Day 1: Perth - Hyden

We finally left Perth around midday and started our cross country dash from Perth to Cairns to catch our flight to England for Christmas.

First stop Wave Rock which is a 4.5ish hour drive south east to Hyden.

The journey started out great, windows wide open, sun beating down, IPOD on shuffle, Henry closely resembling Phar Lap as he cantered down the Brookton Highway. What would be next on this glorious day, or on the IPOD for that matter...

So I have painted the picture, we are all happy, Ol, Henry and myself, quite excited and glad to be back out on the road. Half an hour into our journey we come across the first plague of locusts. Up go the windows, Oly and I exchange nervous glances. These buggers were bombing us and there were thousands and thousands. I was seriously worried that they would work their way through the air vent into the van (like in the movie The Bees). So we drove for half an hour with the tiniest slither of window down and finally we finished driving through the swarm. Then we hit the next one. They came at us in waves all the way down to Hyden, it was like driving through a hailstorm. The day was really hot but there was no way we were going to open our windows!

We arrived in Hyden around 16:30 and went to the local supermarket to pick up a few provisions for our dinner. Back into Henry and he started really sluggishly, drove around the corner and he conked out. We called the RAC who said it was a fuel pump problem and they couldn't fix it fully until Friday but they cleared the blocked air which would allow us to drive to Kalgoorlie where we would have more chance of getting it fixed quicker as it is a big city. Oh, one condition, we drive when it is cool and set off around 5AM. Great.

Determined to not let that get our spirits down we limped to the the caravan park and spent an hour climbing Wave Rock, beating off the locusts and admiring the view (while hoping I wouldn't fall off). Wave Rock is a 15 meter high 110 meter long multi-coloured hunk of granite shaped like a surf wave.

We skipped dinner as we were too tired and bed beckoned us at 8PM, plus we have to get up very early.

Lets hope tomorrow doesn't bring the 9th plague.

Em

Distance: 350km
Time: 4 Hours
Temp: 33c
Music: IPOD shuffle

Aussie slang
She'll be right = It will be OK

It's getting hotter

Well my day was a bit too exciting today.

A train that passes behind the garden fence here decided to throw a few sparks my way which started a fire.

It took about 5 minutes for the fire to go from a small spiral of smoke to a raging furnace. The crackling was really loud. I was on my own, the smoke was everywhere. I had visions of little flames, like lords a leaping, dashing from tree top to tree top and burning the house to the ground. So I did the brave thing and grabbed my laptop and a book and got ready to dash out of the front door. At that moment firemen appeared like magic in the back garden and the day was saved.

Actually, they ran out of water and knocked on the back door to tell me I needed to use the hose pipe and dampen down the pine needles that were smouldering under the trees at the back of the garden and then left.

I didn't need to be told twice...

Emelie

Look on the bright side

Finally Western Australia has agreed to trial daylight saving. This will start in December and last for three years, after which it will be thrown to the public vote... the same public that has rejected it three times in the past 31 years.

I think it is a great move, it seems such a waste when it goes pitch black at 6:30PM and that's it, that's the end of the day. If you turn off the lights everyone knows its time to go to sleep, either that or your hiding from unexpected visitors.

It appears the reasons for rejecting daylight saving here in WA include the following; curtains will fade, cows won't know when its milking time which will make their milk sour, and it will be too hot to eat... the other item dominating the news here is the impending obesity crisis...

I think they may have found a solution.

Em

Where are we?

Well we are still here in Perth, Henry has taken a little longer than we had expected. The good news is he is nearly finished and the unveiling will be sometime next week and more importantly the next stage of our adventure will commence.

Em

The Royal Show (OJG)

Hey yo’all,

This is all about our day out (or day off from the build) to the Royal Show. What is the Royal Show I hear you all ask?! Well I think in its most simple terms you could describe it as an agricultural show. I say could, because I am certain that is how it started, and although that element is still very much the main theme, I have determined that the Royal Show is actually 4 shows in 1. I have never heard of anything like it in the UK, although I am guessing that in the US it might be similar to a State Fair.

First of all you have the agricultural part which brings in farmers from all over Western Australia to show off their various prized animals, which pretty much include Cows, Bulls, Sheep, Goats, Pigs, Dogs, Chickens, Turkeys, Ducks, Pigeons, a few Cats, and several other smaller showings such as Emus, Hamsters, Lamas, Snakes, etc.

