An Epic Few Weeks!

G’day all,

Firstly I hope you all had a very merry Christmas and I hope you have wonderful New Years celebrations in the next few days. It has been less than two weeks since my last blog but so much has happened in the last two weeks, so consider this my Christmas present to you!

The day after my previous blog (16th December), I was up early to catch a bus out of Byron Bay to head to a place called ‘Spot X’ for Surf Camp!! We got to surf camp around midday and we were shown around the place by the stereotypical surfer ‘dude’. The way he walked, talked and looked was exactly what you would imagine when thinking of an Australian or American surfer. After our brief tour we had an excellent lunch and then the fun was to begin.

Following lunch we were told to go and get ready and then meet back outside. We had about a half an hour theory lesson where we were told about how to find the perfect wave and what to do if you got caught in a ‘rip’. We then headed to the beach where we were given an hour lesson on the beach of how to ride a wave, stand on the board and taught how to fall off the board. After the beach surf lesson we were finally allowed to enter the sea with our boards and battle with the waves. I’m sure you’ve all been into the sea and been battered by waves, but trying to get out to sea with waves not only crashing against you but against your board which is attached to your ankle means that it takes a lot of time and effort to get out to a suitable point to ride or attempt to ride a wave back into the beach. The first time I attempted to ride the wave I managed to stand on the board for about one second before losing my balance and falling off in dramatic fashion.

This continued for about 10 more attempts and about an hour into our time in the water I managed to stand on the board and ride a wave for about 10 seconds. I went out and tried again was successful another few times. However, instead of it coming naturally to me, after I had surfed a few waves I began thinking too much about what I was doing and I kept falling off. By the end of the 3 hour session, I was consistently standing on the board. I have to say that surfing was so much fun and being able to stand on a board and ride a wave is so satisfying but it is such hard work, so if you ever try it be prepared to be exhausted by the end of the session! After the surf lesson, we had a huge dinner and I had some drinks with some boys from Bristol who were on my bus and unfortunately all Arsenal fans, so as you can imagine there was a lot of football banter that night!

Standing on a board!

The majority of the next day was spent on a bus going from surf camp to Sydney. I got into Sydney at about 6pm, made some dinner, had a few drinks with some of the people in the hostel and then waited for my friend who is at Nottingham with me and was also studying in Australia to arrive. As soon as he arrived, we went to bed so that we could be up early the next day to go and have a walk around the city.

On the 18th December, we weren’t up as early as we planned to be but we still headed into the city centre at a decent hour. Our first stop was the famous Paddy’s Market where you go to get all your cheap souvenirs and your fake football shirts and clothing etc. It was an interesting experience and for a period of time I forgot I was in Australia with the amount of oriental people there was walking around the market but it is situated in the heart of China town Sydney, so I guess that was to be expected. After spending minimal money in the market, Shravan (my mate from Notts) and I headed for a rather more cultured experience of the Powerhouse Museum. The entry fee was only $5 and after seeing the museum, I did feel a slightly guilty for paying so little for a really awesome museum. There wasn’t any particular theme to the museum, there really was a bit of everything and it was all very interesting! After a few hours in the museum, we went and got some lunch walked around the city for a few hours before coming across the Sydney Aquarium. I personally love aquariums and so I was pretty excited about this and it didn’t disappoint. Obviously there were loads of tanks with all your usual fish that you would find at any aquarium but there was two sections of the aquarium where they had built an underpass under massive tanks one containing loads of different types of sharks, turtles and stingrays which was awesome and the other containing two huge dugongs amongst other fish!!! From the aquarium we headed back to our hostel, had a very satisfying Indian meal for dinner before chilling out in the hostel and then off to bed.

The following morning (19th December), we were up early and headed into the city. Our first stop was the incredible Sydney Opera House and the equally incredible Sydney Harbor Bridge. Our first view of both of these global icons was from the train station where we got off the train and the only way I can describe the site of them was jaw-dropping. We walked around the harbor for a while and from every angle the Opera house looks slightly different! To be honest, I think the bridge is a little underrated and I personally think it is more astonishing than the Opera House.

We went to the Botanical gardens situated right next to the opera house and all around the gardens you can see the opera house and the bridge and as I said before they look different from every angle. The Botanical Gardens were actually beautiful but it was over shadowed a week or so later by the one in Christchurch (Ill write about it later in the blog).

After a few hours of soaking up the atmosphere in the harbor we headed to the place of the first European settlement in Sydney a place called the Rocks. But before that I dragged Shravan into the Contemporary Art Gallery. I personally love modern art but not when I have someone asking me ‘how is that classified as art?’ every two minutes! We got the Rocks grabbed a bite to eat and then walked around. When you get to the Rocks the European influence is very obvious; the streets are narrow with cobbled paving and the buildings have a very European and Italian feel to them! We stumbled across a very cool market in the Rocks, unlike Paddy’s market everything at this market was authentic and hand made and stuff that you probably wouldn’t find anywhere else in the world! We killed a lot of time here before heading to Darlington Harbor for a ‘pre-Christmas’ fireworks display and if that was anything to go by, then I’m very jealous of anybody who is in Sydney for New Years eve!!

The following two days were rather more relaxed than the previous two. We met up with one of my mates from college, had lunch with him one day and dinner with him the other and walked around the city some more. We also went to the famous Manly Beach which was really cool but far too commercial for my liking and it was slightly overcast the day we were there which wasn’t great!

A lot of people have very mixed opinions about Sydney and I was pretty skeptical about it before I went there, but after 5days there I fell in love with the city. When I first got there I was pretty over whelmed with the hustle and bustle of being back in a big city but I soon felt at home there! However, there were far too many Indian and Asian people there which I hadn’t really encountered for the 6months prior to Sydney. I still have Melbourne to visit, so I’ll give you the verdict on the Melbourne or Sydney question in a few weeks time!

On the 22nd of December, exactly a month in to my travels, I left Australia to go to the butt of all Australian jokes, New Zealand! I was up really early to catch my flight and got on board the plane only for the plane to wait an hour on the ground to take off! Once again on a Qantas flight, the service was awesome but they screwed up my veggie meal and compensated for the screw up by giving me a business class meal! I got into Christchurch on the South Island of New Zealand and got on the bus from the airport to meet one of dad’s cousins (Bindi) who I would be staying with for a few days. I met her and we went for a little drive around the city and then just out of it to the fabulous mountain ranges and then to a nearby lake and at that point I realized that my trip to New Zealand was to be the most scenic two weeks of my life! It was so nice to sleep in my own room for a night and get some home cooked Indian food.

My first view of New Zealand

The next morning I woke up feeling very well rested and then headed into the city centre! I walked around for a bit, before I found a market. I walked around there for an hour or so before having an amazing meal at a vegetarian restaurant. From lunch I went to a museum and an art centre which were both pretty mediocre but then my day was made when I entered the Botanical Gardens. I’m not really into flowers or anything but these gardens were beautiful and I spent two hours there and took almost 100 pictures! I got home to another lovely Indian meal, I chilled out with Bindi and then got an early night for the start of my tour the next day.

The Botanical Gardens

The next morning I was up early for the start of a tour around some of the South Island. We set off from Christchurch and headed for a place called Franz Joseph. On our way, our first stop was to a Lord of The Rings filming site. It was a part from the second film when they were going to Helms Deep in preparation for the big battle and they were attacked by the people on horses. At the end of the scene Aragon falls of a cliff but survives! It was pretty cool because I actually recognized the set(as shown in the next picture)!

Lord of The RIngs site

We get to our hostel after a long but beautiful drive, freshen up and then go for dinner at the hostel restaurant and that was the moment when a week of stupid drinking began! It was Christmas Eve and the bar was packed so naturally we were all drinking a lot and with me being the youngest by some way in the group I was always encouraged to drink. That night there was a pool tournament in the bar which I decided to enter. It wasn’t your normal game of pool; they called it ‘Killer Pool’. I won’t bore you with the rules but basically I came third out of 22 people and as the top two didn’t have time to take the prize, I was given this $250 cannyoning trip in Queenstown for free! When the bar shut we were taken by one of the guys that worked there to see some glow worms. I’m sure you have all heard of them and probably have no idea what they are, I guess the best way to describe them is as if someone has put hundreds of tiny but very bright fairy lights deep into a bush.

A reflective Lake

On Christmas day, we were up early for Christmas breakfast and then by 11am we were drinking! I had bought a crate of 24 beers and my aim was to finish them off on Xmas day which I did with ease and it wasn’t until I was given two shots of vodka by random Polish guys that I felt wasted! Christmas day was very odd but I had a very good day with the people that I was with. We had a barbeque and a water fight on Christmas day and we were outside the whole day, how many of you can say you did that for Xmas ’09?! We went to bed at like 1am after a pretty good day.
The next morning, I was up early feeling a little hung over but I had to be up early to go for a hike on the Franz Joseph glacier! We got our hiking equipment and then headed to the glacier. Where we got dropped off it was about a 40minute walk to the glacier and the closer we got to it, the more spectacular it looked! We started with a difficult walk up on to the glacier and then we had to put our ‘cramp-ons’ on to give us grip on the ice. We walked around the glacier for 6hours in total and covered about 12km. The glacier was beautiful and because it was raining the whole time we were on it, it made the glacier look a very vibrant blue colour. We walked through some very narrow crevasses and climbed some steep ice stairs which our guide carved out for us as we walked around it. The walk on the glacier was amazing despite the poor weather but I just feel that when we were walking around on it, we were so cautious about how we were walking that we didn’t really have time to soak up and appreciate just what we were walking on! As soon as we got off the glacier, we got onto the bus and headed for an over night stop in a town called Makarora. We got to the town, had dinner and we ended up in the bar until 2am getting drunk for the third consecutive night! On the Glacier!

