The Animal Issue (yuppie scum meet the animals)

Showgrounds continued
In the last blog I left off when we stayed at the Showgrounds and saw the penguins. There were a couple of other interesting things that I wanted to mention before moving on. I guess the first was that the Tasmanian guy who pulled us out, of course wanted to have a conversation. The part that was a little strange was that he wanted to have that conversation with Mike only. I thought I might be a little paranoid, but Mike also picked up on those vibes. We were all standing around and at that point he was doing the talking and we were doing the listening, and then he asked Mike what he did for a living. The strange part is that once Mike told him we both thought that he would turn to me (like all of the other people have done) and ask me what it is that I did, but he didn't do that. Furthermore his wife stepped up and tried starting a conversation with me to I guess engage me on a completely separate topic. It felt a little like she came in to lead me away so that the "boys" could have their manly conversation. I don't think that this is an Australia thing, because we have met other people and other couples (although they were the oldest) but it was very much their thing. I didn't make a big deal about it, seeing as the guy pulled us out of the mud and did us a solid, but it was a little weird for me nonetheless...

Bruce the hugging groundskeeper

The other thing that happened is that we got to talking to the groundskeeper Bruce, who was a very lonely old guy. Within 15 minutes of talking to us he told us that his wife left him after 27 off years of marriage and told him that she never loved him. He used to be a bus driver before he retired and even made the maiden voyage from Adelaide to Perth when they put a sealed road in. This is just background information for you guys. When we were leaving he came up and hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. Mike later commented on how awkward I was about the whole thing and I reminded Mike that I do NOT like to be touched by strangers.

I have three levels of tolerance for touching and invasion of personal space:

1. Mike - I don't have personal space when it comes to him, and so he often forgets about the fact that in general I am somewhat uncomfortable with touching
2. Close family and close friends - I also see them as people for whom personal space and touching rules are bent. I like hugging them and kissing them - although I have to be in the right mood. If you have celebrated the last couple of birthdays with me - you are OK :)
3. Everyone else - including strangers, acquaintances, and work people. I like personal space and touching is basically reserved for special occasions. I hate it when people who I don't really know feel the need to touch my hand while talking to me, or pat me on the back, or invade my personal space but it periodically happens because I think it's impolite to tell people "stop touching me, we are not close like that". When one of my friends is pregnant and tells me that strangers touched their belly I cannot believe that they are fine with it. If I am ever pregnant and a stranger reaches out to touch me I may be hormonal enough to rip their arm off at the socket and beat them with it. In fact, my sense of personal space is so strong that some relatives have been known to chase me into corners (they come closer to talk to me and I take a step back to re-establish personal space - repeat until there's a wall behind me and there is no escape). Usually, if my father is around he will chuckle to himself and come in to rescue me from my personal space invasion nightmare :) I don't really think it makes me a cold person - I just think I'm not a particularly physical one. 

Anyway, due to this, my hugging and kissing with Bruce was a bit awkward. Do you guys remember "When Harry met Sally"? Harry is talking about how long to hold a woman after sex and that's exactly how I feel when a stranger hugs me. How long do I hold them? Is one second enough? How about 5 seconds? Can I let go first? Just a little glimpse of what goes on inside my head. Oh yeah, I AM this crazy :)

Adelaide
Our next stop was Adelaide and I have to say that Adelaide is probably the people dividing line in Australia. What I mean is this, people east of Adelaide look like normal people, but people in Adelaide and to the west look a little funky. Everyone is just a little off. I don't know why that is, but this is where Mike and I started noticing the difference.

I can't say that Adelaide left any kind of permanent mark on me. I loved Melbourne and I really liked Sydney but there just wasn't anything special about Adelaide. They did have a big Botanic Garden in the middle of the city, and our first day there Mike and I did a lot of walking around, but there was just nothing that spoke to me. Our time in Adelaide was also spent doing Internet related chores. I lost my ATM and credit card in Melbourne and got locked out of all of our accounts. Mike had to be on the phone and online with Citi forever to get his personal credit card joined to our account and to get login info. It was not awesome. I will say that we had some amazing food there though.

Our first night of walking around we came upon an Argentinian restaurant, Gaucho's, and dropped some cash there. The restaurant was pricey enough for my eyebrows to go up, and we definitely did not get the most expensive steak there, but we got absolutely delicious food. If you are ever in Adelaide I HIGHLY recommend that you go there and have some meat. It was just spectacular!

Our last day we ended up going to the Central Market and getting all kinds of yuppie goodies. Jessya and Yan would be very proud of us. We bought goat cheese, and truffled brie, and chicken liver pate, and spicy salami, fresh baked sourdough bread, and even marinaded Spanish olives. We bought those things at like 5 or 6 different stalls. It was awesome. The plan was to go see some animals and then have a picnic.

We still laugh about our day at the Preserve. We went because in South Australia it is legal to hold a koala and we wanted to pet those cute furry little bastards. The koala petting was amazing but the lady who brought out the koala was just bitchy. Mike asked if it was OK for him to pet the koala on her chest instead of her back and the lady replied in the snottiest voice ever: "No! She would not like that!" How do you know? Maybe the koala has a huge crush on Mike and would like nothing better than to be petted on the chest! Do you speak koala? Are you the koala whisperer? It was just the worst tone ever. It's not like we were gonna do it without asking! Just unnecessary attitude. Regardless, the koala that we petted was still a kid and i loved that she held some eucalyptus in her little hand and was just chewing away in my arms. She was so soft and cute and cuddly. I could have spent all day holding her. Mike and I specifically let other people all go first so that we would hold the koala for a longer period of time, and it totally worked. Take that, bitchy zoo lady!

After we were done with the koalas we noticed that the preserve was selling kangaroo food and decided

Wallabies mobbing me

that we might as well feed the roos and wallabies again. The store sold both pellets and "biscuits" (which is what Aussies call cookies) We were dubious about the cookies but the ladies at the counter told us that the roos love them and it will be better than feeding them their pellet food. Armed with a whole bag of cookies (think plain "maria" cookies) we came up to the roos. We only fed them for a little bit because they are less cute than the wallabies and then moved on to our favorite animals, the adorable wallabies. Once they saw me with an almost full bag they mobbed me. There were at least seven wallabies going for the cookies. They were so cute that we could not stop and this is where it gets a little funny. I hope no one from PETA is reading this :) We really overfed them. The wallabies started dry heaving. They would turn away from us, dry heave for a bit, and then go back for more cookies. One of them just had diarrhea all over his tail. It was so sad, but also funny because they still wanted more. By that time we were almost out of the whole bag, so we tried to find the wallabies that didn't get overfed to give them the remains, but there was one wallaby in particular that just kept leaving to dry heave and then come back and fight for more biscuit. It's like he was embarrassed by his body's reaction and didn't want us to see, but wanted more treats. I blame the store ladies for not telling us that we shouldn't feed the whole bag to the animals. I swear we didn't mean any harm, but also they were really funny about it.

