Coming Back

It took me a long time to write this post, but I think I am ready to do it. We have been back to Chicago for a over 4 months now and objectively things are going really well. Both Mike and I have gotten our jobs back, we got our house back, and I even bought a new car. I got my job back in the middle of November, and technically that was the point that we could relax a little bit since we would be able to afford the house and not hemorrhage money like we did when we originally moved back. I am trying to keep everything in perspective because at times it was really hard for me to do that. To me, this wasn't an easy time even though we were never in any serious trouble. I say that because I know that my version of how everything shook out has a lot to do with my personality.

The Bad

The Renters
When we first came back to the states we immediately had to deal with an issue of our wonderful renters cutting down all of the little branches of a tree in our front yard. The issue was that the tree belonged to the city of Niles, and therefore wasn't ours or theirs to modify in any way. Even if we step back from the question of what kind of asshole decides to chop off all of the branches on a beautiful weeping mulberry tree when they are going to move out of the house in a couple of months, and what makes a renter feel that this is their job in the first place, it was still horrible. We had to go to court and argue in front of a judge. We tried to convince the court that the tree can be saved (we did this not just to avoid a hefty fine, but also because I loved that tree and I didn't want to see it replaced with a plain old non berry tree) It ultimately came down to the fact that it was cheaper for Niles to cut down the remaining tree and put in a new one than to nurse the existing one back to life, and since it's their property we had no say in the matter. On the positive side of things Mike argued them down from a fine of $2300 dollars to $1667. At the time we thought that this would be OK because our security deposit was 1900 so at least we would not be out that money.

Our issues with the renters didn't stop there. On top of everything they did not pay us for their last month of staying in our house. Our contract stated that they would rent it through November 1st, but we got a call from them saying that they were gone around September 20th or so. They just left. They didn't pay us, and they didn't exactly leave the house intact. Now that we have been back for a little while I feel like I have a complete list of all of the broken things in our home:
- Wall mounted garage door opener panel was smashed in
- a shelf went missing from one of our cabinets
- the deli drawer lid was ripped out of the refrigerator so that a new one is impossible to install.
- There were a couple of holes in the walls. I don't mean left over tiny pin holes from nails, I mean holes about a 1/4 inch in diameter.
- Our downstairs bathroom shelf was removed from under the bathroom mirror and rehung
- the mirror that was attached to our wardrobe upstairs was removed and screwed into the wall in the basement
- Finally, we found our bed and mattress wet and covered with dirt and black mold. The bed frame was completely broken and the mattress was disgusting.

This last portion made me upset in many many ways. First of all, what kind of idiot puts a bed and mattress outside? More importantly, who would put it back on the second floor. No one in their right mind would keep a moldy broken

bed frame and mattress. It just created more work for us. It was so stupid. While we were in the middle of carrying this nasty monstrosity down the stairs the renter showed up because he forgot to leave one of the garage door openers. We asked him about the bed and about the

rent and he replied that the fact that he didn't pay us rent for the last month was our fault for not writing us a recommendation, he did us a favor by chopping down the tree branches because the tree was sick, and he is "sorry" about the bed. If I had a gun, I would shoot him on the spot.

We ended up speckling and repainting our whole downstairs area and washing all of our curtains and cushion covers to get rid of the stench of those nasty horrible people. On the positive side, it helped us reclaim our house and make it nicer looking than it was before. We also ended up getting a nicer bed with storage and a bigger mattress. There are all sorts of positives, but at the time between the extra money that we ended up having to spend, and the incredibly rude attitude, I was beyond upset.

The Jobs
It didn't take me a long time to get a job if you think about it logically, but I obviously didn't. Since we were dealing with our crazy renters and spending money we didn't account on, I wanted at least one of us to get a job ASAP. I had interviews in 3 places in the first 3 weeks of being back, but then everything quieted down. I was also working against the clock, where going back to my old job was concerned, because if I came back within a year I could keep my original start date and my benefits which would be absolutely huge. I started panicking in early October as I couldn't agree on salary with one of the companies, and the other never contacted me after my final round of interviews. As soon as we came back to the states we became uninsured which means that I was also really stressing out about the possibility of us getting bankrupt by any sort of medical emergency that could occur at any moment. My old employer looked promising, but weeks kept passing by with no word. At the end of this whole mess it was a very close call. The anniversary of me leaving was November 21st, I got an official offer from the company on November 10th and my first day back was November 17th. I wish that I could have taken more time between getting a job, and actually going to it. I wanted to just be able to enjoy knowing that everything was going to be OK and maybe being a tourist in my own city, but that could not happen.

