leaving Ross River finally!

Where to start…well it has been an amazing four months since I last updated you. I have settled very nicely into Ross River, turning it into my home away from home! I have done many things since I have been here, from cleaning toilets after the festival to throwing a cow tail at the Harts Range Rodeo the other weekend..and yes you did just read that right I throw a REAL cow tail and I was up there with the winners, I didn’t win unfortunately but it was still a bit of a chuckle. 

I now only have less than a week left here before I head off further out bush to work in a camp kitchen for this Art group that came to Ross River. I will be living in a place called Tempe Downs and sleeping in a swag for a month. Should be interesting. But the good news is that I will actually be getting paid! Seems like forever since I last had money going into my bank account.And this is where i will be living:

 As my lovely friend Judith mentioned to me it is only 62 days until I come home now, this time in 2 months I shall be landing back in Gatwick (or is it Heathrow…will have to double check that one) and back to the lovely cold weather of the English winter.
Even though it has been winter here for the last 2 months I have still been having better weather then England (sometimes it matches your weather with lows of about 12) with temperatures of about 20/30 during the day, it has been great this last week I have even been able to top up the tan and be in shorts and tshirts again. However the night time is when we have felt the freezing temperatures of winter, with temps dropping down as low as -5 some mornings, so don’t worry I do still know what the cold feels like. 

So what have I actually been doing in these last 4 months I hear you say…I started off as just a general busy body helping out with general maintenance and cleaning cabins, and then for a month I became a governess (home tutor type of thing) which was very interesting as Ziggy (the 8 year old I was teaching) had become very fond of me, causing some days to be very awkward. But we got through it without killing each other. After this I went back to cleaning cabins, and was originally meant to be leaving on the 12^th of July, after my 21^st birthday, which was just amazing. Everyone here made such an effort to make it special for me and we had an ‘M’ themed party. They all used their imaginations, and we had costumes ranging from a mime, to mincemeat man…yes…that’s right Cathal strapped two packets of minced meat to himself. Now I was actually all ready to leave Ross River this time and I had accepted the fact that I would have to leave, when suddenly I was given a job offer to go out to Tempe Downs and work in a camp kitchen (as mentioned above) this would mean that I would have to spend another month at Ross River, it didn’t take me long to accept that offer and change my train ticket for a 4^th time. So for the last month my job has mainly been painting all the cabins I think I am up to something like 16 cabins painted at the moment, with only 3 left to go, so really haven’t done a bad job there. Apart from the job side of life (if you can really call it the job side of life out here) I have been doing a few different things, I have been on 2 more helicopter rides, been to a 3 day festival, few not to memorable nights in town J, and just general parties for people leaving and birthdays. I really have made this place home and I will be sad to leave here, but it is good to have the knowledge that I am coming back here next year for another couple of months, don’t think I could ever stay away from here for too long, Shane, Jodie, the kids, Graham, Lee, Cathal and the rest of the gang have really made it so I have had the time of my life here, and I love them all for it.
But now, it is time to get on the road again and see what else is out there.

