The last town in W.A.

Hello my friends. It’s been a while again. I hope this story makes some sense because I’ve been writing this in bits for a couple of weeks now. We left Carnarvon, we’ve gone on a massive roadtrip with a Swedish couple we met in Thailand. First we went up north to Coral Bay and Exmouth to go to the Ningaloo Reef and Cape Range. We did some snorkelling and fishing off the coast there. Our home made fishing rods and banana and cheese bait was unsuccessful however. Ah yeah, forgot to mention, we got like a hundred bananas ripening in the car. We nicked a big bunch on our last day of work on the farm. They were going bad otherwise anyway.

After that we went inland to Karijini National Park. It took us about 3 days getting there, every night we just camped out somewhere next to the road. We’re getting pretty good at making campfires by the way. It’s been great just sleeping under the stars every night. When we eventually got to Karijini we went hiking to see the gorges. It was about 35 degrees every day, so after a sweaty hike into the gorge there were 3 waterfalls and pools which were just amazing. Just have a look at the pictures.

 

After that we drove to Port Hedland, a stopover for us to get some supplies and not as crazy expensive fuel as in all the outback roadhouses. Not much to report from there, it’s just of big town where like all the iron ore gets shipped that they mine around here.

Then we eventually got to Broome where everything got really wet all a sudden. The first proper storm since we got here, the whole caravan park turned into a frikkin river. A bad time to realise our tent isn’t waterproof… and neither is the boot of the car. Shite! But nothing that a bit of silicone wont fix. Anyways, I’ve spent a evening on the famous Cable Beach trying to improve my harmonica skills… and beer drinking skills.

 

So after that long roadtrip, spending like a million dollars on fuel, we needed a job again and Kununurra apparently was the place to be. That meant 1044km trough the wildest part of Australia, the Kimberleys. Hooray! That was a awesome drive. Big ass eagles in the middle of the road eating dead kangaroos, cows and horses on the road everywhere. It nearly went all to shit when a car towing a caravan coming from the other direction towards us started skidding all over the road trying to avoid a lizard the was crossing. Things got a bit extra sweaty in the car for a couple of seconds. We’re OK incase you started worrying there! There’s 2 towns that you drive trough when you drive from Broome to Kununurra, Fitzroy Crossing and Halls Creek or Hells Crack as they say here. They are as redneck and inbred as they come I would say. Liquor restrictions got imposed on those towns because they got so bad, the only alcohol you can take away there is light beer. It was pretty fucked up. But we had a good 2 nights camping out in the Kimberleys and that was great. At night Jo spotted a dingo or a big cat of some sort sitting a few feet away from us.

So right, we are in Kununurra now, both of us are working which is good for the old bank account. We’re working on watermelon farms doing some preparation work for when the picking starts in a week. We’re staying in a hostel again, in a bed! Which felt really good after 2 weeks of just sleeping on a thin mat on the ground. We’re going to stay here for a month or 2, there’s a lot of work around. So that’s it for now. I will keep you guys updated on all watermelon related info and stuff.

Take care now, bye bye then

It keeps getting better

Hello. Greetings from Carnarvon still. We left the hostel last weekend because, well, it sucked. But also because the farmer that Jo and I are working for offered us free (!!!) accommodation on the farm while we’re working for him. Nice! So yeah, we got our own little place again, it’s not the most luxurious shack on the block but it has got character.

Last week we finally finished weeding the plantation. I don’t think we’re going to be up for doing that again, or any work that involves bending down for 8 hours a day. Ah well, we got paid for it I guess. After that, Kim, the farmers wife, came out and told us we could paint their house. Way better job.

On Wednesday, all a sudden, Blair (the farmer) came out and told us they were going on a holiday and wont be back till Sunday. OK. I was thinking, great time to piss off I guess. No, they gave us a key to their house, told us to keep an eye out, feed the dog and cat and gave us huge lamb roast. Somebody doesn’t have any trust issues. We basically had the whole farm for ourselves, we got paid work with no supervision and a frikkin’ lamb roast. I’d say that’s a step up from eating noodles every day.

We’re not sure if there’s going to be any work around next week. If there is we’ll hang around here for a bit, otherwise we’re going to head up a bit more up north, to Exmouth perhaps.

See ya later yeah!

Out with the goats, in with the melons

 

Hi. It’s us again, back with some more news and tales from far far away. We left Kalbarri last Saturday after a month of catching wild goats. It was a bit sad to leave because we had such a great time there but it is time go and make some sweet moolah.

Of course we had no choice but to throw ourselves a goodbye party on our last night on the station, any reason will do. Calum, the boss farmer, entertained us a with stories of ghosts living in the homestead. For dinner we got steaks (born, bled and then bbq-ed on the station) and the best roast potatoes ever. We had also 5 new workers there who didn’t mind having a few (17) beers with us. It was our first late night in a month, so we tried to make the most of it.