Mike didn't really start looking for a job until sometime in October when I started freaking out, and he stepped back again once I had an offer. We needed him to move us in, repaint, and do little things around the house. It also happens that appliances in my condo started breaking down, so it was convenient having him available to go there and fix things. Those days are numbered now, as Mike received an offer from his previous employer this week. Unfortunately for him, he also can't take any time to bask in the knowledge of employment because he doesn't get any vacation days for the first 30 days of employment and we have a vacation scheduled for the first week of March. (that's right, a vacation). I was so stressed out about the jobs and the house, and the condo for so long, that I can't even enjoy the fact that everything is now set. I just need to slowly get used to the fact that we are fine, completely fine, with a place to live we are not going to lose, and we don't have to limit how much we go out (although we will still eat at home more than we used to before we left), and there is no more uncertainty about what's going to happen.

Psychology
It was really hard to come back home. I anticipated some of the hurdles, and was blind sighted by

others. I expected freaking out about work and the fact that I couldn't just wave a magic wand and have everything back to how I like it. Expecting it didn't make it any easier. Basically I was scared before we went on our trip, I panicked when we first arrived because it became real, but I was also terrified when we came back. This was made both harder and easier by the fact that Mike is a completely different person than I am in regards to worrying. He never does it. He just assumes that everything will be fine. In fact, sometimes I ban him from saying "everything will be fine" because that is how he tends to respond to most worries that I present to him. His attitude makes it easier because only one of us is completely stressed out, but it makes it harder because he completely doesn't understand where I'm coming from so I feel alone and scared some of the time.

I completely didn't expect to feel a burden when reuniting with my family and friends. I missed them all so much that I completely forgot about the fact that relationships are always a double edged sword and when you are in a relationship with people there are obligations and things that you have to do, even though you don't really want to. I am probably not stating this well, and I anticipate a lot of you getting angry with me, but our time in never really our own when we live in the same city as our loved ones. There are events, and favors, and schedules. Mike and I can no longer decide what we want to do on any particular day because chances are there is something on the books slotted for this period of time. Everyone is over-scheduled and if you want to see them you have to put something on the books. It can be exhausting and limiting. I knew that this was an issue even before I left, but having tasted real freedom (mixed with loneliness and homesickness) I could really see just how entwined our lives are with the lives of others. Love has a price, so I guess the Beatles had it wrong, the best things in life aren't free either :)

I also didn't expect to feel such fatigue from living in a constant state of uncertainty. Only this week are things finally the way they were before we left. I still can't believe that it's real. I'm tired of being stressed and scared. In my mind, coming back was synonymous with the end of our adventure, but that was not the case. I think more than anything, it was my own expectations that made me miserable. By the time we left Australia, I was ready to resume my life, and when that didn't happen immediately upon our return I freaked out.

The other thing I didn't expect is the difficulty of living my old life. I am a different person now and my old life is a little tight. The stress in  NZ and Australia is nothing like the everyday regular life stress of living my old life. Everything is planned out on a calendar, everyone is busy, work - although not objectively stressful, is difficult when you think about the fact that my only other teammate was my husband for the last 12 months and we work very well together and have pretty good communication. I suspect that another part of the difficulty is that a goal that we have had for several years is now complete, and this created a vacuum in our lives (or at least in mine). My father has a saying "a soldier needs to task" and my task is complete. This soldier is a little moored at the moment.

The Good

Physical Comfort
I love living in an enclosed space with heat and running water. I love my kitchen and all of the appliances that are in it. I love taking a hot shower without shower shoes and being able to walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night without lacing up my sneakers and putting on a jacket. I love having a bed that I can sleep on and a mattress that is more than two inches thick. I love being able to control my thermostat. I love not having to cook every meal outside, regardless of weather (although I definitely want to incororate more outside eating when it's nice and warm and dry outside). Most importantly of all, I love love love not having to be cold all the time with no where to hide as has happened for several weeks in Australia.

People

I missed my friends and family so much. I love being able to see them whenever I want, I love being able to hug and kiss them, and to have conversations about nothing at all. I love planning vacations with them and their physical presence. I love being there when things happen so that I don't have to hear about them afterwards. I love seeing my parents and grandparents, and my wonderful cat. I didn't even realize how much I missed everyone. I love celebrating events such as birthdays, weddings, baby showers, etc with ALL of the people that I love. People's lives are always changing and it's important not to miss things. Mike and I missed the births of two babies while we were away! That is incredible.

Psychology
Now that the dust settles I can see my trip and the effects more clearly. This trip was an amazing adventure and I am not sorry I went. I learned so much about myself and about life that I didn't realize before. I have to say that by far the most important lesson I learned is that anyone can do anything if they want it badly enough and make it a priority. There are a million excuses for not doing any particular thing, but none of them really matter - if you are using those excuses it means that something else was more important. I also learned to believe in myself a lot more. I will go ahead and call myself a true blue certified BADASS!!! I have climbed glaciers and forged knives and hiked for miles and miles in the rain, and capsized in a kayak during a storm. I have made salad in a van, and showered with a deadly spider and swam with sharks and petted hedgehogs and fed wallabies. I have been threatened with being fork-lifted off a property and yelled at by disgruntled camp ground workers. I really lived! There were times when I was scared, and angry, and miserable, but I am so happy that I got to do it all, and that I got to do it with a wonderful partner who knows me so well and is so different from me and makes we jump out of my comfort zone and grab life by the balls. What an adventure I have had, and I just can't wait to see what else life has in store for me (provided I get a little time to rest and be boring so that I get store up my moxie for his next crazy plan.

