West Coast photos

Some photos of our 5 week trip up the west coast - from Perth to Darwin. 9000 km and Iggy Pop (our campervan) did us proud! We had such a lot of fun....

The Stirling Ranges national park, south of Perth. We climbed up a big hill to get this view.

Iggy Pop at our camping spot near Albany - a room with a view!

Catching marron for dinner.

Iggy Pop at Cape Leeuwin where the Southern Ocean meets the Indian Ocean.

PS The writing on the back says "at what point in a relationship is it ok to stop wiping your arse?" - a very strange question!

The Pinnacles desert, north of Perth

Kalbari national park - they call this rock natures window

Boredom.... still several hundred kilometres to go.

Snorkling the Ningaloo reef

Beautiful empty beaches

The Pilbara (remind you of the film Australia?)

Snorkling the Ningaloo Reef

We went on an amazing snorking trip in sea-kayaks to the outer reef. Saw lots of beautiful multi-coloured fish, sting-rays, turtles and reef sharks (they are not so beautiful!).

Victoria and The Great Ocean Road

Crusising around in the covertible!

The Blue Lake at Mount Gambier

Bandey at home in the shearing shed!

Tasmania photos

Our week in Tassie went past far too quickly and there was so much to do and see. Really we needed twice as much time to do it all but, in our usual style, we crammed in as much as we could into a short space of time! The highlights were definitely the hikes - first Craddle Mountain summit, then Mount Jerusalem and King Solomans Throne.

Starting off on our walk to Craddle Summit

Half way up - thats where we are heading on the right!

And finally, after 2 1/2 hours and climbing over large boulders towards the end - the summit! Naturally we were the first up there on 22/2/09

Mount Jerusalem summit - 24 hours later

And then almost at the top of King Solomon's Throne - we had to climb throught that tiny gap!

Tamworth Country Music Festival 17th-18th January

We never thought we'd find ourselves getting into the old country music but the Tamworth festival is awesome! The whole place gets taken over by musicians, from the buskers on the streets to huge stars of country music. It has such a great atmosphere and every corner you turn around there is a different band or artist playing. We had a fantastic weekend, hanging out in the local club "Diggers" watching lots of different bands, checking out the buskers (of variable standards and ages) and of course camping again!

Wyong Rodeo

Why would you do this? Madness.....

A great spectators sport all the same!

Blue Mountains

We headed up to the Blue Mountains for the weekend and had a bit of drama when we locked the car keys inside the car at a very remote spot 8km down a dirt road!! Kate was panicing as memories of the film "Wolf Creek" came flooding back but her hero Bandey saved the day. Like all men, he never leaves the car without his wallet and his phone in his pocket - a quick call to the Aussie equivalent of the AA and we were sorted. It did however end up being the most beautiful spot to set up our tent for the night for another spot of camping...

We did the most incredible (and very steep!) walk down into the blue-gum tree forest at the bottom of the gorge. It took a good few hours but was really worth the effort. It got us away from all the other tourist that flock to see the iconic "Three Sisters" - we had to go and see it to get the photo but there were way too many people there for our liking!