Yallingup to Denmark

We left Yallingup and set off for the famous Margaret River wine region. In an area such as this, with over 100 vineyards it's certainly difficult to choose where to go even if they don't all operate cellar doors. A chance visit to the big Waterstones on London's Piccadilly a few weeks before our departure saw me pick up the perfect book to see us through this dilemma and guide us for what has become an integral part of our travels: wine. The Glovebox Guide to Wine Touring by Greg Duncan Powell covers 48 Australian wine regions (who knew there were so many?)  and has been an invaluable guide to our cellar door visits with maps, contact info and opening hours and even recommending places to line our stomachs. Fear not, we are responsible and whoever isn't tasting gets to drive!! Somehow, it happened that Tom was driving through Margaret River so I had the pleasure of tasting the wines at three lovely vineyards, two from the book and one being somewhere Tom was keen to visit. To  quote the opening sentence on the region from our book: "If you were God and you could design a wine region from scratch you'd probably come up with something that looks, tastes and feels like Margaret River." I could tell it was going to be a tough day...

Between us, Tom is definitely the wine connoisseur so I can rely on him to talk knowledgeably with the staff at each cellar door while I make appreciative sounds, quaffing each sample and muttering about tannins and 'The Nose' or bouquet, if you will. In Margaret River we started with Clairault wines and then went on to Brookland Valley, owned by the well-known-back-home Hardy's. Set near a large lake amid lovely gardens, the cellar door itself felt like a National Trust gift shop so we felt compelled to wander around admiring the stuff (much of it not even wine related) before admitting that we just want to taste the stuff, please. A nice lady talked us through the selections and discussed the region with us. She also let us pet Lily, the resident dog of the vineyard so that was lovely.

We made a pitstop for lunch in the lovely country town, Margaret River that gives the region its name and added to our ever expanding collection of leaflets at the visitor centre before heading into the final vineyard. Stella Bella was the one that Tom wanted to visit as he has known of it for a long time, it's a family-run vineyard of great quality and reputation. The cellar door here was a bit more like someone had built a bar in a shed and I don't mean that as a bad thing. It was lovely and a friendly English lady took us through the selections here and we may have acquired a bottle or two.

After all the rigours of wine tasting, it was time to find a place to camp so we headed back toward the coast to Cape Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park and stayed in a wooded campsite run by Department for Environment and Conservation called Conto Beach. In the morning, we were rewarded for our early rise by a close encounter with a kangaroo and her Joey. It was lovely to see them potter around foraging together and we watched them for quite a while before having a hearty breakfast ourselves and setting off for the day's adventure.

This day we went to Cape Leeuwin, the most South Westerly point of Australia and one with the tallest lighthouse. We took a tour of the lighthouse so that we could go to the top of it and admire the views over the spot where the Indian Ocean meets the Southern Ocean. Following a stop in Augusta, a sleepy, small town for provisions we drove on to Pemberton via one more winery. This time it was Donnelly River Wines and we scored a bottle of red for $7!! Bargain. Pemberton is a lovely town set amid rolling hills and wooded forrest. Such was its charm that we almost immediately chose to spend two nights here. It's worth mentioning at this point that the climate, and as a result the landscape, in this corner of Western Australia are totally different from the rest of the state. There is far more rain here and it is consistently cooler with the breeze coming in from the Southern Ocean making the whole area more lush and green than the northern part of the state.

Another feature that is unique to this area are the impressive Karri trees. These huge, tall straight trees are a sight to behold and we drove part of the dedicated roadway known dramatically as the Karri Forrest Explorer. It was amazing to drive with such huge trees on either side. The region also has some rather famous individual trees, one of which is known as The Gloucester tree. When the forrest was being logged for timber, certain trees were used as lookout points to watch for forrest fires. The Gloucester tree is one such tree, named after the Duke of Gloucester who visited one day, though I doubt he climbed it. Iron pegs had been driven into the tree trunk to form a ladder up the length of the tree, 53 metres to the top where there is a sort of lookout hut on a platform. For some reason, I climbed the thing while, ever wise, Tom waited at the base. The view from the top was spectacular, you can see for miles around and it was fun seeing the birds and other tree tops at that level. Getting down was tough as you more or less have to look down to place your feet on the godforsaken pegs! I was holding on for dear life which goes some way to explaining why my legs still hurt as I write this, three days later.