The next day we were up early and we departed the town to go to Queenstown, the adventure capital of the world. It was a long drive with some spectacular views and we stopped many times to have a look at the incredible scenery! We got to Queenstown, freshened up and went for dinner. We had some drinks at this place and we were all considering leaving until one of the barmaids picked up the microphone and sang the most amazing acoustic version of Alicia Key’s ‘falling’ and I kid you not, the whole place stopped what they were doing to listen to her. She carried on singing for about an hour going from Bob Marley to Eric Clapton to AC DC, she was amazing and as soon as she stopped the place emptied! I had a relatively early night of 1am so I could be well rested for what would become the most exhilarating experience of my life the following day!

On the 28th December, i woke up early even though I didn’t need to but I was just too excited to sleep I was sky diving from 15, 000 feet that day – the highest legal tandem sky dive in the world! We got to the sky dive centre, signed our lives away and then headed to the site of the skydive. I was so excited but I was made to wait about 2 hours watching other people land until it was my turn to go up! After two hours they called me in, got me prepared and told me how the jump was going to happen and then we were off in the plane. The plane was tiny and cramped but the whole way up I was excited and not nervous at all (my instructor told me I was the most relaxed person he had jumped with in months!) and I was happily looking out the window as the plane climbed higher and higher above the mountains! The first girl jumped out at 12,000 feet and that was pretty high but I went 3,000 feet higher. When my time came to jump, I got to the door took up the position I was told to and didn’t really know what to expect. My camera man was out of the plane but hanging onto the side of it, my instructor started a count down but instead of finishing it, he jumped on two instead of three!

We exited the plane and immeadiately did a spin and then he told me to spread my arms. It was an amazing feeling, you’re falling so fast through the air (about 200 km per hour) but you don’t have the chance to think about it. The force underneath you feels like when its really windy and you’re walking into the wind, so its pushing against you but you’re moving too quickly for it to stop you or blow you away. Then all of a sudden, the instructor opens the parachute and it feels like you’ve stopped but really you’ve just decelerated big time! The journey on the parachute goes quite quickly but the views you see while you’re parachuting down are incredible! You have snow capped mountains on one side, mountains with forests on the other and a massive lake between them! After the skydive I was buzzing the whole day and even doing my laundry at the hostel I was still buzzing! The sky dive was easily the most amazing thing I have ever done in my life!
The next day (29th December) was rather different to the previous one. I was up early for a day trip to a place called Milford Sounds in ‘Fiordland National Park’. I won’t go into detail because I’ve probably bored you enough with this long blog but it was beautiful. The dive there was unbelievably scenic and then when we got on the boat to cruise around Milford Sounds, it was amazing. The clouds were really low down and covering the mountains and in places, it looked as if the clouds were coming down the mountains like an avalanche in slow motion (see below)! On the cruise we saw loads of dolphins and seals and despite it being very windy, it was well worth the long drive there and back!

So there you have it guys, my longest and probably most exciting blog entry to date. There will probably only be two more blogs now because I’m home in just about 2 weeks now! Have a wonderful New Years and see you in 2010!

Mihir

Sun, Sea, Sand and...BEER!!

G’day all!

It’s only been like two weeks since I wrote the last blog but so much has happened over the past two weeks that I have a feeling that this is going to be a rather long blog entry!

Last time I left you, I was in Airlie beach, staying in a rather nice hostel and I had been drinking with some Irish guys from my Oz Experience bus! The following day I woke up after the best nights sleep I’ve had so far because I was alone in a dorm for a night meaning no people leaving the dorm at silly times waking me up! Most of the day was boring just sorting out laundry and stuff for my Whitsundays trip. However, in the afternoon I had a voucher for a free didgeridoo lesson which I thought I may as well use. It was so much fun and I’m glad I did it. I have to say though that it really is as hard to play as it looks! I managed to play it with ease but the breathing technique is so difficult and completely different from playing any wind instrument! After the lesson, I went for a well earned beer with some of the guys I met at the lesson and inevitably one beer turned into many! However, I had to call it a night fairly early as I had to be up early to get on board a boat which would become my home for the next three days!

The following morning (1st December) I was up early and got on the bus to the port to board the ‘Southern Cross’ which was a former racing sail boat. We were given some fruit when we got on and then we introduced ourselves to each other. After about an hour of being on the water, we turned off the engine and put up the sails (which was pretty hard work) and went for a sail for a few hours. As I mentioned earlier, this boat used to be a real racing boat, so once the sails were up one side of the boat would tilt upwards which is the side we would sit on. We got to our first destination and went snorkeling around the reef for just over an hour. This snorkeling experience was actually better than the one I had in the Cairns section of the Great Barrier Reef! The coral itself was beautiful but there was so many more fish here and I saw and swam with two sea turtles! As soon as we finished the snorkel, we were given a much needed lunch before sailing around more of the islands until we reached our evening stop off. We anchored for the night and were given a ‘snack ‘ of nachos and then an amazing Thai curry for dinner! We were pretty lucky that the girl working on board our boat loved cooking and was very good at it. After dinner, we cranked up the music, got out the beers and had a small party on board!

The next morning, we were up early largely due to the sun and how hot it got where we were sleeping but also because the skipper decided to turn on the engine of the boat at 6am! We had breakfast and then set off to go to what is often called the most beautiful beach in the world, White Haven beach. I have to say that the beach did not disappoint. We got there and first went to a lookout point over the beach and the colour of the water was so unbelievably clear and next to it was the whitest sand that I have ever seen! We went down from the lookout point onto the actual beach and it was more like walking on talcum powder than sand. The sand at White Haven Beach is 98% silica so it is extremely fine and pure making it incredibly soft and it felt so good to walk on. The water itself was so clear and there were stingrays swimming around with us (apparently there was sharks too but none of us saw any). We spent a fairly long time at White Haven and the only thing that ruined paradise was the amount of boats that got there at the same time we did, the beach was way too crowded to fully appreciate it!

We left the beach and got back on our boat to have lunch and then move on to another place to go snorkeling. Once again, this was an amazing snorkel experience because we saw a reef shark, which are harmless to humans but the sheer size of it and the way it swam next to us was a breath taking moment. Following these two amazing experiences, we got back on the boat and sailed to our evening stop, had dinner and then spent the evening drinking! We were up much later than the previous evening but eventually everyone retreated to bed so I had to sleep on my shelf. I say shelf because my bed was literally like a shelf on the wall, I was so close to the roof that everytime I turned over my arms and even my head sometimes would touch it, but that’s all part of living on a boat!

On our third and final day, we were up early again and we went for an early morning snorkel where we saw hundreds of different types of fish but the water was a little cold in the morning so we didn’t stay in there for too long! The rest of the day we spent sailing and the skipper gave me a chance to drive the boat for a pretty long period of time! We got back in the late afternoon and after freshening up and having a real shower (on the boat we were allowed only a 30second shower in cold water) I met up with the people on our boat for dinner and some drinks. I think that I got very lucky with the group that I had on the Whitsundays because everyone really got on with one another and everyone made the effort to talk to different people so it worked pretty well! Most of the people on my boat left early from dinner as we all had buses to catch the next day but I stayed on with a guy from my hostel for what was meant to be one pint but became 4jugs of beer instead!

The next morning I was up pretty early again because I had to catch a bus. It was pretty weird because for that whole day I felt like I was still on a boat and walking on land felt really strange! Anyway, the 4th December was a pretty boring day because it was spent on a 10hour bus journey from Airlie Beach to a place called Kroombit which is a compulsory stop for those on the Oz Expereince bus. It was a stop that I was pretty skeptical about too because it was a stay on a farm/cattle ranch where we had to do certain activities. However, I was to be proved wrong by Kroombit and I shouldn’t have made an assumption about it before I got there!

Everyone got to Kroombit feeling a little tired and jaded after this marathon bus journey so we were given an hour to chill out before we had to do anything. We were then served dinner where the non-vegies got a horrible looking meal that they all loved and I was given some good old tortellini! After dinner, we were taught how to ‘crack a whip’ which I managed to do pretty successfully and then everyone was given a chance to ride the mechanical bull they had there. As much as I would have loved to do this, I had to say no because of my back and neck injury! After the bull riding, some of the younger staff from the farm decided it was a good time to play drinking games. I was horrified by this not because I don’t enjoy drinking games but because I always seem to lose them (people at Nottingham will vouch for that). However, we played a game called ‘flip cup’ which involved downing a drink and then flipping a cup and hoping it will land the right way up and then the next person on your team can drink, it turned out that I was the hero twice and the team was chanting my name (well It was ‘Lennon’ because that’s what was on the back on my England shirt that night!). After this most people got stupidly drunk but I just headed off to bed and I’m glad I did!

The next morning (5th December) we were woken up at 5.30am by the owner of the farm revving his quad bike outside our rooms telling us that we were all ‘lazy and he had been awake for an hour already’. Luckily we were given breakfast straight away otherwise there would have been several angry people on the Oz Experience bus! After breakfast, we had some activities that were arranged for us including clay pigeon shooting with a shotgun which was awesome and then the very interesting activity of capturing and branding a goat. We were put into teams of three and put in an empty pen, one of our team members had to go into another pen which had about 100goats and shepheard it out of there. We then had to pick up the goat and place it on it’s side and then had to pretend to brand it with a branding rod which was NOT hot! Luckily for me, I had this crazy English rugby player in my team who ran straight into the pen with goats, picked one out and flipped it. All I had to do was ‘brand’ the goat while the girl in our group did nothing! Our time was by far the quickest out of all the groups but it would be wrong of me to take any credit for it! It was definitely thanks to Richie that we won. After this rather strange but fun experience, we headed off on another long bus journey to Rainbow Beach.