The End (of this adventure)

Mike and Kathy: Hikers, Social Butterflies, Fruit Criminals

Darwin to Uluru
By the time we left Darwin I was more and more feeling like I cant really process any more adventures. We have been travelling for a long long time now, and I think the end will come at just the right time when I am still sad that the trip is over, but also happy to be coming home. This is the home stretch.

OZ fashion

One of the places that I really enjoyed on the drive to Alice Springs was Devil's Marbles. The marbles are formed in the same way as Uluru (Ayers rock) which means that everything around them eroded much faster. The marbles are a nice break from the road and are just incredibly cool. This was also a place for us to break out Glen and Judi's protective nets as evidenced by the picture :). I must add that part of the coolness factor was that we stayed at Devil's Marbles through the sunset and I saw several amazing shooting stars. I will really miss the big sky of Australia and will be sad not seeing the southern cross every night. 

Of course you need a negative experience to offset every positive one and our negative one did not make us wait long. We were passing through a town that boasted of an Aboriginal Art Gallery and Mike and I decided to pop in. Some of the art was amazing, while some of the other things in the gallery looked pretty crappy and cost way too much. The owner decided to chat with us and basically made it seem like he was being a saint by having this gallery, because otherwise they [Aborigines] "get into the grog". He made it sound like everything in the gallery was worthless, which is just not true. He was such a dick that we didn't buy any of the art there (which we regretted later) but his attitude definitely explains the disparity int he quality of the work displayed. If he thinks everything is shit, then he displays everything and gibes no guidance on price points. I have ranted about the racism in this country before, but they just get me every time. I saw posters in the Sydney train station recently that say the following: "discrimination causes anxiety and depression in the aboriginal community." Yep. I can't believe you guys need a poster to tell you that....

We spent an extra day in Alice Springs because Mike wanted to hike in the McDonnell ranges. Having hiked in OZ before, I was not nearly as excited about this possibility ad the reality matched my expectations pretty accurately. Regardless, it was 10 miles spent working out, and it was different than what we normally do, so I didn't let it bother me too much.

On our way to Uluru I was worried that it could not possibly match the hype. I mean at the end of the day, it's just a big shapeless rock that sticks out of the plain, what's the big deal? Fortunately, I believe that it was very much worth the trip. Uluru looks unimpressive from far away, but up close the rock surface is very interesting. I will also say that there are several cave paintings that you can see as you hike around the base. The other portion of Uluru that was very interesting for me was the fact that the Aboriginal tribes from the area have mythological stories that explain the scaring and topography of the rock, and they are quite fascinating.

I was also not aware of the fact that there are fresh water spots around Uluru that the people of the land

water hole at Uluru

found to be holy. It is really something to come to a spot in the dessert with greenery, shade and water. It is so peaceful and serene there. One of the plaques told us that the men would hide by the water hole and wait for the emus to come and drink the water. They would not make a move until the emus were walking away from the water hole and then they would only kill the last emu while the other's backs were turned. They did this so that the emu would not be afraid to come back to the water hole in the future.

For some reason this really appealed to us. We imagined the following emu conversation taking place:

Bob: Hey Fred, Ted, we should probably head back...
Ted: Yeah guys, we better go, I always feel uneasy when I'm here.
Fred: Oh come on guys, its so nice and peaceful here!
Bob: No really man, I hear you don't want to be the last one to leave!
Fred: Just relax man, I just want to rest a little bit, enjoy the shade, be one with the universe man!
Ted: I heard the last one out never comes back home...
Fred: Would you relax, that's just an old wives tale, I can totally be last if you are scared.
Bob: fine, we're out of here, are you right behind us?
Fred:...
Bob: Fred?
Fred:...
Ted: Are you there?
Fred:....
Bob: That will teach the bastard to sleep with my wife!
Ted: I know, reverse psychology is awesome
[Bob and Ted high five]

Kata Tjuta

As amazing as Uluru was, both Mike and I enjoyed Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) much more in terms of the hiking. It was an actual hike, with incredible views! I was really glad that we managed to make it out and actually have a hike that was very very impressive while in OZ. I liked the Flinders Ranges, and the Grampians a lot, but Kata Tjuta is hands down the best hike in OZ. Strangely, Uluru is much more impressive up close, while you need some distance for Kata Tjuta as the face of the rock is not nearly as impressive, but the shape that the 36 giant boulders make in the plain is very interesting and unique.

