Erik and Erin in Australia

We just got back from a sports bar where we watched the Canadian Women's hockey team win the Gold. Yay Canada! We've been able to watch a little bit of the Olympics, but not a lot. The time differences and the communal TVs make it difficult.

We are still in Melbourne, which has been good. We originally planned to go directly to Tasmania, but we got our flight on Saturday, so we've spent the last week around here. We did a day tour to the Dandenong ranges where we walked through rain forests and spent some time in the national park outside of Melbourne. We also tasted wine at a couple of Yarra Valley wineries. Wine tasting is a great way to spend an afternoon. Free drinks in pretty scenery, how can you go wrong with that?

My normally invincible immune system has failed me recently, and I've been a little bit sick. I'm feeling better now, though. It's hard to complain really, I'm on vacation. No one needs to worry, we have been eating properly and taking care of our selves. Honest.

Tonight we are hoping to go to an Aussie Rules Football game. They play some strange sports around here. Have you ever heard of Netball? It's kind of like Basketball, only you can't move once you have the ball. There is only passing and shooting. It's a very odd game. I guess that the Aussies are world Netball champs. Apparently the Canadian team doesn't do very good at it. Oh well, we won in Hockey.

Tomorrow we have our flight to Tasmania. I'm quite excited, I've heard that things are amazing there. I'll post pictures when we get them. Besides, stealing pictures from the web is easier than scanning new ones in.

The top photo is from our bike trip around Rottnest Island. "Rotto" was a really cool place, where everyone and their dog owns a boat. As you can see from the background to this photo.
The middle picture is of an Emu at the caravan park in Exmouth. These things wandered around, and dug in the garbage. They were kind of neat, but a bit annoying after a while. One of them kept visiting Erin in her cabin.
Finally we have a picture from the Geralton lobster factory. These guys are fighting for their freedom, trying to escape the tank and avoid ending up on a dinner plate. A very epic, but hopeless struggle.

We are now saying goodbye to the West. Tomorrow morning we fly to Melbourne, so that we can go to Tasmania. Exciting isn't it.

I'm about to get logged out of this computer, so I'll have to write more later. 'til next time...

This is going to be a long update. You might want to read it in short bursts so that you don't miss anything important.

We haven't been affected by the fires at all, in case anyone was wondering. I can see why they have problems here though. A lot of the vegetation here is various forms of eucalypts, which have a competitive strategy of encouraging fires to kill off other plants. The leaves of these things are full of eucalyptus oil, which burns incredibly well. Combine that with the fact that this is the most arid content in the world, (after Antarctica) and you have a very nasty situation for firefighters.

Erin and I have spent most of the last month traveling up the northwest coast, which has been a excellent experience. I think it is a very underrated and overlooked portion of Australia, which was good for us because it meant that the attractions mostly had very small crowds. We are now back in Perth, in a cool suburb named Freemantle.

The first town we stopped in was named Lancelin. It was a pretty cool place, where the main attraction was windsurfing. No one there seemed know what to say after we told them that we weren't there to windsurf. Another cool attraction are the sand dunes, which you can take vehicles on without doing damage to the area. We went on a monster truck bus where we drove around in the dunes, and sand boarded. The driver got the bus stuck for the first time ever by high centreing it on a giant razorback sand dune. Everyone had to stop to look at us because they couldn't believe that the bus got "bogged". We eventually got out by digging out the bus and getting a truck with a winch. Lots of fun.

We got to see the Pinnacles desert. One of the major tourist attractions of the area. There are fields of strange stone pillars scattered throughout the area. A cool place, but somewhat over-hyped.

The next stop was a small city named Geraldton. This was a very cool place. We stayed in a very nice hostel on the beach. There were no bunk beds, and we could hear the ocean at night. It really doesn't take much to make me happy anymore. The museum was one of the best that I have ever been in. It was very focused, and told the story of the Dutch East-Indies company ship the Batavia. The story is incredible. I recommend searching around on the internet and reading a bit about it. I would write it out, but I'm sure that someone else has already done a better job of it than I would. The museum also tells the story of H.M.R.A.S. Sydney, an Australian ship sunk in the second world war. Geralton also featured a lobster factory that gives tours. I think it has been Erin's favorite part of the trip so far. It was pretty neat. There was also a community art gallery which was mostly notable because it was free.

