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PART ONE

For those of you who think this camping malarkey is akin to a Swiss Carry On Camping movie with lots of young, nubile blondes running around the place in tiny bikinis that resemble a piece of cheese wire with huge heaving buxom inflated chests, and a general persona of a film that should have a working title of Farmyard Back-Door Adventures I have news for you. It is not like that one bit. The closest that you get to anything Swiss is driving past IKEA on the freeway. But, a few days ago there were a few Swiss chicks on the campground and as you can imagine old Romeo here caught their eye. One small problem, in less than 4 seconds it was all over, I didn’t see them walking towards me one morning as I was brushing my teeth outside the tent. Foaming at the mouth like a drunken rabid dog, I shoved the toothbrush too far down my throat and sort of half balked a sound remarkably like Gollum himself choking on a large Halibut and then half coughed foaming toothpaste through both nostrils whilst releasing a truly quite impressive and hugely thunderous burp right into the path of the two hot Swiss chicks who squealed and ran off in the opposite direction. Nice one.

Some of the funny things you get here are the road side gas stations that sell stuff. Yes, you can just walk in and buy what ever magazine you want, and I do mean whatever you want.  For sure you get your FHM, Maxim, GQ, Esquire and a various assortment of chicks mags but then they have the Zoo and Nuts stuff too, which is cool. But then they have mags like Picture and let me tell you, you get quite a a shock when you open them up. The only thing missing is a pop up 3D working model of the female bits. Essentially, they just don’t wear clothes, nothing, nada, you see, well you, er, how do I put this, you see it, well you sort of glimpse it, but not much. So, I was furious, cheated, robbed and I was in serious do-do with The General for purchasing a Grot Mag or Art Pamphlet as I defended, or at least attempted to. Despite my insistence that it was a simple error, I was treated like a pariah and banished from the tent. To make matters worse, quite simply much worse, I was tried and treated like a criminal and I had not even purchased a hard mag! However, I did briefly notice as I merely glanced upon on the front covers some quite interesting articles on the subject of Hot New Facials and a potentially very enlightening nature article on Great Snarling Badgers.

So we have now driven over 13,000 kms in a little over 9 weeks and have managed to get from one side of Australia to the other. This map will give you an idea of the route that we have taken and just how big the place is.  Once again, this is going to be a long story, sorry. I am still having problems with my Canon gear and photo edit suite so excuse the lower quality 

Spiders in Oz, let me tell you about Spiders. Well they are here alright. Any house, park, garden, where ever you look in Oz is full of the 8 legged little killers. Seriously, Funnel Webs, Red Backs and Huntsmen abound where ever you look. Take a stick and go into the back garden and there, hidden inside a white web (that looks like a small funnel) is a little black spider with a red strip down its back. Poke it with a stick and out it comes, poke it again and it leaps at you, poke it three times and it takes the stick off you, whacks you over the head and then chases you down the path with it. Oh and the other small piece of advice is never, I repeat never, use a bush loo (long drop) on a high wind day. Without drawing you a complex diagram let us just say you feel like Horatio Hole-Blower.

Skipping back a few weeks we crossed what is called The Nulabor Plain. This is essentially a vast expanse of land, and when I say land, that is all there is, just land and runs between Adelaide on the bottom South South East side of Oz and Perth on the West Coast some 2500kms in a wobbly line away. 99% of visitors to Oz don’t bother with this crossing as it is just too far to drive. Perth to Adelaide is like driving from Buckingham Palace in London to MOSCOW!!! Several people tried to talk us out if it, but we wanted to do it, so we did. Three whole days of 900km, 800km and 800km and we stood at the desk of the Tourist Info Finish Line and were handed a bumper sticker and a certificate each (certifiably bonkers said one Ozzy bloke who wondered past our car seeing the sticker). Well we did it and the stuff we saw was quite incredible. From nothing in any direction, to huge Eagles sitting on the road, to massive Kangaroos sitting outside our tent and the straightest road in the southern hemisphere all 149 kms of it, like a runway.

One thing that left me a bit stunned about Australia is that as a Brit you tend to carry yourself just a bit over the rest. You hold your head a bit higher and say United Kingdom with a certain sense of pride when you are asked where you come from. You place your passport on the counter rather than slapping it down. But, not here. Not in Australia. Personally, I really don’t think we have the right to. This came as a real surprise to me so I am going to write as I find and it is just my opinion. What I discovered, unearthed, or realised is just what Great Britain did to Australia that in my opinion makes us not quite so great. Here goes and do read this bit because it will surprise you.

