Exmouth to Perth

Exmouth was the last time we spoke? That was pretty much forever ago. Actually I rambled for quite some time about a lot of things that happened since Exmouth in my little Word document here but didn't like the final product so I scrapped that and started again. How do you like that endless line of English teachers that always taught me to revise revise revise. They always wanted so many drafts out of me. Well here you go. Draft numero dos.

The difference between this draft and its so recently deceased ancestor is I think less rambling. More to the point. There has been a lot of beautiful scenery seen and gorges explored but it all seems to get a bit repetitive after a while. I give you a name of a different place and tell you the same thing about how beautiful and remote and awesome it is. But no more. Interesting places that you aren't going to see most anywhere else in the world. Interesting people! Plus maybe a story or two. Here goes nothing.

Exmouth: same as all the other beaches plus windier. How's that for brevity? Moving on.

Coral Bay: favorite beach so far. Less wind. Great day. Nothing too exciting though. Lyndon River, Carnarvon, Whalebone Bay. Boring boring boring. Blowholes: ooo that was a fun place. Really neat rocky/craggy coastline with holes in the rocks where water would shoot out of like a rocket up into the sky so high. I got out of the van and looked at the treacherous rocky terrain that needed to be crossed to get to the blowholes and I looked at my sandaled feet and I told myself “Brian be very careful. With all the walking and exploring you still need to do it wouldn't do to cut up one of your footsies.” And what did I do with my very very very first step after thinking that? I'm not kidding it was absolutely the first movement I made from standing by the car thinking that. I crushed my left foot into a nice big rock. Blood everywhere. Whole big scene. Good work Brian. Anyways, the blowholes were still cool. I have tons of pictures on that link on the side of the blog I keep mentioning.

Mmmm onto Monkey Mia. Dolphin feeding central of Shark Bay. Every morning 5 mama dolphins swim on in to get a little morning snackeroo from the helpful rangers. For a couple hours that morning we had 10 or so (5 mamas and their little baby dolphins with them) dolphins wandering about in the water less than 15m offshore from us. During one of the feeding sessions I got to feed a little fish to a bossy/moody mama dolphin Nikki. Very cool. We also learned about dolphin life. The alliances created among males. How the mother leads her newborn up to the surface and teaches her to breathe. The gang rapes that go on when the alliances of males kidnap a fertile female. Very kid friendly material here.

After that we hit up Hamelin pool on our way out of Shark Bay. Hamelin pool is home of the world reknown Stromatolites. Living fossils! Rocks that breathe! Whatever you want to call them they are some of the oldest organisms. They were around when the atmosphere was so deficient in oxygen that most all of us oxygen dependent animals couldn't survive. These boring little rocks sat in tidepools billions of years ago quietly bubbling up little bits of O2 until the atmosphere was ripe for breathing. We appreciate it Stromatolites but trying to see you in the choppy water on a windy/rainy day was just not my cup of tea. Maybe next time.

Moving on to I would have to say the most outrageous stop so far. Welcome to the Hutt River Province Principality. Way back in 1970. A man named Leonard got fed up with paying taxes and the Aussie government and all that. So in response, he found a neat little loophole that no one (even Prince Leonard himself) will actually explain to me that allowed him to legally secede from Australia. So now almost 40 years later he is owner to his own little 5 acre nation in the middle of Western Australia. Second largest country on the Australian continent. What I love about Leonard and his nation is he totally went with it. He didn't just secede and go on living life like normal. He created a flag and a constitution and currency and stamps and even an army. All of this is mostly ceremonial and it's just fun for us passerbyers to purchase all the notes of his currency for $4AUD. The prince gave us a private tour of our land and stamped our passports as we entered and exited his principality. He is a very quirky and energetic old man. So proud of what he did and how he outsmarted them all. Loves to show you maps of the world with huge cities like Melbourne or Sydney are not even mentioned but the Hutt River Principality is listed quite clearly. We only hung around the Province for an hour or two but it was definitely one of the more memorable experiences traveling abroad so far.

