**Happy birthday sis**

happy birthday to you,
happy birthday to you,
you look like a monkey,
and you smell like one too!!


Sending you our love from across the pond kiddo, hope you have a great day!

Love, lex and your little bro
xxxxxx

Down on the Farm

We've spent the last week in the small coastal town of Kalbarri staying on a proper aussie station, which is a bit like a farm back home except that this farm is over 1000 square miles! We were sleeping in old sheep shearers quarters that were built by the convicts over 100 years ago. The station is one of the oldest in Australia dating back to the 1850s. It was our first WWOOFing experience (willing workers on organic farms) which meant that we worked during the day in return for food and accomodation.



The station is family owned and run by Belinda and Calum Carruth who made us feel very welcome in their home and soon put us to work out in the fields. We were tasked with taking down an old fence around a paddock next to a beautiful river and full of amazing wildlife. After a day working out in the field we would then scrub up and sit down for a family meal cooked by belinda, each night we basically got a different animal, more often than not killed by Calum himself.





On our days off we got to go and explore the place and went fishing, horse riding and even shooting roo's, Paul another worker staying was great at teaching us how to shoot, and giving us some fishing advice. Each day we seemed to get to fire a bigger gun, which started with a 22 magnum rifle and ended up with a 44 magnum, a proper Dirty Harry hand cannon, until recently the most powerful handgun in the world. It was easy to see why after feeling the shockwave from firing it!





We had an absolutly amazing time with them, that it made us feel really homesick when we came to leave, and had to explain to their little boy that we wouldn't be coming back to play hide and seek with him any more.




Quick Messages:
* Sending our best wishes to Kevin Rowland and all the family - hope you get well soon.
* All the best Jacks and Steve with your imminent arrival! (ta Sue for your posts)

Flippin' freezing

After leaving carnarvon we headed down to Monkey Mia, a place famed on the west coast for the group of dolphins that come in each morning for feeding. If your lucky you get to feed a fish to the dolphins, and so Lex batted her eyelids at the boy with the bucket and got to feed old flipper.



We also had a go at swimming with them, but after swimming around in the freezing water for about ten minutes hoping they might come over, we gave up!

Beard Idol

*** VOTE NOW FOR YOUR FAVOURITE! ***


The full on beardy look


The Craig David


The George Michael


The YMCA (Macho Macho Man!)


The Saucy Frenchman


The Hitler (scarily similiar!)

The one that didn't get away!

Well, being stuck in Canarvon didn't turn out to be too bad at all. To pass away the time whilst poor Brucie was getting fixed we decided (as you do) to go to the local fishing shop and got kitted up with some proper fishing gear! This morning we set out early and went down to the town jetty. As we got there, there were lots of dolphins swimming and playing in water - a great way to start the morning. We sat in our little deck chairs for 4-5hours and in that time we managed to catch 4 fish...2 each! Here's what we caught:


Tailor Fish (Ad)


Tailor Fish (Lex)


Yellow Tail Stripey (Ad)


Blowfish (Lex) Bloody Poisonous - so luckily Ad managed to throw this bad boy back pretty sharpish!

The good news is the van turned out to be a relatively simple job to fix, we just had to get the carby cleaned out which cost about 80 bucks!

Poor old Brucie

The bad news is yesterday our little van broke down, but as luck would have it, it was just as we were pulling into the little town of carnarvon, after over two weeks of having no phone reception and all the long drives it really couldn't have happened at a better time. The nice man from the RAC came and tried to fix the van but couldn't, so we have to wait until monday for the mechanic to open. Something has happened to the carbouretta and when you turn the engine on it just revs up higher and higher, luckily we were able to pull in and turn off the engine before it blew up. hopefully it shouldn't be too much of a set back, but we might be here for a few days longer than we first though. We are so lucky to have reached a town, even if it is small and nothing ever appears to be open, but at least we can chill in our hammock with the crossword and maybe dip in the pool - so I guess we'll be ok!



The RAC ended up having to tow us to a caravan park in town and we got to wave to everyone as we were towed to our site! it was quite an entrance. To cheer ourselves up we had fish and chips and now just have to wait to speak to mechanic, we'll let you know how we get on.

broom broome...

So we enjoyed a few days in broome before heading on. We watched the sunset at cable beach a few times which was lovely and even enjoyed some fish and chips. The caravan park we stayed at showed films in the evening under the stars so it was really nice to kick back and relax for a while. After Broome we headed towards exmouth to visit the ningaloo reef. It was another long drive (about 1500kms) but we managed to do it in two days.