We capped off the day by driving back to Uluru and watching the sun set over both Uluru and Kata Tjuta. It was a time for us to just stand together quietly and reflect on our trip up to this point. I can not stress this enough - you should go and see BOTH Uluru and Kata Tjuta while in OZ. It's amazing!!!

Adelaide and our new friends
As we were driving towards Sydney we realized that we would need an oil change before we got there. As it was a Thursday when we made this realization it became apparent to us that we would most likely be stuck somewhere over the weekend. Sure enough, I had called several mechanics and they all laughed at me when asked about an oil change on Friday or Saturday. I finally managed to get someone in Adelaide who was able to take us in Monday morning, so we resigned ourselves to spending the weekend in Adelaide.

This was not entirely bad news as we had been staying at free stops since Uluru, so it had been several days since we had seen a shower. We took our time driving through the Northern Territory and only made it t Adelaide on Saturday afternoon. I am also happy to report that I drove us in to the Adelaide CBD (downtown) which was a first for me. I am now officially a stick driver!!!

Our first night in Adelaide, we decided to go out and ended up going to an amazing restaurant called . As soon as we got there the chef seated us and recommended a bunch of dishes and some amazing Shiraz (three witches) We got to talking and ended up making friends with Mohamed (the chef) and stayed in his restaurant until way past closing time. We also ended up meeting another chef, Joji and his girlfriend Skye that night and having some really late night drinks with them.

Me and Mohamed

Marrakech

Mohamed is a force. I have never met anyone with so much energy and charisma. Within 5 minutes of meeting him, you feel like you have known him forever. Further more, everyone in Adelaide seems to know him. We went to Joji's restaurant the next day, and all of the people at the sushi counter knew who he was. Once you are hanging out with him, you just have to go with the flow. We were not even going to go to drinks with all of them on Saturday night, but he saw us driving home after dining at his restaurant and ran out of his car and told us to come with.

Joji and Skye were also amazing to meet. I think Joji has to be one of the most accommodating and giving people I have EVER met. I think we would become real friends if he and Skye lived in the states. We almost want to smuggle them in :) He also lives the craziest lifestyle by having a full time job in the daytime and working in the restaurant 5 days a week as well which means that most of the time he works 8am to midnight. On top of that he likes to work out after work which puts him at roughly 4-5 hours of sleep a night. I don't really know how he does it.

Basically all of the people we met in Adelaide this time around made us feel at home and gave us really positive memories and associations with the city. Our meeting had a lot of BM magic to it and I started thinking that the magic happens when you are not scheduled. When you are not running late, or have a schedule to keep to, you end up saying "yes" to a lot of surprising and interesting things that enrich your life. This could never happen if we were on a two week trip because we would have a schedule and reservations, and all sorts of other things. I want to know how to add this magic to my life permanently, but I am not really sure how to "go with the flow" when most of the time we know our plans about a month in advance. I think I will try to be a bit more flexible and invite these experiences into my life a little bit more. I mean, when is the last time any of us really made a new connection with someone when we weren't at BM? I am not even talking about discovering something new about the people we have known for years, I am talking about spontaneously hitting it off with strangers. I realize that it's easier in Australia than in the US, because Australians really do start conversations with strangers randomly. I am still in shock about strangers telling each other their life stories on public transportation all around me, but it's a thing here. Regardless, I hope I don't forget about this aspect of life when I'm back in the default world.

We are fruit criminals

You may have noticed me talking about transporting fruit across state lines in my previous blogs, but this time requires an explanation. Australians are crazy about fruit flies and there are certain states that don't have them at all. There are quarantine areas on the borders of states where there are bins available for you to get rid of your criminal fruit.

Mike and I have been solid citizens up to this point and have at times gorged ourselves on apples, tangerines, and pears to comply. This time we thought that leaving South Australia we would be safe and we did some serious food shopping before we left Adelaide. We had all of our salad making ingredients, a kg of pears and a kg of tangerines with us. Imagine our disappointment when we neared the tiny portion of Victoria that we had to drive though and saw those annoying signs.

After stuffing three tangerines in my mouth and having about 5 to go, I put my foot down. I refused to throw away our tomatoes, avocados, pears, and tangerines. I told Mike that I am sick of this bullshit, and furthermore as we are not even planing to stop in the 150km of Victoria that we would be driving through, I don't see any reason to throw away perfectly good fruit! I was also upset because Australia has been punishing us for eating healthy. No one has to throw away candy, chips, and other junk! Why should we have to suffer? Mike agreed with my tirade and we decided to hide our criminal fruit possessions. We stopped by the quarantine bin and got rid of our tangerine rind garbage, and then put all of the offensive items in a couple of grocery bags and hid them under our bed. 

As soon as we started driving we saw more signs warning us not to have fruit with us. We were notified of a 600 dollar fine that we would have to pay. We were also notified that we could be stopped and inspected at random. You could cut the tension in the car with a knife. Images of Mike and me in fruit jail having tomatoes thrown in our face and being beaten with bananas could not be ignored. My plan for us being stopped was to scream "we don't have any fruit, why don't you leave us alone?" was not approved by Mike, and I had problems coming up with a better one. Neither of us could really breathe until we crossed into New South Whales and I have firmly decided that I am not cut out for a life of crime.