Having paid entry to one national park to climb the tree, meant we had free entry to another national park. Apparently I am a glutton for punishment as despite the fact my legs felt as though they might explode, I agreed to climb a mountain!! Well, it was more of a rock really but who am I to split hairs when I can claim to have climbed a ruddy tall tree and a mountain in one day?! It was called Mount Chudla after all. After more nice views and a couple of rain showers, it was back to Pemberton to our nice spot in a  rather idyllic caravan park as we camped next to a stream, surrounded by nosey ducks.

The following day, we headed to Walpole where we did the Valley of The Giants treetop walk. Not quite as dramatic as it sounds, it is literally a suspended walkway amid the tops of beautiful red tingle trees which can grow to 75 metres. It turns out these trees have very shallow roots, in spite of their height so the treetop walk enables people to admire and enjoy the trees without damaging the roots. What's also lovely is that it is designed to sway in the breeze so to enhance the tree like experience I suppose. From there we set up camp at the charmingly named, Peaceful Bay.

Peaceful Bay is the place where we discovered that our griddle pan makes great toast. It is also the place we had to return to mid-afternoon as I had left my tablet charging at the campsite. Thankfully, we weren't too far away when the realisation hit and even though the couple who camped on the site after us had put the thing in their car, at least they handed it over and I was reunited with my doof (as I call it). Other highlights of the day included a visit to Denmark chocolate company, run by a lovely Swiss lady and Forrest Hill winery, the oldest vineyard in the Great Southern wine region.

On the road again

It may seem to you that our blog has fallen by the wayside somewhat and to some extent that's true. The distractions of work and city living in Perth meant that our blog fell down the list of priorities so we are woefully behind and for that we apologise to our loyal followers, all ten of you.

Hopefully, the phone/Skype calls have made up for our lack of prose and we will eventually go back to fill in the gaps for our own sake more than anything.

In summary, we spent 5 months in Perth and four of those we were blessed with a warm welcome and a wonderful Aussie hospitality with my relatives, Simon and Nicci Whitehouse, Simon being my Dad's first cousin and so (and we have this debate on every meeting) I think it makes him my second cousin. Anyway, they were extremely kind to put us up (and put up with us) for such a long time. Not only this but they gave us an amazing Aussie Christmas experience, a beautiful steak on the barbie and of course, a pavlova. They truly welcomed us to their family and it was great to get to know them, their twin sons, Ben and Andrew and their partners, Anna and Jacqui and of course, their grandchildren, Maeve and Freya not forgetting their wonderful dog, Moses, recipient of many belly rubs. We have also enjoyed the hospitality of Simon's sister, Jane while we were in Adelaide and we will update on that later on.

In January I got a job at a nearby family-run deli, Scutti where I worked around 25 hours a week selling and slicing the cured meats and preparing fresh salads and other items for the shop. It was a great experience for me and I met some wonderful people who were part of the team.
Tom got a job at a Japanese restaurant about 25mins away by car which served as an interesting introduction to how fickle the hospitality industry can be, particularly for those of us on working holiday visas.

Our last month was spent in Como, a nearby suburb to the deli. Tom had some shifts at a nearby restaurant but not many hours which meant that it was time for us to hit the road so, on the 26 April we set off in the rain. The night before, our friends gave us a wonderful send off in the pub which resulted in us setting off from Perth a little bit later than planned but we hit our target of spending our first night in Busselton, celebrating our arrival with cocktails on the beach followed by Chinese food in town.

Busselton is a charming coastal town which has the claim to fame of being home to the longest jetty in the Southern hemisphere at 1.8km long. It juts out into the waters of Geographe bay and having undergone a recent restoration, you are now required to pay the princely sum of $2.50 to walk along its length which we (and many others) did in a bracing wind. We gave the underwater observatory at the end a miss as while it is a cool idea, it seemed a bit pricey and we doubted being able to see all that much given the blustery conditions above. It is a rather nice jetty and it even has a charming train as one option to travel along its length. Timber was the main industry to put Busselton on the map and to warrant the building of such a huge jetty, the last extension happened in1969. Our jaunt along its length saw us pause at many an information panel or gaze at the various arty sculptures and comment on the lack of life rings and in some places, complete lack of railing. Don't worry, Mum, we didn't fall in.

