Si & Charl On The Road

Back to Christchurch & Reality (of a sort!)

2010-06-20T13:24:00.001+07:00

Hello blog fans (all seven oreight of you!), sorry it's been a while since we've updated our ongoing travel story, we've been bogged down in the mundane chore of looking for work and lodgings in what is now an increasingly wintery Christchurch.

So what have we been up to since Charlotte's last post ? It's probably best to go back to Dunedin, which seems like another decade to us now but is probably only a few weeks for people living in normal time!

I have to say we really liked Dunedin, we ended up spending five or six days enjoying both the city and the more natural environment of the Otago peninsula, which is practically part of the city grounds anyway. Dunedin has a particuarly British feel to it, the architecture and temperature contributing heavily to this. It's supposedly based on Edinburgh but, for some reason, reminded us heavily of Bristol. Dunedin University has a good reputation, and a large student population means the city is lively in the evenings, we even popped out to sample some of the after dark atmosphere ourselves (although we did end up in Piquinne- Lonely Planet description: "sophisticated wine bar with an older crowd who stand around looking pleased with themselves for making it out to such a trendy venue" , yes that's us now!)

Scene of Dunedin's Harbour, taken from the Otago Peninsula

If you want some fresh air the Peninsula is a short hop out the city, offering walking tracks and the chance of seeing Blue Penguins, Seals / Seal Lions and the Royal Albatross. We were lucky enough to see all of them, the Sea Lions at particuarly close quarters.

We did have have half a thought that maybe we should stay and look for work in Dunedin, it's the kind of place that will have opportunities available as they stuggle to attract people down there and lose a lot of the younger workforce to the slightly brighter lights of Christchurch or the much brighter lights of Auckland and the North. Dunedin has got a surf beach (requiring high levels of motivation in Winter!), good surrouding countryside and property is still dirt cheap down there. In the end though the extra potential options of, and proximity of skifields to Christchurch won through, and we continued our journey north up the Coast.

By this stage money was running short, and the weather was closing in, so we decided to make a break for Christchurch as quickly as possible. We stopped only for the mandatory photo opportunity at the Mouraki Boulders, and to pass through Methven, in order for me to stop into the Mt Hutt Snow School to enquire about snowboard instructors courses (still under consideration).

The Mouraki Boulders - formed from calcite deposits (I think!)

Our plan now was something along the lines of this: Arrive in Christchurch and look for contract work in positions similar to our previous role. Work for three to four months, enjoying the benefits of the many close skifields at the weekend, whilst earning decent salaries that will allow us the top back up our much depleted savings. Make some contacts, then, after the winter take off to explore the North Island in MJ before returning to prearranged jobs and possibly permanent residency. All sounds great in theory!

In practice we were to find the Christchurch job market a harder nut to crack. We'd be warned that it can be a tricky place to pick up work, it's not the world's biggest commercial centre and known as being a bit parochial. In addition the economy here is still recovering from it's recession, even so after three or four weeks of scratching about with little success in the job market frustrations did start to creep in. For all our adventures of the past few years we are still successful professionals, used to having mutiple options when it come to looking for work. It's hard not to take it a bit personally, Charl missed out on one contract opportunity as she "didn't have enough experience", absolute nonsense of course. She was more than capable of doing the job but the old shcool mindset obviously in place at the company was "We need someone with fifteen years industry experience", so when the CV of a thirty year old lady was put in front of them they probably didn't even read through to se that she'd be perfectly capable of doing the work.

Can I remember how to do up a tie ?

The weather was also contributing detrimentally to our mind states, for two weeks in rained almost solid, whilst turning increasingly cold at the same time. This was unusual weather for Christchurch, normally a front will come in and blow through in a couple of days but for whatever reason it got stuck this year, resulting in record floods along the east. Pretty horrible weather to endure when you're stuck living in a 6' by 10' box on wheels. For the first time since we left the UK life felt a little bit challenging (appreciate this will invoke no sympathy from those slogging out forty hour weeks back home)

The great thing about Christchurch though is it's location as a hub for activities and trips away and we managed to dispell some of our job-hunting induced gloom by getting away on three consecutive weekends to explore the Port Hills just outside the city, back over to Punakaiki to see Sam & El, and north up the coast to the seaside town of Kaikoura.

Christchurch City, Southern alps in background. View from the Gondola, Port Hills.

The Port Hills border the city around the suburbs of Sumner, Mt Pleasant and South Eastern area's. On the other side of the hills lies Lyttleton Harbour and the Banks Peninsula. On the weekend the hills are teeming with Kiwi's running, cycling and generally being ridiculously active, from the youngsters right up to older types, lycra reigns supreme and there's barely space for your car on the road (you feel guilty for driving!).There's a lot of walking tracks and the touristy "Gondola" station where less active sorts take a cable car up to the top to enjoy an expresso whilst looking out over the city, the sea and the mountains beyond. Christchurch isn't a classically beautiful city to walk around, but from up on the hills the view is spectacular.

After enduring two weeks of terrible, terrible weather in Christchurch we took the opportunity to go back over to Punakaiki to see Sam and El. For once the sun was shining on the West Coast and the rain was elsewhere! It was also good to see a couple of friendly faces again after a couple of months worth of transitory acquaintances on the road. The West Coast is beautiful in the crisp, clear winter weather. Walking on the beach near to Sams we could see Mt Cook in the background, over 200km's away, something that's only possible with a clarity of atmosphere found in one or two locations on earth (according to some local walking their dog on the beach that is)

The Southern Alps loom in the distance.

We took the opportunity to go walking wtih Sam up the soon-to-be-flooded-for-hydro Mokihuni Valley, and Charl took another yoga class for the locals on the Monday night (she is fast becoming a Punakaiki favourite by all accounts!). The nice weather kept up for our drive back through Arthur's Pass, and although we had been concerned the pass might be snow covered on the eastern side we were back in Christchurch in four and a half hours without any problems.

The following weekend MJ (our self-propelled caravan if we haven't used her honorifc before) got another outing, this time up to Kaikoura. At Kaikoura the mountains drop down almost into the sea itself, and driving up in winter with the snow-capped peaks on your left and a turquoise sea on your right is a pleasure all by itself. It's about three hours drive to the north of Christchurch and has a chilled out, beach town atmosphere. It's well known for it's wildlife watching tours and is probably the best place to come to spot Sperm Whales in New Zealand, there's also dolpins, seals, penguins and albatross in the area so plenty for wildlife enthusiasts. Ten km north of Kaikoura a point break throws out a clean 500m right hander when the conditions are right, and an hour in land you can ride the snow instead at the Mt Lyford skifield. As you can probably guess this gives it top marks in my book.

A Seal chills out on the Kaikoura Peninsula

As luck would have it our trip to Kaikoura aslo coincided with the surf competition - "Kaikoura cold water classic" - so as a bonus we got to watch some decent surfing action. There's a great free camping spot close to the surf so we saved a few bucks at the same time. The following day I braved the cold water fora (quick) surf myself, catching what was probably the best wave of my life out by the point. Unfortunately by the time I caught it Charl had got bored and starting taking photos of shells on the beach so there's no photographic evidence, you'll just have to take my word for it!

So that's a few examples of what you can achieve in the weekends from Christchurch, and a good part of why we're considering the location as a longer-term home. It has been a bit frustrating living out of the van, and trying to find the work we were looking for, but things have just started to come togethor a month down the line. We are now sharing a little house in a suburb called Redcliffs with Paul, an english guy who has been here for three years. Paul's a mountaneer by background and typically of the expat crowd out here seems to have gone for the life full on - he's always out cycling, running, kayaking, surfing, climbing or skiing. It's this sort of common interest that we imagine we'll find prevalent among the people we meet here. It is simply that sort of thing that draws people here, I'm sure there's a good night out in Christchurch if you go looking for it but if you're more into partying than the outdoors stuff there's better places to base yourself I'm sure.

The area we have moved into, Redcliffs, sits on the estuary and is just five minutes walk away from the open surf beaches at Sumner. As it's getting colder the temptation to get suited up and hit the waves is certainly a bit less frequent then it used to be, but I've made it out a couple of times and it's great to have it on your doorstep, although it's not quite as immediatly convinient as living in Freshie!

That's me. Surf is two foot, not a massive paddle out and I was sharing it with one other bloke. Perfect.

It's only a tweny minute jump into the city centre but has a nice small community feel to it, if you're walking out to grab a paper from the local in the morning most people will say g'day as they walk past, it's nice. From the bottom of the road you can look out over the estuary, with the tall buildings of the city in the background and behind them the snow capped southern alps.

Our new residence in Redcliffs

I am shortly due to start a three month contract at a contact centre, making outbound calls to existing customers regarding their wills, home loans etc. Not something that will set the world on fire but regular work that will pay for our rent and ski-passes over the season. Charl has just taught the first week of a four week introduction to Yoga course at a local gym in Sumner. She also is just about to start a six week temp job with a legal company. It's an administrative post and 930-1430, tue - fri, so it's not going to cause too much stress, and does leave her some spare time to try and pick up some more yoga teacher.

It's small steps towards our end goals at the moment, but at least we have some work and the opportunity to test out life in Christchurch and get some snowboarding in over the winter. We recently got our first days riding of the season at Mt Hutt and have spent the last few days in pain as muscles we haven't used for a while have taken a good pounding. The snow is here though and there's been a real buzz around the city as everybody skis or rides and people are looking forward to weekends out on the snow.The main commercial field, Mt Hutt, is an hour and half out the city but there are several club fields also within easy reach. Club fields are a classic bit of Kiwi community co-operation. They are small fields, run by groups of locals and volunteers, than are normally serviced by rope tows and T-bars. They'll often have a lodge, not to dissimilar to some of the DOC huts we've stayed at, that you can book into for the weekend.

New Brighton Pier with a funky sunet

Life here would be about getting out at the weekends and doing all the cool stuff that I've just been talking about. I could easily see us ending up with bikes and kayaks in addition to the surf and snowboards. What's cool is that for the most part a lot of the expat crowd have come here for the same reason, so you'll never be short of contacts with similar interests. Hopefully we'll start to meet a few people through Paul and our work now so after a six month timeout can start to have something of a social life again!

It's not a done deal that we'll stay. Corporate jobs of significance, or suitability for us, are tricky to come by down here, most bigger companies will have their head office in Welly or Auckland. The work to live culture means people stay in the positions they've got, picking up a salary and making the most of life outside of work, which is cool, but does mean positions don't come up all that regurarly. In order to pick up the points for permanent residency one of us would have to get a position roughly similar to what we were doing before so work remains a key factor in our increasingly drawn out decision making process.

It seems like a socially stable place. Crime is low but the social decay which characterises urban settlements in the west is creeping in according to the local press The kids are really into dickhead boy racer culture, and there parents don't always set them the best example! The city is a lot quieter in winter than summer, and if we last through the winter and find we've not been too put off by the cold and inadequately heated houses then maybe that's a good sign. So early days yet but we'll let you know our thoughts again in a couple of months time.

Finally: I would just like to use this public, if admittedly not massively so, forum to express my utter disgust at the perfomance of the national football team yesterday. Quarter to six in the morning I got up, Charl dropped me into town and I wasted twenty bucks on food and drink whilst watching the complete drivel that was England Vs. Algeria. What has happened Fabio? did you get Shaun WP mixed up with Theo Walcott and send the wrong player back by mistake? have you simply forgotten that you brought Joe Cole with you ? Have you taken Rooney's favourite toys away leading him to drop into the footballing depression he's found himself in ? Did it not occur to you that if King got injured (and what are the chances of that happening with his record?) we'd be left without any sort of pace at centre back - knock a ball over the top and I'd have the beating of Terry and Carrager ? Why why why why why why ?

Enough of that, more blog in a couple of months ! Full photos at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=230062&id=681815399&l=271bdb10cb

Cheers M'Dears

Si & Charlotte

South Coast Safari

2010-05-13T11:07:00.001+07:00

After finishing the Kepler Track we had a final night in Te Anau before heading south along the 'Southern Scenic Route' towards the Catlins. Arriving at Tuatapere though we had one last opportunity for walking which we fancied as it involved coastal paths rather than the fiordland mountains we'd been living for the previous 4 weeks.

(View from close to our free campsite for the evening)

So bright and early, after a night on a kind farmer's station for free, we set off for just a two night tramp on the South Coast Track. It forms part of the Humpridge track – a privately managed walk with bigger and 'better' accommodation than you usually get from DOC huts. I think it costs at least $130 in season but from May onwards they decommission their huts and you can walk the whole track for $45.

Despite that option we decided that 3 days of 20km was perhaps a bit too much for us with how we were feeling, plus we could do the DOC part of the tramp on our hut passes and stay in the DOC hut which was an old school house.

So day one took us along the coast, with beach walking for about 17kn to a place known as Port Craig. It's an old timber milling place that was only in use between about 1917 and 1928. Now the only thing left in the School House – since it was owned by the Education Board rather than the timber milling company - and a few remnants of the wharf, sleepers for the train they used to carry the logs to the wharf and various rusty bits of machinery.

It was a lovely place to spend the evening and we caught sight of Hector's Dolphins down near to the wharf. We shared the school house with 2 other couples that night, one of them had actually booked the out of season Humpridge walk and said of the other hut that there was no way left of heating it and as it was up on the ridge (about 1000m I think) it was pretty damn chilly. The private company use the DOC hut in the off-season rather than 'Port Craig Village' a mini holiday complex place that they've built where Si and I think we counted enough bunkrooms for 80 people. I'm glad we just had 4 for company.

(Port Craig School House)

It's the most atmospheric hut we've stayed at and on our 2nd night we thought we'd have it to ourselves until a local hunter turned up. He was an interesting character to chat to though as he ran a paragliding business in Queenstown and had seen some massive changes in the town over the years. Good changes in terms of a lot more money and tourism being such a boon to the local economy, but as with so many popular tourist places, city money comes in to buy property, holiday homes and pushes prices up for everything from beer to groceries to rates the council charges. He's not sure how he feels about the overall result despite his business being successful all year round now.

On our 2nd day we walked 6km further along the track along the old tramlines to see the world's longest wooden viaduct that is still standing. The weather was a bit drizzly and we were both feeling a distinct lack of energy. All the Fiordland tramping was finally catching up with us so we headed back to the hut early, got the fire going and had a game of scrabble. We've been practising by playing open book – with the official scrabble dictionary – and this was the first time we've played for a while without the book so a combined score of over 640 (our highest ever) was pretty impressive!

Simon did say he was going to wax lyrical about community hut life, it's probably good that he ran out of creative energy as it would have simply been some intolerant rant about having to share space with other people. Simon loves it really, and he will be the first to admit that learning new card games off an Israeli chap, meeting long term ex-pats with their views on NZ, chatting to Kiwi's about their home and getting more space to spread out when sleeping compared to our van all makes communal hut living a great experience. Especially when the hut passes are such a bargain.

The walk out from Port Craig was tiring and I think there was a psychological element of our bodies knowing that once we got back to the van that was it. No more ridiculous long walks – for a little while at least – and after a short drive back into Tuatapere a treat of take-away fish and chips followed by a stack of homemade cinnamon pancakes with syrup went down a storm.

We started the drive through towards the Catlins the next day ending up at Invercargill. The biggest metropolis we'd see in quite a while. Population of 40,000 or so and not getting a great rep from people we'd spoken to. It was a bit of reality check getting into one of the main towns in the south, a few characters who wouldn't be out of place on Shirley High street on a Saturday afternoon and a reminder that New Zealand is definitely not on the world's rich list. Houses that can look quaint and cute when you first see them are also rundown and in need of more than just TLC. One very good plus point for Invercargill though was Devil Burger. The most interesting burger menu I've seen. I opted for the Dark Knight – Venison, salad etc, plum and apricot chutney.... Si went for the ManKiller. I thought my burger was big. Just the weight of the bag with his burger in was enough to make our jaws drop. Once it emerged from the bag we realised that he had ordered something that was easily bigger than Si's head, probably bigger than mine although a little bit smaller than Scott's.. Wow – he ate it all, unfortunately we didn't have the camera and he did say to me this morning that the continual background hunger he's been experiencing for the last month has finally subsided.

(Riverton - a quick lunch stop)

We continued along the south coast heading for Curio Bay – home to a 160million year old petrified forest visible at low tide and the rare Hoiho (Yellow Eyed) penguins. The penguins were amazing, a few people gathered around from about 5pm waiting for their exit from the sea up to their nests for the night. They would hop out of the sea into the seaweed and start the slow waddling walk along the rocks. They didn't seem in any rush to get to their nests and spent plenty of time waiting for playmates and preening themselves before bed. Fantastic. All of this happening whilst we're stood on the remains of the petrified forest which in itself is well worth a visit to the bay. Followed by a night's camping on a high spot overlooking the sea to 3 sides we were a bit spoilt. The campsite itself is nothing to write home about but it was quiet and the location was well worth the $15 fee to camp.

(Penguins!!)

(160million year old tree)

With more sunny, fine weather the next morning we had a long walk up the beach at Porpoise Bay keeping our eyes peeled for dolphins – there is a resident community that from the signs we saw obviously come close enough to swim with in the summer but settled for one lonesome sea lion.

There were plenty more sea lions though at our stop for the evening – Cannibal Bay. We headed along the beach and they were just there grunting, roaring, fighting and generally not getting around very quickly. That said we didn't want to be too close; 350kg of male sea lion could do a bit of damage. Another really special place and experience that was completely free and available to anyone taking on the 7km gravel road to the coast. We camped there for the evening undisturned except for mouse number 5 that met it's maker in our new well used mouse trap. It is a shame that freedom camping has become such an issue in New Zealand. Partially because of the sheer number of people renting campervans during the summer and possibly a few financial motives to keep the local economy turning over, it is getting progressively harder to camp out in New Zealand - particularly around urban areas. Rightly so if people cannot be trusted to take away their litter and use public toilets but for responsible travellers, out of season it just gets a little bit frustrating. Still - there are places around if you look hard enough.

(Sea Lions at Cannibal Bay)

From Cannibal Bay we decided just to hit the roads to Dunedin where we'll spend the next few days. It seems like a cool city, bit more artsy than Christchurch and an opportunity to tackle some internet jobs, sightseeing and a long-awaited trip to the cinema!! There's also easy access to surfing along the coast which for some reason Si doesn't seem keen to get involved in... possibly the pre-requisite of a 7mm wet suit is something to do with it! Next stop will be Christchurch when we'll check in with a somewhat more mundane blog I imagine covering our trip up the East coast and the hunt for work in Christchurch which is now looming! (But on a plus side it also means that Odyssey Yoga will be up & running before too long).

(Dunedin City Centre)

Love & peace,

charl x

Check out more photos at :

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=222392&id=681815399&l=8d8a621541

Fiordland

2010-05-04T09:43:00.001+07:00

Fiordland. New Zealand's largest, and the world's fifth biggest, national park area. Towering, snow-capped granite peaks drop steeply into a series of azure (well, sometimes, weather dependent), fiords and great lakes, lower halves clad in dense beech forest. Home to three of the nine New Zealand “Great Walks”, including the Milford Track – possibly the world's most famous multi-day hike. Inhabited by a few hardy humans, accompanied by dolphins, seals, penguins, deer and an array of birdlife. A Mecca for trampers, hunters and sightseers the world over.

Something this good does not come without catches however, and there are certainly a few with Fiordland. Firstly the weather. Fiordland averages seven metres of rainfall per annum on the valley floor and up to eight to nine metres on the peaks, spread over two hundred and twenty rain days per year. That really is a lot of rain. The most common view you're likely to see is that of the rain hammering away at the window of your campervan, or maybe the interior of a cloud, when, after two or three days cooped up in your van you brave one of the mountain walks.

The rain isn't all bad news though. The drive to Milford Sound in the rain is an experience by itself, the road becomes surrounded by a huge avenue of waterfalls as the the rain makes its way off the mountains. The same could be said for a boat trip up Milford or Doubtful Sound. It's best to look on it as a win win situation.

The Fiordland Sandfly

Secondly Fiordland accommodates New Zealand's densest population of sandflies. The New Zealand sandfly is a particularly horrible little creature and even after a couple of months the bites it gives me can cause two or three bad nights sleep whilst I fight a generally losing battle against the urge to scratch my skin off. So bring your best cloth-melting insect repellent, or cover up, as every year hundreds of people (particularly those trekking the Milford Track) probably have a large dent put in their enjoyment of their holiday due to these nasty little critters.

Lake Manopuri & the Fiordland Interior

Finally, due to its terrain, Fiordland is not all that easy to get about. The road from Te Anau to Milford Sound aside, your car is not a massive aid to you. Fiordland is an officially designated Wilderness area for good reason. To really see the interior you need to go by air, water or lace up your hiking boots. There are a variety of scenic flights by chopper or small plane about, a great way to see Fiordland on a clear day. Like most services around here though it doesn't come cheap. Boat trips are available on Milford and Doubtful Sound and both day and overnight trips are available. Doubtful Sound is supposed to be the money shot, but at a minimum of two hundred and fifty bucks for a day boat cruise it'll have to go on our “list of things to do when we've got a bit more money” (steadily growing). Personally I think the way to see the Fiords is probably by kayak, but given it's been six degrees today I think we might come back and do that in the summer.

Seeing Fiordland on foot is what we've really come here for, but even tramping isn't all straight forward here. Most people will see Fiordland's interior on the Milford Track, the scenery is supposed to be world class, however the Milford Track is often fully booked months in advance so you're taking a gamble on the Fiordland weather and personally I'd rather gamble on Gordon Brown winning “comedy personality of the year” (or possibly the general election). The Kepler Track, another great walk, is an easier walk to pick up a short notice booking on but, although spectacular, doesn't have the fiordside scenery of the Milford. The Routeburn Track offers great views of the Hollyford Valley but then crosses the divide back into the Mount Aspiring national park, the scene of our previous tramping tales and an awkward four hour hitch or $150 odd transport fee to get back to your car.

Otherwise to really penetrate the Fiordland interior you're looking at something like the seven day Dusky Track. A remote walk requiring boat or planes in & out, a high levels of fitness and carrying locater beacons / mountain radios etc. In the local DOC stories of fatalities and near misses are on display in an effort to discourage the ill-equipped. The weather is so variable flash flooding and winter avalanches are ever present dangers.

Our first stop and indeed the first stop for most people coming into the park was Fiordland's main and only town Te Anau. Situated on the shore of its namesake lake, Te Anau is a chilled out little place geared up to supply trampers and adventurers heading out into the park. A couple of k's behind Te Anua an observation point set on a hill gives an excellent view of how the rural central Otago cattle flats end on the eastern shore of Lake Te Anau, whilst on the western shore the peaks of Fiordland rise steeply from the lake shore. Te Anau is also home to the best pie shop we have come across to date, Miles Better Pies, (the proprietor's name is Miles – great pie shop Pun). Stevo - I reckon that Pieman from Manly must have learnt his trade here.