The next day after tearfully saying goodbye to the Prince, we wandered our way into Kalbarri national park where we did the usual beaches and gorges that I am not going to get into except to say I did a nice little 16km jog along the cliffs in Kalbarri which was pretty exciting and scary. Lots of loose rocks with lots of edges to fall of the face of the Earth into. I felt like I was playing Mario Kart. Moving along at breakneck speeds with incredible blue waters all around but way below me with only a meter or so of dirt separating me from a big big drop. Anyways my fav part of Kalbarri was the Seahorse Sanctuary. They raise and breed seahorses to sell them as pets to reduce the pressure to fish for seahorses from the wild to serve as pets. Just because that isn't a great practice cuz the horses from the ocean usually don't survive reacclimating to tank life. They argue that this seahorse farm is a much more humane way to go about the situation. Anyways we got to see seahorses in all the stages of their lives. They start out so so so sos small. There was a sweet video of a daddy horse giving birth to his little tiny children. Just popping them out one after the other. All in all it was another place that I don't think you can find many other places in the world.

Geraldton: biggest city we have seen since Darwin. A whole 26k odd population. Really unfortunate that everything was closed since it was Sunday. Bad form Geraldton. Not even a supermarket open on the holy day of rest. All I wanted was a supermarket and a bookstore. What they did have is a nice museum focusing on aboriginal history, HMAS Sydney, and the Batavia catastrophe. We watched a full 50 minute video reenactment of the Batavia's story. So much intrigue. Shipwreck, survival, treachery, mutiny, heroism, terrorism, rescues and swordfighting, romance, sorrow, horror. What else could you want? Real actors? Nah who needs those? It was a lot of fun all around. One of the better museums I have seen out here. Beats out that disgrace for a powerhouse museum in Sydney.

Finally Yanchep National Park was the last fun spot we hit up before rolling into Perth. I loved me that park for its super cool caves. There was a whole network of them. All I really wanted to do was turn off all the lights down there and go down with just a headlamp and get all lost in the passages. Hopefully run into all the spirits like the Jinka that aboriginal lore says is down there.

So that's a nice recap of the last week or so. I am in Perth now for another five days before I am back to the west coast. I am about to go take a shower now. My second since I wrote that last blog post. Ewww. Ok im out. Peace. Love. And all that Good Stuff.

Lindy

Updation Station

I met a man from Brussels… he was 6 foot 4 and full of muscles. I said “do you speak my language?” and he just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich. Now, I don’t know if you’ve had vegemite, but I hope so. It is the weirdest stuff I’ve ever tasted and I gotta say I don’t know how it’s popular. They must have had some fantastic marketing when it first came out.

Anyway – Back in blogland is where I am. I’ve been slacking off like a 200 pound 12 year-old in gym class, so it’s time to kick it in gear. There isn’t all that much to update everyone out there on what has happened… but more what will hopefully happen. Well, ok, we’ve done more than nothing here in the past few weeks so I’ll go over that first.

One notable thing I got to take place in recently was the dicing up of a ‘killah’… as it is affectionately called. A ‘killah’, as I understand it, is just a bull/cow from a cattle range that you kill and eat. I was a butcher for a day. Now, I wish I had a picture of me with all the different parts of the cow on the table or hanging on the hooks (especially the kidney, tongue, liver, etc), but I don’t have a picture because my hands were covered in meat/juices. I helped Rob cut different pieces up for steaks or mince or whatever else. Then we took a break for a bbq lunch and I had cow liver and kidney for the first time in my life. I liked the liver a lot, but Erin preferred the kidney. Both were very interesting flavors. Afterwards Robbie hooked us up with a bunch of steaks and a couple kilos of mince so we’ll eat well for the rest of the time here. I’m currently under the impression it’ll be fine to just leave the meat in the fridge for the next week and a half and cook them up when I want them… is that ok? Somebody let me know if I definitely need to freeze it to keep from keeling over because I’d much rather just leave it as is. Mmmmmmm, delicious.