After abusing the wallabies with the food, we stopped by the wombats, who happened to be up and awake and I even got to pet one through the cage. They were really friendly and could probably smell the biscuits on our hands, but we had nothing to give them (and would have been scared to anyway). I think all of the animals were still alive when we left the reserve and I will round that up to a win.

We polished off this successful day by driving to the botanic gardens and setting up a picnic among the awesome trees there. We were proper about it setting up our table and bringing picnic chairs over, it was al fresco dining at it's finest and a proper goodbye for Adelaide. It was also my favorite day in that particular city and with that we were ready to move on to some hiking.

Yuppie Scum
Since Adelaide is pretty close to the Flinders Ranges we decided to do a bit of hiking before continuing towards Perth. I thought that I was well enough (even though I didn't think I was 100 percent better from my horrible cold). The first day we were in the Ranges we did a small hike (4 hours) to the top of Mt. Ohlssen Bagge. We were taking it easy on the hike as it also turned out to be a marriage therapy session so I didn't notice feeling particularly tired. On our way back to camp (less than 1 km out), we came upon a wild echidna scared of some kids. I knew if I waited long enough Australia would drop one of these bad boys in my lap! The echidna was trying to dig itself into the roots of a tree since the 3 little kids surrounded it. We stood with them and tried to be quiet to see if the echidna would eventually relax and unfurl, but this did not occur. When the kids suggested that we use a stick to get it out of the hold, Mike and I both talked them out of that plan. Mike did eventually try to get the echidna out with his bare hands, but the poor creature was scared and we decided to leave it alone. Another animal seen in the wild under my belt = total win. A comment on travelling in a van together with your partner with no one else around and no distractions - either you will not make it, or it will be the greatest marriage therapy session anywhere and your relationship will come out even better and even stronger. All of the underlying problems that you didn't think were a big deal will float up to the surface and you will have to deal with them. I think that the hike to the peak of Ohlssen Bagge was very very good for us both physically and mentally but we did need a couple of beers when we were done and thank god there was a bar that provided :)

Our second day I started coughing a little bit and Mike wondered if we should go on the hike, but I didn't think it was a particularly big deal so we went. We started out at noon and gave ourselves some options - we could do a loop -9 hour, 21 km trip if we were going at a good pace (we usually would do the hike in 6-7 hours if the estimate is 9) or we could do a straight walk to the peak and back - a 6 hour, 14 km trip that we would be able to do in 4-4.5 hours on a regular day.

We made it to the top of St. Mary's

The hike started well and we were through the flat portion of it (the first 5 km in less than an hour, but when it got to the steep portion I started running out of breath pretty quickly. At first I thought that I was just a little out of shape, since we had not hiked in almost 2 months, and I had to put the running on hold for visitors and then once I got sick, but as we climbed up I started needing to catch my breath more and more often. It took us an additional 2.5 hours to get up to the peak of St. Mary's and I did not think I had it in me to make it to the top. We even stopped for lunch 400 meters from the top because I really needed a rest. As we were eating our food (the remnants of our Central Market feast) Mike decided that we were Yuppie Scum. He has been fighting becoming a yuppie since I met him, but he was no longer in denial. When you hike up a mountain and have a feast of fresh sourdough bread, pate, orange marmalade, and truffled brie cheese, you are by all accounts, a yuppie. Mike then tried to tell me that he is only a yuppie when it comes to food, but I told him that he likes travel and expensive hobbies and took the remaining fire out of his eyes. That's right boys and girls, the day has finally arrived when Mike "Danger" Aloysius Livschiz has admitted to dirty scummy yuppiedom. Muahahahaha, I have finally broken him! This knowledge helped me overcome the final 400 meters and summit St. Mary's. The view from the top was worth the pain, as we could see the Flinder's Ranges from the vantage point that they were meant to be admired from. It felt like we were the only people in the world, no sounds but the wind to distract us from the beauty that was surrounding us. I am usually a snow capped peaks and mountain lakes type of girl, but the view that we saw from the top of St. Mary's was still quite impressive.

view from St. Mary's

It is on our way down that I realized that I was in trouble. I was running out of breath going downhill and my legs were not listening to me very well. Mike stopped to take some pictures of the sunset but I kept on climbing down. The dilemma for me was - go fast and potentially fall due to legs not listening or go slow, and end up hiking in the dark - then fall due to not seeing things. We managed to get off the steep part of the mountain before the sun fully set and only had 5 km of forest trail in the dark. At this point I couldn't even breathe walking down a pretty straight portion and any incline at all left me completely breathless. Mike took my hand and together we made it out. In total, the hike took us seven hours and we got back waaaaay after dark. I guess my lungs were not ready for hiking yet. I was coughing all the way back to camp, but I knew that I would be OK because we had flashlights, and Mike was with me. I don't regret hiking St. Mary's, I just regret the fact that I was not as healthy as I thought I was.

The Road to Perth
After the Flinders Ranges we had a long long way to Perth and thank god there were some things on the way

Oysters on the rooftop of "Ceduna Oyster Bar"

to break up the very long and tedious drive.On our second day out, we came upon a little town called "Ceduna" known for it's oysters. Our travel guide suggested that we go to a place called The Ceduna Oyster Bar and sample the local goods. We had some trouble locating the place, which turned out to be a hole in the wall type of shack with 2 tables and some chairs on the roof. We got there right as the owner was closing up, but he did sell us 2 dozen oysters for 24 bucks with slices of lemon and some Tabasco sauce and even let us sit on his roof and eat them after he was gone. It was unbelievable. The oysters were super fresh and tasty and we had an ocean vista as our background. There were a few unlucky souls who stopped by hoping for a treat, but alas, we were really the last customers and the shop was closed .There really is something nice about sitting on the roof and eating some super fresh seafood with the one you love. We stuck around town some more, showered, and went to stock up on our morning coffee additive.

Since we started travelling, Mike and I like to pour a little Baileys in our coffee to get the day off to a proper start. I should really say that we started with Baileys, and then downgraded to Feeney's but in Ceduna we downgraded again. We went down a step and bought Kilkenney and then downgraded another step and also bought something called Father O'Leary's. Father was one step too far on the level of money savings vs. taste. After sampling the mixture of urine, spoiled milk, and desperation known as Father O'Leary's, we noticed that there is no address to send complaints to and immediately understood why. We were hoping that since we are just adding the swill to our coffee it would be OK, but it wasn't. Father has failed us, to such a degree, that we didn't finish the bottle. We actually threw away alcohol, that is how bad it is. Truthfully, with Irish cream you really do get what you pay for and 3 steps below Baileys is just one step too many.