For every possible category and sub-class they have awards and medals. I have to say though, that some of the “best of breed” animals were the weirdest and most ugly I have ever seen, especially in the pigeon arena, where I can’t even begin to describe what they looked like.

Each of these types of animals had their own huge warehouse size building, so you can imagine how many hundreds there were. As well as just purely showing off the various breeds, there were of course various additional events going on all the time such as the dog obstacle course, and sheep sheering.

Second to the agriculture part would have to be the fair ground. A pretty much standard run of the mill fair ground with all the vomit inducing rides, dodgems, shooting galleries, and various other forms of money spinning games. As with all of these things, you see loads of people walking around you with some sort of soft animal twice as big as they are, and you think, I have to get me one of these in order to have any kudos.

So after $15 at the rifle range, we had a small stuffed hippo. Sense nearly got the better of me, but then I decided to spend another $10 at the darts wall, and got a small stuffed dog. After the darts I managed to resist any further expenses on silly games, and yet as the day carried on, the yearning to get that enormous shark / snake / monkey kept coming back.

After the fair ground, the third part is the house / kitchen stalls. You know like the little cubicles that they have at the Ideal Home Exhibition. Unheard of companies trying to sell you the latest vegetable cutting utensil, or some sort of new wax for your floor that never needs cleaning. Yep, all those same companies appeared here with all their magical goods. I say magical because as we all know the items in question never work as well at home as they did in the demonstration. Not even close.

I must admit though that I did succumb to one purchase, which was a “magical” bench vice that could the job of 5 other bench vices! But wait, there’s more, they also threw in a drill mount worth $60 and soft wood grippers. Today only show offer of $260. Sigh, no hope for me. Luckily it was made out of cast aluminium so it wasn’t too heavy to carry around.

The last part of the show is something I have never heard of before, “show bags”. Essentially these are plastic bags with various bits inside them related to the promoter, which people buy. I have a feeling they started out many years ago as taster bags, and have evolved into a main attraction of the show. For example, there were Kit Kat show bags which had various different Kit Kats inside, as well as a few Promo items such as a baseball cap or t-shirt.

There must have been 50-100 show bag stalls, each one selling anything from 3 to 30 different show bags each. The show bags that I saw varied in price from $4 to $60. The $4 bag would just have a couple of small packets of sweets. There were some impressively large Lindt chocolate bags for $60, which supposedly contained about $120 worth of various chocolate.

In the show guide, there are at least a dozen pages showing you all the best show bags to go for, and what they contain. We bought a Cars the movie show bag as it had a VW Kombi soft toy, as well as Cars cards, Cars Rubiks cube, Cars yo-yo, Cars pens, Cars bat, Cars hacky sack, Cars mini rugby ball, etc. We also bought a $20 Lindt bag and a $40 Morish nuts bag.

As you can imagine at a show such as this, you do get a few strange folk. Of particular note was this man and his bull. The bull was impressive, not only in size, but also he just looked the part. You would not want to step into his field that is for sure. Anyway, the bull was minding his own business, when his owner from several stalls down pulled out an apple and started to approach the bull. Well the bull got very excited! The man cut the apple placed a section in his mouth and fed it to the bull, who loved it.

But that is not actually the “strange folk” bit, nope the “strange folk” title has to go to the woman in the crowd who saw the owner do this, and asked if she could have a go. The man gave her a cut piece of apple, and she tried to give it to the bull. The bull half got it, but then dropped it. So the apple is now covered in bull saliva and all the dirt and muck from the floor. So what does the woman do, yep, she picks it up and puts it back in her mouth. I think even the bull was surprised! Her boyfriend was definitely surprised as he shouted out “Yukk, I’m not kissing you tonight!”. The bull did not drop it the second time round.

On top of the main parts I have just described, there was also a museum area with old machinery, wood chopping competitions (I think this guy looks like Richard), a Japan area, and of course various armed forces recruitment huts. Oh and how could I forget all the food stands, it was impossible to walk more than 1 minute without passing another one. The Pluto Puppy (a hot dog on a stick dipped in batter and fried, and then dipped in Ketchup) was particularly tasty.