I recently finished reading a book called ‘Exodus’, which was a fantastic novel based on the creation of the Jewish nation of Israel. It’s a good book and I’d recommend reading it if you haven’t. I knew a decent amount of the hardships the Jewish people went through during the holocaust in Europe, but I had no idea about most of the other stuff prior to and since. I also recently finished reading Huckleberry Finn, which I’m not sure if I ever read before. Mom – did we read that when I was growing up? I couldn’t remember any of it and thought it was very entertaining and a good break after such a serious book. Tom Sawyer is hilarious. I just started ‘A Portrait of Dorian Gray’, which Erin’s claims to have heard it’s fantastic. It’s a penguin book and only 250 pages or so – so it should most definitely be worth the time. What else am I gunna do here?

To answer that question… I will say not much. We have about a week and a half left here in good old Bedourie before moving on to bigger (it’s impossible to get any smaller than here) and better (more exciting, that’s for sure) things. Without giving too much away… Lindberg and Erin and I are going to do more ridiculously fun and amazing things in 3 weeks than any 3 people should do in a year. Activities include, but are not limited to… Scuba diving, sand dune tobogganing/surfing, snorkeling, surfing, 4WD’ing, rainforesting (no that doesn’t mean cutting down rainforests… just checkin em out), NRL footy double header-ing, sailing, hiking. What do you think? I know… I’m excited, too!

With only 3 weeks to do everything… our schedule has to be worked out to the day and in some instances the hour. What I mean to say is that one particular day we get back from a 4WD tour of Fraser Island in the evening. Then we sit around for a few hours and get on a bus at 1am headed towards Brisbane. When we arrive at Brisbane at 6:05am… we have 55 minutes to take our stuff to our hostel for storage and return to the bus depot to get picked up by our next tour (Moreton Island) at 7am. We will be sleeping in more ridiculous places than ever before. Actually, thinking back to New Zealand, it’ll just be almost as ridiculous but certainly just as fun.

I hope you enjoy reading Lindberg’s blogs because I am living vicariously through him at the moment. He inspires me to continue my rigorous workout regimen in preparation for the fun along the east coast.

That’s all for now – you stay classy readers.

- Jesse “T-minus 11 days” Meredith

The West Coast Beach

Broome? Crocodile Farms? That was ages ago. Is that the last time we spoke? Unacceptable. Where is my ink well and featherpen? Let's get another something something written.

According to my notes (which I keep on the side of our van written in the canvas that is the red dirt that is in and on and coating pretty much all my worldly possessions by now) Broome was just about a week ago. We expected to be in Broome, the last bastion of civilization before Perth, for at least three or four days soaking in the NorthWest charm. That didn't quite happen. Turns out there is really very little to do in Broome. The first night we caught up on all the necessities we have been deprived of in our van. Laundry and a full kitchen to cook with and a real shower with real hot water and a real mirror. Looking in the mirror for the first time in ages wasn't a pretty picture. Then we hotfooted it down to the beach for Stairway to the Moon. This spectacle occurs the day after or the day after the day after the full moon. When the moon rises over the mudflats around Broome it shines a very sturdy column of light down on the flats. And when the moon is just over the horizon the flats light up like so many steps proceeding up to the moon. Pretty cool thing to see. What I thought was even cooler were the hundreds of people lined up down the beach in the dark with their cameras all out. Hundreds of tiny little dots of light from the cameras display was awesome I thought.

Before bed we took a quick stroll around town looking for a little drink. We found what appeared to be a quaint little Irish pub which would seem to suit our needs. Except for it was the most bizarrest barscene I have experienced. Strolling in at half nine the lights were all on and glaring. There was no music to speak of. The place was fairly packed with plenty of people mulling around but it felt like the bar was trying to get people to leave. One of those end of the nights closing time deals where all the lights go on and the music stops and you get to see who you were apparently dancing with. We skedaddled out of there pretty quickly. A side note: OpenOffice accepts skedaddled as a word. No squiggly red line underneath like it gave me for bizarrest (like most bizarre. Duh). Anyways I was not expecting them to accept that. Moving on.