After Ceduna we drove through the Nullarbor plain named so for it's lack of trees. Mike and I did spot a tree here and there, but in general it is pretty treeless. This was also the place where there is a 90 mile (146 km) stretch of straight road. I will not tell you that the drive was exciting, because that would be a bold faced lie, but it was definitely an experience. We slept in a place called the "Head of Bight" because I read that there are whales that can be seen from their whale center.

We woke up to a chilly and windy morning. I will say that the minus of a treeless plain is that there is no protection from the wind (also it looks desolate). We made our way over to the Head of Bight center and did indeed spot some whales. There were a bunch frolicking off shore, but right by our viewing platform was a mom with her young calf. The calf came up for air more often so it was a better experience overall.

The rest of our day was pretty uneventful except for crossing the border from South Australia to Western Australia. I knew that they were really strict about transporting fruit and veg across state lines so we ate most of what we had, but two potatoes and a half of an onion were confiscated from us at the border. I am not lying. Apparently different states have different farming pests and Western Australia is the strictest of them all. If this was America there would be huge local farm stands on both sides of the border so that travelers could restock on confiscated goods, but this was Australia, so we had no fruit or vegetables until we got to Perth.

Our last night before Perth was spent free camping in the town of Meckering. When we woke up in the morning we saw that the park we were in had a display about an earthquake and found more information on it at a photo store that looked like a giant camera. The local man there was an expert on the earthquake and his store was wallpapered with pictures from the time. The town of Meckering is located on a fault line so they have earthquakes often, but the one he told us about was a 6.6 and is the biggest offshore earthquake in Australia to date. The other thing that made this particular earthquake special is that there were no deaths. The man told us that the earthquake hit at 11am on the queen's birthday and people were all outside. One story was of a woman who put her baby to sleep in the crib and went into the garden for a second. That is when the earthquake hit and the house was basically demolished. Once the trembling stopped the woman rushed to find her baby, and found her daughter still asleep in the crib, with the house collapsed around it. The town has a display of the water pipeline that was cork screwed and rails that were bent to very strange angles. It was very unexpectedly educational.

Perth
Not much can really be said about Perth, even the guidebooks tell you about all of the things around, but not in the city. The one thing that Perth does have is King's Park situated on a hill that allows for beautiful views of downtown and contains a botanic garden that we did not walk around in. To me, Perth was about people watching and food.

I have already mentioned that people to the west of Adelaide look a little strange and Perth proved this even further. The fashion in the city for girls I found simply mind boggling. Shorts worn over tights is a huge thing in the city. I am not sure if Perthians just don't want to invest in pants or they are trying to make some sort of a statement, but this style is very prevalent. Another common sight, is girls hobbling on heels. I really do mean hobbling. I think the women of Perth are missing the high heel gene. I don't even know why they try. Either they are an crazy high heels that are clearly too tall, small, tight, or somehow wrong for them, or they are in chunky chunky platforms that make them stomp around like Frankenstein. In Sydney and Melbourne girls had no problems with heels (although they did have a problem with buying clothing that was their size). My theory is that the mom's of these girls were too rugged to wear heels, so they never had anyone teach them how it's done.

Aside from the crazy fashion, the good thing about Perth was the food. My favorite place was called Baby Mammoth and served food with a South African twist. It was very different and very delicious. Mike and I also sampled some cheap Vietnamese and Korean food. All of it was lovely, but Baby Mammoth was my fave. We spent a lot of time walking around and happened upon a plaza with a screen that just happened to be showing a BURNING MAN video from 2008. Can you believe it? I think the universe wants us to make it there this year and is pushing us in all sorts of ways. I could not believe that out of all things that could be on that screen, it was a BM video. I just didn't know it was that much of a thing here.

I have also been toying with the idea of getting a couple of more piercings in my ears and Perth was the last big city that we would visit for a while so I did a little research, found a respectable place (called Off Ya Tree) and got two more holes in my ear. I have to say that it was more painful than I would have thought, but I love how it looks. As a side effect of this decision my hair is now either up or off to the left so that I don't get it tangled. I am very happy with this and it will forever remind me of this great adventure that I am on. I decided that one piercing is for NZ and one is for OZ :)

The last Perth story I have is actually just something completely bizarre that happened on our way into town from our camping area. We were driving down a pretty empty road and this is what occurred to both of us at around the same time:

• Hey what is that in the middle of the road heading in our direction?
• It looks like a car...
• It looks like the front tire has blown and there is no more tire there...
• Why is it not slowing down?
• Oh shit! We better get off the road.

Thankfully the road was pretty empty and we saw the car from very far away. It is just one of those things that you don't expect to see. The guy was going full speed when he passed us (we were on the shoulder by this point) and did not look at all like he was slowing down. That is all. No explanation, no climax, just a weird thing that just happens to you when you road trip in OZ :)

Pinnacles
Our first stop after Perth was the Pinnacles Dessert. It is pretty damn cool and surreal. There are very phallic

Apple van at Pinnacles Desert

looking mounds sticking out of the earth as far as the eye can see. Some places have small pinnacles and some are twice my height. We had driven through the park once, but then the sun came out, so we drove through one more time for the sake of picture taking. It really was a completely unique and beautiful landscape. The weather provided us with quite a few sun showers that resulted in multiple rainbows throughout the day. We finished off the day by walking on the beach as the sun was setting. Pretty damn sweet.

Shark Bay
Our travel book listed Shark bay as one of the four places we MUST visit while in Australia, so we made it our next destination. The first thing that we did upon arrival was visit Hamilton bay where the stromatolites are. Apparently stromatolites are formed by the oldest organisms in the world and look kind of like pinnacles in the water. The site itself was not particularly exciting, it was more about the fact that Australia still has a spot where the environment allows them to grow. Mike and I also decided that we would finally jog together on the walking trail and it did not go well. I fully realize that I have not run since before Melbourne, but I didn't even last 30 minutes. The point was to do it though, and we did :)