Our time in Sydney
Our time in Sydney has been bittersweet. We are concentrating hard on selling our van, but that basically means that we can not do anything else from 10am to 5 pm (the hours of the Sydney Travellers Car Market). We have posted our car online, distributed fliers with all of the hostels in the city (and I mean all) and have frozen our butts of waiting for customers in the car park.  The situation is not dire, as we get to sell our car back to Travellers if we have no other offers, but it would be a shame to waste 10 days on trying to sell the car just to follow our backup plan in the end. If we knew that we couldn't sell the car, we would have just stayed up north where it's warm and had a relaxing carefree time.

Thankfully our nights are a different story. Joji and Skye got into town yesterday and we once again spent some time eating and drinking with them and making new friends. One other guy that we met, Yuuichi, had just finished walking from Adelaide to Sydney. That's right, I said walking! He did this to raise money for the victims of the tsunami. I spoke with him about it a little bit and he told me that unfortunately he did not raise as much as he had hoped due to lack of publicity and sponsorship, but that he learned some valuable lessons and will surely do better in his next walking attempt which will be in the states. He is planning to walk from San Diego to New York and will hopefully go through Chicago. We discussed him walking route 66 and he seemed very excited about this. I really hope that he can make it work, but it is still a couple of years away as he needs to save up and get a visa and such.

The other guy we met was a dead ringer for Jessya's younger brother in terms of cadence and mannerisms. I was trying to figure out who he reminded me of for half the night, and so did Mike, but we finally managed to figure it out. Michael's double is Armenian and moved from Adelaide to Sydney in February.

The rest of the group was also really nice and friendly. Mike and I didn't get home till after one and we were TIRED this morning, but what  nice break from just doing the van selling. We are actually giving our Adelaide friends a ride to the airport today after we are done at the market.

In other exciting news, Olichka will be here for work starting tonight as well. We are already scheduled to see her for dinner tomorrow. She will be working while we are selling, but our nights will be really fun hanging out and catching up. Kova is leaving Sydney on the same day as us, but unfortunately a little earlier in the day, so we wont really be able to hang at the airport together. I still really like that we started and are ending this great adventure with her. I will let you guys know the rest of the story in my next installment of the blog. Miss you all and see you soon.

OZ: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Lazy Days
Mike and I both agreed that our time in Exmouth, or rather the Cape Range national park was the most relaxing time that we have had in Australia. It was the fantasy come to life. We originally went to the Cape Range National park to hike, and just happened to snatch the last available camping spot there for the day. Once we made it in, we realized that they don't really have trails there, but they do have a lot of snorkeling. Mike and I bought wet suits while we were still in NZ because we saw ourselves surfing up a storm.

Wetsuit Superheroes

That has not happened due to weather, hectic schedule, lack of waves, etc and we were feeling a little angry about shelling out the money for the suits but we finally had a use for them. Also, Glenn and Judi brought snorkeling masks with them and left them to us when they left. All we needed to snorkel on our own were flippers and for the amount of days we stayed and snorkeled - they paid for themselves.

Snorkeling the Ningaloo reef was really something special. I want you to imagine as I write this. Imagine that you wake up in a remote campsite. The day will be hot, but it's not uncomfortable to sleep in a little bit. You lay around for a while reading and getting ready to greet the day. When you are ready, you get out of the van and boil water for coffee (french press thanks to the Livschizes). As the coffee is brewing you make breakfast. If you are feeling lazy you will have cereal otherwise it will be eggs with Canadian bacon. You eat at a leisurely pace and drink your coffee for over an hour - something that has always driven your father crazy and something you don't often get to do in the real world anymore. You get in the car and drive to a new snorkeling spot every day. On your drive you will change into your bathing suit which was drying on the dash from the day before. You listen to dirty, gritty, raw rock from the 70s that will make you nostalgic for a time you never saw because you are too young. You sing American Woman at an unhealthy volume and stick your feet out of the passenger window.

Once you have arrived at your snorkeling destination of the day, you will get into your wetsuit and laugh at your husband who is laughing at you since you both look ridiculous trying to put the suits on. Once they are on, you realize that you both look like superheroes and joke about this. You will not want to leave your flip flops at the beach, so you will hobble to the water and try to put your flippers on in a way that will not leave any sand in them. Then you are really snorkeling. You are not worried about running out of time, you have all the time in the world. Sometimes you swim holding hands and pointing things out to each other. Sometimes you separate and do your own thing. Your favorite thing is to swim right over the sea turtles. They are slow swimmers and if you are over them and slightly behind, it feels like both of you are flying through an alternate universe. You get out and have lunch and then maybe go in again. You might tangle in some coral as the tide is getting low, or you might lose your husband and freak out for a second, but overall it's the most peaceful time of your life. Once done with snorkeling the two of you might just lay in the van and listen to music or you might "hike" for an hour in your bathing suits.

