Canberra, Australia

Dear Ethel, Family and Friends,

Well, since our last post we have travelled a further 4800km back to Canberra, fortunately not in a campervan though, we decided to fly. We searched the internet for a week for a cheap way to get back to the east side of Australia and eventually we found Qantas flights cheaper than Virgin and Jet Star. It seems that if you’re looking for flights well in advance, the budget airlines are the way to go but If you’re looking for flights a week or less in advance, look at Qantas.
We really enjoyed our stay in Perth and the trip over and the last week was spent exploring Perth and the surrounding areas. As we were right in town, we toured the city on the free city busses. The water front area near the Bell Tower is a spectacular spot and also has the giant Ferris Wheel as well the ferry port and waterside restaurants. We also explored the beach side areas of City Beach and Scarborough and the inner city areas of Subiaco and Northbridge offering great food and dining opportunities. We also travelled a bit further afield to Rockingham, 50km south and a tranquil seaside town still unaffected by high rise and other modern big city problems. Another place we visited was New Norcia, a monastic town, owned and run by a group of Benedictine Monks, which has some interesting history and buildings.

One of the high lights for me was visiting Fremantle, home to the WA sailing fraternity. As a sailor myself, it was great to visit as it was the venue for one of Australia’s greatest sailing victories when we won the Americas Cup in 1987. Apart from the fascinating town centre, many historical buildings and street scapes, the Maritime museum and wharf E-market shed, we decided to take a closer look, on the water. We saw a tall ship at the wharf the Leeuwin II, a replica of an earlier tall ship that sailed in these waters 200 years ago. We went out on a twilight sail between 4 and 8pm and sailed about 3 quarters of the way to Rottnest Island, an Island about 20km offshore from Perth. It was a fabulous cruise as it unfurled about 8 of its sails with the aid of a crew of 6 professional sailors, the officers and a team of volunteers, about 20 on our cruise and additional help from the guests, including me. It was a lot of fun doing the navy chant, 2, 6 heave, as we pulled up the sails. After all the sails were up, some of the more adventurous folks (me) climbed the mast and the bow sprit, took the helm for a while and generally pretended to be a pirate for a few hours, great fun.

The following day though it was far more serious, I headed to the Fremantle Sailing Club with an appointment to sail on a racing yacht, an ‘Adams 13’ about 45 foot, named ‘The Long Boat’ with skipper and owner Ole and his wife Annie and crew, eight in total. FSC is a very big Club and marina with a lot of active sailing and racing vessels. The day I sailed there, a two day ocean race started at 9am that morning so the afternoon race we participated in was short on numbers, however there were 9 other yachts in our class and there were 3 other divisions. It was a splendid day but a bit short on wind but it was a great way to see the bay and the coastline from the boat.

We have been in Canberra a week now and looking for work and for house sitting positions and deciding what we should do next as we needed some stability back in our lives. I checked out the Canberra Yacht club during the week and went down for a sail today. I sailed on a ‘Magic 25’ class sports racing boat named ‘Houdini’ and had a lot of fun although it was very light wind. The boat has a trapeze which I haven’t used before but I had a great time up on the side of the boat.
It looks like we will be in Canberra for Christmas and we are still homeless, jobless, car less and still trying to decide what to do next. Once again we will let you know one way or another.

All the best for now.

Ric & Louise

Perth, Australia

Dear Ethel, Family and Friends,
It has been 2 weeks and some 4800km latter and we are now in Perth. Our trip started Monday 2 weeks ago when we left Melbourne in the rain and a mild 28 degrees. We hired were delivering a Toyota Hiace van with a fixed high roof for this leg of the journey. It was a comfortable van aprox. 07 model, but with more than 300,000km on the clock they re-badge them from Appolo to Cheapa Camper. Fitted out with a fridge, microwave, stove, kettle, toaster etc, it was similar to our own van, except the sleeping position was in the rear of the van and not very comfortable in the sitting position. Our first night was spent just before the start of the Great Ocean Road.

As I mentioned in the last post, it has been 21 years since we were last in this part of the world, the biggest change being that there are not as many Apostles as there once were and one of the London Bridge land arches has collapsed. This 30 km stretch of road follows the coast cliffs with views of the 12 Apostles, sandstone pillars left in the ocean by erosion and the London Bridge and the blowhole are tunnels through sections of the rock faces. New fencing, board walks and other well placed lookouts are a great enhancement. We stopped a dozen or more time as we found yet more vantage spots to view the spectacle from. It is well worth taking the time to do and can be done as a day trip from Melbourne.

We stayed overnight at Mt Gambier and stopped to gaze at The Blue Lakes, the bluest water imaginable, it has something to do with them being volcano craters. From the ocean to volcano craters our third night has by the banks of the Murray River at the appropriately named Murray Bridge. Only 50km outside Adelaide we enjoyed our stay by the river and exploring a marina full of house boats, it’s always about who has the biggest and best and some were floating mansions.

That afternoon and the following 2 days, the temperature soared to 43 degrees with a very uncomfortable hot dry wind blowing strait in from the desert. We crept into Adelaide to find Louise’s school friend Trish and her husband Derrick. Fortunately they had aircon and a pool and we had a couple of quite days keeping out of the heat. We really enjoyed catching up with Trish again after so long and hope it not another 20 something years.

We picked up our second campervan on Saturday morning and fortunately a soothing cold front moved in to cool things down to about 23 degrees which was a blessing. However our next campervan turned out to be a bit disappointing. It was a Backpacker van and very basic. The van was a Mitsubishi, new enough with only 30,000Km, but really very basic with no fridge or microwave and a stove that makes cooking too difficult, we chose to cook in the camp kitchens where possible. With no ceiling height it made manoeuvring in the van when the bed was made up a little like a beached whale flapping about, still better than a tent, but we had a week to look forward to in this van. The rain came down as we started out on our Nullarbor crossing.

This was the beginning of the really big driving days, 700km to Streaky Bay, 850 to Madura Pass in WA and a further 750km into Esperance. We particularly enjoyed Streaky Bay and we had a couple of good viewing points along the Nullarbor of the cliffs of the Great Australian Bight. The cool conditions remained with us for the whole trip across and by the time we got to Esperance it was a mild 28 degrees again. We loved Esperance and decided we had to live there and get jobs there immediately, but in hind sight it was just an extreme reaction to crossing the Nullarbor and then finding this Jewell at the end. We found we were just as impressed by Albany and the Margaret River region. We did a spectacular tree top walk outside Walpole and I did a light house tour in Augusta at the intersection of the Southern and Indian Oceans. We spent a full day visiting wineries in Margaret River and we stayed in another nice town we would like to live in, Mandurah last night before rolling into Perth this morning. It’s certainly cheaper and quicker to fly across the bottom of Australia, but if you have a couple of weeks to spare, it’s a road trip to remember.

We are booked into a very ordinary apartment right in town in Perth. It’s cheap and the position is great, we have a hire car to explore the area for the next week or so and see what fate has in store for us. All the best for now.
Ric & Louise