Mike and Kathy at Shell Beach

We were fully intending on heading right up to Monkey Mia after stopping at the town of Denham (the westernmost town in Australia) but as we were driving along we passed Shell Beach and I thought I saw mangroves there. I am so glad that we went there :). First of all the beach is made out of cockles. I am not even talking about shell fragments, I am talking about actual full shells. Its pretty crazy. As soon as we got on the beach we saw a sign (and you know how much I adore Australian signs) which stated that we should not remove shells from the beach. For some reason I find this idea pretty crazy. THE WHOLE BEACH IS COVERED WITH BILLIONS OF SHELLS!!!! The other amazing thing about shell beach is how calm the water is. It looks like a mirror. There is a reason for this as well as for the shells. Basically this portion of Shark Bay has developed a sediment bar which keeps most of the water in place. At high tide water from the ocean flows in, and at low tide only a little flows out. Most of the water is kept where it is and evaporates creating a much saltier area where the only organism that can survive is the cockle which has a symbiotic relationship with some algae that allows it to survive the extreme saltiness. The only other creatures that we saw were either dead or dying jellyfish. We made it to the "mangroves" right as the sun was setting. It was low tide so the beach had little pools of water everywhere with trees growing out of them. The sunset was

absolutely beautiful with crimson and gold that was reflecting off the mirror smooth water and the birds were singing a beautiful melody. Mike and I just stood there for a while and let it come over us. It was just us on a completely deserted beach, with the sunset, the birds and the reflective pools. Not a bad evening. Of course adventure was just around the corner as there was no marker on the beach indicating where the road was and the shells created a mound preventing a casual walker from seeing too far out. By the time we were coming back it was pretty dark and we did not think to bring our flashlights on this walk. We did manage to locate our car with only a little extra wondering as it reflected the moonlight a little bit more than the surrounding limestone dunes. Also, since we took so long at shell beach, both the grocery store at Denham and the Monkey Mia resort were closed. We ended up spending the night in Denham which was not a huge deal.

In the morning(ish) we were too late for the dolphin feeding which we decided was not a huge deal so we took our time and managed to buy all of the groceries we needed in the tiny Denham IGA. It was amazing - they even had lactose free milk (cheese!)! We got to Monkey Mia around lunch time, had some sandwiches and went on a nature walk around the area. We didn't see the thorny devils which I was really hoping for, but did run across some very tame emus. We also walked in the water for a bit - because it was finally warm enough to do that and I discovered that Pelicans are awesome water skiers. Pelicans are almost as common as ducks everywhere we go in Australia, but in Monkey Mia we saw a whole flock of them. It looks like when they are taking off from the water they push off with their feet and when they land - they look like they are water skiing to a complete stop. It was pretty cool.

Having warmed up a little with the walk we went for a jog again and this time made it to 40 minutes, but with a crappy pace (over 1 minute slower per mile than my best). The run was waaaay better than the previous day and Mike and I celebrated with beers and small plates at the resort restaurant. We made it an early night and I kept waking up because I was so excited about the dolphins that I couldn't really sleep :)

Let me just say that even the cold and windy weather did not take away from the dolphins. They are AWESOME! The way that the dolphin feeding works is that each dolphin gets 4-5 fish so not everyone gets to feed them. There was a huge crowd but Mike actually got picked to feed! He offered for me to go in his place, but he always gives me all of the best things so this time I told him to just go ahead and enjoy it. I even took a picture of him feeding the dolphin a fish :) We weren't allowed to touch them and he said that it took all of his willpower to comply with that particular rule. We also found out some pretty cool things.

Apparently the local dolphins of Shark Bay forage in a way that has not been seen anywhere else in the world. One of the things that they do is pick up a sea sponge and carry it in their mouth so that they don't hurt themselves on the sandy rocky bottom while they scare up food. Once they see the fish they drop the sea sponge and catch it. The other thing that they do is pick up conch shells where fish like to hide, bring the shells up to the surface and shake them out. There has even been anecdotal evidence that the dolphins line the conch shells up like traps. This knowledge is passed on from mother to daughter in Shark Bay (boys find this kind of hunting too slow and tedious). I am still amazed by those awesome awesome dolphins.

As if that wasn't enough, we also had another jog where I shaved 20 seconds off my pace and got it down to under a minute off my best time and on our drive north we caught what I think is the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen. Mike took pictures and he says that they are good so I will attach one later. The sky glowed like crimson and gold and the cloud cover made the craziest shapes and picked up the strangest tints. There was even a piece of sky that changed from turquoise to green to pale yellow. Just unbelievable!

The most beautiful sunset

Quobba Homestead
We got in to our campground around 9:30 and I ran for the shower. I had been craving one all day and it was finally here. I got into the furthest shower stall and let the hot water hit my body (it was more lukewarm than hot, but that is very typical so whatevs) I want you guys to picture the scene from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. I am standing in the shower, enjoying the water and I have my eyes closed. La la la di da..... I finally open my eyes and stare at a black spider that has come down to about eye level with me. It has a round body and a bright red spot on his back. I look at it and it starts to hit me that this is one of THE MOST POISONOUS spiders in all of Australia, the Redback Spider (a type of black widow spider that likes warm and cozy environments which is why it bites people so often) If I wasn't already naked, I would need a change of underwear!!!! I froze and eventually the spider went back up to the spiderweb above the shower stall, but the rest of that shower took all of 30 seconds. I shook out all of my clothes, but for the rest of the night I felt spiders all over my skin :)

The next day we took it easy. We started off the day with me making crepes (I'm the camping Martha Stewart) and then we just explored the beach by Quobba. Mike and I have been to Mallorka, but the beach we were on is definitely a contender for one of the most beautiful beaches we have ever seen. Imagine water so blue that you can't stand it, imagine waves crashing on cliffs and giving off spray that is over 25 feet high, finally imagine cliffs and rocks that look porous, almost like lava rock (although it might be sandstone). It was pretty much breathtaking. Mike took pictures all afternoon and we were already on our way to the Blowholes (the actual reason we were in the area) when we saw a goat (sheep) standing on the rock that was sticking out of the water. Mike ran to take a picture but the goat (sheep) was already getting back up the shore and so needed to be herded back onto the rocks by the water. Mike thought it would be easy to chase the little bastard back down, but he faked right and ran left completely outsmarting my husband. To add insult to injury the goat polished off his adventure by jumping over the grid in the road that only exists for keeping livestock in certain locations. I named him "The Goatfather".

We got to the Blowholes in the early afternoon and let me tell you, they are pretty spectacular! Basically, imagine that the slab of rock on the shore has a hole in it and when waves hit they go under the slab and water gets pushed out through the hole. Depending on the size of the wave the blowholes shot water out 30 feet high. The whole Quobba area was really really sweet. Mike and I took a walk through the rocks and on to a sandy beach and came out to what looked like a hobo town full of retirees. The locals explained that all of the structures that we see are fishing shacks for the residents of a nearby town and people come in around this time of the year to do a little bit of fishing.

To explain all of the retirees I will teach you guys a new term - Grey Nomads. The term is applied here to people of retirement age (with grey hair) who decide to travel around Australia (that's the nomad part). Most of the ones that we have seen take a more glamping approach to the thing than the youngsters living out of a van. Grey Nomads have sweet ass trailers and RVs, cable dishes, generators, and solar panels. They are really not skimping on luxury :) We actually see more of them than the camper van crowd in some places, and they are very friendly and very very talkative. I think the US term for them is "snowbirds". I have nothing but respect for them - even with the luxury are still pretty bad ass.