Bathing suit hike

You will go back to the campground and your husband will make you dinner. You will both go to sleep early because you are exhausted from swimming against the current and the excitement of seeing reef squids and an octopus and sea turtles and starfish and even dolphins out in the distance. You will repeat this for 4 days and only leave because you still have a lot of Australia to see, but you know that this will be one of your all time favorite experiences in OZ.

I can't finish with Exmouth without talking about a restaurant called The BBQFather. I will start off by saying that I don't like ribs and I don't like BBQ sauce, so we went into the restaurant for Mike, but it ended up being the best BBQ I have ever had. I ordered brisket and forgot to tell them not to put sauce on it - but the sauce was good and the brisket fell apart at the touch of a fork. It was absolutely delicious (yes we were also very hungry when we went there). It was so good that we even told the owners and they told us that they studied smoking techniques in Texas and even bought the smoker from the Texans. No place in the US that either of us have eaten at can hold a candle to this BBQ. It was that good.

Karijini National Park
Our next destination in Western Australia was Karijini National Park. Mike was super excited about this since he has known about this place even in the US and has been waiting to come here for a while. The drive up was absolutely beautiful. As we got close to the park we were driving through mountain ranges with colors that I have never seen. The earth there is blood red. Imagine seeing grass and shrubs of the palest green as they have almost been turned to a burnt out yellow by the sun, but are holding on by the faintest of margin to the green they had at the end of the wet season. Imagine trees with white bark showing through and giving the mountains fuzzy borders. Imagine all of this on the background of blood red earth and blue sky. It was quite a drive.

Karijini National Park on the other hand, turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. Let's start with the fact that to get to the camping portion of the park you need to drive down a dirt road for like 14 km. It was literally the worst dirt road I had been on in Australia till that point. I was the one driving or else I would get very nauseous, but I was nervous and the driving was slow. Construction was being done on the road and dust was everywhere. We didn't let this bother us too much, because we were very much looking forward to a nice long hot shower at the campsite inside the park. In fact, Mike could barely contain himself when he thought about this. When we finally made it to the camp we paid for two nights in advance (and at $40 dollars per night it was not the cheapest of places) and then rushed to get to the showers.

This is where disappointment truly set in. The camping in this particular location is set up in different loops where the facilities are somewhere in the middle of the loop. There were over 20 sites in our loop and only two toilets and two showers. Worse yet, in one case the toilet and shower were in one enclosure which means that only 3 people could use the 4 facilities at a time. This meant that there was a line for both by the time it got dark. We waited it out, and finally Mike left to enjoy the shower he has waited for... Only to return again angrier than I had seen him in a while. Apparently the water in the showers was heated using solar power and no battery. This means that the water was barely lukewarm by the time he got to it after dark. Add to that the fact that it gets quite cold in the area and you get a sad, angry, and not very clean Michael Livschiz.

We were so angry that we tried to cancel our second booked night in the camp and leave early, but the camp was only willing to give us half of the money for the second day, so we stayed. The next morning we went for a hike (we managed to do all of the walks in our area in less than two hours which added to Mike's annoyance) and got back before dark to take showers. This time I managed to get in early enough, but the water was still not warm. My goose pimples had goose pimples. It might have been the quickest shower that I have taken in Australia, although even if the water was fine, I would have hurried since the facilities were not enough for the campers in our area and every additional minute I was in the shower made me feel more and more guilty about being a shower/toilet hog.

The next morning we left and actually did a proper summit of a mountain called Mt. Bruce. I might be spoiled by NZ, but the hiking path and the view from the top wasn't worth the climb for me.

At the top of Mt. Bruce

Maybe I was just angry because the road we took into the park was closed and it took us 1.5 hours to get out of there, or maybe I was just a little heat stroked, but this was not my favorite hike. One thing made me smile though :). When you get to the top of Mt. Bruce there is a map of all of the different peaks at Karijini with their associated heights. I looked for the tallest and found that it was called Mt. Meharry. Let's pause here for a second and sound it out: Mount Me Harry!!! I may have the sense of humor of a 12 year old boy, but this really made my day.

After our hike we actually went back to a town that we passed on our way to Karijini and finally had the shower that we deserved. It was glorious. I also celebrated by making us apple pancakes for breakfast in the morning. Finally the amenities that we wanted were presented to us.

Venus of Willendorf

Before I go on, I must tell you about the termite mounds that Australia has. I don't know if you have seen any of the pictures Mike posts but they are huge. Depending on where you are in Australia they will be a different color, and in Karijini they are the same blood red that the hills are. I don't know if it's just me, but all of the mounds look kind of like the Venus of Willendorf to me.