From Busselton we headed to Yallingup via Bunker Bay to check out the beach and we spotted dolphins in the sea. By the time we arrived in Yallingup, a tiny settlement, the rain which seemed to have followed us since our departure from Perth, had well and truly arrived so we hunkered down, grateful for the warm and dry of the car. Yallingup is one of those small, creative communities where the local shop is also a post office and cafe so we called in there to send off a parcel and discovered next door a bakery dedicated to making kugelhopf which were as delicious as they were unexpected, we took two as sustenance for the day ahead, a chocolate orange one and an olive with walnut. Lovely stuff.
Despite the rain, our trip was off to a good start.

A day in the life

00:05, Friday 7th February

That's it, over and out and to bed now, sleepy. The glass of wine with the skype convo has kicked in and relegated the shift-work adrenaline to second place in my head. Thursday is but a memory, work is done for another day, thoughts are jumbling around, jumbled and dreaming now.

09:00

'... say hello, go say hello Mosey, go on.' Urgh, I'm not ready to wake up, and roll over to ignore the dog nosing at me from the side of the bed. He licks my leg and noses towards me, then trots away to something more interesting. I've been awake four or five times already today: half-remembered dreams leaving me disorientated, bolt upright in bed, trying to understand the half truths of my right brain.

11:00

Ok body, brain needs coffee now. One-two, ... . Try again. One, two, three, my legs swing round and plant themselves insecurely on the carpet. A push, a stumble, fumbles for clothes then glasses that make no difference to my sleep-encrusted eyes. I wash my face then sip carefully at the coffee before me. It's instant and not nearly as strong as usual - damn not having proper grounds today. Annie puts some hot Nutella-covered muffins down on the table and I'm grateful this isn't a morning she's over-tired too.

11:45

Morning's almost up as we head out. First stop is a coffee shop in Victoria Park East, Antz Inya Pantz. We've bought our last three bags of grinds from there, but last time I was pre-caffeinated and got whole beans instead. After rectifying my mistake and sucking down a cold one (of coffee: it's still just morning after all) it was gone midday. 

12:30 

At the supermarket (Coles, Victoria Park's 'Park Centre') we got limes, grapes, cous cous and an assortment of mundanities like cling film and marg. Our reward for our domestic chores: an apple and walnut scroll from Brumby's. Yum! 

13:20

Driving back along Mill Point Road, we swung off slightly early to get some smoked fish for a salad lunch from South Perth Seafoods. I've a soft spot for hot-smoked salmon from the Fin and Flounder on Broadway in Hackney, but, and I'm sure you can all appreciate my middle-class woe at this point, haven't seen it at all on my travels. True to form, although there was hot smoked whole trout (just not the same) they only had normal (cold) smoked salmon (alas! We bought some anyway). The fishmongers stock was, by a vast majority, frozen, though the range was impressive, and not at all unreasonable in price. I'd still rank Clayton's butchers as my preferred local shop, though.

14:00

Annie has made a cous cous salad with some of the salmon and a piece of halloumi on the side, which I demolish hungrily, washing it down with a freshly ground Bolivian 'Jacoba' coffee from my aeropress.

14:20

Simon prompts us to review the voucher book they have for activities and day trips around Perth. I like the look of sea kayaking out of Ningaloo, though admittedly that's not in Perth but quite a drive up the coast, and Annie noticed a couple of good deals on wine tours in the local wine region of Swan Valley, and even one by boat.

14:22

I'm due in to work at 17:00 today, but then my phone beeps twice:

"Hi Thomas sorry tsunami is not busy you may have off today. Thank you"

Woohoo, day off.

14:30

Annie's work hasn't been cancelled, though we didn't get our hopes up too much. Her shift starts at 4pm, but we've some washing up to do and the time quickly disappears into the temporal morass that is domesticity.