And that was the Royal Show. It was a fun day out, we saw a lot of things, although I think we were pretty tired and cranky by the end of it. I think I would go again, but probably not for a couple of years.

Oly

Building Progress Thus Far (OJG)

Hey everyone,

Well it is raining again so the gargantuan effort to get Henry’s cabinet built grinds to a very slow pace, but on the plus side, it does gives me some time to update the blog.

So… to get your first set of questions out of the way: yes we are still in Perth; no the cabinet is obviously not yet finished; yes I am working hard on the cabinet and the end is in sight; once it is finished there is also about one further day’s worth of stuff to do (ha, one day!), no we have not yet seen any more Perth tourist things (except for the Royal Show which I will post separately). I think that covers most of them.

I feel the need to put up 2 diary lists to better explain firstly our delay in this build, and secondly to explain the long gaps in the blog.

Build Diary:

• Day 1: Buy tools, make sure tools work, attempt to get workbench setup.
• Day 2: Buy more tools, buy wood, get workbench working. Cut supports to required lengths.
• Day 3: Change design (due to new fridge). Re-Cut supports to new required lengths, assemble mini structures.
• Day 4: Rained Out
• Day 5: Cut panels to size, assemble mini structures together, add panels to structure.
• Day 6: Cut, route, chamfer table top, fix hinges, add rails.
• Day 7: Cut rear shelf, sand cabinet, sand table, add further supports to cabinet.
• Day 8: Rained Out

So, there are still several things that need to be done: “Make good” the cabinet so that it is ready to be painted; Paint cabinet; Cut table leg; Build drawers; Install fridge and connect to Henry’s battery; Screw in Rear Shelf; Bend and rivet new curtain rails; Cut and attach passenger shelf; Connect and cover new speakers and cable … and several other smaller things. So that is what we are doing right now, and what we are likely to be doing for the next few days.

Now for my second diary list, trying to find a sane way to write the blog!

Blog Writing Diary:

• Day 1: Drive for 1 hour trying to find a local Internet Café, no luck.
• Day 2: Use slow home modem connection to search for a local Internet Café, no luck.
• Day 3: Decide to use slow home modem to write blog, after 3 painful hours blog is written and images uploaded.
• Day 4-6: Break.
• Day 7: Someone tells us of a local Wireless Café, we search for it on our bikes, no luck.
• Day 8: I find a library with Internet access miles away and write blog stuff there.
• Day 9-11: Break.
• Day 12: We find a Gaming Centre, we write blog stuff, machine crashes, all lost.
• Day 13: Frustrated by loss, no progress.
• Day 14: Try to use home modem, but machine keeps crashing with CD (no usb).
• Day 15: Try home modem again, it works, again very slow and painful.
• Day 16-18: Break
• Day 19: Go back to the Gaming Centre, it has moved, we search for another hour for a new one, no luck.
• Day 20: TODAY, try and use home modem again … arghhhh

So, my point is this. Please do not think that we have abandoned the blog, or even that we are not trying to add stuff, we are forever trying to find a pleasant way of doing this and just keep hitting brick walls. I suspect we might end up buying a 3G PC Card which will give fast access wherever we are … well that is what the brochure says anyway, I suspect it will only be fast in cities, but even that will be a step in the right direction.

Right, so that is quite a lot of whining on my part, what other jolly things can I tell you all about! I know, the weather! Actually it is a positive thing, of sorts. I have noticed that weather forecasting here is incredibly accurate. I mean seriously accurate, even the 5 day forecast will get the fifth day accurately predicted right down to the hours when they expect rain and when it will clear up again. Obviously being used to British weather, I only ever took the forecasts semi seriously. Here you can completely rely on it. I doubt it has anything to do with the size of supercomputers, but much more likely that the weather patterns are much easier to predict around Australia.

Well that is my shout for today, I will also post tomorrow the fun day we had at the Royal Show!

Oly

I have been violated!

Some bugger is fleecing my English bank account to the tune of $4000.

So far they have spent $450 on the Heathrow Express and the rest has been debited from my account but the bank can't tell me where it has been spent yet. The last time I used my card in the UK was at Heathrow.

@%*#

I am not happy.