Once again I was feeling pretty tired after this long journey but luckily for me there was a familiar face waiting for me at my hostel in Rainbow Beach and she even made dinner for me! I met up with Ali, a mate I had made in Perth and considering it was the last time that I was going to see her in Australia we decided to make it an epic night and we both ended up getting pretty wasted and poor Ali had to get up early the next morning to catch a bus to another place!
The next day (6th December) I intended on having a lie in but everyone in my dorm left at 6.30am to go to Fraser Island and they made so much noise! The air conditioning was also on a timer and it had switched off for the day already so the room was baking and there was no chance I was getting back to sleep. I got up feeling a little worse for wear or ‘sensitive’ as some may call it and after a shower I went for breakfast with a guy I had met the previous night. I had a free day in Rainbow Beach that day, but there is absolutely nothing to do there, the town is just one street of over priced shops targeting the tourists like me who are only there to go to Fraser Island. I had a safety meeting in the afternoon about our trip to Fraser Island the following day and I met the 10 other people who I would be spending the next three days with. The safety meeting itself was extremely boring but the guy that owns the car rental company (I’ll explain about the cars in a minute) was hilarious, he was an extremely eccentric Aussie guy who had some classic lines which I have started saying now. I don’t really know how to describe this guy but he truly was one of a kind!

From the safety briefing, I went to a huge sand dune near the hostel. It was pretty odd because you could walk from one end of the dune to the other and at one end was the sea and at the other was a forest. We stayed here and watched yet another beautiful sunset before heading back to the hostel for a $5 dinner! I had dinner with two of the girls in my Fraser Island group who I ended up becoming really good friends with and hopefully when we’re back in the UK we’ll all meet up! After dinner I had a few beers and then hit the sack early because I had to be up early the next day.

Ok, before I describe the actual Fraser Island trip, let me tell you a bit about how the trip is meant to work. The day before you head off to Fraser Island which is the largest sand island (meaning that there is nothing but sand here, no mud etc yet vegetation still grows) in the world, you have this safety briefing where you are put into groups of 11. Everyone who has been to Fraser Island will tell you that how good or bad your experience is purely depends on the group you have because you do pretty much everything together and you have to work as a team because there is no tour guide with you. In my group, there were 9 girls, myself and one other guy but we seemed to be the youngest group of the 5 that were setting off the following day. In your group of 11, you’re given a big 4 wheel drive jeep and everything you’ll need for the trip – food, tents etc. The company give you an itinerary but it is up to you and the group whether or not you stick to it, but once on the island it is about you and your group!

So the next morning, we were up early and after a free breakfast of pancakes we were ready to go by about 7am but we didn’t actually leave until about 10am because we had to load up the car and then the drivers had to get taught how to use the car. As much as I love driving, I wasn’t allowed to drive because I’m not 21 so the insurance wouldn’t have covered me to drive on the island. Finally, we left Rainbow Beach and got on a ferry to Fraser Island. It didn’t take long for the 5 cars to separate (there were 4 other groups leaving at the same time as us) but eventually we ran into them (not literally because that would have been a disaster) again on the beach when a jeep full of Irish people had lost a wheel… It could only happen to the Irish! We felt bad for them for about 5minutes before we headed off to Eli Creek for some lunch and we soon learnt what being on a sand island meant. Sand gets everywhere and we were literally having SANDwiches for lunch! After a few meals there, you get used to the crunch of sand in whatever you’re eating!

After lunch we stopped off at a really cool ship wreck on the beach before heading to a place called Indian Head. This was a really cool lookout point at the top end of the island where you could see into the water and see stingrays, sharks and turtles swimming in the sea! We spent about half an hour here admiring the scenery before heading off to find our campsite and set up camp for the night. We got to the campsite and it was getting dark pretty quickly so we had to put up the tents quickly and get cooking asap. By the time we had dinner it was pitch black and the only light source we had was one torch between 11 of us! After dinner we started playing drinking games and a lot of the group got pretty drunk. We met an Irish guy from one of the other groups who started doing impressions of Merv (the guy that owned the cars) and he was hilarious! Most ofour group went to bed early (probably the smart decision) but four of us stayed up and went and sat on the beach under the stars for an hour or so.

The next morning, we were up really early because of the sun rising and how hot it got in the tents by about 5am! We had breakfast, packed up the campsite and headed towards Lake Mackenzie where we would spend the day. The drive to Lake Mackenzie was amazing, it was through really thick soft sand, something that most people struggled to get through but we had a Dutch girl in our group who was amazing at driving through the soft sand and got us through it with minimal problems. A lot of other people struggled with the drive and I know of some groups that never made it to Lake Mackenzie, which meant they missed out big time. I said earlier about how amazing White Haven Beach was but honestly, I think Lake Mackenzie was more astonishing. It was a lake high up on the island with a beach and the clearest and purest water I have ever swam in. The water is so pure that you can drink it with no dramas. We spent the whole day at Lake Mackenzie and to be honest, I could happily go there everyday for a week because it was so amazing!
We left Lake Mackenzie in the late afternoon and headed to our campsite for the night. The drive back was harder than the drive there and we did get stuck twice and we had to push the jeep out of the sand which was fun but hard work! We got to the campsite and made some dinner and then the drinking began. I bought a crate of 24beers before we got to Fraser Island and I vowed that I would not be taking any of the beers of the island which meant that I had to finish them all that night. I finished them with ease but then two Irish guys asked me to help them finish all this Vodka Lemonade they had bought and after a few of those I was wasted. I went and sat on the beach with the two English girls for a long time. I saw at least four shooting stars that night, it was really quite amazing!

We went to sleep at about 2.30am and by 5am I was awake again (still a little drunk) thanks to the sun. We made scrambled eggs for breakfast and then drove around the island for a few hours before getting back on the ferry home. I have to say, that as amazing and beautiful as the Whitsunday Islands were, my three days on Fraser island have been the best 3days of my travels so far. I think this was largely due to the amazing group of people that were with me and I’m hoping that we will all stay in touch with each other for a very long time! I have failed to mention some key details about Fraser Island including there were no showers for us so we spent three days covered in sand, there were no toilets at the campsites we stayed at so everything had to be done outside and there were wild dingos roaming the campsites at night looking for any food they could find! As disgusting/scary as you think that all is, Fraser Island is a MUST DO trip on the East coast of Australia!

When we got back to the hostel at Rainbow Beach, I went for the most satisfying shower I’ve ever had. I spent the rest of the afternoon with Anna and Jess (the two English girls) and then in the evening the whole group got together and we made dinner together which was pretty cool! After dinner, most of the group went to bed as they all had buses to catch early the next morning but I had a free day the next day so naturally I ended up at the hostel bar drinking with people from my room. The next day was a pretty boring day, I spent the morning with the Fraser crew before they all left and in the afternoon I did the fun tasks of laundry, facebooking etc. In the evening, there was a bush fire about 20km away from Rainbow Beach which had burnt down some power lines nearby meaning a power cut for most of Rainbow Beach. I spent the evening listening to music whilst lying under the stars. It’s little things like watching the sunset and seeing the stars every night that makes me love Australia so much!

The next morning (11th December) I was up pretty early to go on a short journey (short being 3hours) from Rainbow Beach to Noosa. I got to Noosa, had a shower and then went back into the town centre for a walk around. I decided to go for a walk in the National Park which was beautiful! I took the longest walk and I had been walking for almost 2hours when my worst nightmare occurred… I was walking on the footpath minding my own business when something moved about half a meter in front of me. I looked down to see a brown snake about 4ft long slithering right across my path. I swore so loudly that it scared the snake, the snake looked at me and was probably as scared of me as I was of it and it quickly slithered off. I stood for about 10minutes calming myself down and convincing myself to carry on. I eventually did continue with the walk, but I was walking incredibly quickly and not really taking any of the scenery in because I was so scared! I made it back to the town with no more snakes being spotted and I went straight to the pub for a beer to calm myself down. I stayed in town for a while and met up with Anna and Jess, who were also in Noosa, for a very tasty and cheap Mexican meal. We were joined by a Swedish guy who I had met in Cairns and been running into everywhere I had been since. After dinner, the Swedish guy and I went back to our hostel and the girls went to theirs and we ended up drinking with some crazy Aussie guys!

The next day (12th December), I was up early for a day that I was very excited about, a trip to Steve Irwin’s zoo – Australia zoo. I spent the day walking around with two Scottish girls that I had met in Rainbow Beach and I have to say the three of us were extremely disappointed by the zoo. It was just like any other zoo, there was nothing special about it apart from the pictures of Steve everywhere. We went to several shows and they were so bad, it seemed like a bunch of pretenders trying to be Steve Irwin. I saw loads of cool animals but they are animals that could be seen at any other zoo. I guess I just had such high expectations for the zoo and they disappointed big time! I would like to have seen what the zoo was like before Steve died, because I’m sure everything would have seemed a lot more authentic when he was around!
I’m currently in Byron Bay and tomorrow I head off to Surf Camp tomorrow for one night, so in my next blog installment (whenever that may be) I’m sure I’ll have an interesting story to tell about my surfing experiences!

Other than that, I’m home in a month now so I’m on the final straight of my trip which as you can imagine I’m not happy about! I hope all is well back home!

Mihir

Adventures on the East!

G’day all,


It’s time for my first blog outside of Western Australia. A quick word of warning though, I’m in an internet cafe with limited time and a lot to say and in addition to that, I’ve got a bad neck/back which I’ll get into later so I don’t know how good this blog will be, sorry!


So, when I last left you, I had just returned from an average road trip down south in WA, after that there wasn’t a lot to write home about of my last week in Perth apart from one day. On the 20th of November, I met up with a friend and we went to a ‘wildlife reserve’ where you’re given the opportunity to hold/cuddle a koala! As you can imagine, Alex (my friend I was going with) and I were pretty excited about this because of how cute Koalas look! We weren’t disappointed by the koala cuddling but the rest of the reserve was awful and I quickly forgot the amazing koala experience because of it. We got about 15minutes each to hold and at the same time feed a gorgeous little koala called Jackson. He was so cute and extremely soft, it was a little like holding a teddy bear or a new born baby, it was a truly amazing experience. However, what followed it was far from ‘amazing’. We walked around the rest of the park and quickly noticed what a bad condition the park was in, it seemed as if they only cared about the koalas and not about any of the other creatures there. Most of the cages or pens that the animals were kept in were filthy and many of the animals looked mal-nourished and some injured. To be honest, I was quite annoyed and pissed off (excuse my French) about this all and left the reserve pretty soon.