15:30

We're almost ready to leave: Annie for work, me for a first visit to the driving range of the local public golf course. It's really close, and it will be good to see if I can hit the ball on grass any better than on the scrub of the Nullabor.

15:50

I visit the Angelo Street branch of ANZ, my bank, to pay in my cash-in-hand wages and get receipts for the quantities to go with the photos of my wage packets. If the tax man here is anything like the one at home, I doubt they'd be happy with me simply announcing the cash figure (without documentation) on my end of year tax return.

16:25

Why is there so much traffic?! It's taken me 30 minutes to go 3 kilometres. The Aussies clock off early, that must be it. I've just arrived at the golf course and see another text from work:

"Hi Tsunami staff, we organised the schedule this coming valentines day on Feb. 14 Friday, we would like to remind you all that everyone will be free to work with us on that day. Many thanks."

As with many things said at work, this needs some clarification, and it turns they should really have just sent something simple like: 'we need all of you to work on valentines day.' That would be much easier.

17:15

Balls hit, divets dug, now that was quite fun. My hand is starting to suffer from friction burns, so time to leave the land of pristine green grass and head back to the parched outside. There was some rather silly golf dress on display, but the people were friendly and it was a lot more welcoming than on our appearance at the Kalgoorlie golf club at the end of the Nullabor Links. Wow that did make us feel a bit uncomfortable!

18:10

After letting a very friendly Mosey back into the house, I wonder what to make for tea, or if we should go out.

18:20

I look at the events for the Perth Festival, which starts today and lasts a few weeks. It's not very centralised, but I note there's an outdoor cinema showing of the current Robert Redford film about a shipwrecked yachtsman that I know Annie is keen on. It's unallocated, unreservable seating so we might as well buy tickets on the door. There's even a pizza place as part of the venue, somewhere over the river on the University of Western Australia campus. 'Sorted, let's go there', I think.

18:35

OMFG so many ants. And not just the super small worker ants, there are the bulbous angry protecting ants too, hundreds of them going right into... the... food... cupboard. Urgh, nasty, time for ant genocide.

The spray does the trick, and soon nothing is moving. I spray some more, then follow the route back to the window frame with ant-trail masking spray. I have to leave it for a little while, there's just too many of the buggers to deal with right now.

18:50

Ok, I'm a bit calmer now, and wipe them all away, clean the cupboard, respray, done.

19:00

I grab the esky from our room and gather picnic supplies for the movie: diet coke, popcorn, a couple of beers, a bunch of grapes. It all gets packed in with ice blocks, and I scramble to get a blanket, some jumpers (it can be almost chilly at night sometimes) and find where exactly the venue is and where to park.

19:23

Quick, time to leave. Annie should be outside work in 5 mins, which will just give us time to get to the venue - she can call the pizza order in en-route.

19:30

Annie waits with one of her Italian colleagues, Gracie, who cut her finger cleaning the deli slicer. It's a deep cut, so plans change and we're heading back to the house to get the first aid kit. The 'supervisor' had left her with tissue paper which does nothing to staunch the flow of blood.

19:45

The cut is too deep and wide for butterfly stitches, so Annie wraps it with dressing pads as best she can and we cover it all with primapore tape. Nicci and Simon arrive back and immediately start to look for out-of-hours medical centres.

19:55

Nicci finds an open doctors in Belmont who will see Gracie when we arrive. To the car! I drive us along the 4-lane highway (with a very slow speed limit of 60kph / 38mph), Annie directs us to the clinic.

20:10

I plonk myself in the waiting room and pick up a Time magazine from October 2013. Annie helps Gracie complete the medical forms.

20:40

I read an article by Bill Clinton about why he's positive about the future of the world. Gracie gets called through to the doctor

21:10

I read an article about coffee shop variations across the world. The girls are nowhere to be seen. I look for places we can get something to eat, but we're running out of time for Solo Pizza (10pm close), which has the best reputation around.

21:30

As if there's causation, almost the moment I drop the fully-read Time on to the pile, they emerge from the inner sanctum. Gracie has a bandaged finger, three stitches on a local anaesthetic and a tetanus jab. We have to wait ten minutes, in case the wound re-opens? Gracie has a doctors note and can't work tomorrow, so Annie and Gracie talk through what Gracie has to say to the boss on the phone.