Te Anau seen from the viewpoint

With a bad weather front approaching we opted to play safe with a two day / one night tramp by Lake Manapouri, twenty minutes south of Te Anua. As a tramp it wasn't too challenging, a water taxi over from pearl harbour, five hours walk the first day, a night at Hope Arm hut, then a nice easy three and a half hour walk back to the water taxi. It served as a good taster though and did give us our first look into the interior of Fiordland. The trip was probably most noticeable for introducing us to staying with Hunters, the other main group who tend to use the backcountry hut system.

Hunting is actively encouraged by DOC in New Zealand. Although indigenous species are all protected, introduced species like deer, possums and stoats are fair game for anyone who wants to have a pop. A surprisingly high percentage of Kiwi's will own a firearm's license (Charl: I now have an image of armed kiwi's walking through the bushes protecting themselves from the stoats. I think Si means the Kiwi people). We were now in the hunting season for Roe Deer, a two – three week period known as “the roar” as the stags roar to issue challenges and attract deer to their herd, although unwittingly they'll often end up attracting a bullet.

Hope Valley Hut, with an unfortunate Deer providing the dinner

We were pre-warned Hunters could be anyone from city guys on a holiday to proper hillbilly types or yahoos out more to drink whiskey then crawl around in the bush. This lot were a nice bunch of family guys from Wanaka. They had their own boat so had loads of stuff with them and we were treated to some spare venison (freshly shot), fruit juice and a chunk of apple & blackberry crumble that one of their wives had prepared – all luxury stuff when you're out on a tramp! A bunch of the hillbilly sorts did turn up later, but obviously decided there wasn't enough space for them all to hang their dungarees up or strum the tune from “Deliverance” on their banjos so they left shortly after.

We then overnighted back in Te Anau before taking off on the Milford Road, the winding 120km road to the famous Milford Sound. This road is how most people will get to see Fiordland and from about 11.00 onwards you have to take your place in the orderly procession of tour buses and rental campervans making their pilgrimage to the famous Sound. The route is punctuated by stops for roadside attractions, DOC campgrounds, day walks and car parks for several longer backcountry trails.

Now I try to understand these tours, I really do, and even as I'm writing this I'm telling myself to try not to sound condescending or patronising when talking about them – although I'm invariably going to fail. No, I do understand that tours are an informative and social way of seeing some of a country's highlights on a limited timescale. This however, is mass, conveyor belt, “drink now, eat now, go to toilet now – 5 minutes only please, thank you for travelling with real journeys we hope you have....etc”, tourism, and I can't help but view it with a sense of something between bemusement and horror.

We braved one roadside stop, the Chasm, and sat in the van watching the rain come down and the tour buses arrive with the regularity of WWF Wrestlers, making their way into the ring at 30 second intervals for the Royal Rumble. We braced ourself and made the break, managing to squeeze roughly in between two big tour groups. The Chasm as it happens is spectacular and well worth more than the minute that most of the shuffling masses have to give it. Picture this if you can, tourist in rain mac, umbrella in one hand camcorder in the other. Jumps out the bus and walks swiftly round the attraction, looking mainly down at his swift moving feet whilst swivelling robotically from the hips to record the surrounding landscape. Presumably the idea is to experience the holiday on your Plasma screen TV from the comfort of your own lounge?

Anyway, as usual I digress. We did do a Milford Sound boat cruise, it was mightily enjoyable even in the somewhat blustery, damp conditions. Here is our advice on doing Milford Sound. First take a drive along to the Milford Sound Lodge, just ½ km from the cruise ship terminal. Pop in, check the weather for the following day looks reasonable & enquire about rates /availability. Resist the urge to jump up & down and shout “Greedy corporate bloodsuckers” at them when they tell you they're going to charge you forty bucks for the privilege of sleeping in your own van – there is some serendipity to the situation. Then drive along to the Terminal, go and have a look round the four different cruise companies and decide which one you fancy going with. Head back to the lodge and book in for the night. The following morning get up early and check the Fiordland weather hasn't. had an overnight change of heart, always possible, and then book the first cruise of the morning through the lodge – at which point you should receive a $25 or similar discount which cancels out the extortion for camping. The early morning boats have no big tour groups so you can then appreciate the Sound in relative peace & harmony, getting back to your van and heading off just in time as “El Masses” tours etc.. all turn up in a blaze of camera flashes and oriental sounding noise pollution. For what's it's worth we took the 8:50 am Mitre Peak small boat tour, a bargain at forty bucks and well worth the money.

Rain and cold weather then stopped play for a couple of days, thank god we brought the Scrabble board along, a splendid way to pass a few hours on a rainy day. With the sun eventually making a comeback we set off on the Caples / Greenstone track. A circuit of 60km or so that we intended to take four days, three nights over, however due to leaving all our dinner food in its bag at the first hut was cut short to to three days/two nights. The walk is a pleasant valley walk for the most part, although the sub alpine saddle (995m) was tough work getting up from the southern side. Hunting was still in full flow with four hunters in every hut. In Greenstone Hut we were treated to the Redneck Yahoo type of hunters. They got up at four thirty in the morning, belching, farting, talking loudly and generally making it obvious that they didn't give a damn about the rest of us. W**kers. At another hut we met and chatted to a group of sixteen year old lads on a hunting trip. Sixteen year old lads, on their own, out with guns....you grow up quick in the country round here!

Crossing the very pretty Mckellar Saddle

Back to Te Anau we went again, a quick stock up on food and a trip to DOC to book our places on the Routeburn Track, one of the Great Walks and a connecting route between the Fiordland and Mt Aspiring National Parks. To save ourselves a marathon hitchhike back to our car we opted to walk into the first hut, Lake Mackenzie, on day one. Then on the second day we walked up the main peak, Conical Hill for a famous panoramic view of the Hollyford Valley & Darran Mountains, before retracing our steps to the Divide car park. The Great Walks are all well groomed tracks but this second day was still 30km and a good ten hours so we were happy to hit the hay on our return to the van.

The Hollyford Valley - Seen from the Routeburn

Another day was then spent waiting out some of Fiordland's finest rain before we embarked on the Hollyford Track, a valley based route that runs from near the Milford Road, skirts the side of the enormous Lake McKerrow and comes out on the coast at Martin's Bay. At a minimum track time of seven days, there and back, this was going to be our longest track to date, around 115km (return). Martin's Bay is supposed to be a beautiful slice of costal wilderness where you can see dolphins, penguins and seals on a regular basis and after all the alpine trekking we had been doing sounded like a marvellous contrast. We knew from the hut warden at Lake McKenzie that the weather was looking sketchy for a couple of days, but when you're setting off for seven days or more in Fiordland you're going to have to endure some bad weather so we off we went anyway. On the second day however we hoisted the white flag in the face of worsening rain and cut it short at lunchtime, stopping at Lake Alabaster Hut – about ten km and half the distance we were intending to cover.

Watching the rain pour down outside we decided the best course of action was to light a fire, dry our stuff out and see what the next day would bring. More rain, was the answer to that question, and indeed the day after that, and after that. In fact we couldn't really go anywhere anyway as the lake level had risen by at least two metres, flooding the path to a chest deep level. On the third day I, along with Rodney and Patricia, an older couple stuck in the same situation as us, decided to try our luck bashing our own path though the bush. We successfully circumnavigated the lake, but half an hour back down the path ran into one of the guides from a private lodge on the same path. The river had burst it's banks and the path back was chest deep in water we were told. The next day we did successfully manage an exit, getting pretty wet in the process. By this stage we just wanted to get back and check the van hadn't been washed away, however we bumped into another Pyke Lodge guide and found out the road back to Te Anau was shut due to flood damage anyway. With there being no way out to the sanctuary of a town we opted to take advantage of the the space and heating facilities of Hidden Falls Hut – just 2 hours walk away from the car park.

Flood damage caused by the heavy rains

The next day we were to find out that this was a record flood for Fiordland and that vast areas of farmland were under water and several main roads closed due to flood damage – and we'd been stuck out on a backcountry track. Bit of an adventure really, and luckily we were well stocked and had the comfort of a relatively new, twenty six bunk hut to enjoy for most of it. We did find out about another guy called Marcel, who we could tell was a day ahead of us on the track from his entries in the visitors book. He'd got stuck in between two creeks further up the track and had to set up his tent and camp by the side of the path for two days until the creeks went down enough to cross. A lesson in respect for the Fiordland weather.

We were pretty much done with Fiordland at this stage and there was increasing talk about going to find some nicer weather. We managed however to muster our energy reserves for one more big track, The Kepler, a 60km four day track in the mountains facing Te Anau. This really is a great walk, glacial valleys, lakeside tranquillity and a whole day's worth of alpine ridge walking with possibly the best views we've experienced so far.

Mt Luxmore Hut - Kepler Track
So there we go, Fiordland: great place, awful weather. I was going wax lyrical about the joys and challenges of communal hut life but my creative juices are running dry and I think that's a subject for the next post. Just a couple of notes to finish.

First: We've done well over 400km of walking treks in the last six weeks or so, normally carrying about 20k or so on our backs. We're quite capable of covering 20km in 5 hours without feeling to much in the way of adverse effects. As always though there's someone there to burst your bubble. Today we met a group of runners. Their idea of recreation is running three of the great walks in three days. Day 1: Milford Track – 50km, ? Vertical elevation. Day 2: Routeburn track: 35km ? v.e. Day 3 Kepler: 56km 1400m elevation. Just. Plain. Silly.

And lastly best campsite sign to date, spotted in the kitchen of the great lakes holiday park, Te Anau:

“Your mother doesn't live here, so please CLEAN UP YOUR OWN MESS”.

You tell 'em son, horrible little layabouts. For some reason a certain section of the backpacking crowd just can't their heads around the fact that Jeeves (or his dutch / german / scandinavian equivalent) simply can't get the time off the family estate to follow them around, clean up their dishes and put their garbage away!

Photo Album:

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3 saddles, 3 days, 3 (not blind) mice

2010-04-28T15:46:00.009+07:00

In the last blog Si left you with us tearing down the Wilkins River on a Jet Boat. We were on such a high coming out of the walk. You look in the mirror after 4 hard days hiking and you actually look different – despite the lack of sleep, washing and vegetables we looked healthy and alive.

Despite the need for some fresh veg we treated ourselves to schnitzel and chips at the Makarora Tourist Camp we were staying at that evening and I got the laundry done – stinking socks no more. After a very refreshing sleep that night we continued south to Wanaka; a beautiful lakeside town – really modern and chic in comparison to everywhere else we'd seen so far in New Zealand. Chatting to a local lady a couple of days later we heard how Wanaka has really developed over the last 10 years with a lot of people investing in holiday homes and people with money moving to be by the lakeshore and on the edge of the Mt Aspiring National Park. A great location both in summer & winter. We were quite taken with it and have debated whether it might be somewhere we could work over the winter. We're still not sure how the whole work situation is going to pan out so it's one to keep in mind.

(Main street through Wanaka)

We spent a couple of days just relaxing, catching up on internet, stocking up with food and eating! Wanaka was preparing itself for the Warbirds over Wanaka festival which only happens every second year over Easter weekend (involving lots of old planes from the World Wars flying over Wanaka). Locals warned us that it might be wise to be out of town before Easter weekend so on the Thursday we packed up from the cheap community campsite we'd found in Albert Town just outside Wanaka and headed along 30km of gravel road (which the van dealt with admirably despite the corrugations) towards a trail head in the Mt Aspiring National Park where we thought we'd be fine to camp over. We also tried our legs out after their 2 days rest and headed up to the Rob Roy Glacier – a simple 3 hour return walk but worth the effort for the close up view of the glacier. At Raspberry Creek car park we found it was fine to stay over, if we'd done any overnight hikes from there we'd have left the van in any case, and had a delicious dinner of steak, eggs and veg followed by caramel slice with yoghurt (NB steak in NZ is massively superior to the UK and substantially cheaper). Food really has become a bit of a focal point, to the extent that I'm making up recipes whilst walking and dreaming about breakfast each night. To be honest I was going to blame the whole food obsession on Simon but I think I'm just as bad.

I'm surprised pies didn't get a mention in the last blog but for sure they will next time as we have discovered the best pie shop in the whole of New Zealand (that we've visited..).

(View from Rocky Mountain track of Lake Wanaka)

Whilst on the Wilkins-Young tramp we'd met an older couple, she was Scottish, he was an Alan Partridge sound-a-like. Really knowledgeable on bird life and extensively travelled, they had had an interesting situation the night before setting off on the tramp - a mouse in their hire car!! They left a mouse trap in the car and were wondering whether it would have caught anything. Then, whilst in Wanaka we bumped into Nick (a fellow tramper from the same walk who had been listening to the story) and he told us that the first night back in his van after the walk he could hear scurrying and had since bought two mouse traps which he'd caught 2 mice in. Anyway, I'm telling you this because that night at the Raspberry Creek carpark we both woke up and thought we could hear rustling. We looked around, couldn't find anything, tried to go back to sleep. But we kept hearing noises, finally I pinpointed the sound to one of our drawers that I knew had a plastic bag in the back. Opened the drawer and lo and behold I could see the mouse trapped in the plastic bag. Obviously getting rid of mice is a man's job so I poked Simon awake from his dreams and told him to do something with it. We should have just emptied the whole drawer outside really but being half asleep Si grabbed hold of the bag but didn't have the end closed and next thing we saw the mouse was jumping out the bag, into the back of the cupboard and into wherever mice go to hide that make them invisible to human eyes. Rubbish. Anyway, I continued to hear it most of the night.

(Mouse - not cute. Si did suggest a photo of one of the ones we have since caught in a trap but I can't look at themso I doubt anyone reading this will want to either)

The next day we headed up the track to Rocky Mountain on the edge of Lake Wanaka and got some stunning views of the lake and the town. Rather than go back into Wanaka as it was Easter Friday now we turned south and drove through the Cardrona mountain road south towards Queenstown. Instead of going straight into the hustle and bustle of what is renowned as the party and extreme sport capital of NZ we stayed in quaint and gentile Arrowtown. A small place that still looks like the wild west with its pioneer time architecture.

(Main street in Arrowtown - busy with tourists, much more tranquil in the evening)

We both quite fancied a drink and head into the village for the evening, a much quieter place without the hordes of day trippers. What we didn't know was that in NZ nowhere can serve alcohol on Good Friday or Easter Sunday unless you are also eating (and supermarkets and shops cannot sell you alcohol). We'd already had dinner but by now the thought of a glass of Pinot Noir had taken hold so we decided that some non-essential spending on a glass of wine each plus peach cheesecake and hot chocolate brownie was ok. Mmmmmm.

With our body clocks set still on tramping time – I.e. Wake up with the light, we got up early and made full use of the campsite facilities before we had to leave at 10am. Instead of heading straight into Queenstown we went to the original AJHackett Bungy just outside town and watched a few brave souls jump off. Not for me, and just watching makes me feel a bit queasy but this particular bungy at around about the 50m mark (or a bit less) wouldn't be so bad that if Si had decided on his 'time / cost' budget analysis (haha) that it was worthwhile I'd have been able to watch him jump all right. Fortunately 2 seconds of freefall for $175 doesn't really pass the test so on we went to Queenstown. Where, with the array of shopping and eating facilities we made the split second decision to get out as soon as possible. Not before however we had a lovely walk along the lake edge, a proper feed of restaurant fish, wedges and salad at the casino ($10 lunch time special) and booked our transport for the next walk.

(Lake Wakatipu which Queenstown sits on the edge of - which at the time of posting this blog is on the verge of flodding the town centre....)

We wanted to do the Rees-Dart loop. A 4 night, 5 day tramp starting a little north of Glenorchy and heading through the Mt Aspiring National Park. We knew that there was rain due that afternoon (Saturday) but the front was supposed to clear Sunday and then it was supposed to be fine. We got a bit concerned chatting to the lady at DOC because ideally we were going to wait a couple more days but we knew that the track transport was getting full and there were apparently plenty of people who had been holding off starting the walk for the fine weather. And it was Easter weekend. A terrible combination that we could foresee but we decided to just go for it in the hope that the rain over Saturday night might at least make people wait until Monday and we would be a day ahead in the huts. That was assuming that we could ford 25 Mile Creek - a notorious crossing after heavy rain.

So, with transport to the trail head booked – we would be finishing at a different place to where we started and were leaving the van in Glenorchy – we set off along the stunningly beautiful road to Glenorchy all the time willing the rain to start on the basis that the sooner it began the sooner we'd get fine weather for walking.

That night we had at least 3 power cuts at the campsite and the rain left the grass like a quagmire. The clocks were changing that night so we had an extra hour of daylight to sort ourselves out in the morning before we got the bus at 9.15 along with 18 other random trampers (it was full) to the start of the walk.

Unlike the previous walk, right from the beginning there was a sense of urgency to the walking. Everyone knows the first hut has 20 bunks. We're 20 on the bus but we don't know if other people have driven to the start of the walk or who else might be setting off later in the day. Si and I got a fairly quick pace on and after a couple of hours everyone was well and truly spaced out. There were two other couples ahead of us and a German and Kazakstani guy also . Unlike our previous tramping we felt obliged to keep walking rather than have our usual photo & rest stops. So when we stopped for lunch after 3 hours, it felt well deserved. We'd covered 10km of bog & forded the river so we were wet and stinky already but the sun was out and we enjoyed our rest.

The 2nd half of the day entered into the National Park proper and we carried on through beech forest and grassy flats slowly following the Rees river valley. We arrived at Shelter Rock Hut at about 3.30 pm well within the suggested 6-7 hours it should take to walk the track and got ourselves a bunk for the night. We also got chatting to the other trampers who were going to become our fellow 'dorm' mates for the next couple of nights. As the afternoon rolled on the rest of the 20 trampers rolled in along with various faces who had obviously come in by some other means and before too long Simon & I had offered to share our bunk so a lady could have the top bunk, and by the following ,morning when we got into the kitchen there were sleeping bags on benches and the floor. There had probably been 30+ in the hut .

(A busy night at Dart Hut)

We got an early start the next day to head up the Rees river valley – once again alpine tussocky grass and clear sparkling springs - and over Rees Saddle (1447m). Once over the saddle we sidled along Snowy Creek, a deep river valley, before a final steep descent to Dart hut where Snowy Creek met the Dart River. We'd pounded through the 9km in only 4 hours and easily got ourselves bunks in the hut and had an afternoon to kill. Unfortunately the weather closed in a bit so we settled for a little stroll with the camera, a chilly splash in the river to clean off and then an early dinner. By the time it got to evening the hut was rammed. And when Nick, who we'd met on the previous tramp, turned up having crossed over Cascade Saddle – a notoriously difficult crossing – we gave up one of our bunks so he'd get to sleep for the night.

The next day started off cloudy but we were just doing a side trip from the hut so we were able to leave a lot of stuff, reserve a bunk for the evening and set off up to Cascade Saddle and the Dart Glacier. We set off with another couple but the girl twisted her ankle rock hopping across one of the first rivers. They were ok to be left – her boyfriend was an experienced mountain guide. But it goes to show how careful you have to be. (The following day she wasn't ok to walk out and an 8 hour trek followed by a 6 hours trek on a swollen ankle was not going to be fun).

Anyway, the day walk was astounding and made the whole tramp – any attachment to getting a bunk or competitiveness in walking – which is not the point of being out there was forgotten. The weather helped but the mountain landscape and views were truly phenomenel. We literally touched the snout of the glacier, kind of scary when you think about the power they hold and with the afternoon sun a bit of melt could easily cause some precarious boulders of ice to fall down.

(Me with the Dart Glacier - yes the grey dirty thing is the huge snout of the glacier)

The walk up to Cascade Saddle was steep, up scree slopes and snow grass but the view from the top was awesome & magical & truly enlivening. The cloud cleared so we had views of Mt Aspiring & the whole of the Dart Glacier. Well worth the effort and despite there being a few others up there with us – also having done the side trip from the hut - everyone was blown away by the place. One Israeli got to the top and literally whooped with joy!

(At the top of Cascade Saddle - 1524m -with Dart Glacier in the background)

Back down the valley and after an 8 hour day out we got back to a crowded hut. With a few folks camping outside we reckon the 32 bed hut had at least 60 people staying over for the evening. At least 2 school (Duke of Edinburgh) groups had turned up and but we were lucky to have an 8 bunk room shared with the guys we'd met from day 1 so it felt like home and we got a pretty good night's sleep. The evening had been spent plotting our next move though. To continue with the planned route meant certain carnage at the next hut. Just 20 bunks. The school groups were moving straight on and the Israeli's (who numbered at least 12) were also all heading that way.

When at 7 the next morning there were already people leaving we decided to cut our losses and head back the way we'd come in. It turned out well with me, Simon, Nick and Neil – a Kiwi who we'd met on this walk – taking the route back. Doing the track backwards really does give you a different walk, the downs become ups the views are reversed and we had even better weather than when we first came over. So the last two days walking out were really enjoyable after the high of Cascade Saddle. The last night was the coldest we'd had. We both were sleeping in long thermals and woolly hats in sleeping bags supposed to be good to -5c but were still cold. Don't think these huts have heating! The main rooms will have a wood burning stove but the sleeping rooms – at least in these huts - were separate buildings. By the last hour of the 5th day we were ready to stop but we got through and back to Glenorchy where the van had been left.

With glorious weather we got our laundry done and started to dry our boots and bags (we'd forded the Rees River about 10 times on the last day getting back) before heading for burger & chips for dinner.

(Numerous crossings of the Rees River - this one not too deep)

Friday saw us heading back down the 50km of road to Queenstown and having to resist the urge to spend any money. Without really meaning to we found ourselves in the MacPac sale (a NZ owned outdoor clothing brand) and leaving with two down jackets which we'd been admiring on other trampers who looked incredibly warm and cosy in the huts. The UK credit card is there for something.... After another $10 special lunch at the casino we thought we ought to get out of town swiftly and spent the evening in possibly the most stunning stop over we've had on the lakeshore of Lake Wakatipu.

It was also the evening that the mouse reappeared. After much annoyance and irritation I eventually caught him in a 'plastic bag with bread inside trap' and at about 6 in the morning took him for a walk a long way for the van before dumping him in a bush. Much to our irritation though it seemed like there was a whole mouse party going on that morning which reached it's most surreal moment with both of us lying in bed, head torches in hand ready to 'spotlight' the mice which sounded liked they were in the van. Si got the silhouette of one about to run into the front cab of the the van and we both lay there staring at him wondering what we were meant to do next. Of course the mouse made the first move and dived into the front cab somewhere. We rolled over and tried to get a bit more sleep. By the time it was light and I realised I wasn't going back to sleep I took the chance to do some morning yoga by the lake. Not something I'm getting to do very much – with no space inside and more often than not now a wet outside it's not so great. Still, the yoga postures are just a small bit of yoga, taking each moment of this trip and being in it and experiencing it completely is just as much what yoga is about.

