LIFE UNLEASHED

Nearly a year after leaving Sydney we found ourselves heading home to Manly.  Little did we know, the adventure was not quite finished.  After a fantastic dinner of mussels on Cottlesloe Beach in Perth we boarded our plane the next morning excited about going home and reminiscing about our adventures past.

BUMP BUMP.  A bit of turbulence.

“Would all passengers & crew members sit down immediately”  the pilot announced.

That was a bit brief, I thought.  But when 20 minutes past without turbulence and the seat belt sign went off I went back to my book without a second thought.  Ok, maybe my second thought was that the pilot needed to improve his ‘pilot-side’ manner.

BUMP BUMP.  About 20 minutes from landing.

“Would all passengers & crew members fasten seatbelts” the pilot announced.  “There’s a bit of weather in Sydney” I hear a stewardess say to a fellow passenger.

Oh well, we’ve flown in snow & wind in North America.  Can’t be that bad.

JIGGLE, JIGGLE, BUMP, BUMP, WOOOOOSHHHHH.  Seems a bit windy. The sky all of sudden goes black and we notice rain outside the window.  Followed by a few cracks of thunder.  Oh and lightning too.  That’s when the plane starts swaying side to side.  That’s when I grab Brad’s hand.  The kids around us are laughing.  It’s like a roller coaster afterall.

After a few more big BUMPS our plane drops a few hundred meters down.  Ooops.  I guess the pilot is finding the weather a bit worse than ground control told him.  That’s followed by the plane tipping sharply to one side.  By this point my hand has taken to gripping Brad’s and the tears are streaming.  Admitably, I’m also a bit angry too –after 30 flights this year it’s going to end on the last one!!!!  NO WAY.

This continues for 15 minutes as we fight through the clouds and past the increasing lightning outside the window.  You’d think when the landing gear came down we’d feel relieved but not on this flight.  As the landing gear deploys there is the loudest sound I’ve ever heard in my life on an airplane.  Like an engine ripping open or a train plowing into the plane.  HMMM.  I guess it’s a bit windy out there.  Do we still have landing gear?

As you can gather from the fact that I’m writing this post, the plane did eventually land.  I should correct – the LAST plane of the evening eventually landed as once off the plane we noticed all other flights had been diverted.

“Just wanted to thank you all for your understanding during landing.  We do our best in weather but obviously there were some challenges up there” the pilot announces after we’ve reached the gate.  I think he was too scared to say anything before that point.

I came close to kissing the ground.  WELCOME HOME!!!!!!

We then stood around for 11/2 hours waiting for our luggage because it was considered too dangerous for the ground staff to unload the luggage.

Too dangerous to unload the luggage but not to dangerous to land the plane.

The next morning we awoke to what seemed like Armageddon.  The Sydney dust storm turned the whole city orange and made many worry the world was ending.  As for me, I looked out the window, said ‘Hmm. That’s interesting” and went back to sleep.  After the night before, not even the end of the world seemed all that bad.

We know many Australian’s don’t like Chardonnay.  Must have been all those teen years spent drinking cask wine on the beach.  But when you head to the premier wine region at Margaret River in Australia, not trying the chardonnay would be like not eating pasta in Italy!

Margaret River was one of our last frontiers of wine tasting, having visited most of the other big and not so big wine regions in Australia.   Barossa, Clare, Yarra Valley, Hunter Valley, Mudgee, Rutherglen — there’s a wine region for every taste and style.  Margaret River definitely lived up to its reputation.  We drove through rolling hills of giant karri trees and past some of the best beaches in the country to taste some of the best wine in teh n.  What other wine region in the world can you be surfing one minute and visiting premiere wineries the next.  Not to mention, heaps of boutique breweries and speciality food shops along the way.

We started our tour of Margaret River by joining the “Cape Long Lunch”.  A fundraiser for a local school, the Cape Long Lunch is a full day wine tour matched with food at 4 wineries and fun contests/draws along the way.   The day started with a last minute call from the organizer to let us know that they had a cancellation and we’d be able to join the group.  The catch –we’d have to meet them at the first winery.  No problem except what do we do with our campervan after the tour is finished?  We wouldn’t be in any shape to drive.  No problem they said!  You can park your van at the winery!

So that’s how we ended up spending the night camped at a winery!  The winemaker and his wife made us feel at home by offering their power to let us plug in the van and inviting us to have coffee with them the next morning.  Lovely people!  

The rest of our time in Margaret river was spent trying as many tasty WA wines as we could, enjoying a glass of the best Chardonnay in the country (the Leeuwin Art Series during lunch at Leeuwin Winery) and shipping home a few cases to enjoy back home in Sydney. 

Follow that up with a drive through Karri country, camping in pristine forests and attempting to climb a 70m tree via Fire ladders (while I cringed below – I only made it up about 10 rungs) and you’ve got a fantastic end to 6 weeks in Western Australia. 

You’ve gotta love the Aussies! They sure are a social bunch. We were reminded at our very first caravan park in WA that it’s one of the things we truly love about Australia. We walked into the communal kitchen area and within 2 minutes were offered a beer, glass of wine and invited to sit down and tell the tallest tale we could. Luckily, if you have been following this blog, you’ll know we came armed to the teeth with stories.

Another great example of the social scene at caravan parks was the soup and burger night at a caravan park near Kalbarri National Park.  Everyone in the park gathers around a couple fire pits and chomps on fresh burgers and lovingly home made soup cooked up by the staff. By the end of the evening you know that Joe has 3 grandsons and has surfed his whole life. Or that Mary laughs like a Kukaburra after a few glasses of wine.