21:40

Equipped with the word 'stitches' and the confidence to tell the boss she can't start at 8am tomorrow, Gracie makes the call. Annie gets roped in to going in to work early, and after fighting claims of 'another holiday!', Gracie is all set. Now for some food, but not until we've raided the picnic stash for an M&Ms sugar boost.

21:48

At the lights, I notice another text from work: 

"Hi Thomas tsunami is not busy again you may have off tomorrow Saturday again. Thanks"

Bonus! Wait - I need hours to get paid. Hmm.

21:55

You can do u-turns at traffic lights here, and crossing three lanes from a side-road isn't frowned upon as it would be at home. I'm glad therefore that the traffic is light as we somehow navigate to the wide array of fast food outlets which, along with motels, provide an unbroken neon edge to this wide highway. Dominos had no seating, so we decide on McDonalds, despite it being on the other side of the road. I don't want to re-park, so we jog across and are soon in the comforting warm glow of the 24 hour 'restaurant'.

22:05

We share stories. Gracie talks of a trip to Paris with a boyfriend, also Italian, on which, due to a dislike of French food, they ate at McDonalds every day for a week. Apparently, croissants just aren't as good in Paris as in Sicily, and once you've had burgers a few nights in a row you start to order the salad meals as your first choice!

22:25

We drive Gracie back to her flat by the zoo, and Annie swaps numbers with her. She has to have the stitches out on Wednesday, so we can give her a lift as long as I'm not at work (with the car).

22:50

Annie and I arrive home after what has been quite a long day. I eat grapes and continue to write this, Annie relaxes with a dose of Buzzfeed. We discuss what to do tomorrow after Annie's shift, but we don't know when she'll finish. Maybe the film will still be on? Otherwise there must be some music or dancing. We decide we'll decide tomorrow: my favourite type of decision.

23:40

To bed. What an unexpected turn of events today. I thought it would be a portrait of both our work days, but it does show the changeability of life on zero-hours contracts (ha, I scoff - there's nothing official or contracted about my job!)

Stepping back in time: Yanakie to Tidal River: A seagull stole oursandwich

Let's rewind from the last post. Before Perth, back across the Nullabor, long before the Eyre Peninsula and even the other side of Melbourne, we were spending the night in the village of Yanakie.

It was a nervy night for Annie, who was rather put out by the cockroach and large spider (a huntsman? We're not sure) that fled the barbecue plate while cooking dinner. The night of Saturday 26th October 2013 was windy, which was not helped by Yanakie's position on a low isthmus protruding into the notoriously rough Bass Straight and the lack of effective wind breaks. In keeping with the theme of the last week, it was raining, with yet more rain forecast for the approaching week. 

We woke to broken skies of rays of sunshine blasting through cumuli, a brisk southwesterly and great promise. Just South of Yanakie is the control gate for the Wilson's Promontory National Park, then we were driving through pristine bush on a ribbon of tarmac unsurpassed in quality, and all the more out of place for it. Annie was on animal spotting duty, but our late start probably didn't help the poor showing. The drive was excellent, a really windy road that would be great to time trial, though crashing in a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Oz National Park probably wouldn't be appreciated. Just in case I don't mention it when describing something specific in Wilson's Prom, the views are amazing. All of them. From close-ups of dense, seemingly untouched bush to magnificent saddle-point vistas, it's just beautiful. 

Arriving in the only permanent settlement in park, Tidal River, we gawped at the enormity of the camping area, deciding to pitch near to the amenities to put some food together. We fought the wind all the while, watching that the filling didn't fly out of the sandwiches, then as Annie turned to me for the mayo, the bugger swooped. A cacophony ensued as the flock of seagulls fought over the top half of our sandwich, not even dispersing as Annie angrily chased after them with a tea towel. We soon realised that the surplus of campsites needed to be investigated, and relocated away from the amenities where the seagulls (and rainbow lorikeets) had picked up their taste for chips and, apparently, ham sandwiches. 

