastline started to change to shear ruggedness and reefs once we got up to Exmouth and headed south down through places like Coral Bay, Monkey Mia, Eagle Bluff, Carnarvon and even further as we headed back along the coast roads to Perth once again. The Ningaloo Reef area is alleged to be far better than The Great Barrier Reef and I can sort of see why. It is beautiful. You simply walk into the water off the beach, pop a snorkel in your mouth and pull on your dive mask and fins and away you go. On one such snorkel we got straight into two blue spotted Stingrays, followed by a sleepy Turtle and then a huge Cowtail Stingray, all within about 5 minutes. We hit the reef at a time when there was quite a swell on and the wind was about 30-40 knots so at least I got to have a kite as well as a ‘drift snorkel’. (Walk up the beach, swim out and drift down the coast back to the car). I did try to get my PADI dive qualification but sadly I wasn’t able to get a medical done in time so I’ll have to wait until Vietnam to do it.

One thing that I have struggled with is some of the water quality has been a bit cloudy so please excuse some of the images being not quite so sharp but they are nonetheless cast to our memories forever, such as Giant Manta-Rays.

Sleeping in a tent when its 40 knots outside is really quite something. The tent simply blows flat and you lay there for a few moments with the room against your chin before it pops back up again, damn those $69.99 tents, but it seemed like such a bargain at the time. Now we are further south we were also shocked at the temperature ranges in Oz. We sat in a blistering 43c on day and then at night a bit further south shivered as the temperature dropped into single figures at night, brrrr.

We were advised to go to a sporting goods store a little further south with an instruction to ask for some dude called Doug Hunt, I can only assume it was a joke as the guy behind the counter wet himself and sniggered something about Duck Hunt, so I called him a c*** as a joke but that was where the joke stopped and he asked me to leave the shop very, very quickly. Still, one thing that was very funny was VB. Now this is a beer here in Oz and it’s kind of a bit of a tourist thing. Apparently no one in their right mind ever drinks VB, which stands for Victoria Brewery or something. I went to a bottle store and asked for a case of VB and the girl laughed at me. Unperturbed I asked again and still she chuckled until she said,’You aren’t from round here are you?’ ‘No, the UK’ I responded gleefully. She then said, ‘You do know that no Aussie’s drink VB and they nick name it……..ready for this………..PG RATING WARNING……….LOOK AWAY IF EASILY OFFENED………..they call it……Vaginal Backwash!!!!!! Ewwwwwww. Lesson One, Day One, Never Ever order a ‘Case of Vaginal Backwash’ from a cute chick in a bottle store.

Again heading south we stopped briefly at the tourist honey pot that is Monkey Mia. Essentially Dolphins come to the beach 4-5 times a day and you pay $6 to stand there and see them being fed, if it is your first ever sighting of  Dolphin then its great but if you are used to them more ‘in the wild’ then the only thing missing is Flipper jumping through a hoop. We hated it and got out at first light. There is however an incredible place just down the road 160km long road) that offers the delight known as Eagle Bluff. This is a cliff path that allows you to look down and see just what is in the water. This will give you a clue of what is in the water just yards from the beach, any beach!! I won’t bore you with the names of places and what else we did but suffice to say, we drive, we pitch the tent, we do a little sight seeing, a little snorkelling, then we cook, the we go to bed at about 9pm and then we get up and drive again, most days 300 km or so.

Okay, so I’m always quoting actual conversations here with little or no embellishment. This was an actual conversation with a Park Ranger fellow. It went something like this. I said, ‘Okay, so, with the exception of the Crocodiles both salt and fresh water, The Death Adder, The Python, The Brown Snake, The King Brown, The Tigersnake, The Ducate Snake, The Taipan Snake, The Sea Snake (55 varieties, 53 deadly), The Desert Scorpion, The Kangaroo Tick, The Red Back Spiders, The Funnel Web Spiders, The Huntsman Spider, The Great White Sharks, The Bull Sharks (more deadly than the GW), The Tiger Sharks, The Great Stingray (Steve Irwin’s Arch Nemesis and ultimate killer), The Stone Fish, The Scorpion Fish, The Lion Fish, The Blue Ringed Octopus (absolutely f*****g deadly-just stops your heart), The Box Jellyfish, The Portugese Man-o-war, The Outback Emu (okay not a vicious killer but hit one dead on at 3am doing 120kmh and you aren’t walking away), Same goes for the Kangaroos’, I said to the Ranger. ‘So with the exception of all of that lot, Australia is a pretty same place to be’. He said, and I quote, ‘The safest place in all of Australia is about 6 feet away from watersedge’. And that is why they say this joke, ‘Q: What do you call a person in the water in Australia? A: A Tourist!