And off we went the next morning, drove about 4-5 hours to Shark Bay where we camped out for the night. We got to this free campsite, not listed in the tourist folder, far away from all that is civilisation. We slept with the ocean only a couple of steps away from us, beautiful clear, starry night. Yep life is good.

On Sunday afternoon we arrived in Carnarvon and apparently that’s also the day this town doesn’t work. Nothing open, not even the check-in desk of the hostel. Great. Another night camping out then I guess. So yeah, work, that’s what we come here to do. We drove around to all the farms the next morning trying to find work. We learned that big signs saying “NO WORK, NO ENTRY” means exactly that. But eventually after 7 or 8 farms we found this guy Blair (I thought  that name only existed for rich people in a white polo) who did need some workers. Hooray! So we spent last week de-weeding his melon fields, without seeing him again after that first day. We just turn up at 6AM take his ute to the field and work till when we want to. Then we give his wife our hours and we get paid, easy does it. Next week we can even move into their cottage they have on the farm, free. Nice. We’ve also got another job painting their house. Eventually when they don’t have any more work for us I think we’re going to move back to a caravan park. Cheaper and more relaxed then the local hostel. The hostel isn’t bad but management is a bit too stressed.

I think that’s it for now, you can carry on your life again beloved reader. Thank you. To see pictures you can always go to my Flickr page.

There’s is one more thing I want to share with you guys though, it’s a saying from the farmer back on the goat catching station who doesn’t like whiners; “If you want sympathy you can find it in the dictionary between shit and syphilis.”

Great stuff.

Onya Mate!

Time for a bit of an update.  I know… It’s been a while. So where to begin? Oh yeah, we are in Australia now! We got to Perth from Singapore on the 5th at like 1AM, we got dropped off in the city centre at 3AM. So we were pretty knackered and wanted to find a bed somewhere. But everywhere wanted to charge us for a whole night and we had to pay for another night at like 10AM. Sod that! So we did what everybody else would do in that situation, we went to a 24h McDonalds! We a had big mac meal at 5 o'clock in the morning and played chess while chatting to the homeless and drunks. Those are the only people who are up on a weekday night. It could’ve been more fun if I wasn’t so tired. But it did save us like 50bucks.

Its been a hectic first week here, just sorting all the paperwork out and trying to get a job. We got a car as well, a cheap but beat up Ford Falcon stationwagon. The important thing is that it runs good and we’re getting a few things to make it a bit cooler. My idea of spray painting flames down the side didn’t go down to well with Jo. We’ll see. But we are leaving Perth on Sunday morning. On Saturday we’re driving to Jo’s cousin Gemma who lives just outside the city here. We met up with her and her husband Didier and her brother Ben last night, we ended up spending the night at their place, having a Kangaroo BBQ feast and goon night. Lovely.

So we left Perth on the 14th of February, drove about 700Km north to a little town called Kalbarri. We rang up a farm there a few days before that needed some help mustering feral goats. Who could say no to that? So up north we drove, as soon as we got out of Perth and the suburbs we got back into the big empty space of Australia. I do think everybody should experience a proper roadtrip in Oz at least once. Very zen indeed. Only the heat might drive you a bit crazy. So all went well and that evening around 6 we got to Kalberri. We camped out that night before going to the farm the next morning. We slept on the roof of the car most of the night (the rest falling off) doing a bit a star-gazing which was pretty brilliant.

We got to the farm the next morning, where everybody was getting ready for the goat mustering. We got handed a walkie talkie, then got dropped in the bush being told we had to start walking east. Right. Do they realize it’s our first time doing this? Where’s east? When do we stop? Let’s just say our first mustering could have gone better. The next few days we were “carting” goats. That means getting them out of the “traps”, the pen they get mustered in. So we have to build a bottleneck with fences and a ramp to back the truck into at every trap. Then the fun begins, chasing the goats down the fences into the bottleneck then up the ramp. That works all really well till one of the big billie goats up front turns around and starts ramming int0 everything. Including myself. So yeah, they can be pretty stubborn. The means used to get them on the truck aren’t always kosher. But it does give you a proper workout.

We’re getting some proper offroad driving experience as well. Most off the traps take about an hour drive to get there and there’s no tarmac in the outback. We got all sorts of extreme 4WD tracks around here, as the property goes from the coast to the rocky hills inland. We usually go in 3 vehicles to the traps, on average about 2 tyres a day get fucked. The truck or the ute get bogged in the sand at least once a day. Towing or changing tyres isn’t nice in 50degree midday heat but shitloads better then being stuck in traffic going to a 9 to 5 job that you hate.

So yeah, we’re doing all sorts of stuff here, my favourite is mustering goats on a quadbike. Every guy wants to be a cowboy I reckon. It’s great fun trying to make them go where you want them. Just make sure you look in front of you occasionally, I've been banged up by trees and rocks a few times already. Great times.