Wilson's Promentory is a tropical desert island, or at least it might be. It was quite clear to us that while there were several activities available to us (fishing, swimming, surfing), all we wanted to do was explore. Our first day saw us meander through the campsite, over the watercourse and then brought us to a complete stop when I brought Annie's attention to the badger-sized animal immediately to our right. Talk about tame - this wombat was 5 feet away and couldn't care less about us as it scruffled for tasty greens on the side of the path. As Annie took photos (and I took photos for Annie of her with the wombat in the near background), a few more people came by, but the wombat didn't care, and kept ignoring that it was meant to be both shy and semi-nocturnal. What a badass. Seeing the wombat sustained us for most of the rest of the day,  though that isn't to say that Squeaky Beach was actually quiet, or that the views weren't inspiring. Our path took us over the headland to the next bay, with great viewpoints, down to one of the finest beaches I've seen, to lunch on remarkable rocks (not The Remarkable Rocks, they're on Kangaroo Island in SA), then back over the hill to the campsite. Squeaky Beach gets it's name from the sound of ultra-fine quartz sand rubbing together when walked on - a funny sensation, though actually replicated in several places along the coast in Oz. Coming back over the hill, the importance of fire to the Australian landscape became apparent. We saw burnt stumps, but also half-burnt trees that were quite alive, burnt tree grasses redoubled in growth and many burnt hollows that were obviously housing some form of wildlife or other. From a lovely granite outcrop, the landscape could easily be divided along recent fire lines - the fewer burnt limbs above the thicker the canopy, the longer ago the most recent burn.


Old fire lines are really obvious from above

 A nice feature on the walk (sadly amiss in many other places in Oz) was the presence of informative signs that related the lives of the traditional owners of the land and how they used some of the plants, along with details on the plants themselves. I liked learning that the tree grass flower sap hardens as a resin used for attaching spear heads, amongst other uses. 



Annie getting up close to the first wombat

He was quite happy with close-ups

 

The revelation of the evening of 27th October was that Wilson's Prom doesn't just have the one fearless wombat, rather several burrows worth of them, including a burrow right in the middle of the campsite. Stop! I know what you're going to say, and don't worry - Annie took enough photos of them to last a trip to the other side of the world, almost. After a sunset stroll on the beach, we also saw several bunnies (cue mixed feelings) then - get this - a deer. I can understand bunnies managing to thrive, even in a National Park, but deer? Deer are surely the easier feral creature to hunt/capture/remove, and I've not seen any others at all across Australia.

{one of the campsite locals}

We extended our stay in Wilson's Prom to two nights, allowing us time to scale Mount Oberon, with silly chanting and exercises on the way up the (rather dull) forest track, though unfortunately the good weather from day 1 decided not to stay with us and we reached the summit in cloud. We kept getting smug looks from the predominantly German walkers descending as we climbed. They had obviously made more of the "a few showers" weather forecast than we had, though in our defence that seems to be the only description Victorians know for anything from vaguely threatening cloud cover to all-out torrential downpours lasting several hours. Never mind, we're British, and a little rain was hardly going to keep us from our sandwiches.

In the clouds, Mt Oberon.

 

Oh, we saw emus when we were driving out. Nice.

Overcast, yes. Stunning, also yes.

We've been in Perth a while now

Everything written here for outsiders includes something along the lines of 'Perth is the most isolated capital city in the world', 'WA is beyond huge' or 'About as close to Southeast Asia as Australia's East'. The problem is that these statements are all too pithy, and while yes, it does take a bloody long time to walk/ride/drive/fly to anywhere over East, once you start living here it's just like being in any other neighbourhood. Well, not quite any neighbourhood:

- it's hot- always sunny, with burning sun and effectively no rain since we arrived in early December (proof: Dec, Jan)
- people are generally friendly
- they don't sound that Australian here
- there's actually a decent public transport system!

We'd have a view like this if we stood on the roof... but normally we just walk 250m to the park for it

We're in South Perth, which is just over the estuarial Swan River from the CBD. The black swans on the river (hence its name) and foreshore had their cygnets recently, which with their grey fluff looked just the same as the standard (white) swan cygnets. The dusty moorhens, coots and ducks add to the similarities with home, though the paperbark eucalypts and palms they use for shade are quite distinctly not British. It's a green city away from the river too, though for a city facing collosal environmental challenges around water needs, low rainfall and flood planes / rising sea levels, they do seem to use the sprinklers a lot. Perth appears a microcosm of Australia as a whole, trying to accommodate every citizen's 1/4 acre dream plot scrubland bungalow, while realising that the 90km continuous suburban sprawl along the coast is very expensive, inefficient and not sustainable. It's pity there's so much mining wealth propping up the expansion.