That evening, I took Dilip uncle, Ina aunty and Beni out for dinner to a lovely Thai restaurant just as a small toke of my appreciation for accommodating me for the past 5months or so! The next evening (my final night in Perth) I went with Dilip uncle and Ina aunty to one of their family friend’s house. It was a pretty good evening and for all those that care, I haven’t lost my touch at Mario Kart Wii!!! On the 22nd of November, I departed Perth with Alex for a city on the East called Cairns and that is where the real adventure begins…


On the 23rd of November, we landed in Cairns at 4am and walked out of the airport to feel 26degree heat, yes it was that hot at 4am and to the astonishing news that Spurs had just beaten Wigan 9-1 (thanks Chetan and Nihal)! We had to hang around the airport for 3hours waiting for our transfer to the hostel, I’m so glad Alex was there because I would have got so bored without her! When we got to the hostel, we were pretty exhausted and just wanted to rest but we were told our rooms weren’t ready yet, so we went and had some breakfast and sat by the pool for a few hours waiting for the first bus into town! We headed into town at about 9am and wondered around it, I have to say that I was pretty unimpressed by Cairns which the Aussies regard as one of their liveliest cities! After a few hours of aimlessly walking around town, we got some lunch and headed back to the hostel and waited for Alex’s friend Hester to join us (she was on a later flight from Adelaide). Our first night in Cairns was pretty low-key as we were all knackered and had to be up early the next morning. We went for a few drinks in town then a couple more back at the hostel before hitting the sack!


The following day, I was up early for a trip to the Great Barrier Reef. I found out in the moring that the three Swedish guys in my room were on the same trip as me, so at least I wouldn’t be on my own! We got to the port and onto our boat ‘Ocean Freedom’ and sailed about an hour out of Cairns to stop at a certain part of the reef. On that hour long journey, the scenery was stunning, but when we got to our stop, my jaw dropped. I can’t explain to you how many different shades of blue there were surrounding us and pictures really do not do justice to the beauty of the Great Barrier Reef. We went snorkeling for about an hour an a half and it was an incredible experience. I saw so many different fish and the actual coral is amazing! I kind of regretted not doing a scuba dive course and diving on the barrier reef, because that would have been one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done! I could have spent ages in the water (apart from the sound of my own breathing underwater was beginning to make me feel like Darth Vader) but we had to get out to go on a tour around the coral in a glass bottom boat. This little boat trip once again highlighted the beauty of the coral and we were given some background to how the coral was formed and its significance.


Despite these amazing experiences, the real ‘WOW’ moment was to come after lunch when we sailed to an island. We got about 50meters away from this island and the boat stopped. We looked out into the sea to see a tiny sand island probably about 15metres in diameter with nothing and nobody on it. We went on a small dingy to this island and I just sat there for an hour feeling the most relaxed I’ve ever felt! It was beautiful, no other word to describe it. On the way back to Cairns, I got destroyed at some Swedish card game that my room mates had taught me and I had a pretty funny hour an a half with them! I got back to the hostel, had a shower and waited for Alex and Hester to return from their diving course. When they got back, I made them dinner and we had a few drinks at the hostel before heading off to bed for a relatively early night.


The next morning (25th November) I was up early again to go on a tour into the rainforest just outside of Cairns. I was picked up at an un-Godly hour by our Rastafarian tour guide who turned out to be a very funny and friendly guy! Our first stop was at a tree called the ‘Cathedral Fig Tree’ and it has to be one of the strangest trees I have ever seen (Ill try and put a picture up but if not, have a look on my facebook pictures). From this tree we went on a small walk into the rainforest and as all of you probably know by now, I’m horrifically scared of snakes so the whole time I had my eyes wide open and my legs ready to sprint incase there was one slithering around near us! The rainforest itself, was pretty amazing, there are so many different types of trees and plants and they combine together to create some spectacular scenery. Other highlights of the day include stops at a volcanic lake, a huge hole in the ground and a few waterfalls. However, the most exciting moment of the trip was a visit to the waterfall where Peter Andre filmed his video for ‘Mysterious Girl’… I know there are some of you going on to youtube now to have a look at the video. As annoying as that song is now, at the time I know all of you reading this loved the song and I know the girls reading this probably loved Peter Andre’s 8pack and his curtains! That same waterfall is also where they film the Timotei Shampoo adverts where the girl emerges from the water and creates a rainbow effect with the swish of her hair, so being a proper tourist, I tried to re-create it myself! After this excitement, we got to the hostel where a couple of us would be spending the night while the others headed back to Cairns. The three of us who were staying went Platypus spotting and saw too before having dinner, some drinks and heading off to bed.


The following morning, we had a bit of a lie in, well it was a lie in compared to the silly times I had been getting up the previous few days! We had a big breakfast before starting our day of adventures. The day began with what was meant to be an 18km bike ride but it got cut short by about 9km because of me. After about 9km, there was a downhill section and I can't really remember what happened at all but the German girl behind me saw it all... She said I took the corner fine and was going down hill fine but then my back wheel hit something on the road she thinks it may have been a stone and I lost control of the bike and came off it. I hit my head so hard on the road that the helmet (not just the plastic outer casing but the hard foam too) actually broke on the impact. Luckily I didn't black out or anything but the girl said I was lucky to not have a head injury considering how hard I hit the ground. I escaped the accident with just cuts on my arms and elbow and I was taken back to the lodge to be patched up. They had to cut me out of my t-shirt because some of it was stuck in a cut. Once I had been patched up, I decided to soldier on and continue with the day thinking that the damage was only cuts and bruises.


We went for lunch and then headed to the depths of the rainforest to see some beautiful waterfalls, that you would never be able to find without a tour guide! Following this, we went canoeing but because of the cut on my elbow, I just sat in the canoe while our tour guide paddled the canoe by himself. We stopped off at a small stream where the water level dropped dramatically and we found a special rock that when mixed with water creates a paste which the aboriginal people use as a face paint. SO inevitably, we had some fun with these face paints before heading back to the hostel and then on the hour long journey back to Cairns. The whole time, I was feeling fine, just a little sore and when I got back to Cairns and the hostel I was staying at, I had a couple of drinks with my Swedish mates before heading to bed.


The next morning, I woke up and couldn’t get out of my bed because my neck and back were in so much pain. Eventually, I forced myself up and got ready to go into town to find a doctors and buy a new camera as mine was destroyed in the accident. Thankfully I had cancelled the white water rafting that I was scheduled to do that day, because there is no way I would have been able to do it! In the morning I saw one doctor who told me that I probably just had bad whiplash but he’ll refer me to another doctor in the afternoon. I killed a few hours in town before seeing this other doctor who scared the life out of me when he said there is a strong chance that I may have fractured my neck and he sent me for an X-ray. However, when I came back from the x-ray he had gone home and as I was leaving Cairns the following day, I would have to wait until Monday (today) to find out the extent of the damage. In the evening, I went out for dinner with my Swedish mates and then a couple of drinks to num the pain. We got back to the hostel and played some card games which I was much better at than the day on the boat!

(Im running out of internet time so I’m going to have to rush this final bit)…


On the 28th, I woke up in more pain but I was leaving Cairns to begin the journey down south on the East coast. I got onto the Oz experience bus and our first stop was at a beautiful section of rainforest which had a very calm and relaxing stream. From here, we went to a small town for breakfast and a briefing on how the Oz Experience Buses work. We drove for about an hour more until we got to our next stop a crocodile farm. I was sitting near the front of the bus and when we pulled up at the farm one of the staff from there got on a bus with a snake around his neck. He could immeadiately tell I was scared so he came right over to me and was about to put the snake into my lap before I swore at him not to! After this heart stopping experience, we went around the farm and the staff fed the crocodiles in front of us. They were crazy, they got into the croc cages and angered the crocs so that they would chase them around the cage! At the park, they also had dingos, kanagaroos and birds that we were allowed to feed and hold!


We left the crocodile farm and continued on our journey to Townsville. We picked up some more people from a place called mission beach and these guys were big football fans (although they supported Darlington) so we played a footballer naming game. They were astonished with how many footballers names I knew and I think they were a bit annoyed with the random European ones I was naming! Anyway, the journey passed quickly and we soon got to Townsville. I don’t really know how to describe this place but I’m just going to say, don’t go there!!!! The hostel was like a council estate and I carried round all my valuables with me, even to the bathroom!


The next morning I was up early again to get on the Oz Experience bus heading for Airlie Beach. We drove straight to Airlie Beach whilst playing some games on the buses. We got to Airlie Beach late afternoon and then in the evening, everyone on the bus arranged to meet up at a bar for dinner and some drinks. I was commended on my beer drinking ability by two Irish guys that were with us. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that my New Years resolution (starting when I return from Australia to the UK) is to stop binge drinking, meaning that I’ll have up to 3pints, but after that I’m not going to drink any more. The bar shut early and I went off with the Irish guys looking for a club, we walked into one but 5minutes later we were out of there again. Airlie Beach is meant to be one of the party hotspots in Australia but if that is true, I’m extremely disappointed! It was so over-priced and full of kids on ‘schoolies month’.


Today, I decided to get my back and neck sorted out seeing as I had a free day. I went to the doctors and she had a look at my x-ray. She said luckily the damage wasn’t too bad or too serious but it will cause me some discomfort over the next few months so just be careful with it! Basically, I hit the ground so hard coming off my bike that my neck and spine are now slightly out of line with eachother, but not too much to be a serious back injury!


Anyway, I have very limited time left and I want some dinner now! Sorry for how rushed the end of my blog is, but everything in Airlie Beach is over-priced including the internet! Tomorrow I get on a boat for 3days around the Whit Sunday islands which are home to some of the most beautiful beaches in the world!