Alright then, I think we’re staying here for another week or so, nothing is planned yet. I did give the owner of the hostel in Innisfail where we picked bananas 2 years ago a ring. He still remembered us and we’ll go there in a few months and get our old jobs back. So again, sorry for the delay in updating this thing, I’ll try to do it more often again. But as a surprise here is our newest video, “Farm Madness”.

See ya later yeah!

Look! Pretty pictures!

Alrighty then, just uploaded heaps of pictures on my Flickr webpage. If you're even slighty interested in what we're all up to I recommened you have a look.

Click here for cheap viagra or maybe even our pictures!

The tales of Captain Neal and shots of monkey brain

Good morning to the world. We arrived on Ko Lanta yesterday after spending 3 days on Ko Phi Phi. On our 2nd day we went for a sailing trip with captain Neal, a Canadian civil engineer who quit his job 6 years ago and been sailing the world ever since. He got this 9m long sailing yacht and takes up to 10 people with him on tours he does around the island. But this time it was only Jo and me, it was like being on a private yacht. First we did a trip to Monkey Beach where we got to feed the monkeys who are at that beach all day. After that we went to Ko Phi Phi Leh, that’s the island where The Beach was filmed, nice beach but waaaaaaaay too many people there thanks to the movie and Lonely Planet. I did some snorkelling on the back of the island. I got told that if you a banana in your hand under water the fish would come and eat it. I’ve never been around so many fish in my life! They just started swarming me and they ate the whole thing in about 20 seconds. Yeah, that was kind of awesome. Then we did a bit of proper sailing to watch the sunset where I probably didn’t talk for 20 minutes. Jo was delighted I didn’t ruin the moment. That sunset did made my top 3 I reckon. Great. I think I could get into this whole sailing thing, maybe something to think about for the future.

So yeah, on Ko Lanta now, we had a bit of a crazy night. We went to this beach bar where they had the weirdest stuff. We spent the nigh with about 6 people from England who were celebrating their last night travelling. I cant go into it too much but a few of the shots I did were: cobra blood, monkey brain and seasnake. The last one is the worst but in a way the best as well. And after the bottle was empty, they took the snake out and cut it up so that we all could have a bit, how nice of them! And for entertainment we had Bong, the manager, spearing apples off peoples heads and playing the knife game with at first a knife, then an axe and for the big finale a power drill. It was absolutely crazy, but it was a great night out.

Just about to upload this story, we’re sitting on the beach now watching the sunset. Wifi is great isn’t it.

Khao Sok & Koh Phi Phi

Sawadii Ka Y’all! We got a bit of jungle action in Khao Sok national park. We decided not to go on one of those organised tours there because they were a bit to pricey compared to the one we did before in Chiang Mai. So we got some bread and jam and headed off into the jungle for the day on our own to explore the waterfalls. It started on a big dirt road that soon became a little overgrown path. We saw heaps of spiders and lizards but no tigers, bears nor the infamous barking deer, maybe for the best i guess. After  walking, sweating and eating jam sandwiches all day we got to a great pool to go for a swim. Heaven. Our goal was to see monkeys, of course, and then just on the last bit back we got to see a family of them jumping from tree to tree. Success! In the evening we found this dark little pub next to the river, nobody there but just a couple of Thai guys sitting under a black light. We soon realised that the black light attracted every single bug within like a mile radius, which the Thai guys more than willingly showed us their preferred methods of eating them. I was well impressed, Jo not so much.

We got to Koh Phi Phi yesterday, beautiful island but well expensive for our cheap asses. Eventually we did find a room, but it does cost double then that we usually pay. But hey, compared to Europe it’s still a bargain. Then something random happened when we were for a walk around the island, I got myself a cool freehand bamboo tattoo on my thigh. I was waiting for Jo while looking at some pictures at this shop and 5 minutes later I was in the chair. Hooray for spontaneity! I think it took about 4-5hours to get it done. Weird seeing a guy poking me for a couple of hours, their was a bit of a crowd as well.  Definitely more painful then a machine tattoo, but the result is just awesome. Really happy to have it done, for a fraction of the price back home i reckon. After we had to go and celebrate with some buckets of course. We went to this beach bar where there was a flaming skipping rope and fire limbo going on, never seem so many people get burned in my life before. Not a great thing to do when you’re drunk I guess. Then we ran into this guy who looked beaten up with an ice pack on his hand, apparently there’s this bar where if you go into the ring against a Thai kickbox  fighter you get a free bucket. I think he lost. What a weird island, I think I’m starting to like it.

We’re going on a sailing trip tomorrow, do some snorkelling, feed monkeys, visit some of the best beaches in the world, you know the usual stuff. See ya later yeah!