The Train and Beyond

An early start to the day as I had to be at the train station early to drop my car off, now Google maps said that it would take about 30 minutes to get there so I got up at 5 to get ready and then left at 6, however it turns out that it only took 10 minutes to get there. Kind of annoying as that meant I had even longer to wait until the train left. After a little sleep in the waiting room I was awakened by more people coming in. this must mean that it was getting close to leaving! So on the train we all went and I was sat next to another girl who was travelling by herself and we ended up chatting most of the way there unless we were sleeping. We made a stop in Katherine for a couple of hours, so we went to the coffee shop for a drink and then went to Woolworths to stock up on some food as it seemed like we were the only ones on the train that didn’t bring any food with them. We decided to go have something quick to eat from the dinning cart and when we sat down one of the staff guys brought us over a plate of cheese and biscuits, we didn’t know whether to say that we didn’t order it or not so we just decided to stay quiet and eat it, especially as we realised that it wasn’t even on the menu which means he must have made it specially for us! The ride was pretty boring after that just the same scenery plus a couple of cows! Before we knew it, it went dark and we went to sleep. Didn’t take long for the morning to come around and then a couple of hours later we arrived in Alice Springs!!!! I couldn’t believe that I was actually here at last, Alice Spring and Uluru are the main reasons I came to Australia, well that plus the Great Barrier Reef. We both went for a quick walk around town and got some breakfast, and then we went our separate ways again. Instead of staying in Alice I decided I was going to drive to the West McDonald Ranges, lovely drive once I figured out how to get there. Driving around I couldn’t get the smile off my face, I loved the change of scenery and the fact that it was a much dryer heat then Darwin. I first stopped off at this natural pool and went for a quick swim, nearly had the place to myself but then another two people turned up, wasn’t impressed. After this I pretty much drove straight to a place called Glen Helen, which is where I was going to be staying the night. It was still rather early when I got there so I saw that they were doing helicopter rides…after looking at the prices I decided that I could maybe just about afford the cheapest one they were doing. Unfortunately there had to be a minimum of 2 people in order for them to do a flight so I had to wait around to find out if anyone else that turned up would want to go for a ride. Thankfully a couple of hours later a tour bus turned up and a couple of ladies who wanted to go up. It only lasted for about 6 minutes but it was 6 minutes that I will remember it was the first time I had ever been in a helicopter and it hopefully won’t be the last. Once we got back I went on a walk and nearly got lost as I couldn’t find the next marker but it turned up finally and I was able to find my way back! Next morning I headed off back in the direction I came as annoyingly I couldn’t do the loop I wanted because I didn’t have a 4X4 L but I didn’t mind too much as it gave me a chance to stop at the stops that I didn’t do yesterday. At one of the stops I went up to the lookout but about half way up I had one of those moments where you realise that you shouldn’t be doing this by yourself especially because no one knows that you are there. The walk to get to the lookout was more of a climb then a walk and there were a couple of shear drops which slightly worried me a little but I got there and it was worth it! And the main thing is, is that I managed to get back down again. I carried on with my drive back to Alice and went through Alice to the Ross River Highway and ended up at the Ross River Homestead. It seemed a little odd when I first got there as there seemed to be no one around so I just set up my tent and read my book whilst I waited for people to be around. A few minutes later the owner, Shane, comes back and says ‘you fancy a drive’, and without thinking about it I said yes. So we jumped into his 4X4 and off we went, he showed me around his “back garden”, which is a massive outback station, and we went to his windmill that he had just fixed as he wanted to make a fishing pond for himself, so he had to fix the windmill so that he could get the water pumping again. After the drive I had fallen in love with the place, it was perfect and somewhere my dad would be very jealous of. Shane was already trying to talk me into staying for longer than one night but unfortunately I had my train booked and I didn’t think I would be able to get my money back, so I told him I would stay for another night as a compromise. This gave me the chance to get to know the other guys that were working there, we spent the day playing pool, and we went rock climbing down at John Hays Rock pool, amazing natural pools. The next day I was meant to be heading to Uluru, and it turned out that the two Scottish guys who I meet wanted to go as well, but they couldn’t drive and were going to get a tour there, so I told them they could come along with me if they could get the time off work, which they did and the 3 of us set off for Uluru and Kings Canyon the following morning. After a long drive we eventually saw what we thought was Uluru, but it turns out that it was another mountain called Mt. Connor, apparently everyone gets it confused so it has been nicknamed Falsaru. So my two new travel buddies and me headed off again and carried on down the long, straight road eventually to see the real Uluru. To start off with I didn’t think that it looked that impressive as Mt. Connor was bigger and looked better, but we were prepared to give it a chance (after all we had just driven all that way!) however the giving it a chance would have to wait till the next day as by the time we got into camp none of us could be bothered to go to see the sunset, so we went and cooked dinner and started on the drinking! It was during this drinking session that I decide that I was going to stay at Ross River for a month, now I could blame Dan and Chris for this but at the end of the day they hardly had to persuade me much! After a bottle