I hope all is well, I’ll be back home before you know it!
Mihir

Exams are over, now the real fun begins!

G’day all!!

The last time I left you, I had just had a fairly alcohol filled weekend away to Rottnest Island and I had exams right around the corner. Since then a lot has happened so prepare yourselves for a pretty long blog entry!

On the 28th of October, I went into uni to get some work done considering I had an exam in 5days time. I had an extremely productive morning and then a much slower afternoon and I was then rescued when I met one of my friends in the library and he suggested going to the ‘Tav’ early (we were going there later for a study abroad leavers Barbie) for a drink or two! So Cameron and I began drinking at 4pm and then the others slowly came along and the drinking continued. The leavers do was really good, we got free good food (and for once the veggie and meat was cooked separately), we got to drink and we got to catch up with people before exams! I had a long chat with some of the study abroad staff and promised them that I would be back to visit UWA within the next 5years, so I better start saving for another trip to Australia!

The next ten or so days weren’t very exciting, they consisted of lots of revision and even more procrastination including visits to the travel agents to enquire about trips that I knew that I could not afford and gardening! I don’t like to say how I think exams went because I feel that whatever I say, I’ll just be tempting fate and so I’m just going to say that I think they went ok!

After my second and final exam on the 6th of November, I went to a travel agent in Northbridge (an area in Perth) which had been recommended to me by several friends. The travel agency specialises in backpacker trips around Australia and New Zealand, so I thought a visit there would be useful. There is so much to do in Australia and New Zealand, and before I went in, i had a huge list of possible things that I could do, but as soon as I started talking to Emily (the woman at the travel agency) everything changed! I ended up spending a very entertaining three hours there and I came out of it very deep into my overdraft but extremely excited about the two months I had ahead of me! I have a wonderful itinerary planned; you’re going to have to read my future blogs to find out exactly what I’ll be up to!

The next day, still buzzing from the prospects of my travels, I decided to enquire about a tour around the south west of Western Australia. I ended up finding a great deal that left in two days time, so I went ahead and booked it and that’s what the majority of this blog will be about! However, before I was to embark on this trip, I went with Ina aunty, Dilip uncle and Beni to go and see some Australian national plants that they were interested in buying called ‘Black Boy or (the politically correct term) Grass Trees’. Now this may not sound very exciting to you, but these trees have fascinated me since I arrived in Perth. They come in all different shapes and sizes but only grow 12mm a year, so as you can imagine, they are quite exclusive and pretty expensive, but definitely worth it!

The following day (9th November), I had to leave the house at 5.50am to get to the mini bus on time. I got there early, and the mini-bus arrived shortly after with our driver and tour guide for the next three days Shauna, way too wide awake for that time in the morning. However, we had to wait for almost an hour for two girls who were to become known as Team Germany for the obvious reason that they were from Germany! Anyway, the girls arrived and we departed down south. I was once again sitting in the front (as I was on the Monkey Mia trip) which meant I had to stay awake the whole time, but it turned out to be a wise decision with our driver being an incredibly interesting person!

After about an hour and a half of driving, we got to our first stop which was just for a toilet break and a chance to get some food and/or drink. However, the stop turned out to be a little more eventful for me. Shauna introduced us to the ‘Weet-Bix (the Aussie version of weetabix) challenge’ and the unlucky first victim was me. The challenge is to eat a Weet-Bix without any milk or any liquid on it, so just dry, as fast as you can. This may not sound particularly difficult to you, but believe me it’s bloody hard and pretty disgusting! You take one bite out of the weet-bix and your whole mouth just dries up and the weet-bix gets stuck to the inside of your cheeks, tongue and teeth making it impossible to chew and then swallow! It took me 3minutes and 7seconds to finish it, which i thought wasn’t bad until I heard the world record is 48seconds and then after the three days it turned out mine was the worst time out of the 12 of us on the trip! If you think it’s easy, I think you should try it, give me a bowl of warm milk and but three weet-bixs in it and I will devour it in under 90seconds but give me one weet-bix and no milk and it will take me over double the time!

After my abysmal effort at the weet-bix challenge, we headed to our next brief stop which was the Taurt Tree forest. Taurt wood, is extremely tough and very good for making tables etc, however, because of the usefulness of the wood, all of the forests apart from this one were cut down worldwide, meaning that this is the last remaining Taurt Tree forest in the world! After this stop, there was a stop at yet another ‘world exclusive’, the town of Busselton which is home to Busselton pier, the world’s longest wooden pier! Unfortunately, the pier was under-going some renovations so weren’t allowed to walk the full 1.8km pier, but the colour of the sea that the pier is located on was truly amazing!

The next stop was our stop for lunch where we stopped in the middle of nowhere at a place called Bush Shack Brewery. This brewery was tiny and I can’t imagine them making any money considering their location but it was home to some extremely interesting beer. These interesting beers consisted of Lemon flavoured beer, Cola flavoured beer, chocolate flavoured beer, cream soda flavoured beer and many more. I had a pint of each of the ones I mentioned apart from the chocolate one, and I have to say that they were all very tasty and pretty refreshing too! I especially liked the cola one even though I don’t like Coca Cola! A few pints later, we departed from here and headed off to some limestone caves. Being a geographer, you would expect me to be fascinated by these, but to be honest, the cave was a little disappointing and it was extremely humid in there!

The next stop was at yet another geographer’s paradise; it was at a place called Canal Rocks, which are metamorphic rocks that provide significant evidence that India and Australia were once joined to each other as part of the super continent ‘Pangaea’. These rocks were truly amazing, not really because of the rocks but because of the way the rough sea was crashing against them providing some true ‘Kodak moments’ (see below). Feeling energised from the sounds and visuals of waves crashing against these rocks, we headed off to a winery called the ‘Flying Fish Winery’. I’m no wine connoisseur but I have to say that these wines were nothing more than mediocre and the woman serving us told us nothing about the actual wines! When we got back onto the bus a little disappointed, our tour guide told us that this winery is one of the few that lets ‘backpacker’ tour groups in but she promised we would go to a much better on one the final day!

To get rid of the memories of our disappointing wine experience, we headed off to the Margret River Chocolate factory which had loads of free samples. I love my milk chocolate, but the white chocolate that they gave out here was to die for, it tasted even better than the milky bar white chocolate! I wish I had taken some of the free samples with me now! Feeling a little livelier now, we headed to Augusta where we would spend the night. We first went to the Lighthouse there which marks the point where the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean meet. The plan was to watch the sunset there but unfortunately the clouds ruined it, so we left and went to the hostel!
When we got to the hostel, we had to make dinner and I was allocated the task of making mash potato. I had never made mash potato before that night but I had an idea of how to make it and it turned out to be ‘the smoothest mash the group had ever eaten’ – their words, not mine! So don’t worry boys in the flat, my cooking skills are still up to par! After dinner, we sat around having a few drinks and I then had a very interesting conversation with one of the guys on our bus who was a detective! I’ve always loved watching police shows such as The Bill and so I asked him all these questions which he has probably been asked a million times, but it was entertaining for me!

The following morning (10th November) we had an early start leaving the hostel at 6.30am. Our day began with a 2hour drive to our first stop and I spent that journey trying to keep myself awake to give the driver some company whilst everyone else slept. Our first stop that day was to see and climb a Bicentennial Tree. These can grow up to 70metres in height and before the days of helicopters, they were used to spot bush fires. At this particular tree, there was the opportunity to climb to the top of it which was 60metres high up. I was so up for climbing to the top until I actually got to the tree. I think all of us were shocked by the way we had to climb the tree and most of the group decided against attempting to climb it, but I went ahead to see how far up I could go. The climbing mechanism was literally a ladder of giant nails that stuck out of the tree and spiralled upwards (see the picture below). There was a wire net on one side but nothing to save you if you lost your footing and slipped through the rungs. I climbed to the first platform (25metres up) with relative ease and I wasn’t really scared. I stopped there to take some photos and then I decided to go further. I must have climbed up about 5metres further when I realised how high off the ground I was and I was still only half way to the top. At this point, I gave up and climbed back down the tree. Most people did the same thing although two of our group did make it to the top and said it was an amazing view but coming down was extremely scary!

From the Bicentennial Tree, we stopped in two small towns for some lunch before heading to see some more tall trees in the Valley of the Giants. The Valley of the Giants is home to the famous Red Tingle trees which are also found in Yosemite National Park on the West coast of the USA. These trees are famous not only for their towering height but also for their strange holes in the base of each tree, with some of these holes being large enough to drive cars through (see below). The Valley of the Giants also has the world’s highest tree top walk which peaks at 45metres at which point you are up in the canopy layer of the trees. The views were spectacular from up here and it makes you appreciate how tall these trees are!

We left the forests and headed for the coast line to see some more amazing landscapes. The first stop on the coast line was to a place called Elephant Cove. Elephant Cove, is a small cove where there are huge metamorphic rocks at the seas edge which strongly resemble a herd of elephants walking into the sea, these rocks were quite amazing! (see below) Next door to elephant cove was a beautiful enclose beach (I guess it is another cove) called Green pool. The colour of the water was beautiful and it was so peaceful in this section, the perfect place for a swim!

After spending about an hour in this relaxed environment we went to ‘The Gap’ which was the last part of Australia to be joined with Antarctica. The way the rocks have been eroded by the sea was pretty cool, the sea had formed a bridge of rocks from one cliff to the other. The sea was once again quite rough so the waves were crashing against the rocks with brute force. From the Gap, we headed towards the town of Albany which is the second city of Western Australia, where we would spend the night. We got to Albany and headed straight for the pub, which was an uncomfortable experience. When we walked in, everyone stopped what they were doing and turned around to look at these tourists walking into their local. The pub was full of local builders in there for happy hour but they weren’t too happy to see us. It was just like when someone unexpected walks into the Queen Vic in Eastenders! After a pint, we decided to leave and go to the bottle shop and just drink at the hostel instead, a wise decision I think!