One thing that we learned at Ocean Park (great images of sharks feeding) was that, get this One fish, called the Lion Fish is so fierce it even has, and I still can’t believe this, it even comes fully equipped with an Anal Spike! Why or the love of God would a fish have to worry about such things? I mean it’s not like one day he was swimming along, just popping to the edge of the reef for a quick dip and then suddenly he gets bottom burgled in the butt cleft by a large gay Halibut. (Halibut is such a good word)

A quick mention on the images of Freemantle Prison. We took a tour, possibly the best tour that I have ever been on around the Prison that closed its doors, well opened them actually for the last time in 1991. The guides were ex-warders and gave stunning and jaw dropping stories about escapes and some of the ‘nasty’s’ the Prison held. The images are in B&W which is something that I don’t normally like doing but it just sort of makes it work. Even the Execution chamber was on the viewing list. 

Okay, different topic briefly. Superstition, or make believe, whatever you want to call it but I have always been a bit weird with stuff like that. Now don’t worry, I’m not going all weird on you here and start chanting but something happened the other day and I just want to share it with you. It’s nothing mediumistic or clairvoyant just sort of thing that happens sometimes when my senses seem, just sharper, sort of tuned in. We were driving along and I suddenly started singing a George Benson song called 20-20 Vision, saying that someone needs to release a song now with 20-20 in the title to be assured massive success in the year 2020. Kind of like Prince in 1999. Within about 3 or 4 minutes we pulled off the road to tank gas. As we walked in the gas station we paused at the CD collection and the first CD we picked up was…….George Benson’s Greatest Hits, nothing strange in that you say……well we pulled back onto the Highway, drove up to 110kmh and turned the radio up. Guess what was playing? Guess which song was playing out of all the millions of records ever released? Yes, you’ve got it….Aggadoo! No seriously, George Benson 20-20 Vision was playing! Dooo-dooooo-do-dooooo-dooooo-doooo (Cue the Twilight zone music). Now this sort of thing is 99% of the time indicative that within a few days I’m going to have bad luck. Call it De-Ja-Vu (French for ‘Been/Seen Before’) or some sort of precognition, but I just always know that a bad day is on the way.

Sure enough, 2 days later, whilst cruising at 96khm, sadly in a 80kmh zone in the middle of the desert, there, coming in the opposite direction were THE FEDS. Boom, the flashy lights go on and he pulls a handbrake turn and is on me in seconds. Now I see his light go on and chuck the Falcon straight into a layby and stomp on the breaks. He doesn’t even get a chance to put the Woo-Woo’s on and he’s got me, so short in fact was my first ever Police chase that the dude nearly slammed into the back of me, when he had finished his J turn. Nice man let off the ‘Bumbling English Mad Professor Haired Twit’……..on we drive, WHALLOP, a bird disintegrates off our bonnet into a thousand feathers (now that sort of stuff really upsets me), so on we drive to a famous kite beach. I drive onto the beach, the waves are great, it’s 25-28 knots X on from the left with a sweet right hander. I drive straight onto the beach and see a sign that says……..’NO CARS’……and it’s too late, we are toast, estate car on sand, we are going down like the Titanic, we are going down like Divine Brown at the latest Hugh Grant movie premier. Then, sure as it all starts, it’s over and life returns to normal. until I get the next one.

We stopped for a while at a Kangaroo sanctuary which as you can see was just incredible and then again at a Koala Bear sanctuary which was just the cutest and lovely place. As you can imagine, we had to go one step further to bring you the best images, so how about this, a Joey in its mums pouch!

And finally, as we got almost to the SW tip we stopped at Margaret River (a huge disappointment - its just a few shops and a murky river). The images from Bussleton Beach contain one or two of my most favourite images that I have ever captured, see if you can guess which they are. We went to a beach called Hamlin Beach where sadly a week or so ago about 100 Whales beached themselves and a huge rescue operation swung into effect. Only 4 Whales made it to freedom and as a result the beach has been closed due to Shark sightings in the bay. Unperturbed I waded into the shallow waters for what was possibly the most scariest experience of my entire life……..I did a close up shoot with not one, not two, not even three, but four huge Black Stingrays. These things were swimming up to me and then bumping into my legs before swimming over my feet. It’s all on camera but was possibly and fundamentally one of the best things that I have ever done. I was shaking for hours afterwards and now, days later, still shiver at the thought of my 2 hours in the water with these mammoths of the sea.

Okay, that’s it for this one. There are lots of images as Australia is quite incredible for photography, so sit back, enjoy the images and more news next time on a new friend of the site called ‘The Sea Sheppard Organisation’. Sorry it was such a huge one but we’ve done just so much and covered 5000km in 4 weeks!

Big hugs to you all

Love from

Chris and Blondie (253 days on the road and counting)

Categories: LBS News