Coral Bay and the road to Exmouth
We have finally made it to the tropics! (We are currently just a couple hundred km north of the Tropic of

That's what people that swim with sharks look like

Cancer and the weather is simply beautiful. Coral Bay is located in the Ningaloo Marine area and we decided to go snorkeling by the Ningaloo Reef. Our expectations were high, but I feel that Ningaloo has met them. First off (and we might not have snorkeled in the very best place) the coral reef is nothing like the Great Barrier Reef. The colors here are a lot more muted and the variety is just not there, but what the reef lacks in coral it makes up for in marine life. We actually snorkeled with reef sharks! They are so damn cool! They basically look just like the Great Whites, but way smaller and they only eat small fish. In fact, the poor guy was more scared of me than of anything else. I tried chasing him, but he lost me in about 30 seconds. I ran into him in the same area of the reef again, and again he ran. I also saw some sea turtles, but at this point I was not as excited about that as about SWIMMING WITH A SHARK!!! Can you tell that I am excited - cause I'm excited. They also have tours where you swim with whale sharks (also harmless, but huge), but those tours are $390 a person and they don't even guarantee that you will see any. I feel like swimming with reef sharks is just as good.

As if the sharks weren't enough, we also got to swim with a Manta Ray. They are between 2.5 and 4 meters at their widest point, so they are pretty impressive. The highlight of that particular swim for me was when the Manta Ray turned and showed us her belly. I got to see the vents and tummy markings that are used to identify each individual ray. Our guide told us that the manta ray we saw was pregnant and both Mike and I feel that she is carrying her pregnancy rather well. We would have no idea that she was with child if we weren't told. You go girl! We polished off this amazing day by going to the beach with a couple of beers and seeing a couple of shooting stars (a first for me). Now THAT was an awesome day!

Our plan was to go to Exmouth and check it out, but sometimes life works out better than a plan. We were about 40km away from Exmouth when Mike saw a dirt road leading straight to the beach. We went on it and it looked pretty solid until the end which looked a little too sandy. I voiced my misgivings and was told, in a surprising twist of fate, that it will be "fine". It was not "fine". Our car got stuck in the sand and Mike worked for a good two hours to get the car out. A couple of Aussies showed up and gave a lot of free advise, but also helped us push the car out. We got out of the sand and moved a couple of feet back. The Aussies left and Mike and I celebrated our successful adventure. We celebrated prematurely...

Mike celebrating our escape from the sand prematurely

Mike got in the car to move it all the way out and it got stuck again. This time nothing he did helped. Worse, our rear right tire was digging us further and further into the sand on every attempt and so our van started tilting heavily to the right. After several hours of trying to dig us out, Mike gave up and we went looking for

Stuck Again...

help. Our original plan was to go to a nearby house to see if they could assist us in any  way, but on the way to that house we spotted a couple of hardcore 4 wheel drive vehicles parked on the beach. Mike went to ask for help and brought back two sisters, Georgie and Ryley, who knew a whole lot about cars in general and digging cars out of the sand in particular. They didn't even need to tow us out, because in their truck they had two plastic "sand tracks" that we jammed behind our rear wheels and drove our van out of the sand for good. It took them 15 minutes total to get us out.

Georgie

We had nothing to offer them but two lukewarm beers (they would not take money) but in return they invited us to fish with them and their friends. It was quite a day. Georgie left pretty early on with another girl, but we spent some time with Ryley and her friend Fro. Ryley drives heavy machinery for a living and she is only 25! Apparently you can make about 250,000 a year doing that job, so she has been working for a couple of months at a time and then travelling around. This time around though she is getting serious and will buy a house. Her boyfriend already owns two by himself. She said that if you know what field to go into there is crazy money to be made in OZ, and it looks like she will be making it. The girl had personality and a half and we ended up driving to the marina for more fishing, cooking dinner together and drinking A LOT of beer.

Her friend Fro (not her boyfriend) is a different story all together. He is 30, and "doesn't believe in having a

Fro and Ryley

job" although he works from time to time. He usually lives in a swag (the Australian version of camping) or crashes on his friends' couch. I kept meaning to ask how in the world they are friends, but could not find a polite way of doing so. This was such a cool day because everything went wrong and it ended up being loads of fun. I absolutely loved it, even though I was slightly mad at Mike for getting us stuck again.

You are now completely caught up with us. I hope to not backdate posts after this. We have been taking it easy for a couple of days in Exmouth, doing laundry, jogging, and just having some down time (which is how this blog entry happened). I am very excited about the weather (seventies and low eighties in the daytime, and sixties at night). I think we will stick around here for a day or two more and then will continue up the coast. That's all she wrote!

We Live in a Van, Down by the River

Australia Observations

It has been a really long time since I have posted so this one is going to be really long. We have been in the country long enough now for me to have some observations on Oz much like I had in NZ so here goes:

• Road Signs - I don't know why, but the road signs here are made for people who should not be legally allowed behid the wheel. The government must feel like drivers on average have the IQ of Forrest Gump because we have seen the following signs:
• "Crossroads" with arrows pointing to the road. Really? you don't say! so this is what a crossroads is. Thank you Australia for finally clarifying this for me. What do you expect me to do with this invaluable information?
• "You are in a Parking area" I am? I thought all those white lines were a modern art project! Is this purely informational or should I get out and do a little "I'm in a parking area" dance? Why in the world would I not know that since the sign is in a parking lot?
• "Do not overtake unless it's safe" Aww, but that takes all of the fun out of it. I like to overtake other cars when there is a car in the opposite lane. It's a game we have in the states called "chicken".
• Bathrooms - There is never a bathroom inside a grocery store, it is always on the outside. Even if the building is the same you still can't get to it from inside the store. In general it's not uncommon to not have a bathroom in a restaurant either. There will be one nearby that is shared by the restaurants and the building and if you have to go, you will need a key to it and directions, and maybe a map. (OK the map is an exagerration but the rest of it is the truth)  Also, if you stay at a campsite chances are you will get a key from the front desk to use the bathroom. You will be given one key regardless of how many people you are camping with. 
• Sharps disposals - every public, gas station, or camp bathroom I have ever been at here has a box for needles. Mike and I were arguing on whether there is a huge drug problem here or a huge diabetes problem, but we have not been able to figure it out. We even asked some locals, and their opinions were also divided between heroin users and people with diabetes. I have decided to go with heroin users since I have also seen the following signs in the bathrooms/showers: "do not thow bathroom tissue on the floor after use", "do not defecate on the floor" (this was in a shower at a truck stop), and "you must flush after using the toilet". I think whoever makes road signs moonlights as a bathroom attendant somewhere....
• Australians are all extraverts - This is not an exagerration. Any time you interact with anyone they will hear your accent and ask you where you are from. We end up telling the same story at least once a day. The Australians will then tell you their whole life story and give you all sorts of advice about where you should go and what you should do. They will also tell you about the government and how they feel about their politics. I don't mind this too much, because it gives us a chance to get the insiders view, but all of our interactions that would have taken 30 seconds in the US end up being at least 30 minutes. We did get some really funny bits of information though. The last guy that did our oil change told us that Ozzies are fascinated with the "bad neighborhoods" of the US and his friends took a tour through Compton and then ran away from the tour to get a haricut at a barbershop. I think the movie "Barbershop" with Ice Cube had a lot to do with that. I don't have the words...
• Drive-Though Liquor stores - because you need alcohol ASAP
• Random Breathalizer tests - Could that be tied to the aforementioned drive-through liquor stores? we were averaging about one stop a week, but there has been a lull for a week or two. On the positive side, they ony take 2 minutes total from the time you are pulled over to when you are on the road again