Have you heard of quokkas? The internet would have you believe that they are the happiest animals in the world, but though they seemed interested and not at all shy, I didn't see them smile when we went cycling on Rottnest Island. A trip to Rotto, as the locals know it (and which my spellcheck wants to amend to rotfl - how lols) is a fave for many Perthites, who appreciate the traffic-free cycling and walking, and the pristine beaches - unpopulated once a few kilometres from the accomodation areas. There's a boat trip to get there; we departed from the CBD jetty and got a waterborne city guide in the bargain.

Much earlier in our trip, we watched the AFL Grand Final (Aussie rules football - confusing and played on a cricket oval with four goalposts at each end) in Melbourne. The losing side was the Fremantle Dockers, who along with the West Coast Eagles comprise WA's contribution to the premier league of this unusual antipodean sport. The city of Fremantle is historic, with several original buildings from the first few years of the settlement, but also fun and friendly. Oddly enough, the presence of a university doesn't really help the feel of the city - too many stale office-like buildings that could be flats and shops, but thankfully the market and cafés compensate really well. Freo (most things are abbreviated here) is just a light railway ride from the CBD, and also quite close to the place I've just got a job at, a bit up the coast in Mosman Park.


Finding jobs here is hard, unless:
- you're fully qualified in whatever over-specific niche is required
- you've 3 years experience doing the job for minimum pay
- you're AMAZINGLY OUTGOING and LOVE serving customers in an EXCELLENT happy mood all the time


Somehow, we've both managed it. I'm the bartender and general wait staff for an upmarket Japanese restaurant. I'm not sure how I fangled this job, though admittedly I'm on just over half of nothing per hour and still in a two week trial period. Annie is doing much better, with a job at a local Italian deli called Scutti, decent hours and a commute that doesn't involve a 25 minute drive each way. Needless to say, the eponymous owners haven't yet been apprised of the colloquial English meaning of 'scutty'.

Going back to where this entry started, we're in South Perth. We're staying with Annie's first cousin once removed (Simon), his wife (Nicci) and dog (Mosey) in their lovely old house. We've been made to feel very welcome, indeed part of the family, and have even gone surfing with one of their friends. Their twin sons Ben and Andrew are great, and I'm sure the esteemed Winthrop Professor (Andrew) would (secretly) appreciate a shameless plug here for his book, 'Will Mozart Make My Baby Smart?' (Hint: ... umm, actually I haven't read it yet, oops).

One of the strange things in Perth is that despite its size, everyone seems connected here: Simon and Nicci know random baristas in town, and my colleague also works at Annie's workplace. Strange though, I thought she didn't know this suburb when I said I was living in South Perth - guess she was just taking the piss out of my accent! There's a nice small-town feel in Perth that comes with the urban sprawl and low-ish population density, and the coffee shop culture that Britain has tried to adopt over the last decade or so really doesn't come close to what Perth has. There are some chains, sure, but outside the malls it's mostly little independent places with top-notch modern Italian coffee machines and speciality blends from a variety of regional and local roasteries - favourite so far is Mano A Mano at the Gordon Street Garage in West Perth. Simon and Nicci are regulars at a certain place on Angelo Street near Annie's work, and are on first name terms with not only the serving staff but also several other customers and their dogs. There are free communal BBQ stations in the foreshore park. A local school backing onto Angelo Street also opens the gym and pool when school isn't on. There are lots of things that contribute to the coffee culture, and even if Britain misses the point, it's a pretty good thing to aim for.