On the final day of our tour, we had another early start, and at this point I regretted staying up until a stupid hour to hustle some French people at Poker! We left the hostel and headed to the coast again to a spot called ‘The Blow Hole’. This was a coastline of metamorphic rock, but there were certain cracks that you could sit on and when a wave crashed against the coastline it would release pressure and air sending a weird sensation through your body. This was fun for a few minutes but it got a little annoying after a while. However, while we were sitting there we saw whales swimming in the distance which was very exciting!

We left the Blow Hole after about half an hour and headed to a place called Castle Rock. To get up to Castle Rock, we had to hike for an hour and a half through the bush on a mountain. It was exhausting work and despite the clouds being low, the view was incredible, which made the walk well worth it! We spent about 20minutes up at the top before coming back down and heading to Castle Rock Winery which was considerably better than the previous winery we had been to! We had some lunch before heading home on a long but very entertaining journey. Once again, I had to stay awake the whole journey but I was talking to Shauna about travelling and then about our passion for Africa and African people. The last leg of the journey was slightly less cultured but equally entertaining, when we played ‘guess that theme tune’ on the bus. The theme tunes Shauna played ranged from ‘saved by the bell’ to ‘Jaws’ and I was surprisingly good at guessing them!

After an awesome few days down south in Western Australia, I had two days in Perth before going south again to Margret River for one night. Those two days were a complete contrast of each other. Both of them were meant to be productive but the Thursday (12th November), I spend more time drinking first in the pub with a friend and then in the pub with Rooshabh, Dilip Uncle and Ina aunty than I did getting things done. The next day however was far more productive; I bought my backpack for my travels and I sorted out and posted the things I had to send back home such as books and excessive clothes. They’re being shipped back, so i reckon I’ll get home before they do!

On Saturday (14th November), I had yet another early start for a two day, one night trip to Margret River but this time I was joined by one of my friends. Unfortunately we were given a tour guide who was on his maiden tour, and he turned out to be a pretty poor tour guide compared to the previous ones I’ve had! Our first stop was at a reptile park, which I was pretty unimpressed about considering my horrific phobia of snakes! After about 10minutes of walking towards the doors and then deciding against going in, I went in and saw lots of snakes, a crocodile and a couple of lizards. I was feeling quite comfortable and calm in there until they took a snake out of its glass cage at that point, I was out of the building faster than Usain Bolt off the blocks! After this heart-racing experience, we went to our second stop which was a bird sanctuary. This sanctuary had hundreds of different types of birds within it of all different colours and sizes. We had lunch here and then went to an amazing winery called Xanadou Winery. There were quite a few wines there that i could quite happily drink with a meal! Our final stop of the day was some limestone caves, after the last caves I went to a few days earlier, I wasn’t too keen on it but these caves were a lot better and a lot more fun with us having to wear helmets and carry torches around.

After the caves we headed to our hostel and all of us on the trip were pretty disappointed by the tour so far, largely due to our tour guide knowing nothing about any of the places we had been to and his lack of communication with the group. We had dinner at the hostel and then we began drinking. I ended up getting ridiculously drunk because after about 9 bottles of beer, the Swiss people on our bus decided to bring out some Red Label Jonny Walker and forced me to have some with them! After a few glasses of whisky and coke, I thought it would be a good idea to get a few beers and sit in the ‘Shed’ which was basically an outdoor shack on the beach. My intention was to finish the beers and then head to bed, however I finished the beers and fell asleep there. I woke up to the sound of rustling in the bushes nearby and I opened my eyes to see the sun was up! I got up, got some water and went to bed at 4.45am!

I woke up a few hours later, still a little drunk and worse for wear which probably wasn’t a good idea considering we were going to be on a boat for three hours to go whale watching! I had some breakfast and we then headed to the beach where we would get on the boat for this whale watching experience. We got on the boat and luckily for myself and several others, the sea was pretty calm! After about 5minutes on the boat, we were joined on our journey by two dolphins, but they quickly got bored of us and left. For the next two hours or so, we saw loads of whales at least 20, but all they would do is come up to the surface and show their humps (they were humpback whales) and go back under the water. They were also all pretty far away from the boat, so everyone was a little disappointed when we were told that it was time to head back.

On the way back, we saw a whale in the distance ‘breaching’ which is when they propel themselves out the water and then land back in the water creating a huge splash. We headed towards this whale, and when we stopped the boat near it, the whale came right up to our boat and brought two of his friends with him. For about half an hour the whales circled our boat coming up to the surface and showing us how big they actually are. Everyone was running around the boat looking to get the best picture possible. I have to say that this half an hour, was a truly incredible experience and it made the whole trip so worth it. Whales are amazing creatures and the size of them is astonishing! I highly recommend whale watching to anyone who is interested in them! After the whale watching experience, we had some lunch on the beach before heading home via the chocolate factory.

Although the second of my two trips down to the southern region of Western Australia was pretty disappointing apart from the whale watching experience, the southern region of WA, is easily one of the most beautiful regions of the world that I’ve seen!

I’m now in my final few days in Western Australia and I intend to have a relatively low-key few days before I head over to the East for an action-packed 8weeks of travelling! There are lots of you asking when I’ll be home, I’ll leave the date as a surprise but as much as I would love to stay in Australia for much longer, I’ll be home early in 2010! This maybe my last blog for a while as I’m not sure how often I’ll get access to a computer to write blogs! If you don’t hear from me much over the next 8weeks, don’t panic, I’ve probably just been extremely busy. If you hear about me on the News, then you should be worried!

I’ll try and be in touch as often as possible but for now, it’s off to the East coast!
Mihir

Wine, Beer, Diwali Show, Rottnest Island and the end of term at UWA

G’day all,


Sorry for the long gap between my last blog and this one, but I’ve been pretty busy recently with assignment deadlines.


It’s been just over a month since I last updated my blog, so as you can imagine quite a lot has happened. However, I won’t bore you with my monotonous day-to-day routine of going into uni for lectures and hours in the library, in attempt to finish off these never ending assignments, and then coming home for a few beers in front of the TV before starting the cycle again the next day and instead I shall focus on the more interesting parts of this past month.


As all the regular followers of my blogs know that I’ve been drinking a lot of beer whilst out in Australia and not really embracing the ‘amazing’ wines of Western Australia, I thought it was time to put a change to that and ‘Spring in the Valley’ on the 10th October was the perfect opportunity to do so. Over that weekend, most of the wineries in the Swan Valley region just outside of Perth open up to the public (not for free) for a mini festival in the wineries. Our day started off early, leaving the house at 8.45am to meet Beni’s friends at the train station. We got to the Horton winery by about 10.30am. The tickets we bought include 6free wine tastings or one full glass of wine and by 11 o’clock we had all used up our vouchers on the wine tasting and it was time to by some bottles of wine. From 11am to about 4pm we went through 11 bottles of wine between 5 of us plus a few beers each. From what I remember, I quite enjoyed drinking wine that day and I’m sure I’ll be drinking wine more often from now on. Apart from the wine drinking, there was a free meal included and some live entertainment from some Australian bands that I had never heard of but they seemed to be extremely popular (The Hoodoo Gurus and Bob Evans). Apart from the occasional rain shower, I really enjoyed the day out!


After Spring in the Valley, we went into the city for a meal which I ordered a Pizza but I can’t (and nor can the others) remember much other than ordering the food. We had another bottle of wine and after that we headed in our separate directions. Beni and I got home by about 9pm and I was in bed just after 10 on a Saturday night!


The following day I was up surprisingly early and not hung over for a breakfast of chai paruta (that is probably the wrong spelling but I’m sure the Indians reading this will understand what I mean). I spent most of the day getting some work done and helping out around the house before we went out in the evening. We went for a meal at a gourmet burger restaurant called ‘Jus Burgers’ and I have to say that it was the best vegetarian burger I have ever had and I will definitely be heading back there before I leave Perth! After this meal we headed into the city centre for the ‘Festival of Lights’ show which was basically meant to be a Diwali show but because they wanted to be multicultural they didn’t call it a Diwali show. The show was outside and it was freezing that night and I have to say that the show started off terribly and we were ready to leave after about 20minutes. The show started with an Aboriginal war dance and was then followed by a very boring Scottish dance which was preceded by half an hour of a man singing Budgens and at this point anyone that was not Indian left.


However, I have to stay that the show dramatically improved with an amazing Chinese dance and some form of Brazilian Martial Arts performance. These were followed by a very funny but very good Ukrainian dance and then the generic Bollywood dances that everyone has seen hundreds of times before. The show was ended with an amazing fireworks display which lit up the Perth city skyline. Overall the event was very good especially considering that it was free to watch and if the show is put on next year, I highly recommend it to anybody who is in Perth at the time!


Nothing out of the ordinary happened the next few days, just more hours in the library making sure that I finished assignments before I headed off for a weekend away with some friends to Rottnest Island.


Friday 16th October came by which meant another weekend away with some friends. We went to a place called Rottnest Island which is just a 30minute ferry ride away from Perth. The trip started off very eventfully (a bit like the Monkey Mia trip) with us not being able to find the port where the ferry was departing from and as a result almost missing it! Thankfully one of our friends who is an Aussie came to the rescue and picked us up off the side of the road and got us to the ferry with literally seconds to spare. After this experience we got to Rottnest (Rotto) and we went and collected our bicycles and waited for some other friends who were coming on the next ferry. Once they arrived we cycled over to our hostel which used to be Army Barracks so as you can imagine they were extremely basic but the only time we would be spending there would be when we were sleeping.


Once we had settled in, we left the hostel and cycled to the bottle shop and picked up some alcohol and then headed to the pier where we thought we would watch the sunset but unfortunately we were on the wrong side of the island to see it. We sat on the pier drinking and talking and once again i found myself having an intense conversation this time not about Africa but about corporations such as Nike, Starbucks etc and their influence in the process of globalisation and their heavy exploitation of the third world! It was a pretty interesting conversation considering I was having it with an American girl who pretty much hated all of the American multi-national companies.