of rum and a bottle of Jack Daniels between the three of us, we decided it was time for bed. When we eventually ventured out the next day we headed into Uluru and bravely decided to do the 10Km walk around the base of Uluru, starting off very enthusiastically and with only a bottle of water each in the mid-day heat, it wasn’t very long until we realised what a stupid idea it was! Even though the time of day wasn’t great, the actual walk it’s self was pretty cool, what I didn’t realise on the other hand is that a lot of the walk you are not allowed to take photos because they are sacred sites to the aboriginals, which is a bit of a shame because when you weren’t meant to take a photo is when you really wanted to take a photo…but don’t worry we managed to get a few sneaky photos in (well can you blame us, the rock looked really cool, we needed to get photos). After a hot, near four hour walk, we finally reached the beginning again, and then, much to our annoyance we realised that the climb was open, but by this point we were all knackered from the walk so we didn’t end up climbing Uluru. So back to the camp we went, where we thought that we would go for a lovely peaceful swim as we saw that no one else was in the pool. Unfortunately this is not what happened, as after about 10 minutes a girls school group decided to come join us and the pool was overtaken by them. We stayed in the pool for about half an hour before we decided to call it quits. After an early dinner we all went off to watch the sunset over Uluru, I was a little bit disappointed with the sunset, as everyone always hypes it up but it just seemed a little rubbish because there is a sunset viewing park that you are told you should go to, but looking back at it now, I would have gone further round and seen it from a different angle. The sunrise the next morning, on the other hand, was impressive. It was only Dan and myself that ended up watching the sunrise as Chris didn’t want to wake up at 5 in the morning, again we went to the actual sunrise viewing area, where we both found a good spot which was free from everyone else, but after about 10 minutes we got invaded by everyone else and we had to fight to keep our spot. But sunrise was lovely, the shadows that all the ridges on the rock made looked amazing and defiantly made it worthwhile waking up at five in the morning. After waking Chris up when we got back we packed up camp and headed off on the road again towards Kings Canyon, this was only about a 3 hour drive if I remember rightly. So we got there just after midday, and we had the choice of going to the camp site first or to go straight into Kings Canyon, we decided on going straight to Kings Canyon. Now you would have thought that we would have learnt from our mistake yesterday that doing any sort of walking in the midday heat was a stupid idea, we didn’t. It was 1 in the afternoon and the idea of doing a 3 hour climb/walk sounded like a good idea to us!! Least we weren’t the only ones being stupid. The first part was a gruelling climb up the side of the cliff (ok there were steps but it was still a near straight up climb) once you got to the top of this section the view was instantly wonderful, but that wasn’t the highest part yet. The rest of the walk was pretty easy just having to follow the ‘path’ then we saw that there was a water hole that you could go swimming in, but we were still a little while away so we missioned it to the water hole only stopping every now and then to take some photos of the scenery.  We eventually got down to the water hole, all feeling the heat, me the most, so we just sat in the shade for a bit before plunging into the near freezing cold water. But man it was refreshing. We carried on along the walk and reached the top, the view was breath taking you could see all along the canyon and beyond. Considering how long it took us to walk to the top, it only took us about five minutes to walk down again, and we were back in the car park before we knew it. Next stop was the camp site, first of all we were thinking about getting a cabin as we were all really tired and wanted a good night sleep, but they were fully booked so that put a stop to that idea, tent it was then. Once we set up the tent and swag, we were all getting a little tired and grumpy with each other so we went for a little sleep before attempting to cook dinner. The ladies that were camping next to us, warned us not to leave any food in our tent as the night before they had left bread in their tent and dingo’s ripped the tent open to get to it. So that night we made sure that there was not food anywhere in or around the tent, but I woke up in the middle of the night to Dan cuddling into me swearing because he had seen and heard a dingo outside, and from that point on, it wasn’t a good night’s sleep as we were both worried that a dingo was going to attack us. This is just what I needed considering I had a 6 hour drive to do the next day! Once we got back to Ross River I broke the news to them that I would be staying for another month, and they were more than happy about that news, it was just the matter of figuring out where I would be sleeping but that was sorted out pretty quickly. So that was it, I am now a fully fletched member of the Ross River gang. And all I have to do is work for four hours 5 days a week and I get free accommodation and free food every day, so really not a bad deal. During the afternoons we try and keep ourselves busy by either going down the John Hays waterhole, or random drives around the property. During a couple of the evenings we have gone for a camp fire up on Contiki Hill, and camped there over night, where Cathal decided to dance on top of his car before going to sleep and when we woke up in the morning we saw the massive dents in the top of his car. I have also been on another helicopter since I have been here; Dan took me on a ride over what I call our ‘back garden’. This was pretty amazing as I got to see where everything was. Since I have been here I have decided that I am now staying for 3 months because if I work here for 88 days then I will be able to apply for my second year visa. I still don’t know if I want my second year visa but this was least I will have the option of it if I do want to stay longer, but don’t worry I will still be coming home in November for a few months. 