(Beautiful free camping on the edge of Lake Wakatipu)

Back to the mice - we think they leave the van in the day – although we now have a mouse trap (ed. 2 at the time of posting this), baited with bread and sultanas, and we are also deliberating whether to create a water trap with the sink and a ruler. I'm not sure which of drowning mice, or squishing their heads in a trap is the more yogic. Neither probably, but now that they have found our underseat food stash – neatly nibbled plastic packets of noodles and ginger nut biscuits – we have to get a bit nasty with them.

We're now in Fiordland – home to rain and wind and rain. Also Miles Better Pies – but I will leave the joys of Fiordland for Simon to muse over next time.

With love from the unwashed and slightly undernourished (therefore it's okay to have 6 meals a day) Charl & Simon xx

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Glaciers & Hiking Boots

2010-04-09T09:34:00.012+07:00

Hello to All,

Visiting Sam & El in their crazy old cabin in the woods (nicked your phrase there Sam) gave us a good lift, because unlike when we arrived in Australia we don't have a ready made social group to fall into, and really don't know that many folks out here. It's good to know if we want to see some friendly faces we can drive over to Punakaiki for some jungle cabin chillout and breakfast pizza. Charl also passed an important watershed by teaching her first full group yoga session, something she'll remember for a long long time I'd imagine.

This chapter really is about our experience of the West Coast, a region in the south island that stretches from Karamea in the North to Haas in the South. The West Coast is known as NZ's frontier country, spectacular temperate rainforest dropping down steep slopes to meet a driftwood strewn coastline where the Tasman Sea rages in. It's considered a remote area, but everything's relative, and when you've travelled through dusty little aboriginal settlements that are 350k's from their nearest neighbour in the Australian desert ,you have a different perspective on what's really remote.

It is however an extremely charming, and very relaxed part of the world. As one retired lady in Karamea took great pleasure in telling me, “nothing happens quickly around here love”. After seeing Sam & El our first stop was the small town of Hokitika, or “Hokey” as the locals call it. Home to about four thousand. We just missed out on one of the West Coast's biggest parties, the Hokitika “Wild Food Festival”. An all weekend event of bizarre and tasty organic foods, fancy dress and lots of alcoholic beverages, attended by about twenty thousand revellers. Shame we missed it but it's on the list for next year if we're here.

"Hokey"

It was also our first wedding anniversary and we treated ourselves to a rare visit to a wine bar and meal out. This was a rare treat indeed. When you're travelling on a limited budget you have to divide your expenses to essential and non-essential categories. Essential items include fuel, supermarket food shopping and vehicle maintenance. The other categories in our budget spreadsheet include Camping Fee's, Alcohol, Activities (inc. eating out) and the all encompassing “Miscellaneous” (normally clothing / camping kit or Internet expenses. Camping fees we try an avoid by free camping (increasingly difficult unfortunately) or at least avoiding expensive holiday parks (never stay in a “Top Ten” park, they are a 100%, bona fide, rip off). Alcohol we've pretty much given up, not a bad thing I guess. Activities is a difficult one because every time you turn a corner you see a sign advertising bungy jumping, rafting, skydiving, jetboating etc.. however New Zealand's national pastime is tramping (hiking) and aside from being the best way to see the backcountry it's also generally free (once you have a hut pass that is – explain later).

With the aim being to squeeze as long as possible out of our cash reserves, you tend to view your expenses in terms of time cost, so fifty bucks on a couple of pizzas and nice glasses of wine tends to be weighed against two or three nights at a campsite or half a tank of fuel. That said if we don't treat ourselves to the occasional bit of food or drink out we do go a bit crazy so to to an extent it's worth it for our sanity if nothing else, and if you can't have a treat on your wedding anniversary then when can you?

After Hokitika we followed State Highway 6 down the coastline to the small cove of Okarito. At this stage we ran into our first bad spell of weather. To be fair we'd been in New Zealand a month, and barely had to put up with more than the very occasional twenty minute sprinkling, so we were expecting it at some point soon anyway. In Okarito it poured, really poured, and the next day we decided we wouldn't be renting kayaks to explore to hidden coves of the Okarito lagoon, searching for the elusive White Heron, nor we we be partaking in the guided nature walk which often spotted the equally reclusive Brown Kiwi. We did however have just about enough time to practice our photography, taking some great moody pic's on the driftwood covered beach and searching for washed up Jade stones.

Moody scenes at Okarito beach

We then followed the road inland, towards the glacial tourism towns of Franz Josef and Fox Glacier. Here are two small towns that make a living out of the two large glaciers that rest in the their glacial valleys just minutes outside the township borders. Carparks at the glacier bases are a merry go round of tour buses that pause for ten minutes to disgorge their loads of Japanese tourists, keen to snap their photo of the glaciers (complete with neon raincoat clad fellow tourers making the “V” signs with their fingers in the foreground, of course)

Franz Josef Glacier

For the more adventurous various 'Glacier Guides' will take you up onto the glaciers for exploring and ice climbing. This is definitely something that falls into the “Activities we'd love to do but can't afford to” category, maybe we'll come back once we're earning to get the full experience here. Franz Josef has a very exclusive feel to it with lots of premium accommodation on offer. Fox is slightly more down to earth but still not a cheap place to stay for a long time. We stopped for a couple of days but the bad weather continued and we ducked out of the overnight thermal springs walk we were intending to do, the Copland Track, after the river levels became too high for us to ford the first crossing safely.

Tour buses galore at fox

The road returns to the coast to pass through the small town of Haast before curving inland again on its way to the Great Lakes and activity towns of Wanaka and Queenstown. On the way we stopped at Makarora and embarked on our first multi-day tramp, the Gillespie Pass/ Wilkin-Young Valley loop. A four day, three night trek, that takes you from a steep wooded valley up over an alpine pass of 1700m and back down a neighbouring valley before meeting a jetboat to take you back down the river to Makarora. The trek also involved a full days side trip to an alpine lake, set in a glacial moraine, and decorated with car-size icebergs and turquoise frosted waters.

At this stage it's maybe best to give you an idea of how most people go about tramping over here. Most people tramp on land owned and managed by DOC, the Department of Conservation. Most towns will have a DOC office that is often manned and provides information and supplies for walkers. DOC manage the infrastructure on these walks that includes the trails, bridges and huts. The backcountry huts vary from tiny little deer-stalker huts with four bunks and little else, to forty bunk cabins with sinks, food preparation areas and flushing toilets. The larger huts on popular routes may have a hut warden in residence who will be in radio contact with DOC and will have information on weather forecasts, potential flight outs etc. The huts are ticketed and are normally $5 per night per person for basic huts to $15 per person per night for “serviced” huts. If you tramp a lot you'll probably have a backcountry hut pass, we bought ours for $60 for six months.

Siberia Hut,a twenty bunk hut on the Wilkin-Young Track

The exceptions to this are New Zealand's “Great Walks”. The Great Walk huts are the only ones that can be booked, they're $45 per person per night, but although pricey you at least are assured you'll be in a bed not on the floor. They also will normally have gas cookers available and even in some cases have the luxury of power & lighting. This commercialisation of New Zealand's most accessible natural beauty is, I guess, inevitable whilst at the same time a little bit sad. The culture of enjoying the countryside by getting out and tramping with friends and family is longstanding in New Zealand and prevalent across all the income groups, at $45 per night the tracks are already out of the reach of a lot of people (including us!). Some of the Great Walks, post-end of April, no longer need booking and our hut passes will suffice, however snow is more than likely in May so anything with Alpine crossings would be a bit of a risk.

As the huts can get pretty crowded you can also take a tent and camp outside them for a bit more personal space. Camping passes are normally about half the price of of hut passes. Before heading off you leave a notice of intentions with the DOC office, so if you're not back by the stated date someone will come looking for you. It's a great infrastructure and when combined with the natural environment of the South Island it's easy to see why New Zealand is one of the world's premier destinations for people who like to do their exploring by foot.

As for this particular tramp that Charl and I set out on, well, it was probably one of the best experiences that we've had together. It was tough – Day 1 was about 27km over nine hours (Probably carrying close to 20 kilo's each in our packs), Day 2 was 12km, 900m vertical climb, 8 hours. The scenery at the base of the valley was very “Lord of the Rings”, the views from Gillespie Pass stunning and the the iceberg strewn Lake Crucible up there as one of the top natural sights we've seen. The first hut we stayed at, Young Hut, was deserted when we got there which meant the first thing I had to do after a nine hour hike was go out to the woodshed to chop some wood and get a fire going (hut etiquette). As it turned out we were the only people there until at nine thirty a Ukranian guy called Pavel turned up out of the dark and rain. This guy was covering serious distances and had caned through what took us nine hours in five.

Tough work slogging up 900m to Gillespies Pass, the Wilkin Valley spreadout below

On the fourth day we met a jetboat to take us out. It was $75 but by that fourth day I'd have paid twice that not to have to walk the remaining 26km out, having twisted my ankle going up to Lake Crucible the day before. Jetboats work on sucking up and expelling water through a jet at the back, allowing them to opertate in New Zeleands shallow rivers. It's a good, old fashioned “scream if you want to go faster “, “watch out for that cow wading across the river” type experience. When we have some good internet I'll stick some video up.

It's probably difficult for a lot of people out there to comprehend what we get from multi-day tramping like this. It's hard work, your legs and shoulders ache, your feet inevitably blister or rub. You can't wash properly and food rations consist of noodles, porridge and cheese on crackers. You get wet and it's not always easy to dry out. During the night the temperature often drops severely in the mountains leaving you shivering in your sleeping bag.

Icy Waters of Lake Crucible

The hardship is part of the challenge though, you're so hungry that noodles and porridge taste like gourmet food. You won't hear the sound of a car for four days, you get to see scenery you just can't access from the road unless you've got the bucks for scenic flights etc. The stars (and Milky Way) are amazing (provided you can see them), you get in some great photography practice and you get to meet a whole variety of weird and wonderful people out in the mountain huts.

In many ways it's not too different to our 4x4 exploits, and whereas in Oz the great 4x4 tracks were key factors in deciding our direction from now on in New Zealand we'll be lead by the many tramps that we're keen to embark upon whilst our money lasts.

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Road Trip through the Mountains to a Crazy Cabin in the Woods

2010-04-03T04:29:00.009+07:00

Heading West through Arthur's Pass

We set off for the adventure 'for real' on Tuesday 9th March leaving Christchurch and heading west on SH73 (State Highway). We hadn't realised but Christchurch extends quite far west with more industrial areas and outer lying suburbs, but pretty soon we were out onto the flats of Canterbury Plains – it is a level expanse of agricultural land with the southern Alps looming ahead on the Horizon. We hadn't gotten too far before we stopped for the obligatory pie.

I don't think Si has mentioned the pies yet, surprisingly. The pies here are brilliant. Cheap, tasty, home made and really yummy! If this blog turns quite food related I apologise now but we have time to cook properly and food helps to structure our days.

We were heading for Arthurs Pass – a small 'village' in the National Park and the centre of some good walks - where the highway crosses through the southern alps before commencing its descent towards the west coast. It can't be any more than 200km coast to coast but the drive is a good 3 or 4 hours (in a normal car) because of the winding roads.

The drive was spectacular. As we started to climb the scenery started to get a certain “Lord of the Rings” feel about it and we both loved the rugged mountain views. MJ, the van, did ok considering her age. She doesn't like hills but it's a good way for all the drivers behind us to practice mindfulness and patience. All very yogic :) Unfortunately the road is also used by the truck drivers – it is the main highway going west – and we had one hairy moment where we were slowing to turn into a lake and the guy behind really didn't seem to be slowing up at all. Apart from that though it was a beautiful drive. There is also a Tranz-Alpine railway which does the journey – some people do it as a day trip to the west coast and back. It practically follows the line of the road and is a good way for no-one to have to drive and all can enjoy the scenery. It's staggering really how the early pioneers built the roads and cut the tracks trough the mountains and indeed all over the country. More on that later – a lot of the tramping follows old pack tracks and tracks that the original Maori settlers used for hunting and moving around the country.

Parked up at Lake Pearson

We stopped for lunch at Lake Pearson - a stunning Alpine Lake where, since the weather was so lovely, we couldn't resist a quick dip. It was very chilly, not surprisingly. We carried on with our journey to Arthurs Pass and realised that whereas in our heads we thought we would be arriving in some quaint alpine village maybe like Meribel, just a bit less commercial, there was actually a train station (for the Tranz-Alpine), a large cafe / pub / shop, a smaller cafe / pub and a motel, 2 or 3 B&Bs and a back packers and the local DOC (Department of Conservation) office, all strung along the main road. We are still having to remember that if we see a place name on the map it doesn't mean that there is anything there, it's most likely just a farm off the side of the road. Lesson #1 always top up with fuel, don't expect to find somewhere else 100km down the road.

We popped into the DOC and checked on the weather forecast for the next day. The plan was to climb Avalanche Peak, a walk starting in Arthur's Pass and was supposed to be 7km, 6-8 hours return, straight up and straight down. It looked fine and there was nothing else we needed to do, we could park up at DOC for the day with no problem and so we decided to head back down the road to a DOC campsite we had passed ten minutes down the road to camp up for the evening.

Kea on Car, not good as they like to pull your wiper blades off, just for the heck of it apparantly

Klondyke Corner had free camping – with just a long drop toilet. DOC have a a lot of free / cheap camp sites around the country and our aim was to use them where possible rather than the holiday parks which charge mega bucks for their facilities and more often than not you're squished in with various other motorhome and Winnebago drivers.

On the corner between two dry river beds, just off the side of the road it looked like a perfect spot to camp up. When a few little black midgey things started flying around we waved them off not really sure what they were. They were persistent though and next thing I knew Si was saying that they were biting him. How can something that little bite you and make a grown man complain I thought? He was right though and we soon realised that these small black harmless looking creatures were actually cannibalistic, devil spawn aliens making their way from the depths of hell to feed on any exposed skin they could find AKA sandflies.

We knew to expect them on the West Coast – but we weren't on the coast – we were in the mountains! And we'd thought we would stock up on repellent when we got to the west coast. The worst thing was that by the time we had clocked what was happening we'd had the door open to the van to let some air in and the evil things had found their way indoors. That evening we had a pleasant game of scrabble whilst squishing the sandflies that had stowed away earlier in the day and were now heading out from their hiding places to fly around the light. The only blessing is that they are incredibly slow moving and so it's easy and satisfying to squash them with a finger, exacting swift retribution to those who manage to get a bite in. Of course at this stage we didn't know that with sandflies the worst bit comes after the bite, maybe 24 hours after....

We packed up our back packs, remembering all our Raleigh training, taking heed of the warnings about the NZ weather, taking warm layers, waterproofs, extra food, compass, string, whistle etc and set our alarm for seven.

Taking a break for lunch on the peak

The climb up Avalanche Peak was unrelenting, After the first five minutes the track started to steeply ascend – as in needing hands to help to climb – and continued like that for about an hour and a quarter until we reached the bush line about 400m above the village. We stopped and snacked for a bit and enjoyed the magnificent views of the valley below and mountains around us. The terrain from this point on changed into a tussock covered ridge as we continued our steep ascent.

After a final vertical push we reached a narrow rocky ridge, with sheer drops to each side. Apparently people have died up there after miscalculating either in winter or high winds. Fortunately we had fine weather and despite the slight vertigo we both edged our way to the summit. At 1873m it's pretty high up. From the top we had glacial views and gazed on as the clouds did weird twirling and disappearing things in the valley below us.

We also had our second encounter with a Kea or Alpine Parrot. We'd first seen a Kea the night before at Klondyke. Ahhh, cute green parrot thing walking around, we'd thought. When it proceeded to jump onto the bonnet of the van and start scratching around he became less cute. At five in the morning after Simon had got up for the third time to chase it off the car it definitely was no longer in the “cute” category. They are endangered but renowned for their curiosity and cleverness. Unfortunately people feeding them makes them both sick and more of a pest to other visitors. Best just to watch and enjoy. This one obviously enjoyed trying to get pickings from people's lunches at the top of Avalanche Peak. There's maybe room for six people at the top and we had it to ourselves for most of our lunch of cheese & crackers.

The descent took a different route, apparently 'easier' but it didn't seem much easier to us. The whole trip took us just over five hours including a prolonged lunch break and morning and post lunch snacks. Surely we didn't need that many meals, particularly as we were easily back down by two, but exercising does justify our appetites.

We saw the Tranz-Alpine come through in the afternoon and then decided to press on to Lake Brunner for the evening. We were tired from the climb and our quadricep muscles were aching from the long descent but it was a fantastic walk and a great introduction to tramping in New Zealand.

At Lake Brunner we spent the evening at a peaceful country motor camp which we had to ourselves apart from one elderly American man. We cooked up curry in the camp kitchen and met our next NZ bird – the Weka. Common in certain areas but by no means widespread, these flightless birds are as inquisitive as all the birds we've met over here seem to be. The particular family wanted nothing more than to get into the kitchen where we were cooking. They are large chicken sized but have to walk everywhere.

By this time we also were starting to get the full effect of sand fly bites – incessant itching. And scratching just makes it worse but it's impossible not to scratch. Itching to the extent that you end up having semi-sleepless nights. I'm not the first person to say that – apparently James Cook in his diaries wrote about the sandflys causing bites “irresistible to itch”. Nearly three weeks later we still have marks from the first bites – tiny little red dots on our feet – and we thought we were good with these foreign things!

The following day the plan was to head down to the west coast and then continue up to visit Sam, a good friend from our Raleigh expedition who's been living on the West Coast for coming up to eighteen months. It was his lovely fiancee's birthday the day we were arriving so we were looking forward to a fun evening with friends.

Sam's Cabin

I love the variety of people you meet on the road if you look for them. It would be easy to keep our heads down, and see New Zealand in our own little bubble without really engaging with the outside world. Apart from that being dull & insular, if we didn't make the effort to find out about other people's worlds whilst we were travelling it would be a complete waste of opportunities & chances to find out more about the world. More about people we meet in a later blog but suffice to say we've just come off a 4 day hike having met a crazy Ukrainian hiker, 3 Israeli's just of national service and off to celebrate the start of Passover, a world expert on birds, an actuary, a nomadic Kiwi who must be 55 but had the energy and spirit of someone much younger and a lovely little girl called Charlotte about to start primary school in Wanaka. It's by talking to these people about the world, conservation, politics, religion, the economy – all the things we're taught it's not polite to discuss on first meeting people - that you start to get a more global view of world and realise that we are not all that different. We bemoan the lack of vision in certain parts of the world..Texans for example... travelling gives people vision and eyes and if people haven't been given the chances to have their eyes opened we can't criticise. Each of our own world views is only as valid as the next persons.

There's a phrase in the film Avatar - 'I see you' – which the big blue people use as greeting to each other. In yoga we say Namaste at the end of class. Often translated as 'I bow to you / to the world' but in meaning is much like the Avatar ' I see you'. When we see ourselves in others we can have compassion for each other.

Message for the day over!

We got to Punakaiki and popped in to see Sam's project site. They've planted over 20000 tress in the last year or so to repopulate an area of land that had been owned by Rio Tinto but has been gifted back to the people of New Zealand and is now in the hands of DOC to look after. The surroundings had changed again on the west coast. Primeval rainforest tumbling down practically to the water's edge with roads clinging to the coast line.

Sam's cabin is incredible. 125 steps up through the rainforest you reach a clearing where this quaint witches cottage has been built. The whole place had a beautiful ambience to it, the sun shone as we looked out from the decking across the sea and enjoyed the late afternoon sun, Sam's been there for coming up to a year and it's a real challenge just living there. Apart from the shopping trolley winch lift to get the shopping up the hill and the long drop toilet at the bottom of the garden, there's a rusty old bath ready to be installed with a sea view and a fire pit underneath for their own outdoor hot tub, an outdoor shower, when the water pump is working, and two big rain water tanks to supply all the water.

It's delightful and we loved spending a couple of nights there both on our way north and then a week later on our way back down.

Sam's fiancée has a smiling heart and we loved meeting and getting to know her. From Melbourne, being at the cottage over the winter is going to be a bit of a challenge but she's got an adventurous spirit and in the same way Si & I would give it go she's going to be just fine in the cottage.

Sam & El were off to Nelson for the weekend but kindly let us stay on the next night so we could watch a film and enjoy the space the cabin has – unlike the van. I also got chatting to Sam and El about yoga and found out the local guy who had been teaching yoga to the locals had moved on. I knew Sam & El quite wanted to do some yoga – we hadn't had a chance the night before – too much wine – how un-yoga like – but knowing that we wanted to spend a bit more time with them and that we'd be heading back through the next week I suggested El ask around and see if anyone would want to partake in a class the next week if we could find a suitable venue.

The driftwood covered Tasman Coast seen at dusk

Around Punakaiki we walked, saw the pancake rocks – the thing most tourists stop for and then carry on swiftly to the next stop. It's a shame because there is so much amazing walking in the area.

We hadn't really planned to head north but knew that the area around Karamea (as far north as you can get on the west coast by road) was supposed to be pretty special and it fitted in nicely with us getting back to Punakaiki the following week. So we headed north, past the fur seals at Westport, , staying at a great community campsite at Mokhinui, doing a lovely long walk through an old mining area (Charming Creek) and following the track the mining train would have taken to a spectacular waterfall tumbling into a gorge below. It was a great day walk and we'd recommend it.

We carried on north to Karamea over the bluff, yet another steep and winding road that our van loves so much, and stayed at another community site in the 'slightly hippy yet not' community of Karamea. They have their own radio station playing out from the backpackers playing reggae most of the day. Bear in mind that there's no other radio reception and I don't know whether they get TV or not.

Apparently there is an ongoing debate about whether to build a road connecting Karamea to Nelson over and through the National Park. A travesty for the environment, possibly an economic bonus to a community that is literally at the end of the road. The reason it continues to exist as a destination for visitors is that it sits at the end of the Heaphy Track – on the the Great Walks in NZ – and is also close to the Oparito Basin, home to large and ancient limestone caverns and spectacular rainforest. We didn't have a chance to get in but we did walk half of the last day of the Heaphy Track as a return trip of about 5.5 hours and about 18 km.

The track was once again spectacular – we are going to run out of suitable adjectives and superlatives very soon on this trip. Following the coastline and sidling along the edge of various type of forest we loved the walk although it was a tiring day and we were exhausted at the end of it. Simon doesn't like walking slowly, which is fine by me, but the terrain was reasonably full of ups and downs and we could both feel it later that evening.