After the sun had set, we went for a dinner of fish and chips, well just chips for me and then continued our drinking before heading to one of the two bars on the island. It was a pretty cool bar which looked out onto the beach but by this point we were all slightly too intoxicated to care about the view. We left the bar at closing time to find that some of our bikes had been stolen so what was meant to be a 5minute bike ride back home became an hour long walk to our hostel! Most of the people went to bed but three of us stayed up and sat outside looking at the stars and talking. Honestly, I think I could quite happily move to Australia just to watch a beautiful sunset every night and then sit under the stars; it’s an experience that you can never get bored of.


The next day (17th October), Diwali day, we went and got breakfast and then planned out our day. The island itself is very small only 8km across so realistically you could probably cycle around the whole island in a day and that was what our aim was. Before we were to actually do anything, we had to get some more bicycles to replace the stolen ones and because this happens all the time and there is no way of smuggling bikes of the island the hire company gave us some more without charging us for them! We started cycling and at every nice beach we would stop and spend an hour or so just relaxing and swimming in the sea before getting back on our bikes and heading to the next one. We got quite far around the island and the only thing that stopped us completing the whole island was the 33degree heat and the hundreds of flies that would fly into your face whilst cycling.


At about 5pm we decided to head back to the hostel, freshen up and then go to the shop and get some food so that we could embrace the Aussie culture of doing a Barbie (barbeque) at any point possible. Luckily for once I wasn’t the only vegetarian so we ended up having two separate Barbies, one for the herbivores and another for the carnivores. By the end of the Barbie, everyone was pretty drunk apart from me because I felt I shouldn’t drink excessive amounts seeing as it was Diwali and we headed off to a karaoke bar. We got to the bar and it was like being at Butlins because the place was just full of thirty year old trashy Aussies who were completely hammered and were singing very very badly. Luckily for me, there was a TV on in the bar that was showing the Liverpool Sunderland game so I got to see Darren Bent’s/the beach ball’s goal!


After this cringe-worthy but amusing experience we went back to the bar which we were at the previous night and had a few more drinks before going back to the hostel and sitting outside listening to rowdy drunk Australian and Irish people (the Irish really are everywhere) shouting and arguing with the security. I always find it funny when security come and tell drunk people to keep the noise down but they end up making more noise by arguing with them than the drunk people were originally making!


On the Sunday, we had breakfast and then went back to our favourite beach from the previous day for a few hours before we had to catch the ferry home. Within five minutes of being home, Dilip Uncle asked me to go to the local Marina with him for a drink or two; I guess we were starting off the New Year as we meant to go on!


The weekend away was really good fun and I’m glad I went despite having so many deadlines the following week! The island itself was beautiful and because the weather was so good and the people I was with were always up for a laugh it made it a weekend to remember. I also learnt that I still love cycling and that I’m fitter than I thought I would be considering how little sports I play these days but my knees are weaker than ever and struggled every time there was a slight incline to cycle up so perhaps it is time to call it a day on all sports!


This past week, not a lot has happened, on Tuesday night we went out for a nice Thai meal with Dilip Uncle’s cousins who have come from England. From the Thai restaurant we went to have dessert at the place where Beni works and I have to say that despite their price, the desserts were amazing! I ordered a Frangelico Ice Cream (Keval would love it) with chocolate mousse.


I said in the previous paragraph that not a lot happened this past week, but having said that, the end of this past week has also meant the end of my time as a UWA student. I still have one assignment and two exams to take but no more lectures or tutorials anymore at UWA! Honestly, I’m a little sad to be leaving UWA. I love the University of Nottingham, but i feel more attached to UWA in just one semester than I do to Nottingham after a year there. I guess it is the same feelings i have about Brampton and Habs and more or less for the same sort of reasons. At a university like Nottingham or a school like Habs, you’re just another student but at a college like Brampton or a university such as UWA, you feel like part of the family. The lecturers at UWA know most people’s names which is something that would never happen in Nottingham and if they see you walking around campus they will stop and talk to you as if they’re a friend of yours.

My love for UWA was highlighted yesterday at the end of term party on campus which was actually really good (I’ll describe it in the next paragraph). I was just walking around the area and someone tapped me on the shoulder and said hello to me. Honestly, I couldn’t remember this guy but it turns out that I spoke to him in my orientation week and although I hadn’t seen him since then he still remembered my name and that I was a study abroad student and we had a good 5minute conversation. After I stopped talking to him a girl that I had met in the first few weeks of uni stopped to talk to me as well and ask me whether I had enjoyed my time at UWA. Although these are just everyday gestures, if people came to talk to you randomly in London or Nottingham i guess most of us would wonder what they want from us!


The summer party on campus was really good. The weather was beautiful and everyone was in good spirits. Firstly, I went to the bar to find out that they serve Vodka, lemonade and lime out of a can which is an extremely clever idea that should be brought to England! They had live music form a few low-key bands and one band in particular stood out for me. They were called Brownes and their musical instruments consisted of a keyboard, double bass, a trombone, a trumpet and drums but yet from these instruments they made hip hop music and had a very good rapper as part of the group as well! However, the highlight of my short time at the summer party was meeting a Zimbabwean guy who was wearing a Spurs shirt with Ginola on the back. He was so excited that I was a Spurs fan, and he asked me to teach him a few chants so he could sing them to his mates that support Arsenal! He took down my details and made me promise him that if he ever came to England that I would take him to a Spurs match! It was a pretty good day but I had to leave early as we (Dilip uncle, Ina aunty, their friends and I) were doing a Barbie on the beach in the evening.


I’m guessing the question on most of your minds is: Have I enjoyed my time at UWA and was the study abroad period worth it?


The answer is a most definitely. I’ve loved it here and regardless of what mark I come out uni with because of it (I lose 10% of whatever I get out here when I go back to Nottingham), I don’t regret it for one second. I’ve learnt so much and have met some fantastic people who I hopefully will stay in touch with and meet up with whenever I can! If anyone is offered the opportunity to study or work abroad, I couldn’t recommend it highly enough!



However, now that the studying is almost over, it means that the real fun of travelling begins very soon, so look forward to my blogs of my travels!


I hope all is well back home and Sal Mubarak to you all!
Mihir

Assignments, beer, dolphins, kangaroos, sharks, shooting stars.. It can only all happen in Australia!

G’day all,

After two intense days at uni consisting of 8hours in the library and two heated debates in separate history tutorials (one about Gandhi and the other about Idi Amin), I felt that the best way to wind down other than having a few beers is to write an update to my blog. I’ve just realised that I haven’t posted a blog about my ‘adventures’ for over 3weeks so this one might be fairly long, sorry!

The day after the previous blog entry (30th August) I had been at home all morning working and I think Dilip uncle and Ina aunty were a bit bored so they suggested going for a drink at the local marina. We went for what was meant to be just one drink but it ended up being 5pints on a Sunday afternoon! After this Sunday session we went out for a very average Indian meal in the evening and then I got a relatively early night.

I won’t bore you with the details of the next few days, because they just consisted of the usual routine of going to uni and my new favourite place, the library!!! Over the past 6weeks, I’ve spent so much time in the library, it’s becoming like a second home to me. However, apparently hours in the library wasn’t so good for my health because I began to get pretty ill and I was struggling to be fit (I make it sound like a football match) for my mid-semester exam on Friday (4th September). I thought the exam went awfully because it was so hard and it didn’t help that I was ill, but I got the results this week and I did much better than I thought! The day after my exam i was feeling pretty terrible so I went to the doctor and was told I had a chest and ear infection and could have got out of the exam the previous day had I seen the doctor before hand, that will teach me not to try and be a soldier all the time! Anyway, this meant I was on antibiotics (again) and that I couldn’t go on my Geography field trip, what a shame... Or not!

I spent most of the next week (it was our reading week) trying to shake off the chest infection while getting work done at the same time. By Thursday (10th September), I was sick of being in the house so being asked to go on an excursion to a place called Rockingham by a few mates seemed like the perfect remedy! Unfortunately, the day turned out to be epically bad... Rockingham is one of the worst places I’ve ever been to, don’t be fooled by the cool name, it’s Bogan (the Australian equivalent of chavs) central and there were people on the bus drunk by 11am! There was a reason we went to Rockingham, it was to see penguins with Mohicans. I’m sure you’re all wondering what on Earth a penguin with a Mohican is and I wish I could tell you but they decided to extend the penguin breeding season by a few days meaning we went all the way to Rockingham and couldn’t even go to Penguin Island!

So after this disappointment, we headed out of Rockingham and back to Perth city centre to try and find something to do. The weather in Perth was extremely miserable and we quickly discovered that there’s nothing to do in Perth when the sun isn’t shining. We ended up sitting in a travel agency for an hour and a half and the three of us came out extremely depressed realising how little time and money we have to travel considering how much there is to do in this amazing country!

I felt that I had had such an unproductive day so before heading home I decided to go for a haircut because Beni and Ina aunty had been pestering me to get it cut pretty much since I got to Australia. I should have known that it wasn’t the right day to get my haircut considering what bad luck I was having but once again I decided to be a soldier and it backfired on me, big time! I went into the hairdressers with hair reaching my shoulders (yes, it had got that long) and I came out with hair that barely reached my ears all because the woman was more interested in my “lovely London” accent than cutting my hair.

On the following Saturday (12th September), I went with Ina aunty to one of her friend’s house. The house was amazing, maybe a little too big for my liking but it had an indoor swimming pool, gym, sauna, pool table, table-tennis table and a 60inch TV screen in the TV room! We watched the film ‘Million Dollar Baby’, I saw it a few years back on the aeroplane either to Canada or USA but I had forgotten how good it was! After the film, I managed to watch my first bit of life football of the season, but unfortunately it was watching two teams that I really don’t like, well actually I hate one of them (Arsenal) and the other I don’t regard as a football team anymore, they’re more of a fantasy football team (Man City). Having said the match was incredible and it’s always good to watch Arsenal get beaten regardless of who is beating them!

