Nothing to exciting

Cut some more grass and vacuumed over a hundred spiders from inside the house! It was very hard for me to do because I like spiders!

First day on the ranch

Just some minor jobs to be done, cut some grass, clean and vacuum a Suburban (which is a piece of junk) and drag a fence around the horse paddocks(fields) to spread out all the horse poo!

Waiting and Reading

I gave Michael a call as soon as I woke up and he said he could probably help me out and would call me back “mid-morning”. I checked out and locked my stuff up at the hostel and went to town for a bit. I bought a couple books, went back to the hostel about noon with still no call back. I just chilled out at the hostel in the reading room, and read about 90 pages of one of the books I bought! So about 4:30 with still no call, I decided to call him. I got his voice mail, left a message and two minutes later he called back! He asked if I could take the train to a certain stop, I said no problem and met him an hour later. Sally told me he was a lawyer and he seemed concerned about how much stuff I had so I figured he was picking me up in a little sports car. Well, he pulls up in this little rusty blue 5 door economy car!!! I get in the car and he talks on the phone for about 5 minutes before he even speaks to me, we say hi and chat about a minute and he’s back on the phone for another 5 minutes! This pretty much goes on for the whole ride there, he seemed like a nice guy though so that was good. There where three other french girls already at his place and we had some dinner and got to know one another. He had to move a bunch of stuff room  from my room but afterwards it was alright and I had a great sleep!

Chilling Out! or Stressing Out!!!

I spent the majority of the day trying to find out what I am going to do the next day because the YHA is all booked up and I didn’t want to go and stay in a backpackers again. I could have found another hostel but I didn’t want to, I was on a mission! I called quite a few different places on the HelpX site near Perth and all of them already had helpers. Some of the ones farther south had space but it would cost me between 60 to 80 dollars. I called a lady named Sally and she said she could use somebody but she and her family where headed out of town for a week or so. She was very nice and she made some calls for me and hooked me up with a name, Michael and number to call tomorrow. I thanked her very much and she put my mind at ease. 

Perth

Going to go and send off the postcards, print the blog and pictures today. That’s mine big planes today, and try and figure out what I’m going to do next. Wether it be get a job, go helpxing, or just catch the Indian Pacific train right across the country to sydney. I just don’t know!

Last Day on Rottnest

They have a luggage pickup at all accommodation spots on the island but I seen some stuff sit out there for the whole day without being picked up so I just looked after my own stuff and locked it up for the day. I tried to ride the bike and pull my bag behind and I could have done it but I just couldn’t sit on that seat anymore!!! I put in in the free bus trailer and just followed behind into the main settlement. It was just to hot to go golfing and the course had very little grass, was going to be quite expensive so I decided to go back up to Oliver Hill on the train and do the tunnel tour.   The train track up the hill was put there strictly for the building of the gun and was about 7 km’s long. The 9.2” gun is the last of it’s kind in Australia and it was very amazing all the hard work that went into the building of the gun and tunnels and never even was fired in battle. The tunnel tour was great and our guide Merv, was a very nice man. After the train ride down I had a couple hours before my ferry, so I went to the beach and relaxed for a bit. On the ferry back to the mainland we got to see a beautiful sunset over the island, a perfect ending to my island adventure. Caught the train back to the city and at the YHA, the room I was put in was terribly stinky so I asked the nice girl at reception to move me and she did. This room was much nicer and one of my Japanese roomies let me use his very fast internet for free!!! Nice.

Rottnest Island Day 2

The bike hire on the Island has over 1300 bikes and every day they must get a couple hundred people so it only makes sense to have 1 sometimes 2 staff helping the 40 plus people in line, just when I was there! It almost took a hour just to rent a bike! The island is over 11 km’s long and 4 km’s wide with 63 beaches and 20 bays!!!