First skip back a few years to 1601. Some Dutch stoners had just discovered Western Oz by crashing into it after a few years of sailing around in circles off the coast of Indonesia in a haze of narcotic smoke and eating strange little cakes that helped them see Goblins. They arrived and promptly set up on the beach with a nice chilled BBQ and a couple of tinnies and, well, that’s about it. Great Britain on the other hand acted entirely differently 5500kms away on the East Coast. So badly did they act infact, I actually feel ashamed to be British for the first time in my life. Football hooliganism makes you look away in disgust, losing at any British sport in the semi-finals is a national institution. But what we did here makes you feel true shame.

Okay so this is a bit long but well worth the read, so it is the 17th April 1770 and Zachary Hicks up in the rigging on board ‘The Endeavour’ yells “LAND HOOO” down to Captain James Cook just down the coast from Sydney Harbour. Into a small rowing boat they drop and put to shore where they are met by two dark skinned, curly haired blokes carrying spears and wearing little but an animal skin across their choppers. Cook’s people pull a musket on the guys in seconds and fire warning shots above their head. They run off but return later. The same thing happens again over the next few days until the strange looking men return with friends. The British explorers then incredibly unfurls a Union Jack and sticks it in the sand yelling, ‘I claim this land in the name of King George III (before the Dutch stoners or the Froggies get their hands on it)’. The name of this place they claimed, Botany Bay because of the wonderful wildlife and plant life. They then set up home quicker than an asylum seeker in England and send for their families.

Skip forward a few years to 1788 and 11 ships arrive from England (10,505 miles away) carrying 751 criminals and 250 soldiers. They don’t like Botany Bay so cruise up to a place called Eora and rename it Sydney Harbour. An Aboriginal man called Bennelong meets them and befriends the funny looking sailors. He lives on a little bit of land called Bennelong Point (the site of the Sydney Opera House). The Brits give the Aboriginals the following trade for their lands, alcoholism, smallpox, and despair. The Aboriginals, not being used to alcohol, western culture and violence soon are in disarray and before long are a broken people. Their spears are no match for muskets so they fight but are out numbered. This bit upsets me. The order was then issued by The British Government to search for land and off they went, killing and raping as they went. Any dissent showed by Aboriginals was to be met with deadly force.

Britain, Great Britain then instructed the criminals to clear the land for them and essentially for every 10 bits of land they cleared, they could keep one. The Aboriginal’s named these strange people Squatters because they squatted on the land! And so it went on, field after field, mile after mile, state after state, slowly the Aboriginal Territories were destroyed and land stolen from the people, the Aboriginals were turned into workers on their own land in return for a pittance and the right to remain on there.  One entire area was traded for a box of blankets. Skip forward a few years, add the Gold Rush, skip forward a bit more to 1914 and War. Britain calls Australian men and women to arms and Australia goes to war and fight hard they do, they fight like dogs for their country.

Finally, in 1941 despite what ‘Great Britain’ had done to Australia over the last 200 years and the harm to its people, both Aboriginal and war fighter, when it comes down to it and Japan is about to attack the North of Australia, Britain, Great Britain, stated it ‘cannot spare any troops’ and Oz is on its own. Incredibly it was none other than the Good Old US of A that stepped in and saved the day. It really is quite an eye opener to what Britain used to do, and still does, but then what do I know!

PART TWO

Salami. The Salami that you get at some of the roadside food stalls is quite incredible. Stopping at one a few days ago the guy warned us that his Old Mamas recipe could be quite volatile. What he neglected to mention was the small fact that his old mum used thermo-nuclear atom splitting in her culinary processes. Three bites into the fiery death stick and my left eyebrow spontaneously combusted as I exhaled in  manner that could only be reproduced if I were to rent some Oxyacetylene welding equipment and blow torch my eyebrow off. The stench as Karen called it did not leave my body for 3 whole days.

One funny thing we did see was, and you will have to cast your mind back to 1979 for this one and none other than SKYLAB? The NASA Skylab was in trouble as was circling the earth for a few weeks hysterically out of control and about to crash with potentially devastating consequences where ever it landed. Each time it whizzed over London everyone held their breath until it shot over head at 18,000 mph, and then continued the ‘SKYLAB Disco Party’ (now called a BBQ), then it headed off to New York, where everyone held their breath before saying, ‘thank fluff for that’, and so on it went whizzing around the planet like an Apocalyptic Wheel Of Fortune until it finally crashed to earth, ready for this, yes you’ve guessed it, at a place called Baladonia on none other than, The Nulabor Crossing, killing no-one. Australia incredibly then fined the USA $400 for littering.

