Hello everybody,
This is the first in what may be a long line of e-mails detailing my amazing adventures in Australia, of course this may be the only one I ever write but they say you should start as you mean to go on. (presumably even if you don't go on)
Anyway.
The adventure started as soon as I got off of the plane, I had been traveling for about 22 hours and had not slept very much on the planes. The in flight movies were dreadful and the guy next to me kept laughing out loud at the jokes that I assume were going on in the films. On the up side though the airline food wasn't as bad as I had expected and the views of Australia from the plane were very impressive, and yet also a little strange it was just a huge expanse of reddish brown dust with a thin boarder of bright yellow sand and azure sea, with absolutely nothing on it, no trees, no buildings, nothing. Anyway I got through customs without the sniffer dog finding the ten kilos of cocaine I was smuggling (joke), and wandered through the small airport thinking to myself that it wasn't all that hot after all. It didn't occur to me until I went outside to get the bus that there was air-conditioning inside, and it was like walking out of a fridge in to the oven. Needless to say it was a beautiful day without a cloud in the sky. I got the bus in to Perth and had to struggle to stay awake all the way there and when I arrived at the hostel that I was booked in to I went straight to bed until the next day.
Over the next few days I got used to the time zone and the heat and explored Perth, which is (in my rather controversial opinion) smaller and far less busy than Leeds. It is a nice enough place though and as it is always sunny here it always seems bright and cheerful. I soon developed the amazing ability to get lost, and in the first week I was in Perth I think I got lost at least once a day. Australians simply don't see the need for sign posts, nor any other helpful indicators of direction or location, but this does allow you to explore without being tempted to follow the beaten track.
In Perth I visited Kings Park, which is just a massive park surprisingly enough, some of it is just bush land with paths through it and other places are grassy with palm trees, it is popular with tourists and locals alike and does boast fabulous views of Perth and the Swan River as well as inumerable monuments. There is also a thing called the DNA tower which is a metal tower formed from a kind of double-helix of steps which you can climb up to view all manner of distant things, unfortunately they didn't build it tall enough as many of the things that they point out for you to look at on the horizon are obscured by the tall trees. Oh, and on the way back I saw my first (and so far last) red-back spider, just wandering across a bridge.
Later in the week I took the ferry across the jellyfish infested waters of the Swan River to the zoo, where I swatted up on all the Australian creatures that I felt sure I would be encountering about the place during my travels. I soon came to realise that almost all Australian wildlife looks something a bit like a kangaroo. I thought it prudent to take pictures of them all just incase I missed any of them in the wild. It has to be said that it is a pretty nice zoo, and just the right size to go around in a day.
At the beginning of my second week I finally (after 2 failed attempts) found the ferry terminal in the near by town of Freemantle, where I got the ferry to Rottnest Island. This is just a small (smaller than the Isle of Wight) island which is very popular with tourists. There are almost no buildings on it and there are no cars (only buses) and it is famous for being one of only two places where the Quokka can be found in the wild. Quokka's are small cute creatures that are the size of a huge rat and (surprise surprise) look a bit like a kangaroo. There is an abundance of them on the island, however as they are mostly nocturnal you don't see them all that much in the day, and even when you do see them (aside from looking cute) all they do is lazily hop about in the shade. I had hired a bike for the day and on my tour of the island I saw only three of the little blighters.
After only a short time at the hostel I had soon made friends through attending the hostel bar-b-q's (which like all Australian bar-b-q's are completely fake and more like a fry-up, which I found curious seeing as it is practically their national culinary speciality) and some one told me about a good job they were going on, it was a tree planting job in a far away place. Seeing as it was meant to be a nice little earner I decided to go along and before I knew it I was stepping off the bus in Wongan Hills. We were to stay in a caravan park on the edge of town, there were 6 of us from the hostel I had been at and about 10 others from all over the place, they were a nice bunch and things looked promising. However like all things that sound too good to be true, it wasn't true and after a 6 day week of getting up at 5am to get the bus for an hour to a hot dusty plantation to work for 10 hours a day doing an impossible job I decided enough was enough. Sadly it wasn't as simple as that as there is only 1 bus out of Wongan Hills and it only passes through twice a week. This problem was compounded by the dreadful hours we were working which meant I couldn't phone the bus company to get a place on the bus as the phone lines were closed by the time I got back in the evening. Any way to cut to the chase, after a few days of scheming I managed to make a break for it and escaped back to Perth, where I am now. Only one of the other slaves (I mean workers) escaped with me, the others choosing to stay for reasons I can't imagine.
And that about wraps it up for now, I am staying in Perth for at least another week, I need time to recover from the work, the blisters I had on my hands are starting to heal now and by the end of this week I will have formulated my plan of where to go next.
I hear the weather in England hasn't got any better, and certainly a far cry from the 40 degrees in the shade that I was working in last week, but you really don't get any news from England here, I suppose there is no reason why you should.
Anyway that's all folks, I will reply to any e-mails you send me individually in addition to this chronicle, but as when in Wongan I am not always near the internet.
Bye.
David