The bike trek to cover the whole island was around 22km’s so I figured I should have no problems covering the whole island during the day. I sloped on some suncream and headed on my way. My plan was to start on the north side and head west and then do some snorkeling on the east side where I was told it was the best, Little Salmon Bay! I started out passing beautiful Longreach Bay, Geordie Bay and Litttle Armstrong Bay. Half way across the north there was a turn off to Oliver Hill Guns, so I road up the hill and glad I did. A massive 9.2 inch gun sits atop the hill with just amazing views of the whole island! They do a tunnel tour that I may decide to do if I don’t go golfing tomorrow. I continued on westward passing York, Stark and Rocky Bays and got to the turn off to go out to the west coast, and by now and bum was already very uncomfortable! I should have picked one a more comfy bike seat but it was a little to late for that. I said I was gonna do it all so I had to go out to the West End. I took a nice little break out at the west end with great views of Eagle and Fish Hook Bays. I put my Aussie towel over the narrow little bike seat and it helped a bit but not much! I started to head east past Wilson, Strickland and Salmon bays with million dollar views of the coast. I stopped for a much needed swim and snorkel at Salmon bay which was nice and went around the corner to Little Salmon bay for a rest and snorkel. The swells coming in were pretty rough and I went out anyway and got some nice pics and got stung by a jellyfish on my arm so that was enough of that for the day!!! By now I was walking up the hills cause I just couldn’t sit on that seat anymore, but I was only 3 km’s away from the hostel so it was alright. All in all it was a very exhausting day and I slept very well that night. 

Rottnest Island Day 1

Lenny’s flight was around noon so he took the 8:45 bus to the airport. We said good bye and then there was one!!! I had to catch the 9:45 ferry and caught the 9:00 train which made it to Fremantle at 9:30 so I just made it in time to the ferry! Next time I will look at the train timetable because I was stressing out thinking I was going to miss the ferry. The ferry ride took about 25 minutes and I made it to the island no problem. I get off the boat and go down the pier to take some pictures and leave me bag behind me and about 15 seconds later I hear this guy yell “Oh, my back”. I turn around and this man who had been walking backwards??? has tripped over my bag and is lying on the ground!!! He ended up getting up and I said “Sorry, for what it’s worth” and his wife said “He should be looking where he walks” I felt bad but it wasn’t my fault so I carried on my way and had a “Cut lunch” which are sandwiches in the shade under a tree. I had to wait an hour before I could check in so I just wandered around, got my key, then caught the shuttle bus to the Kingstown Barracks. The hostel bed looked very comfy so I lied down and ended having a nice little “nana nap”! When I awoke I walked back to town along the beach and got a sandwich from subway and sat on a bench over looking the ocean. I had some little marsupials called Quokka’s come and join me for supper and they are very tame and the little cheeky bugger jumped right up on the bench trying to eat my sub!!! I figure he had done this before and had somebody’s food tumble to the ground because mine almost did! You couldn’t get mad at them though cause they are so cute. I could see some action going on down by the beach so I headed down there and a man had just fed the pelicans and sting rays. This was the biggest sting ray I’ve ever seen! It must have been like five feet wide and he went right up the to the beach out of the water and under the walkway so I was able to take some great pics. I walked around the point to the lighthouse and got to watch a great sunset and then walked back to the hostel to charge my camera for a long day riding around island on a bike and update my blog. 

Lenny’s last day

We dropped the car off early in the morning and each bought 24 hours unlimited internet access so spent most the day just chilling. I stayed out of the sun for most the day to give my skin a little break. I didn’t know where I was going to stay the next night and I ended booking a ferry and a hostel for two night on “Rottenest Island, Perth’s Island Playground”. So I had a couple more days planed now and booked Perth City YHA for 3 nights when I get back. I had some time to glue my crocodile tooth I got from the croc farm in Wyndham to my kangaroo hat so I did and now my hat is even more awesome!!! After we go everything packed for our departure tomorrow we went down to the hostel bar for some $5 pints for his last night.

R.T. #4 Day 2 - Augusta to Tree top walk to Williams Bay to Perth

Had got on the road early and headed over to the “Valley of the Giants Tree Top Walk” and walk among the giant trees which was really neat and then did the “Ancient Empire Walk” with these massive trees that have hollow bottoms because of fire or ants and you could walk right through them! After a couple hours there we headed to “Williams Bay” to see “Greens Pool” where I went snorkeling among these massive stones in the water, no sharks this time!!! And “Elephant Cove” where the giant stones in the water resemble elephants and it was a very beautiful place. We started the long drive back and dropped Nicole off by nine and ended putting on about 1200 km’s. I am soooo finished driving anywhere for a while, someone else can do the driving for a couple months!!! All the dorm beds were booked so we got a double private room with an bathroom which was a really nice change to have some privacy and a more comfy bed.

