Sydney

Though we spent just over a week in Sydney we didn't actually manage to achieve much at all. Unless you count spending far too much money on alcohol and spending days recovering from hangovers as achievements. Despite not sleeping after the bizarre way neighbours night ended (transvestite club, 5 person house party, lost walk through unknown Melbourne suburb etc.), we started as we meant to go on and went out. We ending up eating Hungry Jacks in the early hours... though our meal was cut short by Pete dropping a full large drink on the floor leading to us sprinting out of the restaurant giggling.

The best part of the of our time in Sydney was laughing at how ridiculous Jess is. When we arrived she had a job at a call centre but thanks to our arrival she quit... she just neglected to tell her employees that. It got even better, on our second day, whilst sitting on the beach, Jess refused to answer her phone when they rang her. It got even better, whilst we were staying in Bondi me and Pete got a days work labouring leaving Jess unemployed at home all day completely bored.

As you can see from the photos we did manage to spend at least one day visiting the tourist sights Sydney has to offer. After walking around the harbour, seeing the bridge and the opera house we took a ferry out to Watsons Bay to go for a walk around the nature reserve. What the signs telling you of all the wonderful features of the park neglected to mention was that there would be views over a nudist beach complete with man inappropriately touching himself.

Whilst on this walk we were all talking about how we hadn't really seen that many spiders since arriving in Australia and at that exact moment I noticed that there were about 25 of them just about our heads... Luckily we don't think that they were venomous.

Our only plan for the final day in Sydney was to collect the camper-van that would be our home for the next 2 and a half weeks for me and month for Pete and Jess. On our way to the van depot it seems that me and Pete took or jibes over Jess' employment record a bit too far. This meant that when Pete made one more comment in the office of the van depot Jess turned around and responded with the classic phase “Fuck off Poug, you’re really pissing me off!”. Cue one very embarrassed old lady behind the counter! Anyway we still got the van without too many problems and named it Ange (after Jess' mum so that we could make lots more jokes).

Melbourne

Our very short stop over in Melbourne was all about two things; Neighbours and Formula 1. First was the Formula 1, we spent the whole day watching the support races and looking around the extra entertainment that was put on for the race. The on-track pre race entertainment included a Porsche Carrera Cup race and the Australian national institution that is the V8 Supercars. Finally just before the race began was a low level fly over of a Quantas 747.

When the cars finally made their first race pace pass of us (standing by the 2nd chicane) the sound was absolutely incredible. Something that words cannot do justice, it wasn't just a sound, you could feel the power of the cars as they passed by. We picked a good place to stand for the first lap as this was the corner Schumacher went off at, ended up passing right in front of us (at the end of the video below). As the race went on we walked further around the track to witness them taking some of the higher speed corners and to stand next to one of the straights where, inexplicably, they were louder still.

The other half of our trip to Melbourne was all about Neighbours. We had been told that the street where it is filmed is actually a normal residential street that is actually called Pin Oak Court so we decided to pass on the trip there. Instead we signed up for the Neighbours night at a pub in Melbourne. 

The night consisted of quite a lot of creepy comments made by Paul Robinson and Carl Kennedy (they did have real names but I don't think they were used all night) to all of the girls in the room (males were quite an obvious minority). There was also the surprise addition of Irish Conner to the lineup, who performed a bemusing dance routine to a pop medley. 

The climax of the night was Paul Robinson and the Waiting Room (the band's name makes more sense when Carl Kennedy doesn't have to leave halfway through the night)  playing a load of rock covers to the crowd. 

Other than these two massive events all we did was have a little bike ride along the river using some bikes from a strange vending machine style bike rental store.

Margaret River

Our main activity whilst at Perth was actually renting a car and leaving Perth. We set off to a small place South of the city called Margaret River mainly because Mr. Andrew Taberner and his parents were staying down there. We looked into bus ticket prices but instead managed to convince ourselves that renting a car to drive down would be a cheaper and more entertaining option.

The trip down there was mostly uninteresting as the roads were dead straight, wide open, dual carriageways with a speed limit of either 100 or 110kph. It was, however, good to see some of the Australian countryside. The only thing missing were Kangaroos; though we were told to be careful of them the only ones we spotted were lying by the side of the road ever so slightly dead.

 After saying a quick hello to the travelling Taberner family (who were actually staying in a town called Busselton up the road) we carried on to Margaret River, planning to return the next day. We spent the afternoon just relaxing and visiting a few of the beaches before deciding to find a place to sleep for the night. Well I say a place to sleep; we had already decided to sleep in the car but needed a place to park it. After deciding on a car park on the seafront that looked good (conveniently ignoring a sign telling us camping was forbidden) we parked up and started our horrible nights sleep.