told you it was a small one coming next

Well...slightly smaller anyway

So Darwin…what can I say about Darwin? First thing is don’t come to Darwin in the wet season it really isn’t a good idea. I have been here for a week and in that week I have only had two days where I have been able to go outside without getting soaking wet, all the other days there has been monsoon rain all day and when I say monsoon rain I really mean it! And it lasts all bloody day! However when it isn’t raining there are some good things to see, the Waterfront is a good place with a few bars and a swimming area, I didn’t even realise that there was the Mall Street until 4 days in where there are some good cafes and restaurants. The rain caused me to miss out on the national parks such as Kakado and Lichfield which was a bit of a shame as I had heard so much about the both of them, so I think if I can I will try and get back here in the dry season. So that’s the boring information bit but what have I actually been doing during my week in Darwin?? Well the first few days I spent in the library as I found out that they have free Wi-Fi which is the word that every backpacker wants to hear, especially because in the hostel it was $2 for half an hour!!! And in the evenings we just chilled out at the hostels bar as there was always some sort of theme going on for the night. On Tuesday night they had a beach party theme so we had a BBQ and competition and a raffle which I won even though I only had the one ticket! Woop, I won a free ticket for 2 adults to get into crocodylus cove, which is a crocodile park, I was happy with that win as I was wondering how I was going to be able to afford to go otherwise. But to be honest I was a little disappointed when I did go there, unless you were to pay more money to do other things there wasn’t really much to do, there were some good things, like you could feed the baby crocs and you got to hold a baby croc, I wanted a photo of it but that cost too much money. If you have the money you could go in the cage of death which is where you get to swim face to face with the big crocodiles (well you’re in a cage but still looked pretty cool) the other cool thing about there is that the crocodile out of Crocodile Dundee now lives there so I saw a famous croc!! Well what’s next…St Patricks Day!!! That was a brilliant day I think it is fair to say that it almost rivals the time I was in Ireland. When I first got to the hostel pub I was on my own this was at about 10.30 in the morning and then when the bar opened and the BBQ breakfast was nearly ready I say another guy on his own so I decided to go bug him. Unfortunately for him he was then stuck with me for the rest of the day! By 12 there was a good group of us happily drinking away, already on our 3^rd or 4^th drink of the day! Then the staff got the face paints out…this proved to be a bad mistake…everyone was getting painted, apart from some of the Irish they didn’t really appreciate it, Haha oh well it’s all good fun.  Think we ended the day at about 1 in the morning so that was a good 14 hours drinking session. Then we started again the next day…well it’s the best way to keep the hangover at bay! Apart from meeting some awesome people in Darwin I haven’t really had a chance to do much else because of the weather which is a bit of a shame but least I can say I say the crocodiles! Now it is just waiting a couple of days before the train adventures.