Kalbarri is the next town we spent some time in. We visited another national park, where we did a hike in river gorges. It was pretty spectacular. The picture is of the Z-bend gorges. We did a river boat tour, ate a huge fish BBQ, and got to do some sailing with the British couple we have been hanging out with. It was a nice place.

The next really cool stop was the Shark Bay world heritage park. This park features stromatolites. These rock formations contain what is believed to be the origins of life on earth. The rocks are formed from deposits left by generations of single celled organisms that have existed unchanged for over 3 billion years. This is one of only two places in the world where the area is protected enough for them to still live. There were wagon tracks over 80 years old that still look fresh. nothing ever changes here. The rocks weren't the most exciting looking things, but the concept is amazing. I really enjoyed this stop.

We got to see wild dolphins at Monkey Mia. It was pretty cool, but it was really crowded. There were about 100 people all standing in a line in the water up to their ankles, while an attendant picked people to feed the dolphins. Erin stayed on the beach an entertained people by speculating on eating dolphin meat. Sometimes I wonder why the people here are afraid of us.

On our way north we passed through a fruit growing town named Carnaveron. It had a big NASA radio telescope in the middle of it. I thought it was kind of odd to see this giant high tech satallite dish surrounded by banana plantations. No one else seemed really interested in it though. I bet those people don't have web pages for their trips either. They are just not as cool as I am.

It was kind of cool passing a sign on the highway that said "Tropic of Capricorn". Here is a geekey trivia fact: if you stand on one of the tropics at exactly 12 noon, the sun will be exactly straight up in the sky. I think. It's been a while since Astro. In the tropics the sun was incredibly hot and bright. Even the moon was a lot brighter. There was enough light from a full moon to see in colour in the middle of the night.

We spent a load of time in Coral Bay. The big attraction here is of course, Coral. The highlight of the trip has to be the Ningaloo reef, where we spent a huge amount of time snorkeling. You can walk 10 feet into the water and be in the middle of hundreds of fish and great coral. We even tried SNUBA diving. It's kind of like SCUBA, but your air tank floats on a little raft on the surface. While in Coral Bay and Exmouth we did some incredible snorkeling. I've seen all sorts of fish, some sting rays, a sea turtle, and even a five foot long white tip reef shark. I tried to chase the shark, but it swam a lot faster than I could.

After spending a lot of time at Coral Bay we did the final leg of our trip up to Exmouth. I thought it was kind of funny that the highways never had bridges or culverts. The river and stream beds in this part of the country are almost always dry, so they just put the road through. Of course if it actually does rain, then you can't get very far. I guess it's a lot cheaper to put in a bunch of "flood plain" signs, instead of building bridges.

Exmouth was a nice place, but the heat was just too much. When the temperature gets above 45 in the shade I just want to hide in the water, or in an air conditioned room. Still, great snorkeling made it well worth the visit. I had an Aussie roommate who was there to fish, so we got to eat free fresh cod and tuna. He had a tuna that filled a 5 gallon pail, and he said that it was just a small fish. Quite different from fishing in the lakes back home. On another geeky note, Exmouth was the site of an old american navy base. All around the town there are fields of giant metal towers. The tallest ones are 400m. Aparently they are radio listening stations for the Indian Ocean. Has anyone ever heard of Echelon? I thought that this was kind of cool to see. Erin didn't seem very interested. Exmouth was also memorable beacuse we helped some Italian guys push their car out of the ditch, so they bought us huge amounts of free beer. Ah, free beer.

We found a really cheap return bus from Exmouth to Perth, so we spent a day and a half driving nearly 1400km back to perth a cramped little van. It was only $89aus which included 3 meals and a night's accommodation, so I guess I can't complain.

So that was our trip up north. If you want to read more about it, check out Erin's email. I've put a copy on the page, I've also added her old updates to the page. Here are a couple more pictures for you.

This a picture from the BBQ at Christmas. It just seems wrong without snow.

These three pictures were sent to us by Pamela and Linda, the two Irish girls we were hanging out with in Adelaide. The top picture is from Glenelg beach in Adelaide. The second picture is another from our big drinking night in Adelaide. The bottom picture is at the top of a hike in the Grampians mountain range.