If it was not for internet banking I would not have found this out so soon, they used the "card" on the 30th of September.

Now I have to go through all the inconvenience of cancelling my card, claiming the money back, making a voodoo doll of the bugger that is riding up and down on the Heathrow Express with tickets paid for by me... in the meantime direct debits will bounce, I won't have any card for my account until I go back to England in December, it will eat away at me until I go craaaaazy and I had just used my card to buy a pair of shoes online and now I can't get them because the card has been cancelled... hmm... oly did ask if he could do anything to make me feel better!

Em

Henry Progressing (OJG)

Hey everyone,

Well this is actually the second time I am writing this, thanks to the less than responsive computers we were using at a gaming Internet café. I suspect some spotty 11 year old kid thought it would be fun to “frag” my machine after 2 hours of writing. I was not a happy bunny. On the plus side, I am sure writing it a second time will make it an even better read. Ha.

So, first of all I just wanted to update a part of my last blog which stated how wonderful the library Internet access was… it is now less wonderful. I discovered the process in which new people come to use the few machines they have. Said new person turns up and asks to use the Internet, the officious Librarian takes out the diary, asks them for their name, and then slowly writes down their details into the current time slot. The Librarian then comes over to a random machine and tells the person sitting in front of it that their time is up, to which the person usually replies something like “oh, no warning, ok give me a minute to close things down”. At which point the librarian starts to get all flustered and says that the new person booked and you need to move now. Anyway, I think you get the picture, the exchange carried on for a bit longer, and I was tempted to just sign up again in the diary but thought that I had probably been there long enough.

Since my last blog entry, which I think was Thursday a week ago, Henry spent the day at the Electricians, so his spot lights now work, the inner fluorescent lights work, and he also has two new 12v sockets up front. I also got Ross the electrician to add a battery meter, which was a good thing as there might be a problem with one of the batteries, but we will find out more about that in due course.

Henry has also spent the day with Mitch at John’s Motor Trimmers, where he got a new pop-top fabric (much sturdier than the last one), some new vinyl for the bed and a new tough vinyl floor (easier to clean). Mitch will also be making seat covers for the two new seats that I will be making. Henry is looking great!

On Sunday last we went to visit Robert, Lil, and Ben who live on the edge of the Swann Valley. They have a truly beautiful house which sits on stilts overlooking a small valley. The view from their very long veranda is breathtaking (they probably thought I was a little mad as I snapped away with the camera). But… believe it or not, their view is not the most amazing thing about the house. Nope, even better than the view is the multitude of wild animals that come up right to the house. Specifically kangaroos.

So, I now have 200 or so shots of roos as they got progressively friendlier and closer to the house (now they positively knew that I was mad). If you look at some of the pics, you can see a female roo with her Joey in the pouch. There were in fact 2 females with joeys although one of the joeys seemed to be upside down in there, and it just looked weird. One thing that I noticed is that roos cannot actually walk. They can obviously jump for long distances, but for shorter distances they use their tale to prop themselves up just enough so that they can move their hind legs forward.

As well as the roos, we saw several beautiful birds flying up onto the veranda. So there we are having afternoon tea in a beautiful National Park valley, with roos below us, and parrots on the veranda. For comical value we had Gus, Ben’s puppy big puppy!), who loves nothing better than trying to find new friends by clumsily walking over to the birds with mild curiosity only to be constantly disappointed as they repeatedly fly away. At the end of the day we went for a 5 minute walk to catch a view of the Perth skyline from afar. The sky was quite hazy, but that is not the norm. Apparently it takes 45 minutes by car to get to the centre of Perth. After the walk, Ben showed me his workshop, a room under the house, the size of a very large living room with tall ceilings and a central square workbench probably 3m long on each side. I gotta get me one of those!

So speaking of workshops and tools, you probably all want to know how my own progress with Henry is coming along. Well, no wood has yet been cut, but the plans have been coming along well, some of which I have included as a picture below, so you can see what I am up to.