At about half past 6 in the morning we were woken by a Western Australian policewoman at the window of the car. Pete had seen her and so had sat up and cleared our food and stuff away to make it look like we hadn’t slept there… unfortunately me lying in a sleeping bag in the drivers seat wasn’t too subtle! Anyway Pete pleaded ignorance and we escaped without the $100 per person fine.

Then next day we made a couple of stops on the way back to Busselton. The first was at a cave called the Jewel cave that was, well, a big cave. After that we went to the Margaret River Chocolate Factory which I have to say is definitely no Cadburys world. It was more a very expensive chocolate shop with a window into the small attached factory. The best bit about it was that they called the workers Umpa-Lumpas… workers who all happened to be Asian.

After the Chocolate factory we went up to Busselton and stopped off at the jetty which is almost 2km long. Once we had walked all the way to the end we set off to meet the Taberners.

After an extremely unsuccessful attempt at fishing (it would have been more accurately described as feeding fish) we had a BBQ in the hotel’s grounds. After our meal our evening was interrupted by several possums coming to check out what we were up to.

When me and Pete finally left it was late and we had to find fuel from somewhere. We tried one place in town that had just closed so we set off to look for another place. Somehow I had forgotten to switch the headlights on for the first 100 meters. As soon as I realised I flicked them on and then noticed the headlights in the rear-view mirror; thank God that wasn't a police car… woooop woooop woooop. FUCK. First time I have ever been pulled over. Luckily they weren’t too bothered, they just breathalysed me and sent us on our way with directions to the nearest petrol station that was still open. After that it was a long boring blast back to Perth, the only interest coming from how confusing and disorientating such perfectly flat, straight, roads can be at night.

Perth

I wont go into detail about the journey to Perth from Indonesia, I’m sure get the idea by now; travelling is not the fun part of travelling! Anyway we made it to Perth and more specifically to Ashleigh’s house, a girl we met in Vietnam on the bad day that ended with me in hospital. So firstly I have to say a massive thank you to her as she put up with me and Pete clogging up her flat for a whole week! 

We didn’t get up to much in Perth itself apart from discovering how bloody expensive Australia is at the moment! Over £6 for a beer and it’s not even a pint -  need I say more. I do have to say that despite this I did enjoy our time in the city. All along the central street there are really old buildings mixed with shiny new high rise blocks just like at the end of Batteries Not Included (that‘s a reference most people wont get). Apologies for the poor photos but they were digging up the road so I had to reach over a fence to take these.

The other attraction of the town centre was a park with statues of kangaroos outside the entrance. Of course this meant that we had to pose for pictures.

Apart from walking around town we visited the Perth city park; actually the biggest city park in the world - yeah I bet that fact blew your mind! The main part of the park that stuck in my mind was a tower called the DNA tower. If you are as big a nerd as me then you will notice that the tower shouldn’t be called that because it is not the shape of DNA. 

Now for a feature that my mum will really appreciate, they have these really exotic parrots all over the place on Australia!

The Gili Islands

Before we flew to Australia we had just enough time for a flying visit to the Gili islands at the north end of Lombok. We used the time here for a bit of a chill out before the next bit of travelling that was due to take us nearly 24 hours, most of which would be spent waiting in airports.

Even getting to the Gili Islands was a nightmare minibus journey across the country before spending an hour trapped in a restaurant and arguing with people at the "ferry" port to honour the tickets we had bought. Eventually we got on a boat and after about 5 minutes were regretting it. The boats they use are long and thin and for some reason the usually placid sea around the islands was swelling up massively and threatening to turn us over. Somehow we made it without dying and managed to get a really nice place on the island; a two story house thing.

We were staying on Gili Trawangan, the largest and most developed of the three islands, and so we decided to get on one of the cheap glass bottomed boat trips around the other islands to see a bit more. Luckily the sea was a bit calmer by then and the islands were looking a lot better in the sunshine.

The trip took us to various locations around the group of three islands to try snorkelling. By some amazing stroke of luck we actually managed to take the under water camera with us this time! There was about the same variety of fish that we had observed off the coast of Koh Phi Phi though here they seemed in much greater numbers, and were also much more friendly.

The main highlight of the boat trip was our visit to turtle point where, surprisingly, we went off in search of turtles. Our guide pointed out the first few that were around and then I was happy to spot one for myself that only me and Pete went after. 