To try and give everyone an idea of how big this place really is, here are a couple of photos of the scenery on the drive.



8.15 am



1.30 pm

This is pretty much all we see for about seven hours each day. Every now and again we come to a road house, which is just a petrol station, if your lucky a caravan park, and normally the most miserable petrol station employees you'll ever meet. And no Tina, sorry there is no other road that we can take to make it a bit more interesting, its a case of one way there, and one way back!

Due to the remoteness of everything, some of the roads even double up as airstrips!



Anyway, after the drive we arrived in Exmouth and spent three nights staying in the national park and snorkelling everyday, we got a great little campsite just near the beach where we were able to put up our new hammock, walk to the beach, have a swim and then relax in the hammock again, it's really been a hard life!

The snorkelling on the reef was amazing, much better than wehat we saw on the great barrier reef, just swimming off the beach we saw sharks, turtles, big stingrays, sea snakes, red fire fish, a cod about 1.5 meters long, a couple of octopus and loads of hugh fish. We also got a chance to see the full moon rising (or the starcase to the moon as the locals call it) which looked amazing as a blood red moon rose over the sea lighting up the ripples of the ocean.



After Exmouth we drove to coral bay, another snorkelling spot, but decided after all this time looking at the fish, we had better eat some. We bought a box of 15 fish fingers (we couldn't afford the fresh stuff) and munched through them in one go (with some rice for vitamins!). All this swimming is hard work, so we needed to top up our energy levels.

The point of no return

Welcome to Western Australia!



The temperature is nicely in the 30's and the roads are long and straight!

We've arrived in Broome today after a mammoth 3 day drive from Katherine in the Northern Territory in which we've covered over 1500kms! Were pretty much the diagonal opposite of sydney, so this marks our half way round the country point, its going to be quicker to keep going than turn around!

The beaches look white and sandy and the sea is a tropical blue! We're planning on spending a few days here before heading south down the coast to the ningaloo reef for top class snorkelling. It involves a bit more driving as it's about another thousand k's from here.

p.s. A comment on comments: We like comments, they make us feel loved and not forgotten, please feel free to leave them!

Kak-a- do- do - do

We spent a few days in Kakadu, walking around the ancient aboriginal rock art and learning all about the Aboriginal culture. We learnt more in those two days aboyt the Aborinal communities than our whole time in Oz so far! As well as going to lots of free ranger talks we also saw some amazing views over the wetlands and flood plains.



After Kakadu we drove straight to Katherine Gorge, which is a giant size gorge containing around 13 sections of river. We decided the best way to see it would be to hire a canoe for the afternoon. It was a great afternoon and we got pretty wet, especially when our canoe nearly tipped over after trying to paddles down through some rapids! Sadly we don't have any digi shots to show you, as i broke my last digi in a kayak, and have learnt my lesson!

Jumping Crocs!

After Darwin, we headed out to Kakadu, an amazing national park full of jumping crocs! We started out all excited to be back on the road and only about an hour later we suddenly passed a road train that threw up a load of gravel all over our windscreen, which left us with a giant crack across the screen. We put it down to the curse of Kakadu. We met a terrific couple, Andy and Monica in Darwin, who had bought a new van from the city only 3 weeks previously and on their first trip into Kakadu, the van broke down. This was also topped off by passing an overturned large caravan in the road. This place has to be cursed!

Anyhow after driving back to the city briefly to get the screen repaired we were back on the road to catch our afternoon Jumping Croc Tour on Adelaide River. The tour was absolutely brilliant. We went out in a tiny 20 person boat and as we journeyed up river the crew threw out rods with buffalo attached to tease the crocs out for us. We were also really lucky to catch the Big boy, aka 'Grandad', a 70yr or so old saltwater croc, who you really wouldn't want to mess with!

You never know when you may need.....

If you're not up to the job, Dick's always on hand!

Darwin Beer Can Regatta

About a week ago we spent a week in Darwin (the northern point of Oz) and had a great time just chilling out and taken in the sights. Luckily we just arrived in time for the annual Beer Can Regatta 2006, in which a whole bunch of crazy aussies save up all the beer cans during the year and then make a float/boat to race on the sea! We spent the whole day watching the races and also the silly tugs-of-war and races on the beach. One of the most hilarious events was the Solo Iron Man race, in which 9 strapping aussie men and one butch girl had to run down the beach, pick up a kayak, paddle round a circuit, run back onto the beach and transfer 5 large crates of cans from one end to another. Only in true Aussie style some guys even started with sombero's and cans of beer in hand! Most of them were also upstaged by the girl who came second!