Tasmania, and another time zone

The trip over was incredible! Waves were going over the top of the 9th deck, and then all of a sudden there would be no sea. I was sleeping mid ships, and you could feel this massive ship suddenly floating in space, then the thud as it found it the water again. Dad, who's done the trip a few times, said it was the roughest he'd known.

I've monopolised my parent's computer while I've been here, but it doesn't have a usb port, so I won't upload any photos until I'm bored in an airport somewhere. There should be quite a few opportunities then.

Victoria

Well, I'm writing this from Tassie, and I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to that super speedy broadband I hear they have in the UK. So far I've written it 4 times.

I had my little Tour de Victoria holiday with Mum and Dad, and if it wasn't quite the end of the red centre adventure that I'd planned, well, it was still very pleasant.

Started in historic Ballarat, staying with Colin and Margaret. No the baby is not mine: the lovely Lily is my fourth cousin.

Next on to Halls Gap in the Grampions, which was mostly still completely burnt out from the massive fires in Janary and February, even if this picture doesn't show it. I found myself taking lots of pictures of gum trees (hmm, do they have them in the UK?), but I promise I won't bore you with too many. This is mum and me on a morning walk.

We just dipped into SA at Mt Gambier, where there were more spectacular caves (as good as WA's? Well, I'm not buying into that sort of debate.), fireworks, resident possums and dangerous toilets.

There was also the famous Blue Lake, but for reasons unknown I forgot to take a photo of that, even though it was at it's most delicious blue. My holiday brain's only functioning sporadically - I hope it comes back to where it belong's when I start work again. Sheer weight of credit card pressure should help speed it's return.

Warrnambool - cold, pretty, windy as all hell.....

... and notable for the great civic works created by my ancestor, A. Dudley Dobson (think C.Y. O'Connor if you're from Peth and willing to believe me :) - Arthur's pass if you've been to NZ.) Aha, so this is where I must get my engineering genes from.

Last Day in Perth (again)

I spent my last day in Perth running around trying to sort out the car.

Here is the car.



Here is a bit more of the car.

Here is the stuff in the back of the car that now had to fit on a plane.

Here is the amount of money I had to pay for the 28 kg of excess luggage.

$22.

Here is the amount of money that the guy at the check in told me I would have to pay if that same flight had been to London.

$1000. ($50 per excess kg)

Hmmmm.

In other news, I have now been to the underwater observatory at the end of the Busselton Jetty. It was quite a neat little concept, you walk underwater and see all the weirdly displaced tropical fish and coral that like to hang out there. The colours are actually better than I was able to acheive without finally sitting down to read my lengthy phone camera manual.

Abdandon

Car stuffed. Equity1= E0-$10k

Flying (oh the ignominy of it) to Melbourne Wednesday night.

It's a miracle!!!

This is where I found my wallet!

Yesterday, on the way down from Perth to Bunbury, we stopped for food and then again just briefly by the side of the road where I got out of the car to (heavy irony alert) "celebrate my return to Perth" with a glass of champers. So we retraced our steps, and miracuously, in the dark, found my wallet in the grass near Mandurah.

On the road....briefly

Well, after proclaiming to the world that I was leaving Perth, never to return - guess where I'm writing this from?

Here was my planned itinerary…..

http://jocelynwessling.blogspot.com/2006/10/my-itinerary.html

Things were going roughly to plan. After a frenzied packing effort, every single item in the house eventually made it to one of 10 (!!) locations, right at the last possible minute. There was a small hiccup on the last day when the cleaner threw out all of the items in location number 8 (stay in the house) including all the gardening tools, so my new tenant Frances didn't quite get the nice tidy garden I was planning to give her. But basically, for someone who sometimes struggles to make decisions, I think it went alright.

Mind you, knowing you've got 12 uni exams in a 3 week period that you haven't studied for has nothing on this moving overseas business when it comes to stress. For example, I found myself looking at the cutlery draw trying to decide if the Teflon-coated egg rings:

1. get sent to the UK (Will I cook eggs? How much to replace vs shipping costs? Sentimental value?)
2. go camping with me (Will I cook eggs? Will they fit? Will Mum want them when I'm finished?)
3. get given to friends (Will they want them?)
4. gets left in the house (Will the new tenant want them or will they have their own? Will it create more hassle if the egg rings get damaged and the real estate agent then wants to withhold bond?)
5. get given to the Salvos (Will they want it?)
6. get thrown out

This is of course because I’ve already decided they weren’t going to Mum with the books, or to Brendan, or being sold with the other furniture, or being taken with me to use immediately in the UK.

Here's a picture of my bedroom after I'd just about finished packing it up....

I had my farewell to Western Power on Friday the 28th September, after spending the week having coffee, lunch, coffee, drinks, dinner with other people who weren’t going to be able to make it to the pub on Friday. Lunch down at Bells Café on the river.

Well, I never said I was leaving Perth because the river wasn’t pretty….

A quick and terrible, yet sincere speech about how much I’d loved my job and the people at Western Power, then off to the good old Brass Monkey where it got just a tiny bit messy. It was a very sad occasion for me, leaving all these people I liked so much.

On the weekend, I went in and tidied up my desk (which hadn’t been seen under the paper for quite a while)….

….and listened to the fantastic NRL grand final (go Broncos!) on the radio whilst packing.