The travel, the journey, our incredible adventure is still going strong after some three years off and on of being on the road but this brings me neatly to a subject that I keep meaning to touch on and now seems like a perfect time to do so. I am not a clever man. I am a just a guy, just a bloke, a bit special in some ways and a bit special needs in others. I am not lucky. I am not unlucky. I am just a guy who found himself in a difficult situation and had to make a choice. and it now seems that a lot of people are heading towards a similar situation. I speak of course of the ‘Big R’ aka ‘the shove’ aka ‘R.E.D.U.N.D.A.N.C.Y’ (my suggestion is that if you sing it like Dolly Parton sung DIVORCE) it doesn’t seem quite so bad. What I want to say/share is this.

When I got made redundant 3 and a half years ago I sat there at the bottom of many a bottle of Jack Daniels wondering just where the hell my life was going and what I was going to do, and all seemed lost, truly and utterly lost. But it was a gift. It was a fresh start. Yeah for sure I miss my old colleagues but I enjoyed the tax free money more than I missed the work. Many people we speak to at the moment are staring down the double barrel of the noisy end of the BIG R gun at the moment and it must be terribly upsetting. In my experience it is not the end of the world, it is a beginning, but it is what you do with that beginning that makes you/remakes you.

Like I said, I am not clever, in actual fact I am quite stupid when I am in some circles. Here is an example, a few days ago we were with a super intelligent person who had spent days writing some stuff for a published article on the Global Recession. The title of the works was something like ‘The Global Credit Crisis Leading Sub Social Economic Ramifications Across Structured Business Groups Within The Wider Political Arena’, after much thought, head scratching and staring out of the window at a seagull I suggested a better title and promptly almost wet myself laughing. My suggestion? ‘The Credit Crunch - More Than  Just A Breakfast Cereal’…….The person in question just looked at me. I rest my case.

So, what I am trying to say is this. I did not get here by luck, nor having anyone do it for me, I did it by taking The Big R on the chin, crying like a child for days, being drunk for about a month, then realising that I was at a corner, a big corner with a big opportunity and I dived in with my eyes shut, my breath held and managed to float, Christ knows how but I did. Above all, if you can, remember these words. No-one, as in no person has ever said these words on their death bed, ‘Damn I wish I had spent more time at work!’…..unless of course you are Jennifer Aniston’s Bra fitter!

So, a bit about what we have done in Australia. So after landing in Sydney and flying to Perth, collecting our trusty station wagon, driving up the West coast to Ningaloo Reef, then all the way back down the West to to the bottom, taking a left turn and basically driving from one corner of Australia to the other, stopping or staying at 34 different places we eventually landed in Melbourne. Yes, home of Neighbours. No, we didn’t. We stayed with the ever lovely Anna and Brent (plus pooch Dennis the Sha Pay). We also met up and kited with a very old friend from France back in the good old days of Blondeair, none other that Matt ‘Super Donkey’ Von Der Muln. The weather was shocking so we got into the car one morning and drove with one focus in mind - finding the sun once again. The first signpost sadly displayed the figures 895km to Sydney at a max of 100kmh. Fuel, wee, coffee, wee, fuel, coffee, wee, wee and so on for the next 1058km until we were North of Sydney. Out of the car, pitch the tent, pump the mattress, sleep, back in the car and drive again until the figures on the dashboard said ‘You have driven just over 2000kms (1200 miles) in 3 days. Was it worth it? Was Byron Bay worth the drive? Was Surfer’s Paradise worth the hours it the car? Was it worth it to sit by the pool in the sun again? Answers = Yes to the last and 100% No to the first and second.

I don’t mean to be a snob but it just sucks. It is like Spain will be in 2020. It’s super posh, it’s hot, it’s by the beach, you can cuddle a seal, ride a dolphin, horseback ride a Doodong (seacow), stroke a drugged tiger, play hopskotch with a humpback whale, you can bungy jump from a hot air balloon, fly upside down in a helicopter, you can get a BJ in a limo at 3 o’clock in the afternoon whilst going through MacDoogals drive through, you can do almost anything that you want apart from sit by yourself on the beach and wonder at nature. Well saying that, you do actually wonder at nature here quite a lot, you wonder where the fluff it went. A real shame but then I guess it is all about diversity and for some, it floats their boat.