We were up bright 'n early for our full day in Broome. Bright eyed and bushy tailed for all the treasures the place had to offer. Turns out it didn't have much. An ok downtown area with shops I have no interest in. Some cool beaches which I mentioned before. They were amazing and empty and awesome. But beyond that we were pretty disappointed with our last taste of supermarkets and hot showers and Mackers (Aussie speak for Mickey D's which is youngkids speak for McDonald's). Caught some cricket on the telly that night, spent the morning down at Cable Beach again and then we got back on the road.

The writing on the wall, or on the side of our campervan, says we continued on to Cape Keraudren from Broome. I am following my notes now cuz that is way too far back for me to remember. The Cape was a pretty special place. The ranger talked it up quite a bit as we entered which was interesting and helpful but problematic as the sun was setting quite rapidly and we needed to find firewood and set up camp before we couldn't see which leads to the outside chance of running over a little kangaroo. Fortunately we were able to escape the ranger and set up our camp without any roadkill to show for it. It was a quiet night. The next day we were up with the sun to go see the beach the ranger had spoken so much about. Pretty incredible. Miles and miles of quiet untouched beach with glassy blue water. Spent the whole day on the beach playing and reading and running. Tried snorkeling a bit but the visibility was pretty terrible. The water was beautiful, just opaque. It was a lazy day by the beach for us and the last truly warm day we have seen out here. I suppose the most outstanding thing about Cape Keraudren was being able to run off a couple kilometers and be the only person in sight with tons of beach to do whatever you pleased with. I pleased to pretty much just alternate wind sprints with sitting and relaxing. But the point is the possibilities were there. I could have done anything.

From the Cape we moved onto Dampier. A small little town with a nice little picnic beach we swam in. Nothing too exciting there. From there we moseyed our way down to Exmouth which is coincidentally where I am now. I am not going to get into the story of Exmouth now because that would just leave you with a cliffhanger. Not knowing how its going to end. I don't even know how it's going to end! Ok I can make some predictions but I don't get paid here to make predictions. Plus its breakfast time so the telling of Exmouth will be for another day.

Some side notes. LAKERS LAKERS BABY LAKESHOW BOOYAH. That felt good. It really wasn't as special to see the results on my rss feed pop up in boring regular text. Not even bold. I missed that moment of watching the seconds fall off the clock in Amway arena. That's ok. I celebrated out here. Now my Steelers are superbowl champs. Lakers have their title for 09. Now the Dodgers just need to keep on keeping on winning more games than anyone else in the majors to make it 3 for 3 with my teams in 09 (that is my professional teams. I expect the great record in '09 by the pros to be shortly followed by my collegiate teams doing some damage in the playoffs in '10. Looking at you GareBear.)

Besides that I spend all my days thinking about July with Jesse and Erin creating havok along the East Coast. Jesse sent me an itinerary and I am thoroughly stoked. The chaos will continue for quite a while still. Good morrow from Exmouth. Since it is tomorrow here. We are way ahead of your time. Happy trails.

Lindy

The Amazing Crocodile Farm

There are only two Crocodile Farms in Western Australia. We went out of our way a little bit to reach Wyndham and their crocs. Later we realized that the other farm is in Broome which was our next stop no matter what so we feel a little foolish about going out of our way. With all that said, it still was so so so awesome.

We drove up to the farm around 1030 in the AM and there was a donkey outside to greet us. By 11 the tour began. Tour guide Chris was very entertaining and informative unlike the paleontologist back in Isa. Chris had a goat accompanying him for his opening song and dance so I think that helped his chances a lot too. He told us that the farm had been recently closed down and reopened and pretty much all the animals they get are the crazy ones that manage to get themselves into trouble and get captured because they are a hazard. These crocs are the ones that tip canoes. Or the ones that climb out of the water up the dock mosey their way down two blocks and consume a dog and it's leash. So they get all the crazy ones.