Australian termite mound

We left the town of Tom Price (I love town names here) and I drove most of the way. This was the day we saw fires in the area. The burning was pretty close to the road and it was quite a sight. We had to stop driving at around 10 because we were low on gas and the gas station we stopped at was closed for the night. The fires we saw weren't too far away, so we parked as far from the fuel as we could and went to sleep.

The road to Darwin
The next part of the story makes me angry, but Mike is more forgiving :). We were still in the van in the morning when there came a very authoritative and scary knock on the van. It was so loud that I basically jumped out of my skin. Mike was slow to respond so the guy told us that we are trespassers and if we don't move our van immediately he has a forklift that he will use to push us off of his property. Mike told him that we ran out of gas and we were waiting for morning to fill up and then we would be on our way. The man didn't care and told us that the gas station opened at 7am and it was already 9 (there were no business hours posted on the door, I know this because I checked the night before). I really wish that we had other options for gas and didn't have to buy from him. As it was we filled up almost a full tank. We also ended up having to eat our breakfast on the shoulder of the road as we had to leave the gas station ASAP. Up until this point the people of OZ have been really friendly, but this guy definitely fell short of the friendly laid back manner that we had gotten used to.

I was back to driving after lunch and had my first random pulling over by the cops. This was the first time that we had been pulled over since Melbourne so it was very exciting. The cops were clocking speed and doing random license checks. They were the first cops to pull us over that didn't also give a random breathalyzer test. I felt almost cheated out of that wonderful experience. Mike and I keep wanting to ask if we can refuse the breathalyzer, but keep forgetting.

We arrived to Broome pretty early and it was too tempting to relax there for a few days. There is nothing really noteworthy about the town, it's just a quiet resort town with palm trees, restaurants, and beaches. While there we had some good food and drank chili flavored local beer (which is excellent). We also saw a lot more of the Aborigines. We have been seeing more and more of them as we get further and further from large cities and into less and less populated areas and as a people, they are not doing well. We noticed a lot

On the Beach in Broome

of homeless and drunk people, all of them were Aborigines. These past couple of weeks have been very enlightening for us in the way that the original Australians live.

After Broome we headed for Darwin and ended up spending the night in a town called Halls Creek where we needed to get an oil change. Again, the town had a large population of Aborigines. We had to go to a grocery store while in town and that also turned out to be enlightening. The food that is available for purchase in Aboriginal areas is really really bad. There was a whole freezer full of meat that was clearly spoiled and priced to sell fast. This is also where we saw roo tails in the freezer. Even the meat that was not past due was suspicious. The prices for produce were outrageous but we bought some tangerines to snack on in the car and tide us over till Darwin. Those tangerines were close to spoilt and we ended up having to throw away half of the bag.

The town also showed evidence of the Aboriginal community not doing well. Most of the businesses had serious guard dogs, and some of the houses that had people living in them looked condemned. Most of the children we saw were not wearing shoes and wore dirty clothes and had dirty unbrushed hair. It also looks like the older Aborigines are the ones doing the worst. The people we saw that were about our age or younger , even though unkempt, looked relatively OK, but the older ones are the ones we often saw lying down on the curb or staggering around drunk. I will get to what I think are the causes of this a little later.

On a lighter note, we also saw a restaurant called Russian Jack's that we wanted to eat at while our car was being worked on in the morning. The hours on the door stated that the restaurant was open from 7am, but of course as with most NZ and OZ places of business this is not written in stone. The restaurant was closed. There was a story of the name painted on the outside that I found interesting. Russian Jack's name was Ivan Fredericks (I assume that the last name changed when he came to OZ from Arkhanglelsk and it was probably Federov or something along those lines) Ivan's claim to fame was that one of the other pioneers got sick and Ivan put him in a wheelbarrow and carted him 300 miles through a dessert to the nearest town to get medical attention. There is even an entry for Russian Jack in Wikipedia.

The other Aborigines related story I wanted to share happened the day we left Halls Creek. We were low on gas again and came into a small town where I saw something called the Community Store that looked like it had gas pumps out front. In OZ the word Community is most like what we think of as a reservation in the States. We stopped at the community store, but before we could even get out of the van, the man that pulled in right in front of us got out of the car and came over to us. He told us that the roadhouse where we could get gas was 1 km up the road. (We didn't ask him, this is how he started the conversation). I asked if there was no gas at the pumps I saw up front, but he just repeated that the roadhouse was up the road and so we turned around and went there. The man was not mean to us in any way, so we are not sure why he sent us away. Maybe he thought we would not be comfortable at the Community Store or maybe there is some kind of a rule that we can't shop there because we are not of Aboriginal decent. He was not the proprietor, so he didn't really refuse us service, but we knew we were not to go in based on his actions. I think this is the first time I was ever refused service. Neither Mike nor I were mad about this, more like confused. We are not sure if we broke some kind of an unwritten rule by even trying to get gas there, but it was a strange and an unfamiliar experience for us.