By the way we have finally managed to find a word for what we do, as in all this penmanship and photography. It isn’t really travel writing nor is it a blog so we have come up with ‘TRAVEL COMENATARY’.

Oh here is a quick suggestion. Bigger is not necessarily better. Namely, in Oz they have a real penchants as they do in the United States for making everything available in bigger sizes. ‘YOU WANNA DRINK?’ they yell at you, ‘Er yes please’ you reply meekly. And do you ever get one. I asked for OJ. Good old Orange juice and what I got was not 500mls, nope, not even a litre, nor 2. I got 3 litres of freshly squeezed OJ with bits, that contained ‘A GARENTEED 30 ORANGES’ yelled the big bird from behind the counter. Well it was a hot day and I was thirsty so I began to drink, and drink, and drink. About 1700mls into my experiment my tummy rumbled and gurgled. Unbeknownst (that is such a good word) unbeknownst to be high dosage vitamin C can have quite a catastrophic effect on the human body. NEVER again shall I drink OJ in such quantities. 

The Great Ocean Road. It is so impressive that it needs the royalty of having just it’s own name in a sentence. It is more a statement than a name. It runs from Adelaide to Melbourne, or Melbourne to Adelaide dependant on which side of the car you want the view on. Feeling like a white van man you drive about 700 meters and then leap out of your car to view another breath taking vista before jumping back in to repeat it over and over again. The days that we drove it, there was one heck of a storm blowing so we were lucky enough to catch King Wave aka Rogue Waves aka huge white lumpy things that were 2 or 3 times the size of most sets. Sadly, due to the fact that my trusty Canon 40D is absolutely and completely shagged, more shagged in fact than Brad Pitt at an Anne Summer’s ‘Try Before You Buy’ Lambrini Party for 30 something divorcees. So, I’m back to missing shots and a jamming camera. BUY NIKON (and it hurts me to say that), unless you live in New Zealand, then BUY CANON.

You can see from the images that these waves are just stunning to watch and yet still a few people each week are washed to their deaths by ‘paddling in the rock pools’. Mother Earth is quite a thing to marvel at, and marvel we did at this superbly diverse coastline. Like watching a scene from a Benny Hill TV show the Japanese tourists bus in, screech to a halt, run off, run around, buy icecreams, bow lots, bow some more, smile, with 200 camera flashes per second going off just as if Britney Spears and Paris Hilton had both just arrived to do a ‘No Holes Barred’ out of Limo ‘Beavers-At-The-Ready’ photo-shoot. Then, just as fast as they arrive, vroom and they are gone again 700 meters down the road to the next stop.

Wild Koalas and friendly Kangaroos is something that I just didn’t expect to find here. You kind of just expect them to all live in Zoos or in sanctuary’s, but no, oh no. 4am and that noise outside your tent is, yes a hungry and nosey Kangaroo. Drive down a country lane and there is a sign saying ‘Koalas’, hop out of your car and look up, and there, sitting in the tree are a whole, er, flock or Koala Bears just looking at you. Some are asleep, some are eating and some just sit there looking at you as you shout ‘Hello Mr Koala Bear’ up into the branches. Apparently Koala Bears are one of the least intelligent animals on the planet with up to 20% of its brain activity dedicated to eating/digesting poisonous eucalyptus leaves. Which leaves very little in reserve so they sleep which takes up another 10% to not fall out of the tree. To put that into perspective, Albert Einstein was reported to have used 20% of his brain capacity.Jo Public uses (on average) only 12% of their brains true potential. Koala’s use 30% on just surviving, so have nothing left for anything else…….I know what that feels like!!! So, in theory, Koala’s are 30 times more stupid than me/us. But, could you fall asleep in a tree on a windy day and not fall out of it?!! Huh, Koala’s ROCK!!  

So we headed from Melbourne all the way up to Brisbane, as in 3 days of solid driving and 2100kms later we arrived at the legendary Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast. Admittedly it is a tad Las Vegas and manages to scream both Puerto Banus and Skegness all in the same breath. An interesting fact is that allegedly the bikini was invented here so chicks walk up and down the shopping malls wearing things like this, ‘No I wasn’t looking darling I was just, er, um, er, well’…..and so on.