Our campsite for the evening looked out over the Tasman sea with a great Maori totem on the beach in front of us. Once again the sandflys were bad so we stayed indoors but had a game of open book scrabble (we now have an official scrabble dictionary) to see if we could improve our playing scores. Don't laugh people, we only know two 2 player card games and they get a bit tiresome after a while. Our joint top score to date is 653, rock and roll!

We stopped over at Westport on the way back down. Si was looking for surfable coastline – they hold a major surfing competition on one of the beaches around there each October – and ended up staying at an over-priced 'Holiday Park' on the basis that we could do our laundry and get power for the van. We HATE the places. They rack you up next to each other on numbered pitches rather than letting everyone spread out, don't have soap in the toilets and no cooking equipment in the kitchen. For $38 it's a rip off – given that for $16 on the community campsite we get all of the above.

We headed back south and stayed over just north of Punakaiki in Charleston where Si eventually got in the sea to surf and I planned my yoga class for that night.

El had organised for a few of the locals to come along to the village hall in Barrytown – the next community down from Punakaiki and for me to teach a class from 7.30 to 9. So exciting!! My first real class with strangers.

Simon & Sam came too and so I had a class of 6.

I loved it. I was a bit nervous at the beginning but then got into my stride and was buzzing afterwards. I couldn't sleep I was so pleased with it. There was wonderful energy in the hall and I would have loved to have been staying on to do some more classes. The next day El had great feedback from the 3 local ladies who'd been to the class – they couldn't believe I hadn't been teaching for years.

The next day Si & I headed out on a long day walk up the Poporari River – yet more gushing river ways, spectacular rainforest, towering limestone cliffs, and a brilliant lunchtime stop where we caught some great pictures of a South Island Robin who Sam told us afterwards is quite rare. He seemed to want to join in our lunch and was quite happy to pose for some pictures. We found a good moss covered fallen tree to use as our picnic bench and had a good rest before carrying on with the walk. This was again about 16km & we had about our first little river crossing. We also had a good introduction to the paradise shelducks, noisy crazy things that went mental when we dared walk through their river valley and kept swooping over head checking us out. One of the main features of the forest in the area are the ferns and the variety is staggering. We've made up our own names for them as we've no idea their real names but it's a real testament to how New Zealand is in some ways the world preserved before mammals came along. With the split from Gondwana land, birds ruled in New Zealand and in the same way that ferns were the precursors to trees, there has been completely different evolutionary development of tree and plant life in New Zealand to the rest of the world. One of the things you can't miss when walking are the traps that DOC set to catch possums & stoats. There is also poison baiting and the controversial drop of the poison 1080 – banned in many other places. All of the controversy around that aside, DOC are trying to conserve the unique environment NZ has and fight back against the introduced species that eat the bird's eggs and catch the baby birds who have no innate fear of mammals. It's strange coming from the UK when the closest a bird will get to you is a pigeon on the sea side; here these rare and special creatures come to look as if they are as intrigued in you as you are in them.

Rainforest lined roads along the Bueller Gorge

So we had our walk and headed back to the cabin to cook up banoffee pie and fajitas for dinner. Before dinner Sam and El though they'd take us to have a look at the gorge by the cabin. After crawling through some mud and bush we appeared in a towering rock crevice with a stream flowing down and made our way upstream. So few people would ever have been up there and it was a cool adventure – slightly more civilised than Simon's choice of adventure the previous day which had us in our wetsuits on the beach swimming up a freezing cold gorge, climbing up slime covered rocks and trying to edge our way through some rooks with space for my head and not much else. In the end we called it a day – not before Si had done a suitable impression of Gollum, it being the kind of place you'd expect him to live and me catching it on video. Unfortunately by some unknown coincidence the camcorder card corrupted as we came out of the gorge. Whether divine intervention to prevent some later emergence of the footage on YouTube when Simon is running for president of the world I don't know, but it's a shame that it won't see the light of day.

El loved the bannoffee pie, Sam too, and I left them caramel and cream so they could attempt their own version. I'll leave the rest of the west coast to Simon. I can't believe we are only just three weeks into the trip for real – it seems like longer but already we feel really comfortable & content here, I don't want to speak too early but it could well be somewhere that we feel at home for a little while to come.

Love to all.

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New Zealand - The beginning

2010-03-12T06:00:00.013+07:00

Right then, a brand new country, there is so much to write about but where to begin?

Maybe I'll start by saying that from now on we'll provide the link to our facebook photo albums & video on these posts and enable them for all to see so that even those who haven't signed up to facebook will be able to view them. We'll still put a few pic's up to illustrate the story on blogger, it's just a lot quicker on facebook and time means money when it comes to using the internet on your travels.

It was sad to leave Sydney & our friends there for the second time but that was at least counter-balanced somewhat this time by the anticipation of exploring a new country. It would have been so so easy to pick up where we left off in Sydney, to drop into the city a few times, put out a few feelers for work etc. However, for all that this isn't beyond the realms of possibility again in the future, it would have felt wrong to once again miss out on seeing New Zealand.

Our port of entry was Christchurch, the capital of the South Island, a city approximately the size of Southampton. Christchurch has been described by several people and books as the most English of New Zealand's cities. You'd have thought the natural comparison for us to make would be with Southampton, however having just been back to Sydney we found ourselves primarily aware of the substantial contrast between Christchurch & Sydney, probably in turn reading that into the contrast between New Zealand and Australia.

Whereas Sydney (or at least the parts of it we frequented), is clean, shiny and modern, Christchurch looks a little run down and faded . For instance a lot of the houses look in need of a new coat of paint, however rather than seeming shabby or grimy, we simply found the place unassuming. Sydney is a fantastic place, when partaking in a couple of beers at the Manly wharf bar on a sunny Sunday afternoon the joy and the buzz of the people living and visiting there is practically a tangible part of the atmosphere. If you have to be picky however, you could say that in parts it can be maybe a little bit showy, nothing bad, simply that's it's easy to feel uncool in Sydney (and out of shape if you take a stroll down Manly beach). Christchurch is a bit more grungy and I guess in someways a bit more “down to earth”

Maori dancers on Cathedral Square

Despite numerous shopping trips into "the city" in Christchurch I can't recall seeing more than two or three people in suits. They must be there, Westpac and the other major banks etc.. all have large offices, maybe they all dress down ? Even in the city there are several large second hand or "recycled" clothes shops, handy places when you're a penny pinching traveller. It's refreshing in a way to see, I remember reading an article in the UK before we left about how thriftiness is no longer considered a virtue, people aren't respected for the way they save money. We exist in a society where we are encouraged to buy everything new (on finance preferably), and we're not to try and fix it when it breaks but throw it away and buy a new replacement like the good little consumers that the establishment likes us all to be.

There must be money around, it just isn't on display in Christchurch, we didn't notice a single BMX X5 or Merc ML etc.

The historic tram on it's daily meander around the city centre

It's often joked or stated that both Australia & New Zealand are ten years “behind” the UK. It's true in Christchurch that wheelie bins and post codes have both only been introduced in the last couple of years, something that'd probably make most of us Brit's grin sympathetically and go “ah those crazy kiwi's they'll get there in the end” or something similarly patronising. Behind in what sense though? They're not behind in conserving their environment (DOC, or department of conservation is hugely powerful compared to it's UK counterpart), nor in providing a generally safe and non-violent social setting for kids to grow up in. They're certainly not behind in making their way out of recession. Just because they don't all own an Audi (sorry Rob, Andy et all, nothing personal!) and a 42” Plamsa screen TV doesn't mean they're any further forward or behind us in the UK. Just a saying that seems a bit pompous once you think about it.

Christchurch occupies a great location for outdoors enthusiasts. New Brighton beach stretches for miles and can be reached in ten minutes from the city centre, better surfing is found at Sumner, a beach suburb twenty min's from the centre with a nice longboard wave. In the winter you can be Ski-ing on Mount Hutt within two hours or even sooner of you go to some smaller local ski-fields.

The view of Christruch as seen from the head past Sumner

I'll stop harping on about Christchurch for now, we liked it & found it a unassuming, easy to get to grips with sort of place. It is certainly very english in appearance, down to the sparrows and starlings that seem the most common birds, so depending on your outlook if you're coming straight from the UK you could find it either comfortingly homely or disappointingly unexotic.

Our home in Christchurch for the first week was Drifter's backpackers. Believe it or not despite being hardened travellers this was the very first time we'd stayed in a bona fide backpackers or hostel. We've always been put off by the thought of being stuck in a tiny room with a centimetre thick partition separating us from a dorm full of 20 year old Scandinavian backpackers whose idea of travel was throwing up the local brew at three am and seeing how loud they can shout at each other when others are trying to sleep.(I hate them, I really do, I always thought Brit's were the worst but as the Falaraki crowd don't make it this far normally groups of young scandi's take that dubious honour hands down)

Drifters

Drifters is run by a very nice English couple and their two dogs, Flash & Chippy. We'd decided to try and minimise our contact with the aforementioned large young scandi groups by a) choosing somewhere NOT in the lonely planet and b) somewhere at least fifteen minutes walk outside the town centre bars etc. It worked, Drifters was great and it opened our eyes to the fact that actually backpacker's are a useful place to stop into every now and again. There's a lot of information there and they're a good place catch up with like-minded people.

Travelling isn't always about beach parties and banana pancakes , this is what our list of things to do looked like by the time we got to Christchurch:

Open a NZ bank Account
Apply for a NZ tax reference
Locate & purchase campervan (major issue with a page of subpoints all to itself)
Locate and purchase camping/trekking gear (stoves, sleeping bag, waterproofs etc..)
Purchase all of above a lowest possible cost
See if we could get an introductory appointment with the immigration people
Check our medical insurance status /register for local medical care
Work out where we were going to go to next
work out what to do with our lives!

Buying the van was the main issue, as soon as we had our van we could start the trip. We were looking for something with a bit more space then the normal backpacker van's and took the bus out to the suburbs to see a pop-top Toyota Hiace. We spent about forty minutes looking round the van and test driving with a pleasant retired kiwi couple. They were looking to sell the van as she was suffering from arthritis as needed a bit more manoeuvring space inside.” Yeah we've been looking at a Ford Courier conversion up near Rangiora but need to sell this first” said Dennis the guy, a this stage Charl & I looked at each other knowing full well we were going out to see this same vehicle later in the evening. Hmm to say something or not to say something ? No need for any tension we thought so we kept silent. We were on the verge of getting Dennis's van as it was an amazing vehicle but at $11k was at the top end of our budget and lacking a little bit of storage space. Twelve hours later we had a deposit down on the aforementioned Ford, sorry Dennis, if by some fluke you ever read this. We feel really really guilty but it was us who pinched the van you're after and we really hope you find something else you and your lovely wife feel comfortable in.

We were now the proud owners of a 1985 ford Courier motorhome conversion, that's right – officially we are in the motorhome category! Having spent a couple of days trawling the cheap shops for camping & hiking gear our next move was to go for a trial run, spend a few days out in the van then come back to Christchurch and pick up anything we might have forgotten about. Luckily for us the Banks Peninsula seemed the ideal place and is located a mere forty five minutes outside the city limits.

Like a miniature version of the Yorkshire dales or Brecon Beacons squeezed into a smallish peninsula and bordered by numerous coves and deserted beaches, the peninsula is a common getaway for Christchurch folk, not that we saw many people, even with it being a nice sunny weekend. Like Australia, New Zealand had a lucky and narrow escape from joining the French empire and the peninsula's main town, Akaroa, is the south islands only “french” settlement. Presumably they allow it's to continue it's existence to serve as a reminder of how close they came to a heritage of Beret's and silly accents.

Akaroa Bay

We stayed for three nights at a reserve camp, a backpackers car park and a campsite. Highlights included seeing and photographing wildcat kittens in the Okuti Scenic reserve, walking a deserted Le Bons bay on a beautiful afternoon and a particularly delicious caramel slice from a bakery in Akaroa.

Le Bons Bay

We could already see that this was going to end up a very different experience form our Australian roadtrip. In several ways this was going to be more “mainstream”. In Oz we spent most of our time off on dirt roads in the back country, when we did run into main backpacker territory, e.g. Cairns we hated it and got back off the beaten track as soon as we could. The few people we met tended to be older Australians on holiday, or of course the mandatory Germans, they get everywhere & I mean everywhere – truly it's amazing. In New Zealand we were going to be ploughing the main thoroughfare with all the other travellers and tourists alike so needed to learn to play nicely with others.

There certainly isn't going to be the pressure of covering distance. In Oz we'd often cover 300km a day without pausing to think about it. Here that would cover a significant chuck of the country. As such we going to have more flexibility with our route. Trip across the centre aside we pretty much travelled the circumference of Australia, here if we decide we want to go and see Sam on the West Coast and we're in Christchurch on the East, the trip can be covered in four hours and embarked upon as a spur of the moment decision. Indeed we've been here almost a month as I'm writing this and the trip has pretty much developed on a day to day basis with very little in the way of forward planning, it' s an enjoyably different experience.

And of course this time there's no return ticket as of yet. As we travel we're keeping an eye out, could we live here ? how much is property? what business opportunities are available ? It's an open ended trip which is going to grow organically and not knowing where it's going to finish up is part of the beauty of it.

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Signing off from Thailand - Seeing mates in Sydney

2010-03-02T09:13:00.013+07:00

Our last few days on Koh Pha Ngan were spent just relaxing, Charl was tired from her course and Si was nursing his sore intercostal muscles (which are still playing up). The final Friday we had a little sleep in the afternoon so that there was a chance that we would make it through the night at Guys Bar and see sunrise the next morning. The party was incredible, great music – slightly old skool trance from back in our early days of clubbing and proper house music, a brilliant vibe and everyone having a good night. We saw sunrise – Simon commented how he hadn't been up that early the whole time we were there and wasn't it nice – I did remind him that I'd told him how nice it was on many occasions but he'd preferred his sleep.

(Guy's Bar Party, about 7am)

(What's a party in Thailand without the obligatory fire-dancing. This lady was pretty amazing - and all part of a night raising money for a charity helping kids in Burma)

(Full-moon on Koh Pha Ngan - our other commitments prevented / saved us from the party in Had Rin)

On the Monday we were up at 7.30 to take a 4wd track from the huts back to the main road, followed by some hair raising over taking by the guy from Horizon who was driving us to the ferry. We made the ferry in time and had a four hour trip via Koh Tao back to the main land. As usual the ferry was over booked but we had plastic stools on one of the outside decks so we had some fresh air. Back on the main land we had to go through the usual rigmarole of exchanging already bought tickets for different tickets, getting coloured stickers for us and our bags and then hanging around eating un-appetising ham rolls whilst we waited for the bus.

We lucked out as we'd been allocated seats at the back of the bus which for some reason had twice the leg room of those in the rows and so despite the 8 hour journey we coped ok. We stopped at the same rest area we had 3 years ago on our way back to Bangkok from Koh Tao and had some not too dissimilar rice and chicken curry followed by water melon and pineapple chunks.

Back in Bangkok we were dropped off in the Koh San Road area – the haunt of all 18 year old backpackers so we swiftly grabbed a taxi to take us out towards the airport and the motel we had booked. For a really reasonable 1500 baht we had a deluxe room with lots of space, full length mirrors, ensuite bathroom and no bugs. We slept really well and the next day we had an easy and lazy morning as we didn't need to be at the airport until 2. The transfer was included so we had an easy trip to the airport (which always impresses – Bangkok airport is a pleasure to be in) and spent our final few baht on some lunch before jumping on our flight to Sydney.

We brought the good weather to Sydney with us; Sydney has had a bit of a rubbish summer by all accounts but we brought the sun and hot weather and had perfect weather the whole time we were there. Arriving at Steve and Alex's felt like going home. We fitted straight back in – Simon loading the dishwasher, me making nice cakes for Steve and Alex – and we enjoyed having our old room back. It even had a few of our bits and pieces left from before, including Simon's surf board which he took out most days we stayed. Most of all we enjoyed just getting to spend time with Captain and Alex – thank you both for a great stay, you always make us feel at home and we wish we could spend time together more often.

(Always welcome so long as I cook!)

(Steve in a bunker. He still beat Si though)

I love Sydney, and it would be very easy to settle and live there. But it's also very glamorous and dare I say image conscious compared with where we'd been in Thailand and certainly Christchurch where we are now. The traffic in the city is as bad as any city and if we didn't have the group of friends we have there it could be quite a lonely place. That said we would never rule out living there because it is such a fun city and it's full of some of our favourite things in the world. Steve's promised me legal / commercial director of his company when he's up and running in any case – so unless I can do that remotely from the top of a hill by the sea in NZ then we might have to give Sydney another go some time.

Pip came to visit on the Friday, it's always weird seeing people in the different locations but we had a great weekend, going out to Wharf bar in Manly, chilling on the beach, having curry and just catching up. Pip's doing really well in Melbourne and hopefully we'll be able to get down there some time to see a bit more of it than we did before. Mentally it feels like we are next door. It's a 3 hour flight but it feels so close, as if it would be no hassle for a weekend visit.

Steve and Alex put on a great BBQ on the Sunday with some old friends around, I had to make the obligatory banoffee pie and impressed yet another ozzie bloke who had never encountered such a great pudding before.

As always it was sad to say goodbye to Steve and Alex, but not as sad as usual as we're sure it won't be too long before we see them again. Our bags have gradually been expanding during the trip and leaving Sydney airport we had to do some rapid re-packing to avoid paying extra baggage charges. They are so stingy on the weight allowances these days – all down to rising fuel costs. And then we were off to New Zealand.....

Catching up with the girls - and new girl Sylvie :)

(The Harris's at the Wharf Bar)

Link to Facebook Photo Album:

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Sydney – church

Yoga Teacher Training

2010-02-12T15:48:00.013+07:00

After 4 weeks of early mornings, amazing yoga, brain stretching learning and a bit of fun on the side I am now a qualified yoga teacher. I'm so happy that I decided to take the course and go for it. Not one regret at all. I can't wait to teach my first class – possibly some yoga for thai boxing with the guys at the camp here tomorrow!

So what have I been doing... My daily schedule was to be up at 6.30 to start class at 7. Each morning we had 2 to 2.5 hours of yoga, breathing and meditation. shakti, our teacher took the classes for the first couple of days but after that we thrown in the deep end. Every other day I had to teach part of the class. It started off with just having to learn one asana (posture) but as the days went by we had to build up with the transitions and longer sequences of teaching (with the rest of the class being our students). All of it being continually assessed for knowing the right instructions, teaching safely, knowing the physical and esoteric benefits, hands on adjustment and just having presence as a teacher.

(Sunrise - my walk to class each morning )

(Morning Class)

From 11 until 2 we have a class, either philosophy, history, learning asanas in detail or looking at the more spiritual side of yoga. Lots of discussion about energy! The whole pace of the practice is a lot more meditative than what I have been doing recently and it's refreshing. Something I will bring into my own teaching.

(Some of my class where we had our lectures)

I have the afternoon off – although by the time I've eaten, had an hour of sun, studied and showered it's time to be back for the last session of the day. 6pm to 8pm – we continue our lectures or occasionally have watched a film. We watched the Peaceful Warrior the other day. A great film and I'd recommend watching. Then it's time for dinner – Si had generally already eaten – can't keep him waiting after his boxing training - and then bed. We both had Saturdays off but Friday nights and Saturday generally involved sleep for me – although Si was a bit more adventurous. Last Saturday we did quite a good tag team effort at partying at Guys Bar the main party place here, with Si going the 10 – 5.30am shift and me getting up to continue the dancing while the sun rose. Followed by a swim and some morning time on the beach it was a pretty perfect Saturday.

(Practising for class)

It's been an intense month though and I got quite sick mid way through the course with nausea, back ache and just slept through from about 3pm until the next morning. The next day I had horrific backache in the morning, necked some pills but shakti organised for an acupuncture session which really helped. It took a few days to be properly back on form, whether it was exhaustion, a bug or what I don't know but I'm feeling healthy and fit now.

Around the bay there's a real emphasis on looking at alternatives to Western medicine. You can get any sort of alternative therapy here and just because we label it 'alternative' in the West doesn't mean less good. In fact in the yoga we're spending quite a long time studying anatomy and the anatomical benefits of the asanas as well as looking at why people suffer with a lot of the common disorders in the west. We're very quick to medicate with drugs or suggest surgery, treating the physical body rather than looking a little bit more holistically at why we're suffering and whether we need to medicate with chemicals or not. Don't get me wrong, we can do so much with western medicine that is fantastic (and I'm certainly not throwing out my ibuprofen) but I'm definitely going to have my eyes a little bit more open to taking a more holisitic approach to my health going forward.

(Acro / Partner Yoga (not really yoga) - Si is going to work on his hamstrings :)

Simon teased in the previous blog about a lot of conversation here about energy – guilty I'm afraid. The group of other students is fantastic – we have great energy :) - but the place in general is somewhere where everyone smiles, there is no stress and people just chat and are friendly. It is a bit of escapism but hopefully we can take some of what we've experienced here away with us.

(A final (only!) evening out and guys from the course leaving the bay)

Yesterday we had a little taste of home with Tracy, a friend of mine from work, and Craig arriving on the island for a couple of days. We had a lovely dinner and it was good just to chill with some familiar faces for the evening. We actually treated ourselves to the one place serving good red meat - the first we've had since leaving home and had a gorgeous steak - but will be back to fried rice for the remaining days as steak does not come cheap out here.

So with the yoga finished I'm just taking time to be on holiday for a few days before we head to Bangkok on Monday and then fly to Sydney on Tuesday. I'm making copious notes for my future yoga website – can't wait to get it started – and I feel like wherever else we head over the next few months I've got my yoga to take with me, carry on learning, start teaching and have a whole new journey to take.

Tonight is our last Friday night here so we're aiming to do what we have failed to do so far and do a proper all nighter and see sunrise on the beach tomorrow morning. There's not much on the agenda tomorrow apart from beach so there's no excuse for me really. Party blog to follow!!

Love to all,

Charlotte x

(The whole class at the end of the course with shakti mhi our teacher)

PS - Links to our full photo set for Koh Pha Nagan below:

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KPN 3

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KPN 2

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KPN 1

Horizon Muay Thai Camp

2010-02-06T16:09:00.014+07:00

We are now safely ensconced in Horizon Muay Thai (thai boxing) camp for the next four to five weeks, having slogged all our stuff up from Beam Bungalows up the steep path to our new hut. Still suffering a bit from jet lag and the heat we took a day to chill out and do nothing ,then I was due to start my training the day before Charl started her course. So what then happened to me just as I was due to start? What else but a visit from the old nemesis, Tonsillitis.