The crocs are farmed for their skin and meat. The tour included feeding time for many of these prehistoric beasts. Most of them were pretty docile even when food was around. Chris explained that during the Winter these coldblooded animals can stay pretty quiet. In the summer they are bashing at the side of their cages for small little morsels of steak. It is just about Winter in Western Australia but the temps are in the 80's and 90's so it doesn't feel like it. Summer out here is supposed to be unbearably hot and sticky. Chris was saying all the good shows the crocs make in the summer being all hyper animated is when the temps are in the 110's and consequently there are 0 tourists around to see it.

Here is Fred. I made sure to get a number of shots of him because he reminds me so much of my good ol' D A D. So that was the gist of the tour. Massive beast after massive beast showing up for a little snack right in front of our faces. Pretty incredible how these things can move and even jump out of the water. Some of them close to 5 meters long and are capable of disappearing into the water in a matter of seconds.

Now Tom and I have reached Broome and the West Coast. I swam in the Indian Ocean for the first time in my life yesterday. It was excellent. Cable Beach was probably the most crowded beach we will see on the West Coast and still after a ten minute jog down the beach I was able to have a nice 3km stretch of water all to myself. So incredible. So remote. Plus I scared up a nice little sting ray in the surf. Alas I didn't have my mask with me to get a better look.

Happy June to everyone! Schools out for summer! Or just about. That's fun. Alright time to go stock up on supplies and drive down the coast in search of another deserted coastline. One final note, click the link on the side of the page to see more of my pictures from the North and West of Australia. There are heaps of excellent shots I couldn't put up on the page in fear of overloading you with too much impossible/incredible visual stimuli.

B “B is for Blindy” Lindy

Darwin to Broome

Welcome to the Outback everyone. Ok Jesse already got you acquainted with the nothingness of it all. But now I am out here too so I will rewelcome you all. I am now on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere approximately 500km East of Broome and the West Coast of Australia.



First off to catch up from my last blog, I did Isa in a day and was in Darwin for two after that. Mt. Isa was fairly disappointing. I woke up super early to get up to the town lookout to see the sunrise. It was mediocre. It was cool to see the transition of how the town looks at night all sleepy and then when the light is on it and everyone starts waking up. The colors of the sunrise were a little bland though. I then got all clean and primped and ready for the day and made my way down to Outback Isa that does underground tours in the mines where they dress you up in mining attire and you go down and get to climb all over real mining machinery in a real mine. So cool! BUT, my primping and preening caused me to just miss the one tour of the mines that day. What sort of place only has one tour a day and it leaves at 815 in the AM? What kind of place is this? So I consoled myself by visiting the fossil factory. Apparently most all the fossils found in Australia were found kinda near Isa but still in the middle of nowhere. They had some interesting displays but the whole thing was geared towards kids with annoying commentary on the exhibits blaring from speakers constantly. Please disembodied voice, just let me read the exhibits and enjoy them in silence. There was a tour of the paleontologist lab by the paleontologist himself which really sold me on the whole shebang. I wasn't impressed by the doctor's presentation. After spending a week learning to give good presentations I felt he was lacking in a number of different areas. I recommend he goes and becomes a divemaster just to further his career in paleontology or just increase his customer satisfaction. So that's Isa.