The next week at uni wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, just lectures, tutorials and hours in the library including a 5hour stint on Tuesday (15th September)! The only thing that kept me going all week was knowing that I was going away with some mates for the weekend!

Finally Friday (18th September) arrived which meant my road trip up North to a place called Monkey Mia. I had a very early start to my day as I had to be in Perth city centre by 6.30am which meant leaving the house at 5.40am! I got to Perth only to find out that the bus wouldn’t actually leave until 7.30am, which meant I could have had an hour or so more sleep!
An hour later, we met our driver (Murray) who was a really nice guy and we embarked on our journey. There was 11people on our mini bus plus the driver. Our group made up 6 (5 girls and myself) of the 11 and in addition to the 6 of us there were four Japanese people and one Italian woman. We drove for about an hour and a half before stopping at a petrol station for a chance to get some snacks and a quick toilet break. This doesn’t sound very exciting at all but when we got back on the minibus, it wouldn’t start so we had to push start it. That was a great way to start the trip and was a little exciting but would prove to be very annoying the next time(s) it happened!

After about an hour of driving we made it to our first real stop, the Pinnacles. The best way to describe the Pinnacles is a clustering of rocks randomly sticking out of the ground. Similarly to Stone Henge, nobody is actually sure how these rocks got there but there are many Aboriginal stories of how they got there, including that they are actually people who have been turned into stone. I doubt very much that that is the case but what I have no doubt about is how beautiful the Pinnacles are and that the mystery of how they got there makes the place all the more interesting!

After half an hour of climbing on rocks and taking silly pictures, I guess that was bound to happen going away with5 girls, we got back onto the bus to head to our next stop. Less than 15minutes into our journey, the bus broke down again so we had to push start it again! This time the novelty had worn off and I was beginning to feel like James May from Top Gear with all these problems with our mini bus! We got the bus running again but none of the electrics worked, so no AC, no radio and no speedometers, so our driver pulled over and called back to the place where we had left from. They told him to wait on the side of the road and they would send a new bus, what they didn’t tell us was that it would take 3hours for this bus to come! We waited on the side of the road for 3hours having a picnic and sharing useless knowledge with each other to pass the time.

When the new bus finally arrived, it was too late to do any of our scheduled activities so we headed straight to a town called Kalbari where we would spend the night. As the tour company felt bad for the inconvenience of the bus breaking down, they decided to buy us Dominos Pizza for dinner, my eyes lit up at the thought of Dominos, but I was extremely disappointed with it and it’s nothing like Dominos in England! We arrived at the hostel and had a few drinks before hitting the sack!

The next day was another early start but I was quite excited about the day ahead. My excitement was temporarily brought to an end because our new bus wouldn’t start in the morning! It turned out that Murray had left something on in the bus and after a jump start we were on our way and had no more trouble with the Minibuses for the rest of the trip! Our first stop of the day was at a gorge called Z-bend gorge. From its name you can tell what it looked like, but the view was truly magnificent! It seemed like a (much) smaller version of the Grand Canyon but in my opinion much more beautiful! At the gorge we were offered a chance to abseil down a 30foot cliff face! Only two of us ended up doing it and I was so glad that I was one of them! I’ve abseiled before but when I was about 10years old and it was off a climbing wall at Cub camp not a 30ft cliff face! The hardest part of abseiling is the beginning bit when you have to lean back over the edge of the cliff as if you’re about to lie down on an imaginary bed. Once you have overcome the fear of lying more or less flat 30ft above the ground, it’s pretty easy! It was an awesome experience and I would love to do it again from a greater height!

After the gorge we headed on to our next stop which wasn’t far away. We stopped at a place called Natures Window, which we were told was a ‘hole in some rocks’. I didn’t see the point of going to see ‘a hole in some rocks’, that was until I got there. It wasn’t just a hole, it was really a massive window and the view through it was absolutely stunning! I think the hole had been formed by a combination of weathering and erosional processes but I won’t go into the geographical details because I’m sure you’ve got better things to do with your time!

From Natures Window, we headed off for a barbeque lunch and to see stromatolites. Stromatolites were the most important thing on this planet for the start of mankind. The Stromatolites are rocks in the sea, but they’ve been around for billions of years and it was their chemical reaction with water that produced enough oxygen for the first living organisms to survive and billions of years later, human beings inhabited the Earth all thanks to these Stromatolites which can only be found in Western Australia and somewhere in South America. Unfortunately, when we got there the tide was too low to be able to see the rocks actually produce the oxygen but it was a surreal experience none the less!

We got back onto the minibus and headed to Monkey Mia where we would spend the night. We had another barbeque in the evening, but this was not as good as the one at lunch, because the meat and vegetarian food was being cooked on the same barbeque. I told Murray that I didn’t like what he was doing, but considering there was no other food, i had to go against my principles and eat it. After dinner, we had some drinks and we were joined by a very drunk group of guys from the UK (2 Irish guys, 1 Scottish guy and 2 guys from Hull). They were a group of friends but because they were so drunk spent the whole time arguing about absolutely nothing, it made me realise that that is the exact reason that a British football team would never work! It was very amusing for us to watch, but being a proud Brit, I was cringing the whole time!

The next day (20th September), we got up extra early and went to the beach at about 7am. You may think that it’s a pretty weird thing to do so early in the morning but every morning between 7 and 8.30 at Monkey Mia, dolphins come right up to the beach to be fed! We were some of the first people there, shows how keen we were to see the dolphins, and the dolphins came a few minutes later. They were literally swimming inches in front of us but unfortunately we’re not allowed to touch them. Some people that work at Monkey Mia picked out people to feed the dolphins but unfortunately none of us were lucky enough to interact with these incredible creatures!

After seeing the dolphins, we had breakfast and then set off for another day on the road. We stopped at a place called Ocean Reef Park. It’s basically an outdoor aquarium but the fish that are there have either been caught by mistake by fisher men or were injured in some way in the wild, so they’re nursed back to health and then released into the wild. We were lucky enough to see a shark feeding show but the rest I felt I had seen loads of times before, although turtles still fascinate me! We moved on from here and made a short drive to a place called Eagles Bluff. It’s just a lookout point into the sea, but from this point you can see sharks and stingrays despite being so high up, I guess that gives you an idea of just how clear the water is! It was so windy up there, I could pretty much do the MJ leaning forward dance from the smooth criminal, that we couldn’t stay for long.

From Eagles Bluff, we went onto a place called Shell Beach. The whole beach is made out of shells and it’s just absolutely beautiful. The tide was so low, that you could walk about 20metres out to sea and the water would barely reach your knees. However the water that was there was so clear, it looked like it could have come straight out of the tap. We spent quite a while on shell beach before heading off to the 140acre farm where we would be spending the night.

We got to the farm and had a ‘homemade’ dinner. It was a very strange experience because we ate dinner in what used to be a sheep shearing barn house and they still had all the equipment used to sheer all the sheep in the barn. After dinner, we were taken out into the farm by the owner of the farm and Murray. They drove us to an outdoor observation point and we were told to look up in the sky. I wish I could describe to you what I saw but no words will do justice to just how beautiful the sky was. With just the naked eye, I could see hundreds possibly thousands of stars in the sky and it was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. We were out there only for half an hour but I could have spent hours gazing at stars. In the half an hour we were there, I saw three shooting-stars and considering I had never seen one in my life before then, it was a pretty special moment and something I will treasure for the rest of my life. Following this incredible experience, we had a camp fire and some beers. Once again I found myself engaging in conversation about African politics, it was only stopped by the farm owner telling me that “the England cricket team are the biggest cheats and the most arrogant cricket team in the world”. I told him that we didn’t deserve to win the Ashes, because the Aussies played the better cricket but the Aussies have no right to call any team cheats or arrogant!

The following morning (21st September), I had another special moment; I saw my first living kangaroo (I had seen a lot of dead ones on the side of the road) in Australia and got to feed him! From the farm we went to a place called Hutt River Province. This is effectively a country within Australia set up by a guy called Prince Leonard because he didn’t like some taxes that the Australian government had imposed in the 1970s. It was quite a strange experience but the prince was a really funny guy and very proud that his ‘country’ is one of the few provinces that is recognized worldwide. If you’re a citizen of Hutt River Province and have their passport, it is accepted by most passport controls around the world!

We went from here to some sand dunes near a beautiful beach. We were making up for missing out on sand boarding on the first day because of the issues with the bus. Sand boarding was pretty fun even though we weren’t allowed to stand on the boards because these weren’t the boards that you can lock your feet into. After this experience, I definitely want to try sand surfing as well as real surfing where you actually get to stand on the board.

Our final stop of the trip before heading back to Perth was a wildlife park. Similarly to Ocean Reef Park, they take in injured animals and nurse them back to health before releasing some of them back into the wild. We got to see loads of kangaroos and feed them, Dingoes, a crocodile, some very strange birds and many other creatures. We had lunch here and after lunch there was a snake handling session. I saw one of the snakes and walked away from it all, a bit of a de ja vu from when I was four years old and ran away on a school trip to Whipsonade zoo when they brought out a snake, except this time there was no running (just swift walking) and no tears (just a lot of fear). From this wildlife reserve we headed back to Perth, the road trip was over.

I had an absolutely amazing time on the road trip, saw and did some amazing things and met some wonderful people. I was already very fond of Australia before this weekend, but now I can quite happily say that I love this country and I cannot wait until I go on my travels in six weeks time! As you can imagine, going back to uni to the reality of assignments and lectures was pretty difficult over the past two days, but I’ve just got four more teaching weeks and then a week of exams before freedom for almost 3months!

I hope all is well in England,
Until next time,
Lots of love,
Mihir