Enjoy! the next one is a small one honestly

Next stop was Broome we ended up staying here for 2 nights as well all needed a rest from driving and being in a car, so during the day we mainly just stayed at the hostel and chilled by the pool. We eventually decided to venture out and went to see the dinosaur footprints…if you asked me they looked a little fake but I don’t know. And then we just chilled whilst watching the sun go down and it gave Robin a bit of time to do some rock climbing! In the evening we attempted to go out, this proved to be a fail as Caroline had lost her passport and couldn’t get into the first club that we wanted to go in and then Anna and Leana got stopped by the police for drinking in the streets so they were banned from any bar or club for the rest of the night, so we went back to the hostel and had a few drinks there. I think I would have liked to stay another day or so in Broome as it looks like a lovely little town and there are lots of things to see, but we decided to move on after two nights. After saying goodbye to Jess we set off on the 10 hour drive to Halls Creek, I wasn’t too sure why we had decided to do such a long drive in one day when there were other places that we could have stopped but never mind, least there were others who could drive as well. The drive was pretty boring nothing that interesting to look at but once we got close to Halls Creak we stopped off at this river were there was hut that had markers on the wall to show the level of flooding in the past and last year the flood reached up to 4-5 meters!! Now that’s a lot of water. It was dark when we got into Halls Creek and none of us really liked the look of the place so we decided to try and find a camp site just outside of Halls Creek, we set off for this camp and all of a sudden the road turned into a gravel track, the kind that it isn’t great for a Mazda 121!! We had to go through flooded road, big ditches and with a full car there were a few times when poor Matt was scrapping across the floor! The camp was only meant to be 13km away but because of the speed we were going, we had been driving for 40 minutes just to hit a flooded area that neither car would have been able to get through so we had to head back! So after 10 hours of driving and then another hour and a half we still hadn’t got anywhere to sleep, the next free camp site was 100Km away, but we went to it, 12 hours of driving and we eventually got to camp at about 10.30 at night. All of us shattered and a slight rift between cars because of it! With everyone still tired in the morning there wasn’t much conversation going on and we hadn’t planned where we were next going to stop, my car thought we were stopping in Katherine as this is where Robin was going to be leaving us. This was another long drive which I wasn’t really looking forward to. However once we crossed the border into the Northern Territory (NT) the scenery dramatically changed there was hills and it was green and beautiful! So much better for driving. Only downside was that it was wetter and there was a lot of water on the road, being in the NT meant that we were now an hour and a half ahead of the West Coast which just felt strange to me because we had only crossed an invisible line. When we got to Katherine we couldn’t see the other car so we thought that they had gone a different route because they wanted to go see El Questro but my car wouldn’t have made it so we decided not to, when we got to Kelly’s house (one of Robin’s friends) we tried phoning them but got no answer, a couple of hours later they phoned us asking where we were because they had gone all the way to Darwin, thinking that’s what we had done. We spent the next couple of nights in luxury as Kelly was an excellent host and cooked us dinner both nights and cooked us breakfast on the Sunday morning. During the day we just relaxed and went to the museum…which was ok but wasn’t as informative as I thought it would have been, we then went to the hot springs but because of all the rain it was really muddy and was closed off, bit of a shame would have been cool to be able to go swimming in there, apart from the crocs! Could have been a bit of a problem. We didn’t really want to leave Katherine as it was just nice to be in a house and being able to relax, but we had to make the last 4 hour drive to Darwin. With Matt sounding really ill by now I was getting a little concerned that he wouldn’t make it but I had faith in him and he got us there, through the rain and the sound of something scrapping every time we went through a puddle (I did stop to see if I could find out what it was but nothing was loss so I am very confused about that one). Darwin isn’t like what I expected it to be, I was thinking just a big country style town, with lots of green and hills everywhere, but it’s not, it’s actually a small city which I found very strange, but at the same time very comforting as it made a change to feel like we were in civilisation again! But I’m here, Darwin finally over 5000Km from Perth, I made it. The two girls I had in my car had a couple of nights in Darwin but then I had to take them to the airport in monsoon rain! Never seen rain like it before was really horrible to drive in. Now I am on my own again, well kind of I still have the other car in Darwin but I am not staying in the same place as them. In a few days I will be getting on the train and heading towards Alice Springs, I am really looking forward to this. Can’t wait to get to Uluru.

So time to put the other half up...but dont worry this still isnt the end!

Ok i dont think this one is quite as long as the other but like the title says i havent finished writting yet!! 