Planning is hard work, and remembering to keep well hydrated is key

 We started planning the next big section of our trip yesterday. Roughly, we're just going to follow the coast road, Highway 1, with a few big detours to Darwin, Uluru and Cairns and probably lots of smaller detours like we've written about previously on our coastal journey from Adelaide to Melbourne. All-in, we've probably another 15,000 kms before we get back to Melbourne, and are planning to leave Perth around the end of March, giving us around 6 months - plenty of time! I'm particularly looking forward to driving through the Pilbara (have a look at the photos on this blog!), seeing crocs (from a distance!) in the Top End, visiting the Riversleigh fossils in Queensland (and thus completing the World Heritage listing it shares with the caves in Naracoorte, SA), and especially trying to get to the tropical paradise of the Whitsunday Islands . There's lots more to see and do on the way of course, and Annie is excited about all the Big Things the Queenslanders have made, though less excited when we read about the man-made termite mound in Mataranka, NT.

Poowong and beyond: Giant Earthworms live there

The Poowong campsite was a very peaceful woodland clearing which made it a great place to spot birds and other wildlife, we spotted a kangaroo hiding in the long grass, just the other side of the stream. We explored the local area, including coal creek, a reconstruction of an historic mining town which also randomly had an excellent exhibition about Anne Frank. From there we went on to Loch, another charming little town where we found out more details about the giant earthworms of South Gippsland. We first learned about them from Bill Bryson's book, 'Down Under'. Sadly, the  place where Bill went to see these strange creatures pickled in jars has, for some reason, closed down. So our only option was to look at the info panels located under a motorway bridge in the tiny town of Loch. Unlike David Attenborough, we didn't hear them gurgling under ground, they would have been drowned out by the rain anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxeT_GDKv9g&feature=youtube_gdata_player

From there we made our way through the Gippsland countryside, stopping at a couple of wineries on the way. Lyre Bird Hill and Drummond's estate were both very small operations producing lovely wines so we replenished our stores and continued South for Wilson's Promontory National Park.

Queenscliff to Blairgowrie: The Mornington Peninsula

The ferry crossing to Sorrento was pretty quick with a few penguins to spot on the way. In Sorrento, a well-to-do town where we thought we'd spend the night, the camping options were limited with many of the public municipal sites not open until December. We caught the tourist info just as it was closing to prevail upon them for some camping options. 'Are you in a tent or a van?' The lady asked.... Never quite sure how to reply to this question we replied truthfully that we were in fact sleeping in the back of our station wagon. The lady seemed concerned that this might not be acceptable to the nearby caravan park, at which point we assured her that we had stayed in numerous caravan parks so far and no one else batted an eyelid. In fact this lady was the only person we have encountered so far who did bat her eyelid! Eventually, we made it to the charming Blairgowrie caravan park where we would spend the night.
The next day led us to explore the beautiful region of the Mornington Peninsula, where fortunately for us they also make excellent wine. It is a cool climate area and offers Pinots and Rieslings more than Shiraz which had been the most common variety so far. The real surprise favourites were the Chardonnays, which if we didn't have to store the wine in our car, we would easily have bought numerous bottles.
Montalto was the first vineyard and chosen primarily by its proximity to Flinders. Named for Captain Flinders who was a distinguished navigator and cartographer, the first to circumnavigate Australia in 1801-1802 as well as carrying out a lot of explorations and expeditions. A great deal of land features are therefore named after him, from the historic town in Victoria to the university in South Australia and much more in between. In Flinders we partook of a record breaking custard slice. The shop we bought it from holds the Guinness World Record for the largest ever custard slice, weighing in at 500kg, our slice came in at 500g! Still rather too much for us! We went to a second vineyard called Ten Minutes by Tractor mainly because of the name and unique because it's the only vineyard where we left empty handed!
While on the peninsula, we also took the time to visit the Cape Schanck lighthouse where we took a walk along the cliffs, nearly getting blown over before turning back to the safety of the wagon. Back in the carpark we admired the bravery of a surfer heading out into the high seas, high winds and rocky shores. Following our adventure in the peninsula, we originally planned to stay in Frankston. Though this was thwarted when the caravan site was full. Free camping is limited in the region so for the second time that day, we opted to go somewhere for the name. Poowong. Not only is it a great name, but the campsite was free. We stayed there for a couple of days, all the while exploring the South Gippsland area. It's very lush and green, beautiful pasture and rolling hills that are quite stunning, even in the continued rain.