Head to the beach and lots of serious looking surfers are riding the waves. However, this was an actual announcement that was tannoyed out across the entire beach to several hundred people, ‘SQWEEK - WILL THE MAN ON THE IN FLATABLE GREEN CROCODILE PLEASE GET OUT OF THE SURF AREA AND RETURN TO THE BEACH’………with a half inflated bright green crocodile tucked under my arm I endured the walk of shame back along the beach whilst being laughed at by loads of people…..keeping it real, keeping it hard core. A bonus point for noticing the sign in the back round!

Okay well that is it for this time folks. Remember to buy Nikon and not Canon if you want good customer service.(apart from New Zealand Canon who are fabulous but the rest are utter baboons in my opinion). Finally here is a thought to leave you with. We were at Sydney International airport a few days ago at the arrivals gate waiting for Karen’s Aunty Sandra to come and join us for 2 weeks on the road. As we stood there waiting and watching hundreds of people walk around the corner and seeing such wonderful reunions and emotions of people meeting and greeting each other from all over the world, I started thinking. If I had the power, the ability, the skill, to be able to make anyone of my choice walk around the corner who would it be? Obviously I would want my Mum back just for 2 minutes so say Good Bye again and have one more hug, but who would you choose to have walk around the corner, what situation would you like to have over again to resolve, fix, or change all in a maximum of 2 minutes. What would you do different, what would you say and who would you say it to. If you could Play it again Sam what would you do? and I leave you on that nice gentle thought. Thanks for taking the time to read this and look at the images

Big Hugs

Chris and Karen

(Sydney Australia 2009)

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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)

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Click here to be taken to the latest batch of images fresh from the white shores of Fiji. There are quite a lot starting at W65 as we’ve been in radio silence for a bit.

http://www.lazyblueskies.com/wp/wpg2-2?g2_itemId=9542&g2_page=7

‘Okay now I don’t want you to worry babe but quite possibly I might need to go to hospital as I think I’m having a heart attack’  were my exact words as I lay across the bonnet of our Toyota 4×4 clutching my chest, struggling to breathe and desperately trying not to collapse in a cardiac related pile of agony on the floor! Let me tell you this, that kind of puts the old life into perspective as you drive to A&E, oh yeah you drive yourself to A&E in NZ because they charge you for the privilege.

Okay, so briefly all is good now but I got admitted to A&E for 2 days with ?MI (Myocardial Infarction aka heart attack) and had a million tests done. I had 12 leads hanging off my chest and various other bits, drips and tubes stuck in my arm, an inflatable armband thing that puffed away like a asthmatic budgerigar every 5 minutes and  a bucket load of blood taken all by the cheery Kiwi nurses, including one particularly large black dude with dreadlocks (not from NZ I guessed) who found it bemusing why I was not wearing underpants underneath my boardshorts. This point he found really difficult to understand and even brought over other nurses to see my nakedness! It was quite funny through all the pain and worry to have a conversation about ‘hanging free’. I think I calmed his worries about chaffing as we parted with a good giggle over the size of his elephants trunk swimming pants and architecturally designed ‘ball room’, for obvious reasons.

The good news is that it was not a heart attack. I don’t feel silly or daft that I wasted anyone’s time as it felt, well, just like a heart attack. The other good news is that it was not Pericarditis (Inflammation of the Heart). They even put me on a treadmill, when I really thought that I was going to die. The bad news is that they do not know what it was, so I now have a spray to carry with me at all times (GTN) just in case it may be Angina, and also I now have a Ventolin puffy thing incase I can’t breathe again and some Morphine tablet smarties for the pain. I feel like right geek now and should probably be called ‘Sicknote’ from now on.

Throughout all of this, as you would expect and imagine, laying next to my bed was Blondie in a Lazyboy chair looking after me and making sure I was alright and not too scared. It is a bit tough to admit that I was so scared that I started crying like an 8 year old girl who had just seen her pet rabbit executed by her neighbours Rottweiller. Ooh, yeah, I was calm alright and my pulse during the entire 2 days never once got above 70, but I was pretty sure I was about to Kark It. (Apparently I have a long history of heart disease in the family and 45 is a target rather than an aim so it was all quite serious), still, Nil Desperandum, could be run over by a bus tomorrow, which in itself would be a bit of a bummer as there are no buses on these islands, not even any goats to point and laugh at.