Then, at last it was time to leave. With the ute finally packed to the brim with both camping-in-the-middle-of-the-desert stuff and going-to-the-office-in-northern-winter stuff, I managed to get organised at Darren and Bianca’s place just before getting myself onto the critical path.

That first night, we parked on the side of the highway (somewhere near Wubin), with trucks thundering past, and I had the best night’s sleep in a month. All the stress of moving finally over.

On Friday, we made the long and very, very dusty journey up to Landor, turning in towards Gascoyne Junction from Meekatharra. Poor Kylie in the back of Darren’s old cruiser copped all the dust from the open window, whilst young Nat travelled in comparative luxury in the ute with me, the air con and the iPod.

We had a few minor delays, including an extremely dodgy breakfast (trucker style grease) at a roadhouse, and Darren’s mishap with a stone in his rear window.

Nige was pretty happy to see us finally arrive sometime after 8pm, having almost given up on us.

Of course, Nige had met with his own adventures on the road! Here he is demonstrating what the emu looked like, just before hitting his car (if you look closely, you can see the feather).

We had a great setup with the annexe on Darren and Bianca’s new camping trailer providing welcome shade for getting ready for the day.

And the local kids knew how to keep cool.

Then some of us lazed around... while others learnt how to use their funky new camera...

before it was hats on, time to wander over for the first race...

where it was all happening…

Lucky for us in the heat, the fruit lady was doing the rounds…

Also, we all had a few beers, but none of us got round to trying the whiskey…(supplied from a drenching gun)

Now there’s something just a bit different about this carpark compared to the ones in Perth…


The thongs provided some protection from the dust.

.

Then it was time to go back for dinner at camp and get ready for the ball – theme: Black and White.

Next day, after extracting the water bottle from the humidity of the car….

it was off to find Mt Augustus, biggest rock in the world, 2.4 times bigger than Uluru (apparently).

The best thing about it though, as far as we were concerned, was Cattle Pool.

But we were in such a hurry to get there that at the pool it was a case of “so, did you bring the gas burner? “no, did you?”. Lucky for us girls we had those big strong men with us to cook the sausages over a fire on a bit of coathanger. :)

Of course us girls contributed a lot as well!

We got back to the races just in time for the tug o’ war.  Can you believe there were no tears? These bush kids are too tough for that.

Another magical sunset…a quick snooze…

then that was my final night at Landor (consumption of final port bottle not shown).

Early Monday morning, I packed up the ute again, said a final farewell to Darren, Bianca, Natalie, Kylie and Nigel, then headed off on the start of my big solo journey (huh :/). First stop, Meekatharra to fuel up, fill the gas bottles, buy a filler for the gerry can (ie spend lots more money), then off on the long lonely dirt road to Wiluna.

And it’s about now that the story takes a bit of a wrong turn. I didn’t quite make it Laverton that night as planned. In the end, I was bloody lucky to make it Wiluna. About 100 km out, I looked down at the temperature gauge (off the scale), looked through the dust at the bonnet (steam) and decided to come to a rapid halt in the middle of nowhere.

I’ve had this problem before, and was all set to deal with burst radiator hoses, corroded hose clamps etc. So I settled in to wait till the engine cooled enough to put water in. As it turned out though, the problem was a bit more serious than that.

Lucky for me, who should come down the road but a couple of friendly neighbourhood diesel mechanics on their way out to service haul trucks!

To cut a long and painful story, involving many water refill stops and some cracked black pepper (my new bushman’s trick), they ended up towing me to Wiluna.

Where as soon as we stopped, an interested gentlemen with not much to do (it seemed) directed me to Jim, of Jim’s Mechanical Repairs. Ever been to Wiluna? Things started happening fairly quickly after that, so I’m sorry I didn’t get many photos of the place. I did get one of the back of Jim’s place though….

Just none of Jim with his missing fingers. By now, it was pretty clear that I had blown a head gasket or something similar. We tried a tube of sealant, but as soon as I went for a short drive around town (past the crowded swimming pool and the local primary school from which someone was finally removing the town sewerage pond), the temperature was rising again.

Jim gave me two options, hang around Wiluna for up to a 12 day turnaround (gasp! I was meant to be in Mt Gambier by then) while the heads went to Perth, or, hang on, it’s truck day and it looks like they haven’t left yet. So it was time to race over to the transport company’s shed, where the second of the two drivers was just finishing his shower ready to go. “$600 cash, or $850 on the books”. Hmmm, choices.

So there you go. I also had a shower (very big on hygiene these guys, which makes sense when they’re hot bed swapping on the journey) while the friendly Clint and Quentin loaded the ute, then jumped up and headed back with them through the night to the place I thought I’d never see again.

(Check out the DVD player! They also had a fridge and an oven)

I wasn't quite bold enough to suggest that I get a turn in the bed, so I didn't get much sleep.

We got into Malaga at 3am on Tuesday, and I filled the radiator again, avoided the massive guard dog and drove to Morley where I camped on Mitsubishi’s doorstep. But they said they couldn’t deal with me in the time I needed (have I mentioned that Mitsubishi are bastards to deal with?) so I limped next door to K Mart tyre and auto, where the lovely people looked at it straight away. Right now, I’m sitting at my friend’s computer in Bunbury on Wednesday (I should have been in Warbuton by now), typing this out and waiting to hear back from Kmart about how long and how much.

Oh yeah, and I’ve lost my wallet.