22 hours on the bus and I am into Darwin. Finally. Checked into Darwin and immediately began research on what to do in Darwin. Do I go up to Kakadu national park? Or Litchfield? Maybe I want to do a dive on one of the shipwrecks they have in the area? What else is there to do in Darwin? Apparently not much? I know I eventually want to make my way out to the West Coast so how am I going to do that? I don't want to go by bus anymore. So I went online and just put all of this paragraph so far into the search bar to see what came up. I eventually redirected myself to the local online message board and found a guy who needed someone to keep him company as he took his campervan from Darwin out to the West Coast and then down to Perth. Which is convenient because I was looking for someone to keep me company as I road in their campervan out to the coast and down to Perth. Unfortunately he wanted to leave in a day so I wouldn't have time to see Kakadu or Litchfield. Alas. Sacrifices for I must see the west in a month so I can go back and see the East with Jesse and Erin in July. Anywho that only left me time to catch the Laker game. Domination Station. Good work Kobe. And then I met up with my new travel buddy Tom at the bars and hang out for awhile to make sure we wouldn't stab the other person in their sleep halfway through our trip down to Perth.



We got along well enough so bright and early the next day we set off for Katherine and then out towards Broome. First stop was lunchtime on the side of the road. Nothing too exciting there. We are budgeting about $8 AUD per day for food for our trip so its a lot of PB&J and Doritos. Then after lunch it was time for me to take the wheel of our Wicked campervan for the first time. That is it was time for me to take the wheel of a motor vehicle for the first time in Australia. Sitting on the wrong side of the car looking for the seatbelt over the wrong shoulder with the stick shift on the wrong side and the turn signal lever also in the wrong place with rear view mirrors all confusing me and how am I going to drive a stick with my left hand when I haven't driven anything in ages and haven't driven a stick in ages plus 2 and it really feels like the door on my right is way way to close to me and is really intruding on my personal space and were the doors so close to me when I drove cars back in the states? Terrifying. But I brought us into Katherine safe and sound for a refuel and a swim in the hot springs there. We drove and drove and slept and drove out to Timber Creek and Gregory National Park and Keep River National Park and numerous walks and hikes and lookouts that are all starting to blend together now after only three days. We made it to Kununnurra a small little town right on the border between the Northern Territory and Western Australia. There were some nice hikes there along with a public pool which was o so refreshing and they had showers so I felt clean if only for an hour or so for the first time in days.



From Kununurra we got out to Wyndham to see a spectacular lookout and did a tour of the Crocodile Farm. We made sure to be at the farm during feeding hours so we saw these prehistoric beasts devour chunks of fleshy meat. So awesome and scary. But I am going to do a whole separate post on that since I have so many pics and videos of that. I don't want to clutter up this post with all that stuff. So now Tom and I are 250km South of Wyndham winding down after our third day of our excellent adventure. We hope to drive a lot tomorrow and make it into Broome where we will chill for a couple days. This trip is getting busy and hectic and is so so so much different from the other legs of the trip in Sydney and Cairns. It's tons of fun to be all self sufficient and on our own out in the middle of nowhere with no schedule. We wake up and have no real idea of what we will do or see that day. Where we will end up. Who knows? It's definitely an experience and I wish I could do a better job of describing the specific things we are seeing and doing but there is so much so quickly. I will just continue to take loads of pictures. Thousands of words apiece. Efficiency. Ok we have to be up with the sun tomorrow so I am to bed. Gnight and love from the middle of nowhere!



Lindy

I'm On A Bus

Three months and 105 dives and too many Mad Monday Pub Crawls and I am on the road again at last. Currently I am doing a full day of bus riding from Townsville to Mt Isa. But I will backtrack a bit and talk through my last week in Cairns.

The big finale of my time by the reef was my Dive Controller course (same as Divemaster course). This course is supposed to be the thing I had been working towards for the last few months as a trainee on the boat. I did the trainee program more to get a lot of diving and time in the water, but getting the DiveCon certification is a nice little bonus. The course lasted five days and was done completely in the classroom and in the pool. The focus of the course was to learn how to teach. I made two classroom presentations (15 minute lecture on dive masks and then a 20 minute lecture on nitrogen narcosis) and two pool presentations (explaining and performing certain diver skills such as mask clearing and alternate air share procedure). The narcosis lecture was fun for me to put together. Lots of fascinating research done on what exactly the nitrogen is doing to our heads that messes us up at depth. Masks not so much. I don't care too much for equipment unlike my instructor. So it was great to get my second lecture topic changed to something a bit more biological.