Coincidentally the last time I had tonsillitis was when I was staying on Koh Tao, just a couple of miles to the north, when I was visiting Thailand three years ago. Must be something to do with the change of environment, jet lag and long journeys. Frustratingly that was me in the sick bay for a couple of days. I'm not very good at either being ill or having to wait to start stuff so I had to make an effort not to slip into a habitual grump.

Horizon's huts and gym occupy a rocky headland in between the two beaches, Haad Tien and Haad Yuan. From our balcony we have a view over the bay which is definitely one of the best around. Basically we got lucky because accommodation round here is tighter then I've ever seen before in Thailand.

Horizon at Dusk seen from the opposite headland

Our hut's basic but spacious. We were to find out we were sharing it with big and small Gecko's, a colony of termites, several large hunstmen spiders a variety of different ants and a funny looking small scorpion - after Borneo though we seem to be pretty much immune to all that.

Muay Thai training is twice a day, sun – fri, two hours per session. Training normally consists of skipping and stretching to warm up, then shadow boxing, then rotating between using the bags and sparring in the ring with the trainers or each other.

Practising on the bags

Having missed the first three days of my prepaid training with tonsillitis I was busting to get started so proceeded to make thirteen of the the next fifteen sessions. Top marks for commitment but I was I soon found out that is too much for your body to cope with if you're not already in top shape.

One of the Will's demonstrating the jump punch

By the end of this I was nursing a strained shoulder, stiff back, swollen feet, strained groin muscle and several large purple bruises up and down my legs. A particularly painful Thai oil massage, including the excruciatingly agonising armpit tendon pinch of death, seemed to sort my shoulder out. Then I drifted into a slightly more sedate routine of missing the morning session, instead going for a long swim and using the weights in the Gym then joining in training in the afternoon, which most of the guy who were there for a month or so seemed to slip into. It only works out about sixty quid per week for the training so when you've booked for a month you don't feel too bad about missing the occasional session.

I also found out about three weeks in that the combination of sunbathing, training, not drinking enough water then going out on the beers is a very easy way to give yourself heatstroke – another couple of days in the sickbay for me.

With all of the healing and alternative therapy focus down at The Sanctuary life at Horizon provides a good contrast for me. I always find it amusing when Charl is describing in great detail some yogic philosophy about self realisation and all I can offer in response is an enthusiastic report about the new flying elbow move I learnt in training today. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement that keeps my mind a bit active with trying the understand some of her course content, and Charl a bit grounded so she's not going to sell all her worldly possessions and go and live in a tree somewhere.

Leaving Dinner for Carlsten - a guy who had been staying for 2 months here.

People tend to book in here for a minimum of two weeks so it lends some nice consistency to it on the social side. It generally seems to be full, with a slow rotation on a new person or two coming in every week or so. The staff are, as you'd expect from Thai's, a particularly chilled out bunch of people. There's a couple of three/four year old boys who are around some of the time, whose main activity seems to be Farang (that's us) baiting. Many an afternoon nap on the floor cushions has been rudely interrupted by a pair of three year old knees landing on your abdomen having launched themselves from the table, still when you grow up in a kickboxing camp I guess that's inevitable.

Charl & The amusing named Boat (sure that's not the thai spelling but that's what it sounds like)

Once or twice a week the Thai's go into the main town, Thong Sala, to watch or participate in Muay Thai fights. I went in one night with them as two of our trainers had fights. It's fair to say they don't seem to take it too seriously at this level as I certainly didn't spot any training going on unless it was disguised as drinking, smoking or playing poker.

One of the trainers Phu is an absolute legend. He was out partying until eight on sat morning, then again through to seven am on Sunday morning. Monday, looking decidedly under the weather, he tells us he is fighting that night.

In Order left to right: Phu, Ma, Peng & Nuk

Making our way to the main town, Thong Sala,we watched the first of our trainers, Ma, be outmatched by a much bigger Thai, the equivalent, of a welterweight vs a heavyweight, and unfortunately he was out by KO in the 2nd round. Phu's fight was the headliner, his opponent looked young and fit, Phu looked hungover (he's also well into his thirties by this stage). It looked all over after about a minute as an impossibly quick kick to the thigh had left him limping. By the end of the first round however he had recovered and was simply soaking up everything the youngster could throw at him. Then in the second he proceeded to give a demonstration of the full range of muay thai kicks, punches and elbows. There were knockdowns on both sides and one comedy moment where Phu was just standing there with his guard down taking the blows just to show he could. In the end the ref stopped it shortly into the fourth and gave Phu the fight – experience obviously won over youth and speed in this instance. Video of the fight is available on my facebook page (too big a file for the blogsite)

All in all it's been ideal for me be staying and training here. Without it I would be turning into a vegetable on the beach or spending money I don't have out on the party scene here and slipping into nocturnal mode. We've met some good people so a big hello to both the Will's, Levi, Holga,and all at Horizon is you ever end up reading this.

Chilling between training sessions

We're into our last week as I write. Charl has three more days of course left and I will scale down on training, partly due to a jarred neck and pulled abdominals. We'll maybe enjoy a few drinks at a couple of the parties around, do a spot of diving and top up the tan's. In ten days time we'll be enjoying the hospitality of the Merrit's Back in Sydney. I'm looking forward to getting back on my surfboard and hopefully squeezing in a round of golf.

Training in progress (Si in the injury bay at this stage)

Si in Training - I had by this time pulled my inter-costal rib muscles so was only doing light training and avoiding left sided moves, gives you an idea of what we got up to though

More training - Still carrying the rib injury so not really at full pace again!

Arriving in Koh Pha Ngan

2010-01-13T18:56:00.007+07:00

Journey to Koh Pha Ngan

Overnight sleeper train from Bangkok to Chumporn: 10 hours
Bus to ferry port: 1/2 hour
Ferry to Koh Pha Ngan via Koh Tao: 4 hours
Taxi from Thong Sala to Haad Rin: 15 mins
Taxi Boat to Haad Tien: 5 mins

And so we arrived, tired, grimy and hot at our destination for the next four to five weeks, the island of Koh Pha Nagn in the the Gulf of Thailand. I had actually been to Koh Pha Ngan previously when I was backpacking back in 2001. I was prepared to find it a lot more commercialised, albeit my somewhat hazy memories of this place last time round possibly aren't the best thing to judge it by.

Koh Phan Ngan is known as a party island due to the infamous “full moon parties” held on HaadRin, but given Charl's course instructor has asked them to avoid alcohol for the duration of the course, and what I'm expecting to be a rigorous training schedule at the boxing camp, I'm expecting it'll more than likely be a more sober experience this time round.

The bay we are staying in is basically a set of three beaches separated by rocky headlands. Haad Tien, Haad Yuan and Why Nam are accessible only by taxi boat or a particularly hairy 4x4 journey over the mountainous interior from the nearest town, Haad Rin.

Haad Tien Beach

We arrived by taxi boat to the central bay, Haad Tien, on the beach in front of the centre where Charl's Yoga course is being held, The Sanctuary. Expecting to find a low key, chilled out quiet little beach retreat we were a bit fazed to discover it teeming with people.

It didn't take us long to work out that we'd arrived the day after a big beach wedding and even though we'd arrived at midday they were all just finishing up partying from the night before. To add to our feeling of dislocation it seemed like we'd just walked onto the set of one of those American high school soaps were large numbers of impossibly good looking people hang out on the beach wearing designer sunglasses.

It turns out it was a gay wedding between two dancers from Vegas, hence the guest crowd of what appeared to be dancers, models, DJ's. In fact the wedding sounded like a real (camp) extravaganza, showgirls from Vegas, fireworks, body art , the works. It's disappointing we missed it as I think everyone on the beach wether local or tourist was invited along and it sounded like one hell of a party.

The downside of all this was that it also meant was this place was now properly busy, and accommodation was in short supply. The only hut we could find to start with was tiny and could just about fit both of us and our backpacks in, plus it didn't have it's own bathroom. Realising sometimes you've just got to take what's on offer we paid for two nights and hoped for better luck then.

Our First Bungalow & the Beam restaurant

Charl's work had kindly paid for a 3 night upgrade to our accommodation which we thought we'd take at the end of the time here but with the lack of decent places decided to try to find a slightly better hut for the whole stay rather than a really nice place just for a a few nights.

The next day our accommodation concerns were eased as I (perhaps somewhat foolishly – watch this space) committed myself to a full month's worth of training at Horizon Muay Thai camp (I.e. Thai boxing / kickboxing). They have their own huts, a little run down but spacious, with bathrooms and sea views from the hammock on the veranda. I took a package which included the hut, breakfast and all my training. It's cost us about 5oo quid for the month all in, not too bad but what's galling is it should have been closer to 350 if we weren't being stitched up too badly by the poor exchange rate on the pound.

View from our new hut

Initial impressions then of Haad Tien:

It's a what I'd describe as a proper little alternative community. The bay is dominated by the Sanctuary, a bar / accommodation complex that runs courses in Yoga, dance, healing & a whole host of funny sounding alternative therapies.

A lot of people are here doing these courses for a month or so so it gives the place more of a settled feel then a lot of the other beaches we've stayed at. There's also a lot of people who obviously just never left after arriving here twenty years ago and probably moved to this beach when Haad Rin got too hectic.

Local birdlife - a Hornbill

There's a distinct lack of haircuts amongst the males of the beach, a definite overuse of the word “energy” in conversations, and a lot of people who have names that sound like they've been taken from the “Lord of the Rings”.

It is though very relaxing, people are generally friendly and at this stage in life infinitely preferable to me that the Magalouf-esque Haad Rin. I find all the new age stuff and self seeking (Charlotte's course excepted obviously!) down on the beach a little contrived, but then most of my days are going to be filled with punching bags and trying to ignore the pain from the bruising on my shins so I'm sure it won't be too much of a problem for me.

The island interior

We've just checked into Horizon, it's chilled out, seemingly down to earth and comes complete with a couple of kickboxing three year olds who jump on you as soon as you go into the veranda / eating area so it should provide a good balance to the magic roundabout down on the beach !

Back in Bangkok

2010-01-07T22:30:00.007+07:00

So back to Bangkok, two and a half years since our last trip took us through here several times. I remember stepping off the plane the first time I visited Bangkok, about nine years ago, and finding the city like a cultural slap in the face. This time round it's more like putting on an old pair of slippers.

Just to start the trip with a bit of drama we were chased out of heathrow by the encroahing snow storms, we had a delay of an hour whilst some bloke in a cherry picker came round and de-iced our wings but given what happened over the next 24 hours I think we got out just in time.

Our enjoyment of Bangkok has increased immensly since we worked out that it's actually a lot easier to get round the city if you don't stay in Banglamphu, the main backpacker area.

We stayed for two nights just off Sukhumvit road, a bustling if slightly seedy expat area in the centre of the city. A flying visit but just enough time to do some shopping for beachwear at the huge MBK shopping centre, sort out some travel plans to get to Kho Pha Ngag and catch Avatar in 3D at the cinema .

Next stop - overnight sleeper train to Chumporn and 5 weeks on a paradise island, it's tough stuff but someone's got to do it.

The city around our guesthouse

Bangkok at night - see what I've done here shutter speed fans, next time I might even remember my tripod and get some real funky images

Part 2 - The Beginning

2009-12-30T00:20:00.013+07:00

So, here we are again. After what seems like a brief sixteen months back home we are now two days away from our flights back out again.

Although there's a lot of similarities with our last departure, and the farewells are just as difficult, it feels like a different path ahead of us this time. We've no return ticket for a start, and instead of staring down the barrel of four months of Raleigh International we are looking forward to a month's worth of thai boxing and Charl's yoga teacher training. They'll both be tough for sure, but don't quite come with the fear factor of Raleigh.

We'll be staying on Koh Pha Nagn, a Thai island Simon already knows, before heading onto Sydney to see our friends from the last trip, and then eventually arriving in New Zealand, where it could be argued the adventure really starts this time.

It's been an enjoyable stint back home, the main highlight being our fantastic wedding back in March. There are a few photos below to illustrate our main memories over the last year or so.

So hello to all our friends and family, and any colleagues from SkyBlue and Tandberg who might be reading, we'll try and keep this updated as reguarly as possible. We go armed with an SLR camara, a camcorder and a book of photography this time so you may even get some decent quality imaging on there.

So here's to hoping we find what we're looking for this time.

Si and Charl's wedding - Marwell Zoo, March 2009

An Active Honeymoon - La Plagne, Apr 2009

Falconry in the New Forest - May 2009

Camping at Osmington Mills - Jun 2009

Barcelona, Scottie's thirtieth - Jul 2009

Giant Jenga, Big Bird's 30th - Jun 09

The Rowthorns - Pembrokeshire - Aug 09

Florence & the Machine, Camp Bestival - Jul 09

North Morte Point, Woolacoombe - Sep 09

Farewell dinner at the Old Forge, Otterbourne - Jan 10

South to Sydney: Down the East Coast

2008-07-28T13:19:00.015+07:00

South to Sydney: Down the East Coast

Arriving in Cairns was a smack in the face. People - lots of them, cars – as in not 4x4s, various Europeans – noisy, shops – keep me out and rain – the cold sort.

Perhaps we picked the wrong place to stay, but after having to get up at midnight to shout at some Dutch backpackers next door to us and after the tenth time a smile or hello was ignored we couldn't wait to get ourselves back into some remote place with not many people around (and those that are are on the whole friendly).

We did get out to see the football (Germany vs Turkey), had a kebab and had our mysterious knocking in the car looked at. Apparently a popping floor panel. Unfortunately though the garage had the car for 3 days so we didn't get about as much as we would have liked. A day trip out to the Great Barrier Reef was good – we got a dive in – but with the weather not being its best it wasn't the amazing 'must do experience' we'd perhaps hoped for. It did get us reading up about diving in the area though and we started to look into a a wreck dive off Townsville.

The Rural Theme of North Queensland

We both wanted to see a cassowary in the wild. But preferably not one jumping us from behind or trying to disembowel us with their crazy big and extremely lethal talons (They have been known to cause fatalities). On a recommendation we spent our first night south of Cairns in Etty Bay. A great local's spot, with nothing but beach, caravans and cassowaries. One of the imposing creatures dutifully appeared the next morning and we took a few snaps whilst keeping a suitably large talon free distance.

Sunset from outside the tent, Etty Bay

We then sat ourselves down by the tent, beach view and tucked into our bowls of muesli and mugs of tea. I was teling Simon some fascinating story about something which he was paying his usual amount of attention to, when into my line of sight, about 2 foot behind Simon an unexpected visitor appeared. Given I'd stopped mid-sentence I'd finally got Si's attention and he turned following my eye gaze. The look of fear on his face!! (And he laughed at me for being afraid of the crocodile!) Si in his own words was in a slight quandry about what the correct course of action should be when one's muesli is interrupted by a strutting cassowary picking at rainforest plums on the ground behind your back. Fortunately I was ready to dive into the tent to find the camera and managed to catch Mr Cassowary parading away from us, obviously rather less interested in us than we were in him.

Following Etty Bay we headed to Jourama Falls in the Paluma National Park. A great national park campsite, good little walk with some improvised off-piste boulder scrambling by us just to liven things up and cold showers! Fortunately the weather had cheered up and it was a good 25 or 26 degrees again by this point. A National Park we would have liked to spend a bit more time around but we were feeling the pressure of there being so many things on the east coast we wanted to see.

From Jourama Falls we continued south. The sugar cane fields which had started immediately south of the Daintree rainforest continued to line the roads which were criss-crossed with the sugar cane train tracks. The sugar cane goes as far south as Bundaberg and with the highlands as a backdrop they are pretty spectacular.

Bowen Pier

One of the many Sugar Cane trains pottering about

We made a brief lunch stop in Townsville and treated ourselves to fish and chips in the sunshine by the beach. Our destination was Alva Beach. A little south of Townsville it was going to be our jumping off spot for the Yongala wreck dive.

Magnetic Island - Seen form Townsville Town beach

The camping ground in Alva Beach was great in itself. Once again a local's special, with couples staying there for 3 / 4 months and it being the 8th year they'd done it. But the camping wasn't the the reason for the stop.

Yongala Dive (we'd recommend them as a dive company) were taking Simon and I and 8 other like minded souls to dive the wreck of the SS Yogala.

Sunk in 1912 with the loss of all 123 people on board it has become one of the world's top dive sites. The wreck is the only thing on the sea bed for miles around and so it has become a bit of an attraction to the now local fish population. It has formed its own reef with masses of wonderful coral and schools of HUGE fish inhabiting the surrounding waters. Not only fish but turtles – perhaps the biggest turtles I've seen were dozily sheltering on the wreck - sharks are known to frequent the area (although none appeared on our dive), marble rays at least 3 meters across were gliding through the water and a little later in the year they get the whales on their migration passing by. Fabulous dive.

Above - Scenes from the Yongala

Eungealla National Park, somewhere I really wanted to stop into. After slowly ticking our way through the checklist of Australia's weird and wonderful creatures, a platypus was still outstanding. Apparently this was a top spot to view them so off we went. Little did I realise that heading a few hundred metres into the hills (which are still covered in rainforest I might add) would lead us to a freezing night where we improvised lighting a fire in the tent by carrying in a dish full of hot embers, wondered whether hot embers would kill us through carbon monoxide poisoning, put the hot embers back outside and brought in hot stones from the fire instead which crumbled apart in the bed. It was flippin' freezing though! And to justify it all we woke up to a white field – covered in frost – something we haven't see since leaving the UK.

Above - Scenes from the Eungella

Again another wonderful national park, great camping and we saw a platypus. From a distance. But that was good enough for me.

You might need to maximise this picture to see it but there is a platupus there, honest

So after 2 nights freezing our proverbials off we agreed it about time we started out east coast sunshine holiday. Land of endless beaches, surfing dudes, hot sun and glorious winter weather. Well the winter weather was about right.

Si was itching to get back on his surf board and Agnes Water being the most northerly surf beach had to be a good place to stop. It was a heck of a drive south though with little to see on the way so we over-nighted at a roadhouse campground (still freezing) before rocking up in Agnes Water the next morning. Small village, not too hectic and surely hot and sunny we were still so far north. No chance. The heavens opened as we were arriving and after 4.5 months of never putting the tent up in the rain we discovered that it's not much fun.

The Surf at Agnes Point, some nice easy longboard waves were just what was needed

We spent 3 nights in the end – Si got some surfing in, the weather cleared up enough for us to get a walk or two in but I felt entirely miserable being cooped up in the tent. I admit it, after all, I am a fair weather camper.

Agnes Water and the Town of 1770 as its called were definitely good spots though and in good weather would be even better. I would head back there like a shot for a holiday.

Above, fishing and walking in the national park outside 1770

By this point we were counting the days we had left and trying to work out priorities of things left to do. Fraser Island was the big thing. After a night in Hervey Bay (beautiful beach, nice town, too early for the Whales) we took the morning barge across the bay to Fraser Island.

The largest sand island in the world and a world heritage site, Fraser is one of the highlights of the trip. We'd been a bit worried about it being full of tourists and families with it being school holidays, but it's such a big place that we didn't really see that many other folks. It's strictly four wheel drive only with narrow sandy and winding inland roads on which you rarely top 30km/h and the east coast is one long 'beach highway', easily traversed at 80km/h at low tide but a bit trickier later in the day when the soft sand and tracked out beach don't do much for your fuel economy.

Above - Scenes from Fraser, above right - I am actually fishing here not "using the facilities" as it might look like

We took 5 nights there in the end and stayed on the eastern beach tucked away on a small plateau behind the sand dunes. We had a stunning view of the beach and ocean and it was probably our top located campsite for the whole trip. It's basic camping, no facilities, but we got a hot shower at the national park campsite on one day and had a cold dip in Lake Wabby another day. The inland lakes are one of the highlights of the island, beautifully clear, fresh water – known as perched lakes, along with the crystal clear creeks – so clear you almost can't see the water in them, and the ancient rainforest. We also headed upto the northernmost tip. Which due to a couple of tricky bypasses and it being only possible in the couple of hours around low tide, is much less well traversed than the rest of the island.

The "Mahena" wreck and..wait for it..a group of backpackers with their troopy stuck, you don't see that very often!

We proved how tricky the bypasses could be by taking 3 goes to get up one of the ascents on our way back south. It had been fine coming the other way :) But our now legendary skills in the Patrol meant there was no panic at potentially being trapped by the rising tide which would have given the car a very unwelcome salty bath.

The inland tracks and how to make our car look small

Back to the mainland and we continued our beach trip – staying at another national park site – Freshwater in the Great Sandy - and took the beach all the way south to Noosa.

Noosa was a bit like coming home (it's a lot like Manly, although a bit more upmarket) and we took the chance to holiday. We set up camp on the river, surrounded by Pelicans, facing west for glorious sunsets and spent a week lazing in the sun, splashing in the sea (which was a bit cold), making new friends in the camp kitchen, fishing at sunset, beer in hand and wishing away the nasty weather due to arrive on the Monday. We only had 5 or 6 days before we were due back to Sydney. We'd deliberately stayed north in the warmer weather as long as we could. But with the rain and cold heading in we packed up and started the 1100km journey south the Sydney.

Surfing with the dog (Max the photo's). We love Australia.

We didn't get too far though as first stop was the mighty Australia Zoo. Steve Irwin's home and a a great day out. Maybe some of the impact lost on us because we'd seen so much whilst on the road but we did get to see (and play with) wombats!

Wombats - like a giant marsupial guinea pig!

The one creature we hadn't seen at all whilst in Australia so we signed up for a 'close encounter' and got to find out all about the 3 different species of wombat and see them be fed. Apparently the most intelligent of the marsupials, it's about as clever as a dog (they all knew their names), but without the same sense of subservience. So when our wombats started being naughty (one of the old girls had got into a grump) we had to get out of the way and leave their keeper to fend off the 40kg of hairy lump.

We stopped over in a roadside rest area and set off quite early for Brisbane the next morning.

We spent a few hours looking around, sitting on the artificial city centre beach, checking out the museum and thinking that if the sunny winter day we had there was typical of a Brisbane winter day we'd be very happy to call it home. We carried on south and took in the gold coast. Quite a shock to see Australia so built up, with some serious high rises going on.

That night we found a really pleasant campsite – with a heated pool! - on the Tallebudgera Creek. We've been getting used to the number of people around again and comparatively when it's busy here it would still be a quiet day in the UK. Everything's relative. But this campsite was very quiet and we made the most of having the whole camp kitchen to ourselves.

Byron Bay in the rain

Our last two nights heading south were spent living it up in motel rooms! The weather had really closed in and although we would have love to spend the last coupel of nights camped by the beach on the east coast having a wet tent and gear was really not something we wanted to contend with at this stage.