On a serious note, thank you so much to all those that sent such wonderful and heartfelt messages of Get Well, Stop Faking It, and Anything We Can Do?.

Moving on to less dramatic stuff, New Zealand is now a distant and wonderfully fond memory as we are now 2200kms North in the incredible Fijian Islands. Before we close the NZ chapter we want to say hello to all the cool people we met there along the way. Different people from all walks of life but all cool none the less. People who made me realise that there is a certain fun and simplicity in simplicity itself (I thought of that all by myself). Here is a rough route map of how we covered a stunning 14,000kms.

So Fiji, or F1-J1 as it is known by travellers is everything that you would think a pacific island paradise should be. If you close your eyes and imagine what Fiji is or must be like, then it is. Coconut trees, palms trees gently leaning over the crystal clear bluey green waters that are as warm as a bath and lap quietly against the shore lines whilst nothing happens for hours and hours except the passing of time, Fiji-time (a bizarre expression for ‘I’m bloody lazy and I’ll do it……at some point’ and the deepening of your suntan. As I write this I have been sitting and watching nothing happen for an hour, just wasting the day away busy doing absolutely nothing. Today I watched a Hermit crab busy doing ’stuff’ so I lay on the sand and watched it for a while, then it stopped and watched me, 40 minutes later I lost interest in the portable habitation crustation and got back to doing nothing more important again. The only part that they fail to mention before you get here is, IT IS F********G EXPENSIVE. VERY VERY OH MY GOD F*********G EXPENSIVE!! I don’t mean, not cheap, or even a bit expensive, I mean you get bottom rogered at every step of the money spinning process.

Fiji a holiday paradise, but it is also a money making machine. Scratch away the smiley venire and you get a very real push to make money out of you at every opportunity, snorkel hire $12, kayaking $25, taking a photo of a fish $50, icecream on the beach $10, 2 beers $10 et al. In the greater scheme of things it’s not going to break the bank but it soon adds up to over £2000 for 2 weeks (not inc flights).The bit that we found the most upsetting is that the islanders are broke and live almost close to, well a happy sort of poverty I guess on $80 a month (£35) and yet will all the money pouring into the islands they still remain in, happy poverty.

I would say to anyone that if you are thinking of going to Fiji, really think about it before you do. Again, it is without doubt beautiful but it’s full of young single kids in dorm bunk beds or the super rich in all inclusive resort islands. Personally you could simply stay at home, go to the kitchen, put the oven on 250c/Gas Mark 5, open the door and bend over in front of it wearing a bikini top and bottoms around your knees whilst tearing up £50 notes and shoving them up your left nostril at a rate of 6 every minute whilst someone buggers you senseless with a large rolling pin and a rolled up copy of the How To Lose Money Monthly.

Seriously, it is great but we are absolutely haemoraging money at a rate that I just cannot believe, so much so that in less than 4 days my wallet now wouldn’t shut because of so many receipts. Throughout all of our trip so far the biggest expense has been $100 for a night’s bed (about £40) but suddenly to live in a tin hut on a mosquito ridden beach is costing over £100 a night, and you get cake for breakfast with custard. Oh don’t get me wrong it’s beautiful and all that, but the Maldives are 100 times better and cost the same. Okay, I’ll get off my soap box now before they charge me for speaking to you. The stunning beauty of the photos are enough to speak for themselves but more often than not, I AM THE OLDEST DUDE ON THE BOAT.

ADHD or Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, now that’s a funny one, let’s go play on our bikes.

Oh before we left NZ we went to The Top Gear event with good old Jeremy Clarkson and Richard ‘I-Nearly-Died’ Hammond and my god was it funny. Clarkson said this, ‘Britain; We were once an Empire Empire run by an Emperess. Then we became a Kingdom, run by a King.bNow we are a Country run by a C……….’ ha ha ha, now that made us laugh. To cut the story short, screeching tyres of Ferraris doing wheel spins, Football with cars and a metal ball with not 1,2 or even 3 but 4 motorcycles riding around inside it, all very impressive and well worth the visit, we even saw THE STIG (who was sh*t by the way….time for a new one). Enjoy the images.

