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Blog June 2006
Perth, Western Australia
Wed 21st June/SM
Sorry for the long delay. What can I say except... we're on holiday! Anyway, here's the latest update although, to be honest, we've been taking it easy over the last couple of weeks as 'travel-fatigue' has caught up with us and we've been more inclined to sleep in than go adventuring.
After all the excitement of the glaciers, mountains and caves of New Zealand's South Island, the North Island seemed so much more gentle upon our return. As we only had at most 2 weeks before we flew out to Australia, we took it easy, visiting some quiet beaches and out-of-the-way places. One place I was really eager to visit (to satisfy my geological curiousity) was a secret beach which we'd heard was the resting place of many ventifacts. Ventifacts are rocks which are carved over eons by the wind instead of water, and they tend to have beautiful angular shapes as opposed to your more common water-eroded rocks. To find the place, Simone and I kind of just trusted instinct and walked for a few kilometres along the beach until we found where the ventifacts were being slowly eroded out, like hidden treasure, from the rock strata they were buried in. It was so cool (he says with a big geeky grin), finding these special little rocks popping up out of the sand amongst all the dunes.
 Ventifact beach, NZ |
 New Zealand venitifacts |
 Bay of Islands, NZ |
From there, we drove up to Hamilton, said our goodbyes to Beth, Graham and Ben before heading up to Auckland put up posters advertising the sale of the van. We had a long weekend in Northland relaxing around the Bay of Islands, reading books and enjoying the North Island scenery before finally heading back to Auckland to fly to Melbourne across the water in Oz. We sadly sold our beloved Bongo van and are both feeling a little sad to lose our faithful old companion. A couple from Chile bought Bongo off us, so we're hoping that they have as good a time as we had.
 Luna Park, Melbourne |
 Melbourne CBD |
 Melbourne sculpture |
From Auckland, we flew across 'the ditch' (as the locals call the Tasman Sea) to Melbourne, down in the south-east corner of Australia. Simone showed me around her old hometown for a few days, then we hired a car and shot down to the Great Ocean Road, visiting the Twelve Apostles and the Ship Wreck Coast. If you Google the Twelve Apostles, you'll probably find the story about one that collapsed (<- good pictures but the story made me laugh!) - you can see the collapsed apostle just behind the large stack in the foreground in the photo below.
 The Twelve Apostles, Great Ocean Road, Victoria |
From the coast, we drove inland to visit The Grampians National Park - rocky hills which used to form Australia's coastline thousands of years ago. The hills are all made from sandstone, which has weathered in Australia's dry climate giving deep red and yellow colour to the rock. The hills themselves have been eroded by wind and sporadic rainfall into some really strange shapes - we spent a couple of days hiking around The Grampians, but we saved the best till the last days when we hiked, scrambled and climbed up and into Hollow Mountain.
 Ancient aboriginal hand art at Hollow Mountain |
 Climbing up the side of Hollow Mountain |
 Inside Hollow Mountain |
The Grampians are almost halfway between Melbourne and Adelaide so, as we were only about 400kms away we decided to extend our hire car time and nip over to Adelaide in South Australia to visit a couple of our old Perth flatmates - Gray and Marc. Gray took us koala-spotting (total seen: 0!), hiking and, best of all, crazy-bike riding. Gray and some of his Adelaide mates of have been building kooky bikes from the remains of discarded bikes, which they then use for bicycle-jousting. We didn't actually try the jousting - just staying on the bikes was hard enough as the bikes weren't built for stability!
 Circus-boy Gray |
 The Sims' new transport |
 Whose bike is this? It's not a bike, it's a chopper baby |
Simone and I then drove the car back to Melbourne, where we jumped on a flight over to Perth on the west coast. Here in Perth, we've been catching up with some old friends of ours here, and maybe drinking a wee bit too much Aussie wine in the process. But the wine just tastes so darn good...
And today we booked our next transport - we are now the proud owners (for 29 days!) of a 2-bed campervan, which we're planning to drive 4000km up Australia's west coast to Darwin. We're leaving tomorrow (Saturday 24th) - first stop: The Pinnacles National Park. More on that later! Bye for now.
 Swan River, Perth |
 Perth City |
 Perth's new bell tower - silenced by the surrounding residents! |
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