A last word from Si:

So we're back in Sydney where we started, the cars been sold, our tax returns done to give us a bit of much needed cash and a last weekend ahead before the flight back to Blighty. This blog's more for us to look back and remember than anything but thanks to anyone who's read it - hopefully it's given you a bit of an insight into our trip.

We might get round to doing a best of section if we can find the time in our now busy schedule but in the meantime just two pieces of advice for travelling Oz. Do it by 4x4 and get away from the East Coast, thats all you need to know.

We guess there won't be an entry for a while now but this is definitely "paused" as opposed to finished and we look forward to the time when we pick it up again.

Cape York Adventures

2008-06-27T10:51:00.022+07:00

Stop 61 Kalpower Camp Ground, Lakefield National Park

Our first stop on the cape was a large national park well known for crocs and fishing, consisting of rainforest, eucalypt forest and wetlands.

Driving into Lakefield

The campsites in true ozzie fashion are run on an honesty system, you just drop a few bucks in an envelope at a collection point and let the ranger know which site you'll be staying at.

Unfortunately my fishing didn't last very long as suffering a lapse of concentration on my second cast I managed to throw my (one and only) lure into a tree sticking up about three metres into the river. I could see it but didn't quite have the guts to go and get it as yes, I'm scared of the big bad crocodile.

Women Drivers - look what they get themselves into!

We stayed at Kalpower with running water (pumped from the river) and even has the luxury of cold showers (just remember to get in before six or so when the temperature starts to drop). It's a cool spot and we took the rare opportunity to spend the entire day chilling, reading books and walking by the river. During the night we had our first evening tent invasion as I woke at some point to the cold clammy feeling of a tree frog hopping up my chest, nice.

Walking down by the river we were surprised to come by an “Operation Raleigh” 1986 headstone by a set of stairs – they'd obviously been here over twenty years ago putting these steps in, sure these guys had a different experience to what we'd had, it was tough " beasting" type stuff back then.

Stop 62 Coen

On with the journey north and we passed Musgrave Roadside – site of one of the old telegraph stations that has given part of our route further north its name. The roads were on the whole wide, straight and recently graded gravel and we decided to call it a day at Coen. One of the most isloated places on the tip since they rely on road transportation for all their food and fuel which means when the wet season hits they can be truly cut off. They get a drop of diesel at the beginning of the wet to last them through and a food run every fortnight so long as the government road department allows the truck to travel.

Bush hitch hiker

Coen's a small mixed community and we didn't quite have the courage to pop into the local – amusingly renamed from the Exchange to the Sexchange hotel by a local comedian. We did however manage to catch the local tourist spectacle at dusk when millions of huge fruit bats start appearing on the horizon and loop round and round in the skies above Coen, literally darkening the sky. (Pretty cool, unless you don't like bats).

Stop 63 Chili Beach, Iron Range National Park

Following day we headed into the Iron Ranges National Park with the intention of camping at Chilli Beach. The road in was a bit rougher but no real dramas, it did however meander through some spectacular Borneo like rainforest and is worth driving just for the scenary.

Chilli Beach - including the random thong tree we contributed to. Oz myth - you only ever find left thongs washed up on beaches, it's true, once we'd heard it we only ever found the left foot washed up, crazy.

We camped up under the palm trees fringing the beach, surprisingly sheltered from the trade winds roaring off the sea. We stayed for a couple of nights and met some crazy people including the botanist in charge of vegetation management for the Cape who had good stories from when he lived up here in a hippy commune and some axe wielding nutter ex-UK guy, honestly you meet some funny folk out here.

Camped up at Chilli Beach

Whilst others were partaking neither me nor Charl were that interested in the local oysters that could be easily prised off the rocks at low tide. They'd charge a fortune for those things in Sydney though.

Stop 64 Moreton Telegraph Station
Exiting Chili Beach we thought we'd take a short cut to the north known as the Frenchman's Track. Unfortunately we had to turn around after 10km after bottling the crossing of the Pascoe River. The combination of waist high water, huge rocks on the river bed and a steep slippy far bank did it, I really didn't fancy having to winch the car 30m up the far bank if it all went wrong.

Rough going on the frenchmans track

So, we backtracked on the same road and turned north on the main road until we hit Moreton Old Telegraph Station.

(Most people head up this way to follow the old telegraph track. A service road for the telegraph line – built in the 1880's, transmitting morse code from Brisbane through the Cape and up the Thursday Island. It was the only means of communication for guys living in the far north. Although the main roads have been improved and bypass tracks built there is still a section of the old service road left that is one of the most well known (and challenging) 4wd tracks in Australia.)

Brett & Kathy @ Moreton

Moreton offered a pleasant camping ground with lots of bird life and fishing available on the river. At great surprise to ourselves the totally unexpected happened here. After having a chat to the site managers – Brett and Kathy – they asked if we would like to stay for a few days to help them out with several tour groups they had coming through. We stayed for six days in the end and in the main helped with the preparations for a group of 35 cyclists who for some bizarre reason were choosing to cycle all the way to the tip. Brett and Kathy are 2 of the coolest people we've met on the trip and if you're reading this guys – thank you for having us we had a great stay.

Got to drive the quad around, great fun.

Having six days in one spot meant we could keep our eyes open a bit more for the wildlife which included the Great Palm Cockatoo. Endemnic to the cape and a symbol of the region this is the world's largest parrot and we were lucky to get to see one so close up.

Can't get the scale so much from this photo but he's a big fella

Stop 65 The OTL to Dalhunty River Crossing

After 6 days nights at Moreton our shrinking time left in Oz meant we had to bid Kathy and Brett a sad farewell and continue our mission to the top. We knew we'd helped them through a tough time and we'd got to meet some really cool people and see some cool stuff so we were glad we'd taken the opportunity to stay for a bit longer.

It was time to take on the Old Telegraph Line (OTL), the historic old telegraph route that also happens to be one of Oz's best known and challenging 4x4 routes, crossing 12 creeks on the way to the tip. It's split into South and North Sections, both of which have a longer but much quicker and better maintained bypass roads. Plan of action was to take on the southern section on the way up and the northern section on the way back.

Creek no 1, Palm Creek. Just to gently ease you into it, a sixty degree drop into a bog hole.

We don't want to bore people with an inch by inch account of the journey up there so just to give you a general idea. The track's single lane and varied between dirt and sand, ruts and ditches mean you've got to to take a bit of care with wheel placement and you spent so much time leant over at what seems like a 45 degree angle you get use to seeing the horizon slanting diagonally in front of you.

Creek no 2 seems easy until you drop into the deep waterhole at the end

The creeks can have really steep banks meaning you've got to avoid impaling your car bullbar first on the way in and the way out can become tricky from some creeks without winching. Some rocky creeks have fast flowing water concealing large, deep potholes you really don't want to drop a wheel down, others look shallow to start with only to drop into waist deep waterholes further down, some have soft sandy bottoms that bog you in the middle of the water and some are simply deep.

The "Muffler Tree" at gunshot creek, shows how careful you gotta be climbing out of it.

Lesson learnt on this creek - if I don't put up a wading sheet in deep water my headlights fill with water, then my bulbs blow.

All good fun, what makes it though is the fact that everybody travelling the track (of which there's a few, this isn't as remote as say the gunbarrel) is on holiday or travelling, having a good time and if anything happens you'd know it'd only be a short time before someone else turns up and helps you out. There's plenty of radio banter and even if no one is in sight you can usually get an idea of how far away people are. Bushcamping by the creeks is no 1 activity on the line, they make pleasant camping spots and ideal vantage spots to watch people trying (and sometimes failing) to navigate the creeks. It's a bit like mooring up your boat on the visitors pontoon mid afternoon and sitting there with a glass of wine watching other people coming in and doing the same.

Gunshot creek - and yes those are entrances/exits (there's about 5) , you're supposed to drive over them... thankfully there was a slightly easier one which didn't require a winch / parachute

We camped by the Dulhunty river, one of the best spots on the line we reckon. There's a few shallow pools you can wash in without to much worry about being snuck up on by a croc. We'd also now caught up with the cyclists from Moreton who had left earlier the same morning, in a stroke of comic genius (well we thought so) we'd flown a pair of bright blue spandex cycling shorts one of them had left behind from our UHF aerial as we motored through the group struggling in the soft sand.

Stop 66 Punsand Bay
After the rigours of the OTL we were happy to take some easier roads now up to the tip itself. Crossing the Jardine River involves shelling out $88 for a short chain ferry journey, as extortionate as this is you are by now a long way from anywhere and the only other alternative is taking on the old Jardine ford. This is very much in the “potentially vehicle destroying class”, very wide, very deep and fast flowing, all a recipe for being washed away, to top it all off the Jardine has one of the worst records of croc attacks in Oz.

The Jardine ferry, all $88 worth

One of several WW2 plane wrecks in the area

Once into aboriginal lands north of the Jardine roads conditions became quickly worse with severe corrugations rearranging bits of car and my temper. All was forgotten though once we reached our destination – Punsand Bay, about 15k from the tip itself. We ended up with a plum camp spot within two metres of the beach and settled in to explore the tip for a couple of days.

Sunset at Punsand Bay

The walk to the tip takes about 20 minutes and is part rocky scramble part rainforest track, rewarded with tropical paradise like views of the beach and coastline around. We caught up with an aussie family also making the pilgrimage and after taking turns to take photos they shared the remains of their bottle of champers with us!

Camped right by the beach

Later that day we took on a beach drive to some old ruins and graves of a family that initailly settled in the area in the late 1800's. This was good fun despite Charl having to dig out the rear of the car which I managed to bury to its rear axle in soft sand when attempting a steep sandhill strewn with rocks (nothing a bit of digging and the old floormats under the wheel trick couldn't get us out of). You'd have thought we'd have learnt by now. Still, it was a textbook rescue and without witnesses so no need for us to be embarrassed.

Stuck in the Sand and the view from the tip

You could easy spend a week poking about up here at the tip, some of the roads are wild with the narrow and winding sand tracks being totally enclosed by the rainforest, so tightly you can here the sides and roof of your car scraping as you make your way slowly through them.

Charl is turning into a budding nature photographer

At Punsand our neighbours were two older couples , away together, who we had a great time chatting to. They spent sunset having a drink on the beach and they seemed to enjoy our stories about our trip. In there mid sixties and seventies they'd made it up here towing a off road caravan, what a great way to spend your retirement.

Our neighbours enjoying a sunset drink

Stop 67 Eliot Falls

Time for the journey south and the northern part of the OTL. The first creek was called Nolan's brook and was the deepest we'd come across so far – over my waist with a soft sandy bottom that looked all too easy to get stuck in.

Checking for depth at Nolan's - hmmm should we really be driving through this

Class - driving back home is going to be so boring.

Ha - water poring off my windscreen, and ,more worryingly, out of the fuel tank!

I waded across with our winching stuff so that if the worse happened I wouldn't be fishing about underwater trying to get it out my boot. Sometimes in these situations it's just worth having other cars about and after a brief wait a group of 4 cars obliged turning up on the other side.
The leader of their group belted across without barely checking it, then we got across ok – I belted into it pretty hard and just saw this massive bow wave chucked up by our wading sheet obscure all vision through our windscreen, still we made it across unlike the poor guy after me who managed to bog his back end in the sand of the creek bed.

Once all safe on our respective side we crossed back over to have a spot of lunch with the group – it's that sort of “we're all in this together” type attitude that makes the Cape York trip such good fun. This group were a group of farmers from Victoria.

I didn't drive it all - Charl took on this slippy, steep section, followed by a hairpin, in a creek, with soft sand on the bottom

Some of the bridges were ah..rustic

We camped next to a series of waterfalls known as elliot falls and ended up sharing a pitch with our neighbours from Punsand Bay. That's the other thing about this place, it may be almost the size of England but you end up seeing the same people all over. We also hooked up with a couple from the Gold Coast who were heading our way in a short wheel base land rover he'd had shipped over from the UK. Not many of those around.

Elliot Falls and Fruitbat falls, a welcome rest break

Stop 68 Captain Billy's Landing

Opting to take the supposedly quicker bypass route south we rattled ourselves and the car over some of the worst corrugations we'd seen before turning off into the National Park and heading to the coast where we camped at Captain Billy Landing. Not quite sure who Captain Billy was, from what we picked up an aboriginal guy who was guiding some white folks around, but the landing remains – used during World War II apparently and more recently as a drug smuggling landing.

The beach at Cap'n Billy's

We thought it would just be ourselves and Pete and Sam (the Land Rover couple) camped over but, proving that Caoe York really is the smallest place in the world, the two guys who we'd travelled part of the OTT northwards with (Dave and Justin) turned up and our two vehicles became a convoy of four.

Stop 69 Moreton
The following day we travelled as a group back down to Moreton where I had to collect my surfboard and have a final catch up and farewell drink with Brett and Kathy. The plan was to travel as a group down the Frenchmans track and across the Pascoe River – which we'd bottled on the way back up – although Dave, being pressed for time, decided to carry on that afternoon and we said our farewells.

A few hours later he mysteriously returned – we all though shit, it must be bad if Dave hasn't crossed the Pascoe. He'd actually had a nasty run in with a whipped headed black bellied king one of Australia's many ridiculously venomous snakes. It had wrapped itself around his diff and no matter how many kms driven, stones thrown or sticks poked it wouldn't get down. I don't know how but eventually it got off – we later learnt all you have to do is drive through long grass and they'll get off. So now you know if a snake interrupts your M3 commute to work you just need a field to drive through.

Running repairs at moreton. She is actually up on a high lift jack on the front - not hoisted from a tree as one guy thought when he saw this photo

Our evening campfire was crashed by two guys connected to Moreton who had some interesting stories to tell. Spending their lives digging up stuff around Australia that the Australian military really didn't want digging up. In particular 2nd world war bunkers apparently blocked up and left to be forgotten to avoid big clean up costs. After a couple of hours we'd had enough, Charl in particular was probably about to hit the pair of them for being generally obnoxious so we retired and left the rest of the crew to be talked to for another couple of hours.

Stop 70 Cooks Hut – Iron Range

The following morning we had picked up another recruit – guy called Vaughn & his wife who Pete & Sam had met previously on the cape(the worlds smallest place). So in a convoy of five we set off to tackle the frenchmans track.

Now we were quite used to passing big groups and tag along 4x4 tours by now, you could usually tell they were coming by the inane radio chatter with the lead car offering all sorts of useful adive such as “careful, twig on the road”, “watch out for the puddle on the left” or “caution, pebbles on road”. However easy we found it to be derisive about these groups though it was a good laugh doing it in convoy, with a bit of banter over the radio and someone else up ahead to hit any tricky patches first. Crossing the pascoe river certainly seemed less daunting with cars on either side of us and a couple of mechanics in the group and after a bit off deliberation and poking about in the big holes between the rocks we all made it across without incident.

Above - the Pascoe crossing

Last time we'd come into the Iron Ranges National Park we'd gone through to Chilli beach but this time we stopped about 35k inland slap bang in the middle of the Jungle. The group had split but Charl & I camped overnight before doing the 10k old Coen rainforest walk the morning after. It was good to stretch our legs and we got to see the elusive (but vocal) eclectus parrot which is quite a find if you're into ornothology over here

The Iron Ranges National Park

Stop 71 Archer River Roadhouse & 72 Lakeland
There's not that much to say about our next couple of days making our way off the cape. By this time the car had had enough, it had added several new rattles and bangs to it's range, it's headlights were full of water from creek crossings and in general I got the feeling it was saying “enough is enough, take me back to the tarmac now please.

The Archer River Roadhouse

Archer and Lakeland were both pleasant stops we'd recommmend. Lakeland has a huge flock of sulphur cockatoo's – the avian world's nosiest bird, so either bring your earplugs or a rapid fire airgun.

3 Carriage Road Train, they have right of way, in all situations !

Cape York was simply incredible. Exciting driving, good people, stunning scenery. Go there !

Across the Gulf to Cooktown

2008-06-25T07:16:00.016+07:00

Gulf Savvannah to Cooktown

Total km: around the 18000 mark - further than driving to london from Sydney

Stops 52 – 57 Crossing the Savvannah Gulf

From Katherine we had decided to take the more direct but much less well travelled Savvannah Way which would take us all the way across to the East Coast and Cairns. We had a quick burger and milkshake break in Mataranka where the 'village' roadhouse also bred Thumbelina horses before starting down the single lane Roper Way, somewhat unnerving when a 50 metre long road train is bearing down on you, and then onto the Nathan River Road which was closed to vehicles except 4WDs.

Above - scenes from the gulf road, including a willy-willy similar to one that attacked us at a rest stop along the way. the one that attacked us was actually about 10m high and a couple of metres wide and had us sheltering behind our car!

For the most part we bush camped by rivers or creeks on route with Simon still trying his hand at fishing and me staying by the truck biting my nails dreading that I'd hear a yell and a splash and have to go and wrestle a crocodile to save him. (Kate: I tried to stop him but you know what it's like stopping Simon doing anything when he has his mind set on it). Due to my paranoia about a hunger crazed psycho croc unzipping the tent in the night and having us as a midnight snack we slept in the car those nights and made a point of being at least a little way away from the water's edge.

Bush camping by the lagoon

rough tracks

Beware - mutant cattle

For most of the Savvannah way we were driving through, surprisingly, savvanah land and cattle stations with a few small towns on route. Burketown (named after the explorer) was one of these and a local guy, running the town visitor centre in the converted old post office, was able to tell some first hand stories of crocodile encounters on his fishing trips and a decidedly gruesome story about a German tourist who had been snuck up on from behind by a far too cunning croc.

no chrome wheels and booming stereo's for this crowd - it's big spotlights and UHF arials to be in with these guys

mini horses - cool

lifesize model of croc captured in Normanton - 8.63m

The town was pretty and relaxed as were Normanton and Croydon. We enjoyed a drink in the local pub in Croydon - the only one left from the original 36 that had serviced the town when it had over 6000 people prospecting for gold in its heyday. Now a mixed population of closer to 200 remains in this beautifully restored and maintained town.

The "Lost City"

"Bush Bashing" , the art of following little used tracks

We also wandered through the 'Southern Lost City' – similar to the sandstone formations we'd seen at Keep River – and had a good chat with the lady at the Hells Gate Roadhouse, no longer a roadhouse but still running a cattle station and heard a more rural perspective on the current rising fuel costs in Australia. We're not sure what's happening in the rest of the world but it seems to be coming to a head here – isolated stations like this use diesel for their ute's and trucks and their only electricity comes from diesel generators so the rising fuel costs are hitting hard – then of course the city folk moan when it hits them as a rise in beef prices. Not quite sure where this is going to end but it's not looking pretty.

Gulf road roadhouse similar to "Hells Gate"

This road is actually a causeway across a river - gives an idea of the difference in wet season

Bush Campsite

From Croydon we continued eastwards with an overnight at Innot Hot Springs where we hit grey nomad territory with a sausage sizzle around the pool and a round the campfire sing song with such hits as 'She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes” and “How much is that doggy in the window (woof woof)”. Priceless. We didn't partake but observed these strange creatures from the safety of the camp kitchen.

After the hot springs we had an evening date to make and so set off on the 200 or so km eastwards towards the coast and glamorous Port Douglas.

We really noticed the change of scenery on this leg. Before the hot springs we'd just started coming into more hilly countryside, more forested, less Savvannah like but from this point on we really started to notice the tropics encroaching. We drove through the beautiful Atherton tablelands which we would love a little longer in – perhaps on the way back down – through the highest town in Queensland (920m), and the misty mountains were truly misty!. The road then wound down perhaps the longest and a most twisting road we've ever driven on down to the coast where we passed through sugar cane country before hitting Port Douglas.

Above - scenes from the trip to port douglas

Stop 58 Port Douglas
Resorts aplenty, Port Douglas is not for the budget conscious but a good diversion for us all the same which was made more than worthwhile just by the look of delight on Alex's face when we snuck up on her and Steve having sunset drinks and prawns at the marina.

Good to see some mates at last !

Port Douglas at sunset

Steve had miraculously kept it a secret that we might make it there whilst they were holidaying from Sydney. It has to be said it's good to see some mates after a few months on the road. One thing we certainly are though is out of practice with drinking so having exceeded our daily two stubbies allowance we then suffered our first real hangover for almost three months.

Good spot for a holiday Port Douglas, chocka with nice accommodation and easy access to the rainforests and great barrier reef. After a long spell in the relative wilderness we were also back in backpacker country as the number of wicked campers etc... testified

Stop 59 Cape Kimberly Beach, Nr Daintree National Park and Cape Tribulation
After saying our farewells to Steve and Alex we hit the road again up into the Daintree National Park, famous as being one of the few spots where the rainforest comes all the way down to meet the sea and the fringing reefs.

It felt like being back in Borneo with it's dense rainforest and windy roads. Unfortunately this is a well known spot and crowds were evident at most of the scenic area's. After all the remote spots we've been to any gathering of about more than five people is a crowd in our book and we've become suitably snobbish about it.

Above - crossing the daintree to Cape Trib. Have to keep your eyes out for Cassowaries (the world's most dangerous bird)

We stayed at the Koala resort on Cape Kimberley, camped up underneath rainforest tree's but only about 50m from the beach -it was pretty cool. Si tried his hand at fishing again but as you've probably guessed from previous posts didn't catch anything – this time though neither did the locals either, they all agreed it was the wrong state of tide or some technical fishing thing like that.

Above - Cape Kimberley

The next day we took the well known 4wd trek – the Bloomfield track – up the coast to Cooktown. Whilst all the 2wd's had to detour for miles inland we took the windy, steep and occasionally water covered trek through the fringing rainforest and through some of the best kept aboriginal communities we've seen. In all fairness it's not a difficult trek and none of the creeks were high, however it does sport some monster hills and after getting ourselves in a couple of flusters with wrong gears we hoisted the white flag and took to crawling up in first.

The Bloomfield track

Stop 60 Cooktown
Gateway to Cape York, Cooktown is the farthest north one can get in Queensland on the tarmac. What a cool little place, fantastic year round climate (low of about 25 in July I think), wide streets with wallabies roaming about and a general chilled out, “what's the rush” type feel about it.

Cooktown

Whilst there we managed to witness a local fisherman have a mackerel snatched off his line by a giant groper (that was pretty cool) and find an honest mechanic who actually put the right amount of reasonably priced oil in and carry out a couple of minor repairs to the electrics and reserve fuel tank.