Road trip #4 - Tree top walk/ Augusta

We reserved a full size Holden Commodore of similar, and when we got there the gave us a brand new Audi A4 with like 70 km’s on it!!! Sweet eh! Ended up paying only $93!!! for 48 hours. We were very pleased about this, especially Lenny cause it was a German car! We headed over to Armadale and picked up Nicole and drove down the South West coast down to the hostel in Augusta and went to the very nice ??? beach and laid in the sun and swam. It was a very nice hostel and had a free pool table so that was great.

Fremantle

The day before we read on the ferry terminal wall and it said it leaves at 8:45 so we were down there around 8:15 and the lady told us the time on the wall in wrong and they go at 9:45! Well, this did NOT make the german very happy and no story short we bought tickets for the 9:45 and they were pretty quick at taking down the wrong time on the wall after Lenny told them how to properly run a ferry service, hahaha! Anyway, we just walk back into the city and ate some very expensive maccas for brekky and headed back down. The boat ride was just over an hour and was about 90% Asian’s!!! Half way into the ride Lenny said the seats in front of the boat were free so we went up there and there was an Asian lady sitting in the middle of three seats so Len and I sat down on either side of her. Similar to our “Camel Man” experience, like ten of these Asian people, all armed with camera’s, started laughing and taking pictures of the three of us sitting there!!! So we each put our arm around the back of her seat and they got even more excited like we were movie stars or something! Too funny! Again, through all of this we didn’t get any pictures on our cameras because we were just too in awe I guess? Later on when I was just standing there some more Asian’s wanted there picture with me??? I don’t know why??? I would have said it was my awesome Kangaroo hat but I wasn’t wearing it at the time of this phenomenon!haha.

When we got to Fremantle we went to the visitor center, then decided to do the Fremantle prison tour that a couple people told Lenny was really cool. We bought our tickets for two tours, one was the life in prison tour or something, I forget. And the other was the great escapes tour. We had a half hour before our tour so we went to the “Fremantle Markets” which were nice and had amazing spring rolls and sushi. I Have never done a prison tour and it was very cool. We had a man named Jim for our tour guide who had worked in the prison for many years before it was closed down and he REALLY liked to yell at people who didn’t follow his instructions, especially the Asian’s!!! I got yelled a too for not standing behind the white line, my toes were on it! The great escapes tour was not as good cause we had a lady, who was very nice, with a soft monotone voice and she wasn’t a very good story teller! Afterward we caught the free bus down to south beach, but the wind was so strong it was like a sand storm so we didn’t stay to long. Lenny went back to the city on the train and I walked around Fremantle a bit longer and came across the “Little Creatures” brewery and bar right on the harbor. This was the most amazing bar I’ve ever seen, with the brewery built around the bar and restaurant. After I did the tourist thing walking through the brewery/bar, I had a pint for $9.50!!! the most expensive pint of beer I ever bought, and it was brewed right there??? It was Sunday evening and this place was absolutely packed with people!!! I kept walking along the harbor and came across “Cicerello’s”, supposedly the best fish and chips in WA but they were not so special. I caught the train back to the city and returned to the hostel.

Perth

I tried to have a little sleep in while in a comfy bed but after waking up at sunrise for the past month was unsuccessful, that and the dang hostel is right beside the train tracks so that didn’t help my cause either! Spent most of the morning just relaxing and in the afternoon went out for another city walk down to the harbor and decided we were going to take a ferry to Fremantle tomorrow morning. Back at the hostel we got the chance to do some much needed laundry and while we waited for it we jumped in the pool, which was nice and cold! The hostel has a very nice theatre with nice comfy chairs and ice cold aircon so it’s a nice place to relax too. We booked a car to go down south to the “Tree Top Walk” and were to pick up Nicole, a German girl we met in Adelaide who was just out side the city. 

R.T Day 26 - Perth / 10,700km’s total!!!

We made it to Perth safe and sound!!! Dropped off our van and the girl looked at it or like 2 minutes and said it was good and the windshield was covered, sweet!