20 November - 9 December 2009

As we were approaching the end of our long travels we decided to have one last road trip in Western Australia or WA (pronounce: double-u-aae) as the Aussies like to call it. After a 4 hour flight from Sydney we finally arrived in Perth, the most remote metropolis on earth.

As Brock, a Perthite we met months before in the Himalayas, had told us Perth itself is not really a good place to stay, we headed straight to Freemantle, a pleasant harbor & beachside town where Perthites spent the weekend to have some fun. After a surprisingly cold night, the next morning we decided to go to a store to buy some warm blankets and pillows and other essentials to make our stay a bit more comfortable as our Wicked campervan turned out to be a little bit less comfortable and luxurious as our Happy Crab in NZ.

The Saturday afternoon we spent in Little Creatures, a trendy harbor side bar with their own brewery. As almost all tables were taken, we sat down with an Australian couple and soon we started a conversation which turned out to be the start of yet another adventure.

In Sydney Sharda desperately wanted to see a concert of Seal. However, she could not get me enthusiastic for it and we didn't go. Guess what? The couple we met raved about Seal's performance last night in Perth and it turned out that Paul was even the Australia tour manager of the singer. You should have seen Sharda looking angrily at me! A few pale ales later Paul & Amanda invited us to join them to the Nickelback concert in Perth later that evening, to make up for missing the Seal concert. Furthermore they said we could crash at their lounge in the VIP area of the Hyatt since they felt sorry for our first freezing night in our Wicked campervan. In return we offered them a free ride in our van into the city. We parked it in front of the fancy hotel and went to their room to change, have some drinks and wait for the limo picking us up. As the concert had already started Paul had called a colleague, the driver of the Nickelback lead singer to bring us to the venue. Although we missed the first half of the show we had a lot of fun. Especially as we noticed that Perthites are not as outgoing as we would have expected at a rock concert and kept sitting in their seats if it were a classical concert. Top offset this dull crowd 'crazy' Amanda soon went nuts and we joined her, which soon led the way for others to stand up and go crazy! After the concert we headed back to the Hyatt and made it a great night in their en-suite room with a mix of cool eighties & nineties music, expensive wines, bubbles, vodka and some of the things which made the whole world visiting Amsterdam. The following morning we enjoyed a copious breakfast in the VIP area (unfortunately we missed Nickelback itself) and we returned from living the rock star's life to our wicked camping life and hit the road.

To give you an impression of how big and remote the state of WA is: it is bigger than the whole of Europe, but only 2 million people live in it (of which 1.5 million in Perth). So you have to be self-contained. Meaning we had to take some 50 liters of water and plenty of food with us as stores or gas stations are only available every 100-200km or so. Many times when we thought we entered a township as it was displayed on the map, it turned out to be a gas station or roadhouse as they call it, where you can buy some food and fuel (mostly at pretty high prices).

During the many hours on the road you'll easily get bored as the roads are endless and go straight through a barren and red dry semi desert, with the occasional kangaroo carcass on or on the side of the road. Although you do not meet many people on the road most of the time we were greeted with a tip of the point finger or a bit more enthusiastically by people honking or making the Wicked 'W' sign with their hands. Another cool phenomenon we are not accustomed to in Europe is the road train, a large truck with three or four trailers behind it and almost making you blow of the road.

Although we only visited a 'relatively small' part of WA, from Perth 1300km north along the Coral Coast up to Exmouth, we really liked the warm weather (35-40*C), the wind, the beautiful pristine white beaches with their turquoise waters, the abundant and colorful marine life on the reef and the red dusty rocks and gorges in the national parks. The only annoying things were the many flies, which tried to crawl into your mouth, nose, ears and eyes in many places and the lack of cool drinks in our esky. The first time we visited the Kalbarri National Park we were actually scared away by them. But for every nasty thing is a solution: so we bought mosquito nets to cover our heads and many bags of ice to cool our wine and beers.

Also in Kalbarri, Sharda had her first encounter with a living kangaroo. While walking back from a nocturnal toilet visit she decided to turn on her headlight to avoid walking into a venomous snake or spider. Instead, when she looked up she saw a man high kangaroo staring at her only 2 meters away. A high and very loud scream though woke me and probably most people on the campground, but also scared the animal off. In Exmouth we saw many emu (an Australian relative of the ostrich) strolling through town as if they were planning to do some shopping.

On the beach of Coral Bay, a small township, picturesquely located on the turquoise waters of the Ningaloo Reef we met a very friendly Dutch couple named Jacky and Mike (formerly known in Holland as Michel and Jacqueline) that left NL 19 years ago to explore Australia and never returned. They had seen about every corner of this huge country by working a few months or years in a place and then moving on to travel for a while before settling somewhere else. They immediately invited us for some drinks, which ended up in two nights of interesting conversations with these very friendly and open people, who just had a different lifestyle than many of us in NL, but seemed to enjoy it for the max. The first night they taught us some Aussie basics: when you are invited for drinks or dinner you normally Bring Your Own food and drinks. This BYO concept is also widely applicable throughout Australia in many restaurants that have no liquor license. So the second night we brought some drinks and snacks with us, although they still treated us with some good pizza. Thanks a lot for the great time we had with you, Jacky and Mike.

Back in Perth we had an awesome experience swimming with dolphins on a tour and enjoyed the beach life city style on Cottlesloe beach. Our last two days we spent on Rotto, as the locals call it, a.k.a. Rottnest Island, which was first discovered by Dutch VOC explorers and called 'Rattennest' island due to a very special and funny creature that only lives on this island. Its name is the quokka and it is a mixture of a rat (the long tail) and a kangaroo.

A month before in NZ we met Frances, a Canadian girl that lived and worked on Rotto. We decided to give her a call and luckily she had a day off from work and turned out to be a fantastic host, showing us the island by bike. We snorkeled from two beautiful deserted beaches and even swam with three seals. On our return from snorkeling we discovered that some bold seagulls had gotten into Frances' daypack and had opened and eaten a closed and sealed box of cookies. An even bigger surprise was the 40cm cucumber resembling lizard that was hiding in her pack! At night Frances and her boyfriend Dean treated us with two nice freshly cooked lobsters, which they had caught themselves the day before. This time we knew the Aussie habits and brought some beers and salad to accompany the seafood with. On our way to the youth hostel we almost biked over some quokka's and drunk teenagers, the both of them seemed to be in abundance on this island due to lack of natural predators (read: snakes and parents).

As we had to return our van the day before we were about to fly out from Perth to Sydney as the company had limited opening hours, we spent the last night of our 'summer holiday' in WA in our van just in front of the Wicked office. How romantic!

Love!

Jordi & Sharda