I left Kalbarri and headed towards Monkey Mia, it was a rather easy drive, nothing too extreme. It felt like a long drive but then the sight of the sea finally appeared and it was one of the best views that I have seen for a while, bright turquoise sea and lovely looking beach, but it was still another hour or so until I reached the camp site. When I got to the camp site I realised it was a full on resort and it was stunning (the type of place that you would take your kids to and they could just be let loss while you relax on the beach or at the bar. So you can understand why I thought $15 a night was cheap as chips!!! $30 for two nights I was rather happy. After about 2 hours I went back to my car and a man runs over to me and says can you take me to the airport as I fell asleep and have a flight tour to go on in 30 minutes, the airport was only about 15 minutes away so I thought why not I don’t have anything else to do. So once I got him there he told me to meet him at the bar at 4 and he would buy us a bottle of bubbly…there was no way I was going to turn this offer down!! Haha. So true to his word we met at the bar at 4 had a bottle of bubbly then he cooked a BBQ for us both which was lovely considering I had been living off noodles and porridge! It’s like being back on Raleigh. Then next thing I know it is 10 in the evening and we have gotten through another 2 bottles. Good times. The only bad thing is, is that he then wouldn’t leave me alone, he was a nice enough guy but there is a point when you realise you should move on. Never mind he kept me entertained (and not in a rude way before any of you put up any jokes!!). The next day I watched the dolphin feeding and they came right up close to you, then I went on a 4 hour boat cruise to do some wildlife watching where we saw a manta ray, tiger shark, turtles, and some other cool things. I had the afternoon to myself but then when I went back to the car again I had a couple of girls come up to me and ask if they could get a lift out of monkey mia with me, when I leave. So I said sure, which then meant I had to tidy out my car as I made it a tip. Especially as I then had one of their friends come over to me and also ask me for a lift, I wasn’t too sure about having 3 people in my car because I wasn’t sure if we would all fit, but I said yes because he was hot!! Haha. In the evening I went back onto the boat to go on the sunset cruise which was fantastic, an hour and a half on the boat watching the sun go down, couldn’t get much better than that!! So the next morning we somehow managed to fit everything into the car, even though we had to put bags in the foot well…this was going to be a very uncomfortable trip I could tell. But anyway off we went heading out of monkey mia, first stop petrol station which we only just made it to, I had less petrol then I thought I did. When we left the petrol station Robin suddenly goes “where did I put my newspaper?” then we realised we left it on top of the car. Thankfully we had only gone just down the road and I turned round and there it was on the road still in tack. But wait…what is that coming from the other direction? Only a bloody road train, with a tot of his horn he drove past and newspapers went flying everywhere. Luckily the poster that he wanted from it was still intact and then the rest went in the bin.

Next stop Coral Bay. I originally wasn’t going to be stopping here I was going to be stopping in Carnavon instead. I’m glad we did stop here as it is a beautiful seaside town, tiny as anything but lovely none the less. It was at this camp site that we met up with another car with 5 people in it. Now I was travelling with a good mix of people, I was with French, German, Swedish and Danish! The next day we had a very short drive to Exmouth. When we first got there it looked rubbish there was nothing in the town and it wasn’t even very pretty. I had heard mixed reviews on the place before I got there and again this is somewhere that I wasn’t going to be going if I was by myself…however we kept driving and eventually drove into the national park where we had heard that there was some stunning beaches and we also found out that we could camp for just $7 each. Now I could see why people love Exmouth and why others don’t as I’m guessing not everyone makes the drive through to the national park. We spent the day on the beach and did some fishing which we later found out was illegal in the part that we were in, and we could have got fined $2000 each! Opps, but never mind we had caught them now, so we hid them and then when we got into camp we built a fire and cooked them…yes that’s right I ate fish and I enjoyed it! Freshly caught fish cooked on an open fire! And again bit later on we found out that because of the time of year it was an illegal fire!! So we only done a few things wrong that day. After an early start we had a long drive to get to Karratha, I was kind of annoyed by this as I really wanted to go to Dampier because of the Red Dog legend but I suppose it just gives me another reason to head back to Australia at some point! When we got to Karratha we went into the main town and first stop was McDonald’s as we knew they had free Wi-Fi and we all wanted one. After this we set up camp at a road house (which is just a petrol station which does meals and where truckers stop for the night). During the night I was suddenly awakened by the feeling that my tent was about to take off with me in it. So I stretched out to all four corners to hold it down. Shortly after, the wind stopped and some of the others got out their tent as a few of their things had blown away. In the morning a few of us were talking and we decided that it was a tornado that went through as during the day before we had seen a few out in the distance. We even had a truck driver come over to us and bring back our camp chairs that no one had realised had gone missing!! Can’t believe I was actually in a tornado…albeit a small one!