I have bought a significant number of tools, and to be honest I am a little embarrassed at doing so when we are supposed to be on such a tight budget, but in my defence the prices have been very good. In fact, I found the following quite funny (and hopefully so will those of you that also have a workshop full of tools). The Multi Sander cost 40GBP, the 18V Cordless Drill with Bits cost 40GBP, the Laser Guided Jigsaw cost 40GBP, and the 1550W Plunge Router with 50 bits…. yep…. cost 40GBP! Now as any of you know, the Router with bits should be several times more expensive than the little sander. It makes no sense! And all this is from GMC, a middle of the range make, there were much cheaper!

All in all I think I have spent 300GBP for all the tools, and 100GBP of that was just for the Router Table… which will suit my needs now, but will be improved at a later stage J Already the projects are building up.

So, plans are mostly done, tools are all bought, wood is mostly bought, a few fixings still need to be found, and with any luck the next 3 days or so should see a ton of wood being lovingly cut, mitred, sanded, drilled, fixed, and if all that fails, cursed at (still lovingly)!

With regards to the colours we have finally both agreed on the following scheme, although modifications have already been made… but more on that later!


Well, I think that is it for the moment, there are a lot of other things to write down, but I don’t want to turn this into a novel. As I have mentioned many times before, please leave comments, they are important to us. Also, we do try and keep the blog entries regular but with no permanent Internet access, it can be difficult.

Oly

The da Vinci effect

Hi, sorry its been so quite from us lately, this time we have been very busy.

The last few days I have been painting Henry. He is no longer the extremely dirty bright blue interior, he is now Wild Mustard and looks very dashing with it too.

Last week he had his pop-top, floor and back seats done by Mitch at Johns Motor Trimmers which took two days. He spent a day with the mechanic and the electrician, all that is left to do now is the storage and the curtains.

We are in an internet cafe right now which is more like warehouse it is so huge. I have just looked around and they have camouflage nets on the ceiling to make the LAN/internet gaming experience a little more authentic. You wouldn't want to think you are in a industrial park building in on the Albany highway in Cannington when you are fighting zombies, orcs and warlocks, you're half dead and there is not a health potion or druid to be found. At least you have camouflage.

On Saturday we are looking forward to watching the AFL (Australian Football League) match between the West Coast Eagles (thats us) and the Sydney Swans who beat us by a feather last year... so it will be GO EAGLES from noon. ----->

Finger crossed!

Em

All quiet on the western front

It's been a while since I have added anything to this blog, sorry about that. It's not as if I have been busy.

Oly has already told you all about Hamlyn Bay, which is where my last post left off, and the fateful bike ride to Foul Bay and back. It was the worst bike ride or any type of day out that was meant to be fun in my whole life. I thought I would never get back to the camp, I was starving, we didn't take enough water, the hills were really steep to the point where we both had to get off our bikes and push even on the proper roads and the whole trip I had a view of the back of Oly peddling furiously in the distance, except when he was sliding towards me on one of the many impossible sand dune hills. Never again!

Apart from that Hamlyn Bay was pretty special, and Foul Bay was idyllic. We soon settled down and enjoyed the tranquility whilst our neighbours with a veranda, portable toilet and shower, struggled to align their satellite dish.

Speaking of toilets and showers, ablutions as they are called in the camp sites, they are really scary, I swear I have watched too many slasher horror movies. When I am washing my hands and I look back up to the mirror in front of me I expect to see candy man or someone with a scythe and a scream mask on. I won't go to the loo in the night so I have to stop drinking any liquids a few hours before I go to bed. When I do go in the dark (it gets dark at 6pm) I take the big 6 cell mag light as protection and make sure I am really quick! I am certain it is something I will get used to over time, either that or develop a bladder of steel.

Well we are still in Perth, preening Henry and getting ready for our launch out into the outback. I am dying to get back out there having disastrous bike rides and showering in flip-flops (UK) thongs (AU) All good things come to those who wait...

Em

Aussie slang for the day
Dunny = an outside toilet, lavatory.

Back in Perth (OJG)

Hi everyone,

Just typing away at a local library (which has pretty good, fast, and FREE Internet access, but no ability to attach USB drives, so no pics... yet), and I wanted to let you all know very briefly what we are up to at the moment.

After our great week in Margaret River, we decided that we would in fact spend a little bit of money on Henry and spend 2 weeks in Perth getting him ready for the adventure ahead.

