Down Under (Finally)

So, here's my summary of the grand Andipodean adventure:



I managed to swing an invite to a pub crawl with the Perth female hockey team – eleven of the loveliest young ladies I've seen for a while. It was one of those party bus deals where a bus takes you to various pubs and clubs. It was a wonder to behold!

And I went on a day trip to the pinnacles desert – it was a long drive in a coach and there were several scheduled stops for tea and the like. This German girl who was on the tour with me, kept making me cups of tea and fruit juice and stuff, but she wouldn't talk to me. Very strange. Then we stopped at a beach and she stripped down to an astonishingly skimpy bikini, which kinda made my day! Heh heh heh…

I swam with dolphins, which was very cool (although not particularly life changing – not really sure why people make such a fuss about it), went to Perth Mint where I got to play with a freshly made bar of gold worth about £100k – that was jolly heavy, went to the zoo, where an elephant thought it would be funny to squirt water at me… did you know that elephants laughed? Well they do. And I took a fantastic picture of a Tasmanian devil while I was there.

I took a little 4 seater plane over to Rottnest Island off which is the world's most southerly coral reef and did a bit of reef snorkelling there - there were some very large fish there. No sharks though. They did have quokkas – little rodenty things - on the island, which are indigenous only to that island, which is about 2 miles across. I think that makes them officially endangered.

I went to Fremantle Prison where I saw many tiny cells and some lovely gallows. Then I went back a week later and went on their torchlight tour, which, contrary to the name, actually took place mostly in pitch darkness and featured many strange noises, people jumping out at me through doors and an excess of amateur theatrics which were terribly amusing!

I met a man from Stevenage called Barry who managed to persuade a travel agent to pay for his flights and accommodation around Oz and NZ on the condition that he wrote it up for them… how cool is that? I have to get myself a deal like that!

I visited Perth Mint, where I handled a rather large gold bar worth about £100k and met a man with no hand.

I also spent much time on the beach and have almost no tan to show for it, went sandboarding down the biggest sand dunes I've ever seen, also persuaded the tour guide to let me drive his off-road vehicle on said dunes, consumed much barbequed food, visited the oldest pub in West Australia and heard Kylie being played on at least 400 separate occasions!

I'll add some pictures to this entry when I get around to uploading them to the net!