Broome to Katherine

2008-05-21T17:54:00.013+07:00

Total Km: somewhere around the 15000 km mark
Ipod game: on hold / more likely cancelled due to technical difficulties. Unfortunately the world shall now never know if my music collection, when played a-z, would last 4 months on the road

Stop 35, Cable Beach Caravan Park, Broome
So after the trauma of catching and eating our own fish we arrived the next day at the sprawling metropolis of Broome – at a population of 14'000 it's the biggest town we've seen since Adelaide.
You hear a lot about Broome on the road, everyone travelling WA seems to be heading there. It has to be said it's hard not to like it when you get there, it's a chilled out little seaside town where the main activity is making your way down to Cable Beach with a few cold beers to watch the sunset.

The main event at Cable Beach

"Muddy" the croc at the park. In case you can't read the sign behind it says "extremely dangerous, stay away from the fence"

Our neighbours friendly eclectus parrot

We treated to ourselves to a visit to the pub, a film at the open air cinema ( accompanied by special sound effects when the low flying aircraft come over mid film, great place , shame about the film – 10'000 BC) and a trip to the Malcolm Douglas Crocodile park. We getting into Croc territory now so we thought it prudent to go and learn a little more about them. It's worth a trip as they got a couple of big 5m fellas in there. It's amazing how well even a croc of that size can conceal itself in a small pool of muddy water.

This one was giving us some lip so I had to slap the noogie on him, teach him a bit of respect etc...

mini croc's

Broome's a cool little place, it's got a vibrant social scene going on and is chocka full of backpackers. We checked out the cheap(er) campsite (24 bucks - nothings cheap in Broome) but declined after deciding it looked more like glastonbury than the kind of quieter family & older folks places we were used to. Given our average bedtime has developed into half eight or somewhere around there we didn't r really fancy having to put up with bad drunken guitar playing at two in the morning form the tent next to us.

Travelling in style - check out the converted bus

Stop 36 Windjana Gorge National Park, Gibb River Road

So suitably refreshed and croc educated we headed out onto the Gibb River Road, the 700k unsealed road cutting right through the heart of the Kimberley Savannah Region.
It's probably one of the most travelled dirt roads in Oz, by tourists and road trains like, so we'd heard it get's cut up pretty bad. However a couple of calls to the local council made us realise mid May the perfect time to be doing this, grading work had just been completed, the road had just been fully opened a couple of weeks ago(it's closed during the whole wet season) and the many creeks and rivers it crosses were down to a civilised level.

The Boab tree - used as a prison cell when they used to trek aboriginal prisoners across the kimberley

Stopped up heading into the kimberley

Our first stop is was camping at the Windjana Gorge National Park site. We walked into the Gorge late afternoon and it is a simply magical sight. Scores of little freshwater croc's line the banks of the river and float about soaking up the afternoon sun, the gorge was also home to hundreds of white corrella's (parrots) flying all around with the noise of their cries echoing off the gorge walls.

Windjana Gorge (possibly the best photo we've taken to date), can you spot the croc head ?

Croc Mania

Stop 37 Bell Creek National Park

The next day we drove 20k down the road to do the well known “Tunnel Creek” walk – a 1k walk following a creek through a long, dark croc and bat infested cave. In all fairness I don't think any croc's were inhabiting it at the time but it makes it sound more exciting.

Heading into tunnel creek

The Bell Gorge National Park was another pleasant camping spot with a croc free pool to swim in at the end of the Gorge. We ended up sitting round a campfire with a couple of Ozzie families till the grand old time of half nine in the evening! We feel pleased with ourselves as everyone here has their 4x4's and off-road camper trailers etc.. but after what we've done we held our own in the campfire conversation about touring tips and locations! We've definitely picked up a bit of respect for having taken on the Gunbarrel !

Swimming in the pool at the top of the falls - Bell Creek

Stop 38 & 39 Random Bushcamp and the El Questro Wilderness Resort

Leaving Bell Gorge we stopped at the magical Galvens gorge for a morning swim ( and then continued East along the Gibb River Road taking a short detour into Barnett River Gorge is there a theme developing here?) where we contemplated driving the truck over some serious boulders and across the river but satisfied ourselves with a sit, rest and cheese and crackers instead. Overnight was a rest area which we had to ourselves.

Galveins Gorge

The next day we set off early with the scenery staying rough and rugged but we made reasonable progress despite the numerous creek crossings (graded by us from puddle to river) with the Durack and Pentecost rivers definitely being at the more serious end, we went through the wrong side of the Durack and got water in through our passenger door – forgetting our own golden rule of clear everything out the passenger footwell as it tends to be a bit leaky as soon as we're passing through a foot or so. The Pentecost was low but at a good 2oom it was by far the longest crossing we'd done to date.

Checking out the pentecost crossing

We kept bumping into this old german couple who obviously had no idea how to use their shiny new patrol and would shout 'Vat gear ja?” at us from the other side of the creek. “Four high oder four low” - we found it hilarious. We safely helped them through and they arrived shortly after us at the El Questro Wilderness Resort.

Above - Gorge walking at El Questro

More resort than wilderness it was clear who their target market was by reading the steakhouse restaurant menu however they were well set with numerous self guided walking trails, 4wd treks, hot springs and a really pleasant camping ground. There was plenty to do so we set up camp for a couple of nights. I tend to object to any place that wants to charge us thirty bucks to put a tent up but you gotta hand it to them here, they've made the “wilderness” a nice place to stay for a while.

Above - 4wd trek to some stunning views

It was at El Questro that our funniest (for me – Simon) incident to date happened. We were crossing a particularly scenic creek, not deep but a long rocky crossing protected form the main river by tree's and rocks. I suggested Charl nipped out the car to take a photo as I thought is looked pretty cool, needless to say this met some crocodile inspired resistance, “go on” I said “it's only 20cm deep or so - there's nowhere for a big croc to hide”. Anyway Charl reluctantly left the motor and got a couple of metres before there was a big splash in the water in front of her, coincidentally there was actually a croc in front of us – only a little fella but enough to make a splash. I've never ever seen Charl move so fast, she was back in the car without seeming to move! The croc has stopped just under my car window, he was probably just under a metre so not huge but certainly enough to give Charl the fright of her life. I was laughing for the rest of the day.

Above - the "croc incident" in pics

Stop 40 Keep River National Park

After an exhilarating swim in the icy plunge pool at the end of Emma Gorge we headed towards Kunnunurra – a chance to drop a quick note home & get some supplies
About 40km out of Kunnunura we hit the NT (Northern Territory) border and jumped forward 1.5hours as we made our way to the Keep River NP. Just off the highway it was a spot chosen for its convenience and cheap camping more than anything but we arrived and it was a little gem. We just shared the campsite with a German family (Germans - you can't get away from them out here!) and some mega sized ants, it had good camp fires with clean hot plates and non-stinky toilets. The little things that become important on the road.

Above - scenes from the Keep River

More than any of that though we were surrounded by the most incredible sandstone rock formations. Almost resembling some ancient lost city, fallen into disrepair it was different to anything else we'd seen. A short circular walk from the campsite was one of the most scenic and interesting walks we've done on the trip.

Stop 50 Bullita Campground, Gregory National Park
Now this place is a huge, huge expanse of rugged limestone country that has been turned into a venue for remote and difficult 4x4 touring. The access track in is relatively easy gravel track which ends in a restored homestead that gives you a good impression of the tough lives that people led out here 100 years ago or so. Even by local standards this was considered a tough place to farm.

Just to prove I can do arty photo's as well - mangroves on the bank of east baines

The campground nearby is a lovely spot in it's own right and worth a trip in. The emerald waters of east baines river runs by, lined with mangroves and palms. I tried chucking a line in but as per usual had forgot to buy bait and the no one seem interested in the tuna flakes I subbed in.
The plan was to take on the well known and difficult Bullita Stock Route, an 90k but 8 hour drive involving a couple of pretty serious river crossings and 10k section of seriously steep limestone steps. Luckily, as with most of my sillier ideas, Charlotte managed to talk me out of this one. Some routes are just better done in convoy (or at least with a satphone – we'd given ours back by now) and this is probably one of them.

Fritz following us over the rough stuff

The following day though we took the Tawa something route back out the park, a 30k trip taking a mere 2 ½ hours. We invited this German guy who was also at the campground with us along, travelling by himself in a hire 4x4 he probably had to take less chances than we did on these routes so it was good to have another car in tow. The route turned of into the forest and following barely discernible tracks we drove off until we hit several large limestone boulder fields. This turned into very slow going with charl out in front of the car guiding my wheels so I didn't end up tonking my underside too hard. All technical exciting stuff although when we got to the end we found the razor sharp limestone had put a two inch gash into one of our tires so we didn't quite make it through without casualties.

This is what driving over limestone flakes does to your tires!

Stop 51 Katherine

Then to Katherine (well named eh mum, & charlotte's mum!), the Northern Territory's third biggest town at the lofty population of 9000 or something similar. I love the NT – it's real cowboy hat stuff and if you haven't got a dog in your ute you simply don't fit in!
In all fairness it's a pleasant little town with some nice hot springs to relax in. Largely populated by the local indigenous folks it, like a lot of the small regional towns, has alcohol restrictions in place to stop people drinking themselves off the face of the planet. (Charlotte: more seriously: the whole indigenous 'situation' has only really hit home whilst being in northern WA, NT and on into parts of Queensland. A personal view is that while people have to want to help themselves these guys have been seriously let down and mistreated in the past and we don't really know enough about what is and isn't being done at the moment to comment any further – although we have seen a lot of individuals and couples running roadhouses and community facilities and obviously trying in their own small way to improve life in these remote communities, much respect).

The main thing to do here is visit the Nitmilulk or Katherine Gorge National Park. I know, another gorge, yawn.. to be honest we were quite gorged out ourselves by this stage. Katherine Gorge however is a much bigger landmark then anything else we'd been to. To mix it up a bit and try and get a bit of exercise we took the option of seeing the first part of the gorge by kayak, much better then sitting on a tour boat with fifty other people.
We picked up a copy of the Northern Territory Daily in Katherine. Front page headline “Croc vs. Shark”, sheer journalistic brilliance. A 3 m Croc had been spotted with a small shark in its mouth in an estuary. It caught it, brought it out the water, bashed it about a bit then left it out to suffocate on the bank. Might have a brain the size of a pea and not be much good at calculus but they sure know how to kill stuff. They pulled a 33ft croc out the gulf in 1999, 33ft! That's bigger than the boat eh Dad ? You wouldn't want that popping up behind you when you're out in your dinghy.

Carnavon to Broome

2008-05-11T14:03:00.019+07:00

Stop 25, 26 and 27 Carnarvon, Red Bluff, Carnarvon

Although it'd been another long drive, and felt somewhat like a chore, broken up with cold bolognaise alla chilli concarne at the Kennedy Ranges which would have been worth a stopover if we'd been in the right frame of mind, but getting to the west coast had been just too enticing the previous few days.

Crossing the Gascoigne River (thankfully quite low)

Bug Mania

We'd heard mixed reports about Canarvon but we unexpectedly got the opportunity to get to know it quite well. The warrior truck went in for her service the day after we arrived and came out with a broken injector pump. You'll remember that we knew it had a leak back on the Gunbarrel but were assured at the garage that it'd probably be okay up to Broome where we thought we'd put it into a 4x4 specialist for a good check over. Unfortunately in changing the fuel filter during the service and bleeding the engine (or something like that) it put a bit too much strain on the injector pump and it went. All in all it was going to be probably a week delay as the pump had to be sent to Perth and a fair proportion of our contingency fund gone.
Not to let little things distress us too much though or put paid to our plans we rented Troopy (Old School Toyota Landcruiser) for a few days and headed up the coast a little over 100km to an undeveloped rural haven – Red Bluff and the joys of Gnaraloo Bay.

Arty photo of the shore break in action at the Bluffs beach

We received the friendliest of welcomes from the station family, got to cuddle the orphaned joeys they were hand raising and received a lump if tuna steak (because they had too much) that fed us for 3 nights. Our first experience of the Western Austrlian coast lived upto expectations with crystal clear waters & beautiful deserted beaches, Si got to surf with turtles (They were swimming in the same water – not actually surfing – obviously that would have been a bit silly) and I enjoyed gently drifting along the coral reef admiring the huge variety of marine life. Including my first octopus at close quarters – which I moved away from very quickly. Simon helpfully suggested that next time I should put it on my head for a photo opportunity. Yep. You first then Si.

The road into Red Bluff - the point has a well known left hand surf break. However given a local surfer broke his jaw on the reef the day i got there i thought i'd give it a miss

Camped up at the Bluff

So, one way or another we managed to pass five nights camped out by the beach, surfing and swimming by day, eating fresh fish and drinking godawful red wine at $12 for 4 litres while philosophising over the milky way and the universe and life at night ....

Osprey with take away meal

One of the stations little Joey's - far cuter and much less hassle than real children

Unfortunately the dream life by the beach had to end and we headed back to Canarvon exactly a week after first arriving. The following day the heavens opened with a tropical downpouring that in part flooded the campsite and gave us an excuse to sit in the TV room all day watching episodes of 24. We liked Canarvon. It's not the prettiest (but not unattractive), isn't the most happening place (but we don't need that most of the time) and had all we needed for the 3 nights we spent back there before retreiving the truck (fixed) and heading further north up the coast.

Checking out the bountiful surf and preparing for a beating

Fishing (Unsuccessfully)

The "dreads"look after five days with no freshwater supply

A note on Troopy
It was quite a treat to have a brand new troop carrier to drive around in, it went faster when you accelerated, didn't squeak in quite so many places over the corrugations and we had slightly more confidence she wouldn't fall apart. That said we were also worried about every bush and rock scratching or banging her.

Stops 28 and 29 Warrorah Station & Ningaloo Homestead
We had a night at each of Warrorah Station and Ningaloo Homestead on the way north. We loved these settings, either just on the beach or behind the dunes, with sandy tracks linking the various places. Seems that these are the places that the locals come to to get away from some of the more touristy areas up the north west coast. En route we had a lunch time stop at Coral Bay for a quick snorkel but our ultimate destination was the Cape Range National Park and Ningaloo Marine Park. We'd wanted to take the coast raod but on advice from Ningaloo homestead we retreated to the main road. The big rains we'd had (while we were in Canarvon) had washed away a sand bank at Yardie Creek and so the creek crossing had become impassable (at least for anyone without HUGE tyres and less to lose than us). If we couldn't take the advice of locals then whose could we and the advice proved well founded as we later heard during some campsite BBQ chat that a guy that day had bogged his nice new land cruiser in the creek and no doubt given his engine a salt water bath as a consequence.

A Few littel bones we found kicking about

Looks like the locals have a termite problem

Sunrise - Again, unbelievably seeing a suprising amount of these!

Stop 30 Yardie Homestead
We got to Exmouth reasonably early Saturday morning and had a chance to replace the nut that had shaken itself out of the bullbar on one of the less than fun tracks north we took. The weather was really heating up and the tropical heat was leaving us tired and desperate for a dip in the sea! The whole area is renowned for the Ningaloo reef – about 250km of coral reef that is in some places just a few metres off shore and so easy to get out and snorkel around. So the plan for the next couple of days was to snorkel, surf and see the whale sharks and also enjoy a Sunday roast dinner put on by the Yardie Homestead where we decided to set up camp. Brilliant!

The Cape Range National park backing onto the Ningaloo Marine Park

The whale sharks are one of the big draws for the area – between May and July they are predictably there and 7 operators run trips from Exmouth to snorkel with these gentle giants. At up to 12m long there are few other creatures that we would ever get the chance to see in such close quarters (and no other shark I would happily get so close to).
We booked to do the trip with Ningaloo Reef Dreaming – the one operator in town that runs its own spotting plane and is doing a lot of conservation work as well. (The other operators share a plane – which means when they spot a shark, the 6 boats also share the shark). The morning started with a regular scuba dive which reminded us how much we enjoy diving and got Simon practising his nudibranch spotting (small psychedelic coloured sea slugs) – he spotted 3, I still have never spotted one first.

The little fish we all paid so much money to go and see

The day proper got underway as soon as we surfaced from the dive with the guys on the boat shouting for us to come back quickly as we were 'on' a shark!! Action stations and the boat roared off towards the shark's location. Unfortunately it had dived before we got to it but a little while later another shark was spotted and we were lucky enough to stay with this shark for over an hour. It's a bit of a military operation. They split us into 2 groups – 6 in each (with Simon winning scissor, paper, stone for our group to go first) – and each group has a spotter. When we're near the shark (and they swim just a bit under the water so from the boat they are pretty hard to see) the spotter goes in and heads off to where the shark in swimming towards him, when he has the shark he sticks his arm up and swims with it. That's the signal for us to get in. We are all lined up on the rear of the boat – fins on, mask and snorkel and we get an order to go,go go! - navy Seal style. At which point we all jump in and swim madly towards the spotter until suddenly, a little blurred at first but then there's no mistaking it, this giant wide mouth appears and you head off to one side of its body or the other and there's the whale shark. Grey and spotted, powerful and sleek and a truly splendid sight. The first swim was quite brief, maybe a minute and then we stopped and the other group went in, the boat picked us up and brought us back round in front of the shark and then we got another signal to go, go go! We were lucky and in total had nearly an hour swimming with this one shark with the time in the water getting progressively longer as some people didn't want to go back in and it just being one group swimming along. It's tiring though! First the dash from the boat to the shark then swimming alongside and keeping up with her really gave us a workout. Everyone has to maintain a distance of 3 metres and not swim in front of them. She didn't seem to mind us being there and everyone was very respectful, not interfering with her natural journey through the sea, feeding on the plankton and bits floating near the surface.

Charl doing her Urusua Le Guin (think that's spelling) impression

Our roast dinner was exactly what was called for after that trip and the following day Simon got to surf – some nice gentle stuff which he'd needed when we first got to the coast – again with turtles millingsaround and we spent the rest of the day snorkelling a couple of reef sites. The abundance of life was fantastic, the beaches were white and clean and we were glad we'd caught the area before tourist season really hits in later on in May.

Stop 31 Random Rest Area
Next up we were heading back inland a little to the Karijini National Park. Originally we were going to follow the coast but had heard great things about this National Park and we'd had no particular desire to see some of the other northwest coast towns. It was a two day trip though so after 5 hours driving on the first day we pulled into a roadside rest area in Pilbara on the Nanutarra – Paraburoo Road (Cheela Plains). A friendly couple offered us their fire after they'd finished with it and we cooked up steaks and sweet potato before bedding down for our second night's sleep in the truck.

Stop 32 Dales Gorge – Karijini National Park
Not having had the tent up gave us a quick getaway in the morning – the earliest we've had at about quarter to 8! - and we headed towards the town of Tom Price and a 4wd track up Mt Nameless. This provided some good views over the massive iron ore works and kilometre long trains taking the iron ore up to the northern port cities.

The view fomr Mt Nameless - huge trains moving iron ore to the coast

the 4WD track up Mt Nameless - time for a bit of low range action

We quite quickly moved on though to Karijini. A stunning park where the main attractions are gorges that literally fall away in the landscape with waterfalls, pools and some stunning rock colours and shapes. The reds, terracottas and orchres of the rocks against the deep blue sky and lush greens (from the good wet season that had just finished) really sum up this part of Australia. We camped at the National Park site at Dales Gorge and spent the next day and a half walking, hiking, scrambling, climbing, swimming, jumping, splashing, wading and generally having a good time through the gorges. My particular favourite was Circular pool, at the end of a gorge and simply magical. Ferns surrounding it, a wonderful warm shower trickling from the rocks on the far side and deliciously refreshing deep water to swim in. Just what was needed after the heat of the day outside the gorge.

Gorges and Gorge walking are what people come here for

Simon enjoyed the spider walk and proceeded to sing Spider Charlotte, Spider Charlotte – to the tune of Spider Pig as I tried not to fall into the slippery stream below.
The camp was fine despite the howling pack of dingos we were woken up by at night and we were happily free of flies! We wouldn't have though twice about spending a couple more days but given the time we'd lost around Canarvon we felt we had to move on.

Spider Charlotte, Spider Charlotte, does whatever, a spider charlotte does

Above: The emerald pools of the Karijini Park (and Charl doing her Timotei ad audition)

Friendly neighborhood Dingo

Stop 33 & 34 Pardoo Roadhouse and Barn Hill Station
Leaving Karijini our next destination was Broome a good 900 km and probably 2 overnights away. Rather than take the main bitumen road north from Karijini though, we decided to head off piste towards Australia's hottest town – Marble Bar – and some mining tracks north. We were so pleased we did this as the scenary was just incredible. Rugged and winding and peaceful with no other traffic for most of the 400 or so km we did to the Pardoo Roadhouse and back onto the main Northern Highway. Marble Bar itself had a wonderful natural pool with incongruous lawned banks where we sat and had a picnic before kindly feeding our apple cores to a horse. The horse then decided to tfollow us back to the truck and try and eat our rubbish bag. We both love animals but big horses not fenced in kind of scare both of us a bit and we made a quick retreat.

The mandatory abandoned goldmine, proper ozzie outback stuff

Hm.. you can't turn your back for a minute

Lunchtime picnic

Pardoo Roadhouse did what it said on the tin – grass to camp on, fish and chip dinner, swim in the pool and we set off again in the morning heat of the north west (this time along the tarmac) towards Broome.
Apart from the odd road train, Simon commenting that the road looked like it had glitter on and the occasional crackle of ABC local radio on AM it was dull. And reinforced our decision to stay away from the tarmac beforehand. It's hard to comprehend from the UK and even from Sydney – we were on the main highway connecting WA with the Northern Territory and there is no mobile signal (in fact we had had no mobile signal since Canarvon), for 99% of the time no radio to pick up, there is little traffic (maybe 2 or 3 vehicles an hour coming the other way) and there is literally nothing but vast flat plains divided by the long staight tarmac with a hazy mirage on the horizon from the heat. Unfortunately there simply was no choice as to road now and so we were straight lining it with the sun bearing down and no ipod.

Ipod Interlude
That's right – the ipod decided to start playing up around Exmouth, seemed to fix itself and went weird again on the way to Karijini. We ran the battery down – which had fixed it last time, charged it back up, switched it on – all working perfectly – except that every track, every single itsy, bitsy bit of music had been wiped. And anyone who has had the pleasure of Simon's ipod knows just how much music that is. And the laptop with the back up? In England. Arghhh!!!!!
So, we're attempting, intelligent conversation, have been reading tourist leaflets to the whoever s driving, doing crosswords but whether we manage to complete the trip without the ipod is another matter! Watch this space.

The Marble Bar road

Barn Hill
We'd had a recommendation that there was this campsite by the beach which was populated by grey nomads and other more senior folk looking to get away from things and fish that was well worth the visit. Being just over 100km from Broome it made for the perfect second overnight on our journey and an easy launchpad for the next morning into the biggest town / city we would have been to since Adelaide!
It didn't disappoint. Complete with bowls lawn, open air showers, a panoramic view of the sea and friendly dogs we happily stopped our driving for the day at lunch time and set up camp on the magnificent red rocks overlooking the white sand beach and Indian ocean beyond. After a short siesta we decided to spend the rest of the afternoon on the beach and try our hand at fishing again.