Bloodwood

Before I get on with my story I just want to say that if ever you are in Sydney and need an amazing place to eat, go to Bloodwood. They do small plates there and every single thing that we ordered was absolutely fantastic. I will also add that its cool for waiters there to have waxed mustaches which adds a key element of entertainment to the meal. They do not take reservations so don't come there hungry, but it's worth the wait. The neighborhood that the restaurant is in is also pretty hip so take your time and walk around. It has a very hip and cool vibe to it and it's away from the CBD for when you are sick of that whole area.

Here I am, on the Road Again

Once our guests left Mike and I took a couple of days of not driving or doing anything much for that matter, to get our bearings back. We had a couple of lazy days of lounging around and reading, doing laundry, and cleaning up the van before getting back to the road, and the driving is pretty different this time around. There is no more schedule, there is no checklist, there is just whatever feels like a good idea at this particular moment. This is the first time that we have taken the van on a trip as just the two of us. As we started driving for some reason I had the Chizh song "Na Dvoih" in my head and even played it for Mike a couple of times. I can't even describe the feeling, but I feel like it's us against the world, and we are extras in "On the Road"

by Jack Keruak. The destinations are no longer important, or at least not as important. I have finally become the vagabound that lives for the metronome of the tires hitting the road. This sounds a bit forced, but there you have it, this is where the fantasy matched up with reality for me. We drive and talk and listen to music and laugh. We are never late to a meeting. We (or at least I am) are just enjoying each other's company and the adventure of discovering new things and new people.

Down By the River

We found a free campsite that was by the river and spent a slightly cold, but still nice night there. In the morning Mike thought it would be great to take pictures of the van literally down by the river for Olya. He checked out the slope and deemed it safe for us to ride down there for our photoshoot. I had reservations, but decided not to be a party pooper because it will be "fine" according to Mike. The photoshoot was a great success. I am attaching proof of fun that you can have while channeling Chris Farley and SNL. If we had goverment cheese we would have put it into the shot as well. All was good until we tried getting out of there. As you can see the van is standing on pebbles and it had to go up a pretty steep grade and the first time we tried it I think we went twenty feet before stopping. I got out of the car "to lighten the load" but in reality so that my freaking out will be less obvious to Mike, who I would like to strangle at this point. He tries again, the van goes the same 20 feet and then has to back down again. The third time is the charm but the van sounds like its using every horse in the engine and I am just furious as I get back into the passanger seat. That was a little too close for my comfort and there was no good reason for it. I'm all for an adventure but I think I prefer mine a hair safer than that.

Nighttime Hiking.

We decided to swing by the Dorringo National Park for some hiking so took an hour detour off of the main road. The hike we did was a short one and the road was paved but the forrest was vastly different from anything that we have done up to that point. We were told that there was a cheap place to stay nearby so we opted to spend the night in the area. It was very beautiful to wake up there in the rolling green hills with the blue sky and sunshine. We even did some outdoor yoga which I needed because even with the beautiful scenery I felt kind of strange about the place. For some reason that there is no explanation for I just wanted to hit the road. 

We did want to do a proper hike (without a paved road) so we went to a different part of the national park and started off. It was probably around 4pm when we started so we took headlamps with us. Thank god! It got dark in the middle of the loop that we were on and night hiking in the forrest in a place where the trail is on a side of a mountain and there are waterfalls and rapids beneath you is not exactly the greatest in my book. I was scared that there would be snakes, that there would be other animals, and that we would lose out footing and tubmle to either out deaths or to a breaking of a bone. I had a scenario in my head that Mike breaks both legs and I have to go get help and leave him. I told him about this later and he got mad at me for hypothetically leaving him alone in the forrest. Apparently you never leave a man behind even if you can get help faster by leaving them for an hour or so than by dragging him for 5 hours to safety. I have never been so happy to see the parking lot as I was that night and informed Mike that I can be talked into a lot of things, but hiking in the forrest at night will not be one of them. By the time we got to the van my feeling that we must leave this place was at an all time high, so even though it was pretty late we headed back towards the highway. We didn't realize until the next day that we left our towels at out campsite to dry. I hope they find a happy home, but I am never going back to retrieve them :)

The Chainsmoking Cyclist

We stopped at a rest area somewhere not too far off from Sydney and met a chainsmoking cyclist who was camping there. Being Australian, he immediately wanted to know where we were from and where we were going and even though he looked to be quite a talker and we thought we would get stuck with him for a while without a plite way of extricating ourseves from the situation, we talked to him for a bit which turned out to be amazing for us. First off he told us about WikiCamps which is the greatest app ever if you want to travel the way we do in OZ. It's less than 5 dollars and is basically a list of all of the campsites in OZ (kind of like the Camps book that we got with the van but better because you can sort it and it works with Navigation and even offline). This has been amazing for us because not only can we figure out where to go for free showers (which we couldnt with the book) but also people add comments and pictures so that you know exactly what you are in for. If he didn't tell us about anything else, he already improved our quality of life significantly. The cyclist was from Melbourne and gave us a restaurant recommendation which also turned out to be solid, and lastly told us where we should stop for the night. There was a town of Woolgoolga not too far from the rest area and the guy recommended that we park by the beach and sleep there. He said that there were public toliets and no one would bother us. The toilets even had free cold showers, but the temperature did not make that seem like a pleasant thought. 

We ended up following every piece of advice that he gave and it turned out great. There was a bit of a

problem with the public toilet (it gets locked after dark) but we figured it out and slept where we were told. It was great to wake up to the sound of the waves hitting the beach. There were BBQ facilities, a sink and even a power supply and we ended up having a lovely picnic breakfast followed by some R and R, and a run on the beach. The beach was beautiful with many different colored pebbles washed up and Mike and I picked some up as souvineers. The whole day felt maigical to me, just the thought that my "house" could be beachfront property whenever I felt like it gave me a little thrill.