Besides passing the presentations, we also had to pass a watermanship evaluation and a multiple choice test. The watermanship tests included swimming 400m, snorkel (swim with mask and fins) 800m, and treading water with hands out of the water for 15 minutes. Lots of fun. You get different points for how fast you can do the swim and snorkel. I did fine on the swim and I dominated the snorkel. With the swim you need to have good form and technique which I don't have. With the snorkel you just kick and kick and kick and don't have to worry about technique. That's more for me. Same with the multiple choice test. Much of the test was a lot of math (calculating air consumption and using dive tables) which I liked because there is a definite right answer. It was the questions that have a few good answers and you have to select the 'best' answer that I don't care for. But I did fine.

So that's that. I am a divemaster or DiveCon or whatever you want to call it. There is some outstanding paperwork that the shop still needs to get me before I can actually receive my DiveCon card. There always seems to be some sort of problem with the paperwork.

Anyways I finished my DiveCon course Friday night and then spent the weekend figuring out what I would like to do next. Watched the Lakers dominate on Saturday and did a lot of the aforementioned paperwork that day as well. Sunday I stared at a map of Australia for a long long time and from that decided I would like to find my way out to Darwin. Sunday night I had one last night out with my friends before getting on a bus bright and early Monday morning. But I had a bit too much fun Sunday night apparently. Slept in an missed the bus. Fortunately another bus came at midday which I managed to make. But still I wasn't happy to start my travels by missing my first bus out to Townsville.

It all turned out for the best though. The ride out to Townsville was a 6 hour trip down the coast. Halfway through the trip we stopped at Mission Beach to pickup/dropoff people. At that point a nice group of kids who I had met and hung out with a little up in Cairns boarded the bus. Whataretheodds is what I said. It was very nice to catch up with them for the second half of the trip. Unfortunately once we arrived in Townsville they had to immediately take a ferry out to Magnetic Island. I was on my own again.

There isn't much to Townsville. Small little town with some nice museums and an aquarium. Big reptiles roaming the streets. Unfortunately I didn't have time to see them. The bus got in at 6pm and I needed to catch the 7am bus out to Mt Isa the next morning (which I am on now). I really only had time to grab some dinner and make some new friends at the hostel I was staying at for the night. There were some large animals on the street. This morning I tried to run up Castle Hill overlooking Townsville. I figured it would be a good little workout plus some amazing views of Townsville and the surrounding area. What I didn't figure was that trying to run a rocky/uneven trail at 5am without much light at all is pretty much impossible. So I got halfway up the hill before having to abort in fear of breaking an ankle and leave the conquering of Castle Hill for another day. Mark my words Castle Hill. I will be back for you.

Boarded my bus at 7am and I arrive in Mt Isa at 7pm. I will spend a day there before moving on. I expect to make one more stop before I get myself on up to Darwin. I purchased the bus pass that gets me from Cairns to Darwin one way, but lets me get on and off the bus as much as I want in between. The bus pass cost about as much as a flight would but I prefer to see some of the things along the way. Once I get to Darwin I will be looking to share rides with other people driving out to the West Coast. That way is cheaper and we have more freedom to stop and go when we please. But for now I am enjoying spacing out as the bus just goes. Plus we stop at the most random roadhouses and I eat the most random food and I always picture Jesse and Erin standing there behind the counter right before I walk in. Alas I am missing their roadhouse by about 1000km. Anyways I got this Lot Burger yesterday in Hughendon I reckon and as far as I could tell it contained: beef, steak, egg, beetroot (bears, beets, battlestar galactica), pineapple, coleslaw, carrot, cheese, tomato, lettuce, onion, pickle, and much more.

So that's where I am now. Where are you? I haven't heard from a lot of you people back home in a while. As always we really love to get comments or even whole emails about life back home. Alright that's it for now. Time to go back to sleep.

Divemaster B