Let me touch briefly on ‘bathroom etiquette’ as this subject seems to keep cropping up all the time we are travelling. Ladies, there are very few simple rules that guys must adhere to so listen up as this is insider knowledge. 1) If faced with a dry metal urinal the participant must attempt to spray write his own name on the surface 2) Bonus points are awarded for full stops and underlines. 3) If faced with 3 urinals but 2 are occupied the newcomer must seek a stand up wee in the cubicle. 4) Under no circumstances is the newcomer to nestle in between the number 1 and number 3 placed standers. 5) Stage Fright does happen, men both know and accept this but the participant has a 20 second window of ‘non activity’ before you become a potential nob-holding freak. 6) MDP (multi directional pees) are a harsh fact of life but if you wee on another mans foot your are likely to receive a harsh and substantial beating. 7) It is never, I repeat never acceptable to ‘check out another mans package’. Polite conversation is to strictly limited to the weather, the football, your boss being a c*ck and finally how drunk you are. (If there are mirrors in the urinals - LEAVE IMMEDIATELY)  9) A passing of gas is acceptable but must be limited to a good guff and nothing with bubbles. 10) Eye contact is acceptable with deliverer to pass on a ‘Guy-Nod’. I trust that this now clears matters up

Slopping shoulders, is the next topic of conversation. You can always tell when you are travelling who the new UK travellers are based upon a couple of observations. Firstly, the milk  bottle white skin that requires sunglasses just to look at them, and then there’s the Leprosy Look which is essentially the inability to understand that a mosquitos sole purpose in life is to bite, bite, bite. The remedy is to apply bug spray before going out and not wearing perfume and quaffing sweet drinks and falling asleep in a hammock. (some of the sights we have seen have been quite incredible and have even resulted in being chased by a fatty who really didn’t see the funny side) and finally, slopping shoulders. What I mean by this is when you sit around a table with fellow travellers everyone has sloping shoulders. Stop reading this now and look around you, where ever you are, what ever you are doing, (apart from Simon who is a pilot and Dr Jo who is, well a, Doctor and should be doing important Doctor stuff). Seriously, look around and see that most people from the UK are so tense that their shoulders almost touch their ears. I mean you could balance an apple on their shoulders without any worries. Hacuna Matata. So, chill and let the apple roll off.

Oh I forgot to mention, whilst I was busy trying not to die in hospital I heard the funniest conversation between a 5 foot 3 inch Indian Doctor and a 6 foot 5 Kiwi farmer the other side of the curtains. The Doctor was explaining that he was going to have a look up the mans bottom with a small telescope. ‘A SMALL WHAT?’ the Kiwi yelled. The Indian Doctor chappie was like, ‘Oh do not worry sir and try to relax as it will go up a lot easier, I just want to have a quick look around’. The Kiwi then boomed, ‘IT’S NOT A BLOODY QUICKIE MART BRO’. The Doctor then continued unabated and informed the Kiwi that he was going to use some KY jelly to ‘assist the entry’. The Kiwi once again boomed, ‘YOU’RE GOING TO DO WHAT MATE?’. There was then a metal clanging sound followed by a sort of squelchy farty noise and a yell that made me jump out of my skin that sounded like, ‘SSSTTTREEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWTTTTTTHHHHHH’ and the Indian Doctor yelling, ‘Please do keep still Sir it is very difficult to see anything’. The Kiwi then yells, ‘OH MY ARSE’. Five minutes later the Hubble Telescope is removed from the Kiwi’s tradesman’s entrance and the miniscule Doctor wanders off to have his choccy pudding lunch whilst the Kiwi dude is left sitting bolt upright in bed with eyes like dinner plates and a surprised expression on his face similar to that you would expect if Britney Spears just offered him a quick ten minutes in the broom closet. Priceless.

It all kind of reminded me of when Matt J went into the Doctors because he thought the new Doc was cute but made the mistake of saying that he thought he had tummy pain. The new Doctor was a bit keen and she diagnosed ?Appendicitis, promptly whipped out a pair of rubber gloves and poor Matt became known as ‘Sooty The Glove Puppet’ after that. He didn’t quite feel able to going back to being able to stare lovingly into her eyes after being brutally fisted before even their first date. Well, would you, could you, still at least she took off her watch?

