From The Archives. Stage 5. Perth to Brisbane.

Hello people! I’m back by popular demand… I hope you’ve all enjoyed a fantastic Christmas and are planning for an amazing up coming year.  I’m here to recount our epic Australian leg for any of you that might have missed the many hilarious and highly entertaining blog posts from the crew.

It’s been over a month now since I’ve returned from duty, but it feels more like a lifetime ago since I first stepped on to Australian soil.  Stepping off the plane, the heat and humidity hitting me like a slap in the face, I instantly forgot the 23 hours spent in transit.

Perth turned out to be more than just a starting point for our Australian leg, it almost became the end of the whole trip.  The quarantine officials were rather unimpressed with the clean up job done on Martha before she boarded the ship and were threatening 3 weeks in jail (quarantine jail that is).  Steve quickly got his persuasive hat on and got chatting to the guys at Luckens.  Low and behold quicker than you can say “Bonza mate” we were pushed to the front of the queue, free of charge of course, and were due out of quarantine in 3 days.  The first of many amazingly generous offers of help and assistance we got from the people of Australia.

.

Along the way to Albany and Esperance we discovered that Paul had a rather serious phobia of being eaten by a shark.  Fair enough really as we were in shark infested waters and even he will admit he’s not a great swimmer, for a triple iron man that is!

North from Esperance we hit our first mining town, Kalgoorlie.  Mining towns are strange places.  Seriously strange.  We visited the SUPER pit before connecting with the Great Central Road and what would essentially be our home for the next week.

The further inland we went the more the environment became barren and untouched.  We quickly left behind most traces of civilization; even the road turned into nothing more than a dirt track.  Our only contact with the outside world came in the form of remote aboriginal communities with a garage to fill up thirsty Martha.  We slept in numerous roadhouses, camped in dried up riverbeds and even visited an aboriginal school in Warburton.  Didn’t see that many kangaroos though, maybe they found it a bit too hot and decided to holiday in cooler climates…

We reconnected with the tarmac and civilization at Uluru (Ayers Rock) after a whole week in the outback. The whole team was elated to spend a night at the Uluru Fire Station and finally have a shower.  I thought this would be the end of slumming it and we could finally enjoy the benefits of youth hostels.  I was very wrong.

Trucking on to Marla, we ended up spending the night with hundreds of black beetles (about 3cm in length!) crawling all over our beds.  If there is one negative out of the whole trip I think the Marla experience would be it.  People, if you are traveling through the outback of Australia and come across Marla, just drive on by.

In Coober Pedy we met the living legend that is Don.  Don provided us with hours of entertainment and came out with quotes like ‘Disco Steve don’t advertise’ and ‘There’s sh*t in there that’ll eat you!’  We stayed in an underground youth hostel where your room is actually dug out of the rock, with no windows.  I did mention that mining towns are strange places, right!?

We had the pleasure of staying in the Fire Station Inn in Adelaide.  The inn is converted from an old fire station into a 5* boutique hotel.  Quite a change from the bug infested Marla motel!

From then on, we cruised down the Great Ocean Road (everything is the Great ‘something’ in Australia), stopping off in countless beauty spots along the way and chilling out in Port Fairy as well as Apollo Bay and Lorne.  The whole team appreciated a bit of quiet time before hitting the big towns Melbourne and Sydney.

In Melbourne we had an amazing fund-raiser organised by our good friends at Blue Freight.  We then set off with rather sore heads on the longest mileage day of the whole trip so far.  Over 900km covered in a single day!  BOOM!  Arriving in Sydney rather late, everyone was shattered and looking forward to a good sleep.  However we managed to book into the rowdiest youth hostel in the whole town and were kept awake by randy teenagers until the early hours of the morning.

Brisbane was our final stop and we managed to arrive just in time for the 4^th day of the first test of the ashes.  You know, the day we actually started playing and turning the game around after the dismal start.

Well, there you go, a month long trip with around 9000km covered in under 1000 words!  There are so many people that need to be thanked that it would be pointless trying to fit everyone in in this brief recount of stage 5; so thank you to all those that made the Australia leg a possibility.  And finally, thank you to Steve and the rest of the crew for putting up with my nonsense and giving me the opportunity of a lifetime!

Fuad

[flickr album=72157625634547919 num=30 size=Square]

[flickr album=72157625634583839 num=30 size=Square]