Though the turtles were pretty cool, the best fish of the day was obviously the Nelson fish that Pete captured swimming under the boat...

Two Kutas

After we had finished with volcanoes it was back to the beaches. The first two stops were at two places called Kuta, one on Bali and the other on Lombok. It has to be said that Kuta in Bali wasn’t our favourite place in the world. It was full of Australian chavs, or bogans as they are known to the Australians. As well as this it was the worst place for being hassled by street sellers and taxi drivers since Bangkok. We weren’t there for long and as such there are only drunken photos and this fantastic one of our curtains that had Claudia Schiffer written on, I don’t know why… or why I took the picture.

Whilst we were on Bali we tried our hand at surfing for the first time. We rented a couple of boards on the beach for pretty much nothing and just tried to copy what you see on TV. The tactic worked and both of us were quickly up and surfing like pros (well that’s what we thought).

Our next stop was Kuta’s namesake on Lombok, the island next door. On our first afternoon we tried our hands at surfing again. This time things didn’t go so well. We were told a place called Gerupuk Bay would be ok for beginners so we went there only to find out we had to take a boat 10 minutes out into the bay to where the waves were breaking. When we got out there we realised the waves were huge (well for us) and so we spent most of our time being half drowned and beaten up by our surfboards.

 

During our second night, there was an earthquake off the coast of Bali, with a magnitude of 6.9. In the morning after there was the quake in Japan and the locals were definitely worried about tsunamis. luckily we were able to tell the ones that we were staying with that the forecasts were saying we were safe in this part of Indonesia, though some had already evacuated inland. We spent the night celebrating the absence of tsunamis by drinking palm and rice wine with some of the locals at a restaurant we had eaten at earlier. Whilst on Lombok we had planned to take a ride around the island if we could rent some nice-ish bikes. We were told that they could find us a couple but in the end it turned out there was only one nice bike and one helmet in Kuta so Pete shot gunned that and I was left with the WORST bike in the world. It had no lights, indicators, keys, ignition, had the softest rear suspension, and was an old 2 stroke. I decided it wasn’t a good idea to take the bike around the island which was a good decision as it turned out it also drank fuel at a crazy rate! 

Though Kuta in Lombok was worlds away from it’s counterpart on Bali and there were no street sellers in the tiny town one thing it did have was what we called the bracelet mafia. At pretty much any time of the day small children would come up to you trying to sell little bracelets. On our last night there we finally relented and decided to buy one each, we ended up surrounded by the kids as word quickly spread that people were actually going to buy!

After buying bracelets we learnt one more thing about Indonesians; they like playing with fire almost as much as I did when I was 12 / still do now. 

Ijen

After our morning watching a volcano erupt it was time to visit a (hopefully) less violent one further along the island. The journey wasn’t a huge distance but thanks to the road being unsurfaced it took over 5 hours mostly travelling at about 5 miles an hour. When we arrived we paid about 14p each to sit in a volcanic hot spring for a while as there was not much else to do. We spent the evening in the company of about 8 or 9 huge rhino beetles, the largest being about 4 or 5 inches long. Despite their size they are as stupid as other insects and enjoy repeatedly flying into light bulbs until they fall to the ground with a loud clatter.

The next morning was our second pre-dawn start in a row, though this time it wasn’t so that we could see a sunrise so our failure to ever prepare wasn’t an issue. Breakfast was an interesting experience; jam and chocolate sprinkle sandwiches again surrounded by the stupid beetles. The walk to the top of the volcano was 3km and in that distance rose over 500m, i.e. steep.

Luckily the views from the path on the walk up were pretty incredible so we had an excuse to stop and nearly die every 2 minutes (travelling doesn’t do great things for fitness). 

When we finally reached the rim of the crater it was like arriving on another planet. Hard to really improve on pictures of this, not that they do justice to being there.

We decided that we should get a closer look at the vents lower in the crater (despite the many signs forbidding it). We followed the path down that the sulphur miners spend all day trekking up and down. Unfortunately halfway down the wind changed and we couldn’t make it any further in past the thick stench. To get a sense of scale look at the tiny dots that are the people around the vents, this was taken from halfway down the crater.

On the way back down we stopped to get a drink at what turned out to be the weigh station for the workers mining/harvesting the sulphur from the crater. We watched one of them getting their basket weighed; it came out at over 65kg and wasn’t one of the biggest loads we had seen!

One last thing, the hotel provided the best towels I have ever seen; featuring both Winnie the Pooh and Transformers!