Canberra

Mike really wanted to see Canberra so we stopped in on our way to Melbourne. There is a really spooky feeling of being in a ghost town when you get to Canberra, especially when it gets dark. The town itself is very pretty and very well planned. Perhaps it's planned a little too well. It has wide streets, and a lot of trees, but not a lot of people. We spent 1.5 days there and the nights are very strange. You keep walking around asking yourself where all of the people are. It's really quite strange, but the town is clearly trying. There are weird scultptures throughout the CBD and nice benches and chill areas.The only thing missing are the people. It might be that the city is too wide and too big for the population, and maybe a little to clinical and sterile. None of the art including the gafitti feels genuine... Our second day there we went to the Sunday Market to try some tasty food and look at crafts, swung by a glass blowing demo in a glass studio and then went for a 35km bikeride around the lake that is located int he middle of the city. The bikeride was absolutey beautiful. Canberra has all of the seasons and we were there just in time to see the leaves change. We biked through greens and yellows and bright reds, we biked through the hills and preserves, through university ad museum campuses and finally through a beautiful sunset. It took us about 3 hours to do the distance and we were not even aware of how tired we were until we had to walk down a flight of stairs and our legs refused to obey :). We treated ourselves to hot apple ciders and burgers and closed the book on Canberra. I understand why people say that it's a boring place, but i had an absolutely phenomenal day here.

We finally made it to Melbourne!

I was really excited to get to Melbourne, as it was one of the places that I was looking forward to seeing the most. I really fell in love with the city and I know why people say that it has soul. As much as I loved being on the ferries in Sydney, to me Melbourne is a more real place. We originally stopped at a truck stop 40 minutes outside of the city, but after a couple of days decided to spring for a proper Holiday Park to be closer to the action. I loved the Melbourne CBD. The parts that are on the Yarra river made me think of walking around Chicago. There are parks right in the middle of town, and it's a very pleasant place to walk around.

I took a free tour of the CBD on one of the days and found it to be absolutely fascinating. Melbourne was built in two waves:1850s with the Gold Rush money, and the 1880s when that money was inherrrited by the children of the miners. There are old beautiful buildings everywhere you look and everything seems accessible. On the tour I started getting disillusioned by Bill Bryson and his book. He stated that there is no reason why Ned Kelley is such a hero to Australians, but the tour guide went through the whole history of Ned and his family and why Australians hold him in such reguard:

Ned as just a regular kid from a large irish family that got into a little trouble ow and again, but nothing serious until one day a corrupt cop hurt himself and framed the whole Kelley family stating that they shot him. The family was rounded up and jailed, ony Ned and his brother escaped. They went into hiding with two of their friends and started robbing banks to make ends meet. The reason people were so fond of him is that when he robbed a bak, he would set fire to all of the mortgage and deed papers and would erase people's debts. He also seems to have been pretty generous with the money he stole, kind of like a real life Robin Hood. The gang was finally discovered and surrounded. Ned made an armor for himself covering his head, torso and family jewels. The shootout was leading the police nowhere so they set the house that the gang was in, on fire. Ned was the only one to escape and when he saw that his friends and brother all died in the flames he decided to go out with a bang and ran out shooting. In order to bring him down the cops shot him in the leg 28 times. He survived and was brought back to Melbourne to stand trial. The city gave the judge a petition with 30,000 signatures asking that Ned go free, but of course that didn't make one bit of distance. The judge sentanced Ned to death by hanging and sentanced him with the words "and may god have mercy on your soul". Ned looked up at the judge and said "I'll do you one better, I'll see you in hell!". The judge kicked the bucket a couple of weeks later (but after Ned has already been hanged). The police captain (I think) didn't think it was good enough that Ned died, he also had his head mounted on the fence by the jail and made a tobacco pouch for himself out of Ned's scrotum so that for the rest of his life he had Ned by the balls!

Take that Bryson! why couldn't you put that in your book? It made me respect you less and take everything you have written about Australia with a boulder of salt. I also loved walking around the CBD at night. No matter what day of the week it is, it's absolutely packed with people. The Chinatown (2nd oldest in the world) is open 24/7 so the party never stops. We decided to belatedly celebrate our anniversary in Melbourne and got a hotel in the CBD for a couple of nights, it was glorious. 

Once we were done with the CBD we went to the eighborhood of St. Kilda - which I was very underwhelmed by. Honestly I would not have fallen in love with Melbourne the way that I had if we didn't also go thte the neighborhood of Fitzroy. I LOVED FITZROY!!! If I lived in Australia, I would want to live in Fitzroy. It's artsy and cool and old and shabby and beautiful all at the same time. It reminded my of NOLA with its wrought iron work on the old houses, and of Bucktown with it's cool and hip restaurants and cafes and people. I also discovered the most delicious cafe there called "Babka" which had amazing Russian food. Since I got sick from a homeless woman coughing in my face on one of our nighttime walks inthe CBD I really enjoyed me some Russian comfort food. I liked it so much we ate here on two separate occasions. We must have walked all up and down Fitzroy. I will always have a soft spot in my heart for it. All in all I think we spent about two weeks in Melbourne and really soaked up the vibes of a hip and cool city. We probably stayed a little longer than we should have, but it was one of very few opportunities to really soak up the big city life :)

The Road to Adelaide

We rode out of Melbourne right as the weather turned colder and rainier. In a way it has been good, we have soaked up all of the good weather in the city but we are greedyand want good weather all of the time. Mike saw a destination called Wombat Forrest and decided that we must camp there in order to see a wombat in the wild. He got his wish and on our one night there he indeed saw a wombat right in the area where we camped. I was too sick and too cold and it was too wet for me to get out of the van, but he was really excited. I don't want to work that hard and hope that like the emus and the kangaroos the wombats will come to me when they are ready. This was also the first night we made dinner inside the van due to cold and wet weather. It's actually very cozy and nice to make and eat food while sitting crosslegged on the bed. Makes me think we are having a strange sleepover :)

We spent the next day relaxing and not doing much as I was still pretty sick, but did go on to expore the city of Bellarat which was supposed to be old and historic (it's a gold town) but after just spending some time exploring Fitzroy, Bellarat was really nothing special. I have grown spoilt by my new favorite place in OZ. The next day we made it through the same portion of the Great Ocean Road that we did with Mike's parents, but this time caught a beautiful sunset from Gibson's Steps. The other amazing thing that happened that day was that a koala just happened to cross the road while we were driving! After all this time, this is the

first wild koala that I saw. We stopped the car and went back to take pictures and he was there waiting for us and posing. Koalas are really adorable animals and this one was much better than the ones at the zoo because he wasn't drowsy and tired from interaction. My favorite part has to be the super soft furr growing out of his cute little ears. Take note wombats, this is how I would like to be approached by you! For me the koala was the highlight of the day, I even posted about it on FB as you gys might have seen. Mike wanted to do night photography and so I went to sleep in the back of the van while he drove to different locations where we have been with his parents and took some night shots. It was my dream come true up until we stopped for the night at our campsite (the road was unpaved and it was not a pleasant ride in the back).

