High point: Driving through the stunning outback at sunset
Low point: An introduction to one of Australia’s larger eight legged friends in the camping block
Mo point: Steve looks like he should be in a Will Ferrell movie, Barham would be at home commanding an army of soldiers on the battlefield and Fuad resembles a Mexican sombrero seller. Lou and I are still working on our tashes
Pee point: Lou and Amy are now Shewee professionals, boys go one side of the road, girls go the other, job done
Roo count: A disappointing one roo spotted
Dish of the day: Beef Bourginon with tinned potatoes and baked beans, mmmm
Pink thought of the day: The girls are trying to introduce a tiered ‘no swear Friday’ scoring system after Lou was unfairly crowned princess potty mouth. Boys are much worse than girls, everyone knows that Read more →
In life you can’t wrap yourself in cotton wool and worry about the if’s and maybe’s. You would be safer if you never left the house but that is crazy as life is for living. In fact the health and safety brigade have pushed things so far the other way that I’m sure you could sue if it rained and you got wet. I’m not a great fan of flying but it would never stop me from flying to get somewhere. The chances of something happening are less than getting into a car. It would be irrational not to get onto a plane as it would be not to drive Martha through central Australia for the very real threat of being ambushed by a gang of knife wielding delinquent Kangaroos. No for me there remains one last bastion of anarchy that flies in the face of health and safety and that is the ocean or to be more specific the shark. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not anti-shark. There are magnificent majestic creatures, natural born killers, top of the food chain and I respect them. They own the ocean and the coastal waters that surround the incredible Australia and I deem putting myself at their mercy to be an unacceptable risk. It would be like playing frisbee in a minefield or playing Russian roulette and I won’t be Russian to do either of those. If they got me they wouldn’t need to eat for a month. It is my problem not the shark’s .
High Point: Our fire truck convoy escort, leaving Perth for the beginning of Stage Five
Snack of Day: Burger Rings
Chat of the Day: The Perth Firemen
Dance Move of the Day: The Box
Gift of the Day: Perth Firemen Calendar
So there we were driving down the Perth freeway sandwiched between an old service fire engine and new fire engine in a special convoy, whilst being followed by a cameraman from the GWN news channel. Just a normal day down under 😉
Low point: Realising we’d have 7 days to drive 9,000 km
BBQ point: Burgers in Luckens fumigation centre
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It was an early start for my induction into how things roll on the FTFE expedition. We were excited and apprehensive (but mainly tired) as we headed to Freemantle Port at 6:45am to welcome Martha from her trip across the Ocean on Melbourne Cup day. As we pulled into Lucken’ s Fumigation Services http://www.luckensfumigationservices.com.au/ (who would be unloading Martha and managing quarantine clearance) there was a slight problem… Martha hadn’t arrived yet and nobody seemed to know where she was! Steve got on the phone to Richard Dexter of Bluefreight and there were various calls backwards and forwards as they tried to locate her. There was no joy and we missed our slot with the Quarantine Officer, who would be inspecting Martha to see if she was up to the very strict Aussie cleanliness standards for importing vehicles. Read more →