On Monday I took him to see Kurt at V-Dub Repairs in Freo, and he sorted out the wipers, horn, indicator switch, new seatbelts, a few engine bits, wheel alignments, and several other things. Henry honestly feels better drive for it. Thanks a lot Kurt.

Today, Henry is with Ross (an Electrician in phoenix Rd), who is sorting out the spot lights, fluo lights, additional 12V adapters and a battery charge indicator. Next Monday Henry should be going to get to the John's Motor Trimming, to get a new pop-top fabric (no more leaks) and possibly sort out a couple of other little fabric problems.

In the meantime Emelie is working on some new curtains, although she can't get past the initial obstacle of "what colour", and I am completely re-doing all the storage inside Henry. Well all of it except the bed and it's under storage area.

I have gotten pretty far with the plans, of course as many of you who know me will realise, I usually take months to ponder, draw, ponder some more, re-draw, ponder yet again, start again from scratch, and after many months and many brainwaves, I usually come with the ultimate and most perfect design! Which of course is completely impossible for me to actually make and I usually get stuck and then bored early on when I hit the 2nd or 3rd hurdle.

I am hoping that the immediacy of this particular project will mean that plans never life long enough to get too complicated, and therefore will be totally within my grasp and within the time limit of 2 weeks. I can hear some of you laughing with doubt, but we shall see who laughs last!

I of course am also slightly suffering from a colour conundrum, and although I have now 100% decided how the outside of Henry will be painted (although we have decided it is not worth it to paint him now), the inside is proving a bit more tricky. Add to that the complexity of what material to finish the units in, and also if any additional surface styling is needed. It might sound like I am falling into old habits again, but if I am going to do this, it needs to be good, or at the very least I need it to have potential to be good!

So... on the bright side of all that, I know have Carte Blanche to buy a ton of new power tools!!! YEEE-HAW! It is possible to rent power tools, but the price of some of the tools are so cheap it is actually more economical to buy than rent for more than 1 week. So Router (my fav), Drill, Sander, Jigsaw, Workbench, and corresponding bits are all a must. They can all be bought for about $100 each = 40GBP. The tricky one is a Router Table which is a real necessity (I think anyway), but you just can't get them cheap (probably the only item that isn't made my China, yet). So, with any luck I will be cutting away this weekend. I will post sketches and ongoing progress pics as soon as I can (unless of course the progress is negative, in which case I will just show pictures of somebody else's Kombi).

That is it for the moment, sorry for the delays in posting stuff, but there s nothing like a slow connection to sap your blog writing energy :)

Oly

Diving with Sharks (OJG)

Ok, I have somehow forgotten to mention the afternoon I had at AQUA, the Aquarium of Western Australia. For this particular blog I will just let the images do the talking with a few comments next to each one...

<-- Some jellyfish against a blue background. They are so alien-like! Well this is what greets you as you enter AQUA. People stand in front of them for ages just watching them "push" themselves upwards just to sink bak to the bottom and then repeat.

3 Moray Eels, looking their usual pissed off selves (they cannot help it, that is how they breath).

<-- Cuttlefish, I believe a close relative to squid and octopi. I am sure this one was watching me! The movement is so graceful.

Where is the deadly poisonous rock fish? This is a trick question (answer at the bottom).

<-- A picture of some Sea Dragons (I think), members of the Seahorse family, except because of the low light it all got blurred. However I quite liked the pic so here it is.

A seal showing doing his best impression of the red Barron!

<-- The 2 seals together, getting ready to play up to the camera again.

Apparently they like to swim upside down, and for some reason it just looked hilarious every time they did it.

<-- A Nurse shark, I know she looks fearsome, but she has no interest in humans at all. Alegedly.

Yep, several sharks and a stingray, which up until recently was not even considered a danger. Think you can guess the most dangerous animal in the tank?

<-- Grandma, what sharp teeth you have?! Nope not the most dangerous.

Yep, believe it or not, this is the most dangerous animal in the tank! Apparently their poor eyesight means they can bump into you, panic, and start pinching away with their huge beak.

<-- And here I am along with a few other divers in the shark tank. Unfotunately there is very little interaction with the sharks, and we are instructed to steer well out of their way. Sigh.

Me again, with a shark nearby. Half way through my 30 minute dive.

And a nice final pic of a shark. Perfect :)

Oly