The next day we finished off the Great Ocean Road and saw "The Arch", "The London Bridge" (a portion of which collapsed in the 90's while there were tourists on it. No one was hurt but they could not go back to shore and had to be helicoptered out. I guess that's what you get when you name a structure London Bridge, it can't help but fall down), and my favorite of all the Great Ocean Road sights, "The Grotto". I hope I can use one of Mike's pictures, but the grotto is really amazingly beautiful and the best part is that we were the only people there. There are about a million tourists at the 12 Apostles, but it seems like no one has the stamina to go to the very end and see the Grotto. I highly recommend going there if you are ever in OZ. 

As we left the Great Ocean Road we did have a couple of animal sightings: we passed a farm with dead foxes strung up on the fence. They were mostly exploded and nasty, and I'm not quite sure what the farmer was trying to do there... Clearly the original bodies didn't keep the remaining foxes off the land, and I don't know of any other reason to string up corpses and make the area reak of death and decay. The day ended on a more positive note, with ANOTHER KOALA SIGHTING!!! This time we were going through a town and the little bastard was just running down the road and then jumped onto a tree. Mike stopped the van and took about 30 minutes for a proper photoshoot. While he was at it a local showed up and informed him that there are several koalas that live in the town, so it's not at all strange that this one was hanging out by the road and not even on a eukalyptis tree. The night of the koala we ended up getting hungry for dinenr before we were ready to stop for the night, so we went to Wooly's (Woolworth's) and bought a couple of items we were low on, and proceeded to again cook in the van - this time in the grocery store parking lot. I don't know why it made me feel self conscious, but there was something extra vagranty about making a salad and slicing bread in a van under the harsh lights of the grocery store parking lot. We didn't really have any other place to go to eat and it was really cold, so we would have been inside the van anyway, but somehow doing this in the city and not in a picnic area just brings weird associations to my head. I guess it's all relative.

The Night of Adventure

Over the last month there have been plenty of times that I thought that we would get the van stuck in the mud. It seems only natural that this would happen since it has been raining fairly often and a lot of the rest areas are not paved, but I never thought that it would be like this. Mike and I decided to splurge on a powered site since all of our tech was low on power and a chance to do it all in one shot plus have drinking water and hot showers makes it almost even. We have figured out that the camping prices go like this:

• free - either its a cool remote location with a bathroom and no shower or drinking water or it's a truck stop right off the highway with a lot of noise
• Show-grounds - $15-$20 with hot showers and bathrooms - but old and maybe a little nasty. There are usually no kitchen facility but there might be drinking water
• Holiday Park - $35+ but really nice facilities and if you are lucky there is a closed off kitchen area although mostly it's just an area outside with BBQ and a sink. There are often laundry facilities but I have decided that going to the laundromat is cheaper and faster.

We try not to stay at the Holiday parks unless there is a very good reason, and on this particular night we opted for a Show-grounds. The GPS took us to a dirt road that ended with a dead end so we had to turn the van around. It did not look particularly muddy, but we did not make it back to the road. The back tires got stuck in the mud and there was no moving the van. I thought it might be helpful to go to the show-grounds anyway and ask for a push but apparently 8pm is the dead of night in these parts and the one camper van that was staying on the premises was already done for the night. Mike and I tried to get the van out for over an hour with me at the wheel and him walking around in the mud and we even got it out, but due to lack of communication I drove it into another mud area and got it stuck again. We gave up right as one o the people that lived in the area came out to see what was happening because we woke him up. He was pretty nice about it and let us borrow his shovel, but it was still a no go so we gave up as no not wake more people up. We ended up sleeping in the van about 50 feet from the campsite we wanted to go to :)

I the morning Mike made a joke about us getting a free night out of our adventure and I told him to hold off to us NOT having to call a tow truck, since it might end up costing us quite a bit. We were still in the process of getting up when there was a knock on the door and the caretaker of the Show-grounds appeared and informed us that the cavalry was arriving and will be towing us out. They had us out of the mud in no more than 5 minutes. Mike didn't even have time to take a photo, it was that painless. I hope that this is the first and last time that we get stuck like that - but I doubt it. There have been too many close calls, but that's part of the fun isn't it?

On a side topic - I casually mentioned to Mike how bad we are in high stress situations and he was shocked that I thought so. He thinks that we work amazingly well in a "crisis". We are approaching it from completely different sides I think. Usually, especially since we have been on this trip, we have our jobs down and work like a well oiled machine. We can anticipate what the other person needs and can both work on a task without getting in each other's way. When there is a "crisis" situation that no longer applies. There is a lot of bumping into each other, terse speech, and a general layer of fuckery part of which stems no doubt from the fact that we both have a plan and the plan that I have is drastically different than the plan he has, but we both think that ours will work better. Mike countered with the fact that our "crisis" work never ends in fights, we are not actually mean to each other, we don't call each other names, and one of us does not walk out on the job in the middle because they just can't deal with the other one. I don't think we have ever had more differing viewpoints on a particular thing, and it made me wonder how other people feel. Do I live in a dreamworld, or are his expectations too low? 

Granite Island Penguin Colony

We decided not to go to Phillip Island to see the penguins as I have read that it was very very touristy and we were told by the locals that there are other places to see penguins that don't have you competing with 1000 tourists all taking pictures. After some research I settled on Granite Island, which was close to Adelaide and on our way (more or less). We ended up just making their Sunday tour and it was pretty interesting. Apparently the colony was at 2000 penguins in the year 2000 but now only has 26-30 penguins. Mike asked our tour guide why that was and she told us that some are attacked by dogs, some are maimed by people and a lot are killed by seals for sport! I swer between finding out that otters rape seals and seals kill fairy penguins for sport I am very unhappy with nature!!! The weather on the night of the tour was cold and rainy and I think Mike and I held out the longest, but we did see some penguins. Watching them run to their burrows made the whole tour worth it. It was not really like watching a colony we saw two singles and one pair, not quite a swarm or anything, but it was still pretty awesome. They were adorable and posed for the camera for quite a long time. I'm not sure if I would recommend Granite Island over Phillip Island (I am guessing the penguin colony is a lot more of a specticle there), but on Granite Island we could get right next to the penguins and have a completely unobstructed view. Animals seen in the wild: kangaroo, emu, fox, rabbit, koala, fairy penguin. Let's get it in gear wombat, echidna, and platypus!!! Until next time my friends, and I totally understand if this blog is TLDR!