Great to hear the feedback from both men and women alike re the 75mph Swiss birds knockers, keep up the good work,

Speaking of being violated, a couple of bits of news that sadly aren’t quite so good. I thought long and hard about whether to put this in, but I guess travel is all about up’s and no quite so up’s and my website is my way of recording what I experience as we travel around the world. We found out a few weeks ago that my mum’s longer partner John had actually died last May after what is believed was a drinking binge that resulted in him collapsing and subsequently carking it. The little fat man left instructions that ‘no one’ was to be told in the event of his death and that he ‘did not want his money left to anyone’ so the Solicitor chose the RNLI (Lifeboat) and buried him next to Mum without our knowledge or permission. Shattering news. It feels like a fresh fire has erupted under the whole emotional wheelie bin all over again just as I was starting to come to terms with it all. It is terrible to deal. Everyone throws advice, opinions or suggestions at you and then gets upset when you don’t take it, but surely that is the whole point of advice, it is an opinion, a thought. But what do I know. Annnnyway, moving on.

But, as a girl we met in Bolivia had tattooed on her forearm (well she was from Bristol) it read, ‘AND THIS TOO SHALL PASS’ 

So, again, thanks for all the lovely messages of support from close friends, you know who you all are. It’s a tough time for me, very tough indeed but where better to deal with it than sitting on a beach surround by palm trees and coconuts with Blondie at my side. I debated putting this in the story as I said but this is a record of my life and my travels so it is justified in a way I guess as it has had a hard effect on me and will explain why I haven’t been very chatty for a while. (Sorry if I’ve been a bit short and a but grumpy)……anyhooo moving on as I said.

Speaking of which a girl sitting 30 foot or so from us a few days ago had a really lucky escape when a coconut dropped 10 metres from a tree and slammed into the sand right next to her head. It would have killed her without doubt if it had hit her. Strange really when you think about stuff like that and how fragile life is that you just take for granted.

Also whilst we have been in Fiji we have been doing some test shoots for Aquapac.net ( go and have a look in the gallery under additional photography for Fiji Aquapac) and have produced some quite stunning work. Last year our images adorned the front cover of the AQUAPAC International Trade Catalogue that went to, we believe in excess of 130 different counties and a distribution of somewhere in the region of several hundred thousand copies. Just in case you have not heard me banging on about AQUAPAC before or you have been living on Mars for a few years, they make waterproof cases for all types of things, like radios, phones, sunglasses, videos, cameras and even bags that are waterproof (we have all our clothes in one and vital documents in another). But the best bit is that they make cases that you can put digital SLR’s in, so that is the secret into how I get all my special watershots. The best thing is that if I were to get a Pro case it would cost me £3500 but the Aquapac case is £80!!! If anyone has any questions or wants to know more about the ranges/prices just let me know.

Thanks to Canon New Zealand for the loan of the Canon DSLR used in this shoot.

Right the final music bit. We had a bit of a gay scare. Seriously!! We stayed in Auckland with a couple of lovely guys called Jason and Eric (Kiwi and French) who are lovely and gay. We did the whole iPod music swap thing and we discovered a small problem, apparently I have a gay music chip inserted in my brain. Then I got to thinking so help me out here (not out in a Tom Cruise ‘feathers and bows’ in a closet kind of way). Tony Hughes and Darren Goldsby if you are reading this you will understand. Okay so at school I grew up listening to, in my formulative years the likes of; Divine - You think you’re a man / Bronski Beat / Depeche Mode / Mark Almond / David Sylvan / Prince / Kylie / Jason Donavon / George Michael / Michael Jackson / Barbara Streisand / Shirley Bassey / Spandau Ballet / ABC / Boy George / Elton John / AH Ha / Bananarama / Kagabloodygogo………..OH MY GOD!!! The music chip in my head is GAY! Gayer than the front row of the Mardi Gras parade in Gaytown. And I haven’t even mentioned Shirley Bassey. But in my defence I did just buy the new Metallica album but again Mr Manillow is next to it on my iPod.

So, we headed to Australia after 2 weeks in Fiji and 2300kms later landed at Sydney, then flew 3300kms the next day to Perth in WA where we are now in Perth. We both want to say thanks to the wonderful and ever friendly Jo Ciastula from Animal and Airush Kite Boarding who very kindly acted as a chauffeur for a week and was even kind enough to sell us his car! It was really important for us to meet Jo and primarily were it not for Jo and his parents (Hi Tad and Sue) we would still be in Spain and would not be in WA in the middle of a world tour.

Finally, I would like to welcome Helen, Jenny and Patsy Wheelbarrow (yup that is a real name) to the site, three wonderful and fun fellow travellers. As well as the Norwegian wakeboarders and the Mason’s for the Lonely Planet AUS

More stuff in the next few weeks or so.

Bye from us down here to you up there.

Love

Chris and Karen

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