We made it into Northern Territory without further incident. So far this area has distinguished itself with its high speed limit (130kph) and its completely atrocious monuments. We did not take this picture, but I am including it as exhibit A, the Beef Road Monument.

Exhibit A - Beef Road Monument

I think the Northern Territory gives exactly zero fucks about tourists if this is that they give us as a photo op. I don't think you can see in this picture, but the "monument" is also heavily graffitied. This is also an opportunity for me to give you a look into some of the tourism lameness of Australia in general.

OZ is a young country, everyone knows this, there is no reason to put on airs. Everything here is "historic". In any other country the "historic" buildings and sites that we have encountered would long ago have been knocked down. I wouldn't be surprised if we stumbled upon an outhouse marked historic because Charles Darwin pooped there once. Knowing OZ though, it would actually not be the same outhouse, but one reconstructed later to celebrate an area where Charles Darwin may or may not have pooped. It's becoming a bit of a joke for us. I groan every time I see the brown photo op or historic tourism sigh. It is never interesting and never truly historic :). It's kind of amazing, because people have lived in OZ for over 65,000 years and only a small portion of that history is on display, what is mostly on display is "history" of the last 150 years of the white people that came here and didn't do anything particularly interesting outside of committing atrocities and disturbing lives of the natives - something that they have done in a lot of other lands that they have colonized.

Darwin
Darwin is another resort town that we needed a break in. Both Mike and I are pretty tired of driving and we know that the weather won't get any warmer than it is here. On our first full day here, we decided to go to the Darwin international film festival which is held outdoors at a place called Deckchair cinema. On this particular night there was a double feature that celebrated a 20 year anniversary screening and both movies were Australian classics. I was very excited and we made sure to come early. The first movie was called "Storm Boy" and was a classic Australian film from 1976 about a boy and his pet pelican. It was cute but the thing that I found memorable was the reaction to the movie of a little boy sitting directly in front of us.

At the end of the movie the pelican is shot by poachers and dies. The kid in  front of us was hysterical. He was not quietly sobbing like some of the other kids that were in the vicinity, his heart was breaking. He held on to his mom and she had to carry him out while he was convulsively crying. I think I remember that feeling at the end of a little Russian childhood movie called Beliy Bim Chernoye Uho where the dog, after having the worst life of any dog on earth, dies. Would any of you let your children see that movie?

The other very memorable experience with "Storm Boy" was that this was the first time I had seen David Gulpilil - the famous Aboriginal movie actor. This is not really true, as he had a role in Crocodile Dundee, but I don't remember him there. David Gulpilil is a presence and one of the trailers that we saw after Storm Boy was for a current movie of his that was out in regular theaters and that we vowed to see.

The second movie in the double feature was called Nostradamus Kid. If you ever want to make time stand still, and for some strange reason also torture your friends, have a screening of this 1992 classic at your house. No one that you will invite to the screening will ever speak to you again. There were some clues that the movie would be terrible:

• Almost everyone left the theater and no one new showed up
• The director's intro to the movie was very slow and boring. (Mike and I were considering running back to the car and getting some tomatoes to throw at him)
• The food catering company left after Storm Boy as if they knew that the business they would get from the second wave of moviegoers wouldn't be worth the torture of staying there.

This last clue also caused me to bring apples from the car and periodically fight possums for their possession during the movie.

We made it through - barely and called it a night, but we did go and see David Gulpilil's new movie Charlie's Country a couple of days later when the thought of sitting through another Australian movie no longer gave us hives. This was a very heavy movie that tackles the subject of the current situation between the Aboriginal people and the white people of Australia. Both Mike and I wished that we knew someone who could explain some of the nuances of the movie to us, but we think that between what we have seen so far on our own, and what we could understand from the movie, we have a pretty clear picture of how it is. I highly recommend watching it if you are curious about the current state of affairs in Australia in relation to the Aborigines.

Mike and I thought a lot after seeing the movie and tried to talk it all out. Bill Bryson, in his book on Australia, writes about the practice of Australians taking Aboriginal children out of their homes and placing them in foster homes. It's really the only topic that he discusses in relation to the Aboriginees. This practice occurred from 1910-1970 in this country. I looked it up and there is an estimate that between 10 and 30 percent of all Aboriginal children were taken out of their homes and put into foster care at that time. Think about that and what that would do to people. Consider that you are doing this to a people whose culture is very community oriented. If you want to research the topic more this is referred to as the "Stolen Generation".

It made me think of the social issues blog entry I had about NZ and this last month has shown me that the Maori lead a charmed life in comparison to the Aborigines. It's a topic that has not gotten much attention and I had not known how bad things really were here. I know that I am leaving off on a heavy note, but this is what I learned about OZ this month and I wanted to share. OZ is not just snorkeling and emus and kangaroos. I am telling you the good, the bad and the ugly. That is all (for now)

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!