At last - a silver Trevally, bout a foot long. Tasted good

I found a dog to play stick with and Simon boldly launched his prawn bait into the sea expecting an hour or so of standing around before we went back and cooked tinned tuna pasta out of our rations box. Within 5 minutes though a startled Si had yelled for me to stop running up and down the beach with 'Rosie' and get a bucket of water for the fish! This hadn't really been in the plan but to cut a not very exciting story short we had a Trevally for dinner and learnt how to quickly end a poor fish's suffering. At least we know better for next time.
As an aside we are getting slightly concerned that we enjoy, indeed prefer, chatting to retired Australians than 'backpackers' and would rather sleep in the middle of nowhere in peace and quiet than in a busy town campsite. What is to become of us!

Yulara to Mt Augustus

2008-04-22T09:20:00.016+07:00

Yulara to Mt Augustus 14th - 21st April

Well we've arrived aon the West Coast at Canarvon, tired, hot & dusty but somewhat proud of ourselves. We've traversed a country the size of North America, driven approximatley 5000 km of which 90% have been dirt roads and desert tracks. These have varied from wide, well maintained gravel roads to two tyre tracks in the sand heading out into the desert with waist high spinifex grass growing in between them.

To give you an idea of how remote we've been crossing the west, we went for over two days without seeing any other people – and that was when we called into the Carnegie Farmstead. We went for three days without seeing another vehicle on the road or picking up any sort of radio traffic!

We've seen some amazing remote country but there's also been times when I've been covered in sweat, dust and grease, lying on my back under the car with flies swarming round me, trying to clear the underside of spinifex grass before we got a nasty underside fire, that Manly Beach has seemed like an an attractive option!

Sitting on the roofrack, having a beer, watching the rock change colour. Happy Days

Stop 19 Warbuton Roadhouse, WA

Sandy Sandy on the way west

The time had finally come to leave the comfort of Yulara. We'd had a good break, done some good walks and had experienced the famed Ayres Rock Sunset. We were also now well stocked and prepped for what will potentially be the toughest and most remote leg to our whole trip.
In all honesty there's not a lot to say about this first day – we put in a good 5ook+ to take us to the roadhouse of Warbuton on the Great Central Highway, a major unsealed road between Perth and the Red Centre. Once past the sandrifts and deep corrugations of the Northern Territory section it was plain sailing down to Roadhouse through unchanging scrubland.
A long day but we gained some time with the 1 ½ h time difference between states. Interestingly we found a scouser and a south african backpacker working in this middle of nowhere place – being on Aboriginal land you couldn't even buy or consume alcohol so I guess it was a good money saver for the them

A Thorny Devil - we managed not to run this one over

Stop 20 Camp Beadell, The Gunbarrel Highway

We woke the next morning to organised chaos as the local aboriginal population were getting fuelled up to go about their daily tasks. Dusty cars rammed with aboriginal folks were everywhere and our start time was delayed as I had to wait out the worlds slowest ATM queue behind about ten aboriginal ladies who seemed to be all a little confused by the machine.
About 30k down the highway we turned onto the Heather highway, a bit narrower but in still in good nick. Another 40k and we came to a t-junction, of sorts. On the right a set of corrugated tyre tracks led off through waist high spinifex fields, on the left the option was similar, the fun had begun.

Sun set at "Camp Beadell"

(Outback Traffic)

The next stretch saw us taking on heavy, heavy corrugations, numerous rocky washouts and dry creek bed crossings. Our average speed dropped to about 20/30kmh and it took us the best part of a couple of hours to do this 40 k stretch.

The "Highway"

We were somewhat relieved (prematurely so) to reach the junction of the Gunbarrel Highway where we would turn to head west. Some godfather of outback road construction – Len Beadall – blazed this trail some 40 years ago whilst looking for sights for military weapon testing. There hasn't been much road maintenance since and “highway” is definitely meant in an ironic sense – the scratches down the side of our car from close encounters with gum trees show. Whilst we had some relief from the corrugations the washouts took a turn for the worse requiring some serious attention on wheel placement and then the corrugations returned, worse than ever requiring us to drop to 10 k t avoid both the truck and ourselves being shaken apart. Somewhat frustrating and although we came out for these roads the corrugations just aren't fun. There was a distinct lack of any life on route although the vegetations remained green for much of the track. We happened upon a couple travelling the other way. With his and her trucks – supposedly so they could take on harder tracks and have means to recover each other. We think they'd probably just had enough of sitting in one truck together. They were the only people we saw for the next 48 hours and the only vehicles for the next 3 days.

Outback Pedestrian

The Gunbarrell wasn't in great condition in parts!

Camp Beadall was essentially just a bit of desert where people had camped before and previously had a working water bore pump, but apart from ourselves and the flys there wasn't another living thing in sight. So we settled down for a peaceful nights sleep – that is until the Dingos started howling.

Pumping up water from 16m down and getting some good exercise with it !

It's not called the "gunbarrel" for nothing

Stop 21 Mt Lambert, The Gunbarrel Highway
Despite the worry of marauding Dingo's a reasonable nights sleep was had and we were up early to carry on the battle along the gunbarrel. First stop was Mt Beadell where a short climb gave us incredible views over the savannah like landscape we had been travelling through. Simply breathtaking and it was suddenly all worth wile.

Views from Mt Beadell

Coming down to the motor a cursory inspection led to the discovery that our Injection Pump was leaking diesel, faced with several unattractive options of being broken down in the middle of nowhere and likely 400k or so from the nearest settlement we decided to go with the carry on and hope approach.

Outback Roadsigns

The drive continued to be an exciting, technical affair interspersed with long sections of bone shattering corrugations. At a place called “Everard Junction” we signed what is surely the world's most remote visitor book. Quite bizarre really, you get to this junction in the middle of nowhere and suddenly there's this tin box with about four years worth of visitors book in.
Shortly after we suffered our second setback of the day when we managed to get our first flat, picking up some sort of metal spike that had been lurking under the sand. The flat's not a problem in itself – that's what we carry two spares for – however at this stage we couldn't help thinking “ok, bad luck comes in threes, what's next?”

Demonstrating the correct use of a jacking plate in soft sand

The worlds most random visitors book

As we reached an area know as Mugkilli's Claypan the road finally improved and we were back up to a comfortable 60/70 kmh. We parked up for the night on top of Mt William Lambert, a small rise with panoramic views over the savannah, probably stretching 100k in all directions. With fairly strong winds prevailing we decided to put our car's campervan function to the test and slept on the back shelf, awaking to light of the sun rising over the incredible savannah views, it was one of our top experiences so far.

I didn't envy the guy who had to change these babies

(above - views from Mt William)

The penthouse suite

Stop 22 Imbin Rockhole

We continued on our way with the roads gradually improving as we went. About 3 hours in we reached Carnegie homestead shown on the map as having fuel, camping and supplies. It's easy to forget that these places are still in the middle of nowhere so when we turned up to find a kid on a tractor and everyone else out with the cattle we shouldn't have been surprised. We stayed around for a bit and made a cup of tea whilst being entertained by a swarm of children who appeared out of nowhere. After we watched them fearlessly chase away a bull that had strayed into the homestead we were regaled with their stories about life on the station, dingos, quad biking and going to school if they felt like it. Some of the most articulate and confident children we've met.

Aboriginal Rock Markings around the waterhole (meaning, uh..waterhole I believe)

The track to the waterhole

Bush Camping at Imbin

From Carnegie we had a couple of options – we'd thought we were heading towards Wiluna but decided to take an alternative route in a similar direction described on a painted corrugated sign by the side of the road as the scenic route. Whilst we were a little dubious at that description to start with we came through a lovely rocky valley called Sydney Heads Pass with a steep path up the side. We duly put the truck into low range and took on the vertical path, with the reward of good views and the sight of a large red kangaroo hopping down the road we'd just driven up. Simon swore that he'd seem a place called Imbin Rockhole on a tourist information sheet somewhere. It was marked on our map as being close to Syndey Heads Pass but we struggled to find the turn-off. With a bit of help from the GPS (no not the speaking lady telling us to turn left now but some genuine map reading) and Charlotte's ace navigation skills we followed what vaguely looked like a track off the side of the road for 5km, pressing on with the constant belief that it couldn't be much further and did get to Imbin Rockhole.

We camped up for the night and realised a little late that camping on spiky burrs wasn't such a hot idea but the peace and serenity of the location made up for the prickles in our feet. For a change we were in quite a wide open area and the climb up the rocks once again gave us a great view of the surroundings.

We were getting tired now and were both keen to get back to some civilisation. Apart from the kids on the station we now hadn't seen a vehicle or other people on the road for 3 days, indeed we'd seen nothing but the occasional bird and every now and then an emu or some camels

Stop 23 Meekatharra

The next day we woke up knowing we had at least 300k's to do to get to what we where thinking would be our first “town” for a while Wiluna.

After a long but relatively uninspiring drive down the Granite Peaks road we turned up at Wiluna. The guy at Carnegie had warned us this was what he described as a “blackfella's” town. Pretty typical description by white rural bushfolk out here. We didn't take that much notice even when he told us the last time he'd been there he'd tried to go to the pub and the big aboriginal guy on the doo had told him “not here Whitey, Whitefella's round the back”
However we did get there to find the town deserted other than a group of twenty or so aboriginals sitting on the pavement outside the pub.

Deciding the place was more bronx than welcoming country town we decided to push onto Meekathara, another 180k's or so away. A mixed town of a thousand or so it seemed like the seat of civilisation to us when we got there. We noticed the barbed wire around the caravan park but didn't care as hot showers and a pub meal where top of our priorities and a welcome relief.

Stop 24 Mt Augustus
So that was the desert crossing out the way. We still however had the large expanse of WA's Mid West to get through to get to the coast, a 2/3 day drive at least and still remote, outback territory.

This remote land didn't change dramatically but slowly but surely signs of water started appearing, the occasional grassy patch was seen and at one point we even had to ford a river with water in ! (the first we'd seen for a couple of thousand K's)
We decided to stop for a couple of days at the Mt Augustus National Park and climb the worlds largest rock. Standing 1105m above sea level the Mt is a rock similar to Ulluru but as it's covered with vegetation so it doesn't have the same visual impact as Uluru and as such isn't such a known destination. (the fact it's 500k's from anywhere significant down dirt roads that shut after rain doesn't help either).

down the gully

At the summit

The climb took us five hours return and it's a toughy. The tougher route isn't so much a path as a scramble down a rocky gorge. Good fun but our legs were jelly after. It's a great climb with stunning views. I'd recommend it to anyone but it's quite an isolated spot and a 4x4 is pretty helpful for the roads to and from.

The view form the top

The following day (after another evening being entertained by the resident stick eating dog) we set off on our way to the coast and a few dust filled hours and shallow river crossings later we reached Canarvon. Time to hit the west coast.

Adelaide to Uluru

2008-04-11T13:24:00.017+07:00

Adelaide to Yulara 2nd April - 12th April

Total km - 6000+ but we keep forgetting to check the exact number
Ipod game - just got to Cafe Del Mar and the C's
Roadkill - one poor lizard (see below)

Adelaide
Adelaide was a great stop, we really wished we'd had more time to stay and enjoy the city. Seemed to have a pleasant vibe and plenty on (including a 38 DJ back to back Drum n Bass Event on the Friday night. Gutted as that would have been pretty sweet. We had some intersting weather as well, miserable, cold and wet, hail storm and also hot and warm when we arrived. The campsite we stayed at on the edge of the BelAir NP was perfect for us and the guy managing it was really helpful. We also encountered a pesky little possum, that thought it was a cat – but proceeded to bite Simon's finger after being fed sweet corn and biting my toe after he snuck up behind me and I accidently stepped on him.

Stop 11 Quorn
From Adelaide we drove north, through pretty wine regions that we didn't have the time to stop in and slowly the scenary became more 'outbackish' and the roads got quieter. We spent our first night in what we perceived to be the outback in a place called Quorn. It's a beautiful and friendly little village, with old pionner-esque buildings and a great pub (the Austral) which served a $7.50 curry (Thursday night only) which was the best we've had in Oz. The campsite had everything we needed including a warm laundry room for charging the laptop and a mug of wine before bed (as it was a bit chilly). We thought that if this is the outback we can handle this.....

sheep following a Ute in pastoral country prior to Quorn

The Austel pub - best curry so far

Stop 12 Bunyeroo Gorge, Flinders Ranges – Wilpena National Park
The following day we started our meander north towards the Flinders National Park. Our route took us away from the main highway on some dirt and gravel roads which took us past some of the interesting historic and natural sights on route. The the mid 1800's a railway was built running from Port Augusta eventually up to Alice Springs, affectinately known as The Ghan railway, much of our route for the last few days has followed the old rail route as many of the settlements were originally established as sidings and stops on the rail route. some of them remain today (despite the rail line being long closed down) whereas other sites are simply ruins. It's a fascinating history of these people without any of the modern conveniences that make our trip bearable if not always pleasant, establishing new towns and trying to make a living through some of the hardest times. In particular a massive drought in the 1860s / 1870s meant the end for some of the pioneers attempts to make a life out here.

We also spotted the rare yellow footed rock wallaby, our first sightings of emus in the wild, the giant wedge tailed eagle, and various kangaroos, wallaroos and wallabies along the way. We also followed an hour long walk in the afternoon to see some Aboriginal rock paintings. The temperature and weather was heating up and without any knowledge of what the art was showing and no descriptive text we were left a bit uninformed and could have been looking at any old thing.

driving into the Flinders

Wilpnea Pound National Park

Sleepy Kangaroo

Later in the afternoon we entered the park and made our way down a 28 km track (4wd really) to Bunyeroo gorge where we camped in a great small NP campsite for the next 2 nights. These places are all self-registration (with an honesty box for fees) and had just four sites. We were pleased to have some neighbours as it can get a bit spooky being by ourselves in the bush.
The scenery in the area was simply stunning, mountain ranges, amazing colours – reds, oranges, purples, rocky and changing landscape all the time and wonderful amount of wildlife. The following day we left the tent and went to Wilpena Pound – a natural basin in the mountains with only one route in and out
It had been 72 days since it last rained in Flinders and it was looking pretty dry, looking at the map we though we'd have a number of creek crossings to navigate but in reality all we saw were dry creek beds.

Stop 13 Marree, Outback South Australia
Heading north out of the Flinders we passed through the scenic village of Blinman and had our first experience of the local Quandong Pie from the village roadhouse. Quandong is a type of local peach and the pies were delicious.
Shortly after Blinman we left the ranges and entered “the outback” proper. It shortly became apparent that they weren't joking – these places really were out the back (of beyond).
We stopped at the tiny village of Copley (about six houses long along the highway) for our second portion of quandong pie for the day and then passed though the village/shacks of Lyndhurst (if only the well off folk from the new forest could see this place!) We'd had a good stretch of tarmac from the Flinders to Lyndhurst but we now left the sealed road and wouldn't really see any again for over 600km.

Our stop for the night was the small township of Marree at the base of the Oodnadatta track we were planning on taking. Think Mad Max – broken down rusted old trains, corrugated steel shacks, signs swinging in the wind etc.. The oasis campsite & motel didn't quite fit our expectation of the word but they had a bit of grass for us to pitch on and hot showers so we couldn't complain. We also braved our first outback pub and chatted to the mandatory tattooed, bearded blokes who actually turned out to be Aussies from Adelaide out on a road trip.

Local art displayed in front of houses at Copley

Old train wreck in Marree

Farina Ruins nr Marree

Stop 14 Coward Springs, Oodnadatta track GPS 29 24 09 S , 136 48 40 E
We'll start giving a GPS ref for some of these points because unless you've got a detailed local area Oz map you'll likely never find it!
Heading out onto the Oodnadatta track we started to really see the desert landscape. Each time we've started to feel more remote over the last few days we move on a bit and the goalposts keep on moving with us.

The landscapes we were travelling through were constantly changing – red sand one minute, scubland the next, rocky planes the minute after. At this point we'd stopped seeing so much wildlife other than the occasional bird – we were seeing the odd dust devil, little mini whirlwinds whipping dust up in miniture tornado windspouts. Who could be the first persons to drive through a dust devil became a bit of a game between us. (NB: Have just found out that a dust devil is actually known as a willy-willy. Insert your own joke).

One spectacular stop was at the edge of Lake Eyre. For any geologists it's a pretty incredible basin thing (the biggest in the world) – rain that falls as far away as the great dividing range in Queensland travels through the underground water courses eventually popping back up again (2 million years later) in the lake eyre region – in mound springs which become these little oasises of life. Very occasionally the lake will fill – and it is HUGE – look on a map. While we were there it was just a giant flat salt bed as far as the eye could see (salt because many millions of years ago the seas flooded this area). They set a land speed record here some years back.
After that geological delight we headed for more fun with rocks at Australia's only coal mine. Simon considered trading in Xena for a bigger model but thought better of it.

That night we camped at the delightful Coward Springs – it is the true definition of oasis. Shady pitches under a group of gum tree's that manage to survive thanks to the spring water that bubbles up in the area. It even had a natural spa which we hopped in for a soak. The owners of the land have done a magnificent job restoring the area and old railway related buildings. Using much of the old materials around for building a small toilet block and benches around the site. (And they're the best loos we've experienced in the outback – all of which are pit toilets as there's not much plumbing going on out here).

sign speaks for itself really - start of the Oodnadatta track

The"Blanche Cup spring" just popping up out the desert about 1ook along the track

The old "Ghan railway" stretching off into the distance

Lake Eyre

we thought about trading in the truck for a new set of wheels

Coalmine just past Marree

Camping at Coward Springs

Stop 15 Algebuckina ruins (everything broken!)
A further 300k up the track by a large waterhole and next to the ruins of the algebuckina rail bridge was our stop for the following night. On the way up we took a detour for lunch to the old Peake telegraph station. It was 16k down the roughest 4x4 track we'd been up yet but set in spectacular scenery as the picture shows.

Simon: By this stage it was becoming apparent that a bit of daily maintenance was going to be needed in order to keep the old girl going on the rough stuff. I had taken to walking round the car checking the tightest of all the screws and bolts, we already had one front spotlight strapped on with bungee cords after its nut had shaken loose on the corrugations. To top it all off we managed to slice through our power cord for the fridge, blowing fuses and losing our main source of cold beer!

We camped right next to the waterhole at Algebuckina, proper bush camping on cattle station land with not another soul in sight. Si tried his luck throwing a line in but we didn't fancy eating the mouldy stick which was the only thing he could manage to catch.

remnants of an old pioneer car - looked like a motor out of the 1950's or so...made us feel slightly better about our motor

The William Creek Hotel Pub - utter outback class (although incredibly it did have a german backpacker behind the bar, they get everywhere!)

think this was once a kangaroo

The Old Peake station ruins where we stopped for a bit of lunch in the shade (Max the photo and you can see where we where)

Catching Mouldy twigs at the Waterhole

Stop 16 Cadney Park Roadhouse
Travelling on the next day we were being somewhat indecisive about choosing between the three possible routes ahead of us. First port of call however was the famous (in certain circles) pink roadhouse at the Aboriginal settlement of Oodnadatta for some spare parts and a bit of expert advice on the roads ahead.

Thankfully the roadhouse stocked all we needed and more, we reattached our dangling spotlight and rewired the fridge (Simon's doing electrics as well now – and is beginning to complain he didn't come on this trip to be a handyman). We also had this really useful desert driving god chat to us about tyre pressures – it turns out we can run them much lower than we thought without damaging the sidewall which should stop things falling off the car! (Simon wrote that sentence because I don't know what it means).

We decided to take the route out through a patch known as the “painted desert”. One of the best decisions we've made, it's a landscape's that really does look like it's been created by an artist.
By the end of the day we'd reached the tarmac of the Stuart highway and the Cadney Park roadhouse. It's amazing what might seem like a “from Dusk to Dawn” style outfit in one situation seems like Butlins in another – for us the fact we had a pool to have a dip in, some grass to pitch on and half price beers at happy hour was just what we needed.

Buch Mechanic at work

The worlds chospiest (pinkest) roadhouse

driving in the dunes outside Oodnadatta

(Above) The painted Desert

We went down this road we nicknamed the "avenue of funnelweb doom" becasue of all the funnelwebs by the side of it. I did get out to try poking it with a stick to see if I could get it to come out but it wasn't playing ball

Sunrise through the tent window at Cadney Park

Looks like Ulluru but this is Mt Conner about 1ook before

Birds night out

Stop 17 Curtin Springs

The journey north from Cadney Park was dull compared to what we'd seen so far, the flat dry landscape was occasionally broken up by small hills rising up from nowhere before returning to the flat arid landscape. I thought about a pub cricket-esque game with the various roadkill but we didn't play, instead gawping at the huge eagles / vultures that were feasting at the sides of the road. The Stuart Highway is without a doubt the least exciting part of the desert. We did, at the very last moment spot a Thorny Devil lizard – something Si had really wanted to see while we're out here. Unfortunately it was a couple of feet from my front left tyre at the time and so he didn't last much longer.

Nothing else to report on that day. Dull, dull, driving up the bituman, covering too many km and deciding to stop 100km before Uluru at a free camping site at the Curtin Springs roadhouse complete with inquisitive emu that took a fancy to my hairbrush. We didn't want to mess with him.

Stop 18 Uluru Resort (Yulara)
It's been a little bit of paradise for us to be here – aircon, shops, swimming pool, and of course the spectacular sight of Uluru and Kata Tjuta.
Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) is about 40km further along the road from Uluru but also holds special spiritual significance and is just as impressive if not more so than Uluru. We did a walk there early this morning through the 'Valley of the Winds' and reached the most incredible look out. Almost pre-historic looking walled it by sheer red rock but looking down on this lush green valley hidden in the centre of the mounds. This evening we'll go for the sunset viewing of the red rock (along with everyone else at the resort) and thought that tomorrow we'd get up early again to do the base walk around Uluru.

We were going to have a whinge at this point about the flies (drive you insane), the dust, the heat etc but don't think we'd get much sympathy.

Signing out for now. This is probably the most arduous 10 days coming up. We've logged our route with police, family and responsible friends (we do have some) and will be dipping our toes in the ocean off Canarvon in WA in less than a fortnight. Si has just discovered a surf beach nearby and so the sooner I get him there the better, I can't cope with the unused surfboard lying around in the tent much longer. Love to all Charlotte and Simon xx

The Olga's (outside)

the Olga's (from the inside)