Most importantly you know that Aussies love to make new friends, old or young, foreign or local and they’ll welcome you with a few bevies, a friendly slap on the back and “Good-on Ya Mate” for good measure.

Author’s Note: This post is a continuation of our last post “1 Campervan, 2 Silly Canadians and 5000 Dusty Kms” and best read in that order.

We left you with visions of sharks & manta rays from the West Coast of Australia to move inland to some of the most spectacular scenery in Australia – Karinjini National Park.

Picture the middle of the Western Desert springing forth deep gorges almost untouched by man and you’ve got Karinjini National Park. There are some great hikes you can do to the bottom of gorges, lush with plant life, full of birds and secret swimming holes. We did most of them and can recommend all. But the definite highlight of our 4 days was the canyoning trip taken with West Oz Adventures. Listed as one of the “Top Ten things a Bloke should do before he dies” (or a Sheila should do for that matter!) how could we resist the challenge.

So we threw on wet suits, helmets, ropes & an inner tube to float through the gorges on and jumped (10 m down a natural rock water-slide to be exact) right in! Our canyoning adventure included 5 hours of hiking down into a gorge, abseiling through a waterfall, water-sliding down natural rock slides, rock climbing along sheer rock ledges (clamped on, of course) and marveling at the amazing rock colours surrounding us. Never have we felt so close to nature and so adrenalin pumped at the same time.

How do you follow-up one of the best things we’ve done in our lives (canyoning)? By a few more life highlights in the Bungle Bungles. But before that we had 2000km to cover and took a lovely 4 day break on the coast in the most remote ‘city’ in Australia - Broome. We enjoyed a few movies in the oldest outdoor cinema in the world, took advantage of a more developed city in some tasty restaurants, spent a day on lounge chairs at Cable Beach (voted one of the best in the world) and recharged our batteries after a suspicious cough/fever that might have been caused by what Brad termed “Gorge Pigs” in Karinjini. (i.e. possibly a mild case of swine flu).

We left Broome with the excitement of crossing the Kimberly through one of the last areas of Australia we haven’t covered by land (just have the Nullabor left now!). The Kimberly is as remote, arid and almost deserted as you’d expect. But at the same time it has some amazing swimming holes, gorges, wildlife and natural rock formations like the Bungle Bungles. We left Wanda for a few days and headed into Purnululu National Park (Bungle Bungles) for 3 days of 4 WD adventure and camping on our own.

To begin with, it was 100% worth the extra effort of taking your own (or Thrifty’s) rental 4WD into the Bungle Bungles. The drive in was a fun 4WD track that went over small rivers, through bumpy rocky outcrops and past some stunning scenery. Once in the Bungle Bungles there were some fantastic walks to Echidna Chasm, Cathedral Gorge and one of our favs – Mini Palm Gorge where we were the only humans in site. It was hot. Not just a little hot. HOT! So be prepared.

We loved the hikes, and the connection of being in place that is so remote and almost sacred feeling. But for a kick of adrenalin we took an early morning helicopter tour of the Bungle Bungles. Picture us helicopter newbie’s (1st time!) walking up to a tiny, blue helicopter without any doors riding over ancient landscapes. We were grinning the whole time! AWESOME!

After leaving the Bungle Bungles things did settle down a bit. We camped a few days beside Lake Kunnunura and had a friendly freshi crocodile named George visit the lakeside each night. I don’t know about you, but if there is any sized crocodile next to my tent I’d be a little worried! Bats would fly by in the thousands and all the while we’re sipping a cool glass of white wine soaking in all the adventures. What more could you ask for?

We finished the final 1000km of our 5000km from Perth in Darwin a city we’ve visited a few times already. Luckily we made it to the Mindle Beach Markets for a fresh mango smoothie and a glass of wine while watching the best sunset in the world.

Western Australia –that’s what I call 5 weeks unleashed!

We had just traveled around the world and gotten back to our starting point, Australia. We could go back to our regular life, get jobs in offices and book into a routine…but that’s not living a life unleashed!

So what did we do? We planned a crazy road trip that would take us half way around the 3^rd largest country in the world. One that would take us on a remarkable adventure to unusual rock formations, agricultural regions feeding this great nation, some of the best diving and snorkeling in the world, several of the world’s top beaches, deep gorges which would bring untold adventures, to the far north where tiger sharks, crocodiles, bats and snakes abound and then back south to a premium wine region and huge Karri forests. And what better way to do all of this but in a campervan.

We learned early that campervaning the way to see great nature through trips in New Zealand and Tasmania. We also learned that every camper needs a name and for this epic journey we took a girl named Wanda. Wanda because she was bound to wander (“wanda” as the aussie’s would say!) and because she was taking us from the south of Western Australia (WA) to the city of Darwin (DA) in the Northern Territories.

Life on the Wild Side (Part 1)

We checked out Fremantle in Perth for a couple days, enjoyed the great café, Little Creatures brewery and seafood restaurants, got stocked up on some essential supplies and went to pick up Wanda (the campervan). Our first stop on our drive 5000km up the Western Australia coast was a bizarre rock formation desert called the Pinnacles. It was the kind of place that old sci-fi shows like Buck Rogers or Star Trek would use to represent an alien planet.

Hundreds of 3 meter pillars of rock standing like trees filled this sandy desert wasteland. I half expected to see Cap’n Kirk himself doing his famed back flip kick to a lizard man. The best part was that you could not only do a 2km walk through this wasteland but also a 4 km drive. I imagine this is what Neil Armstrong felt like the first time he took his moon rover out for a spin.

Western Australia is the most remote state in Australia and as a result has some of the best national parks in the country. Kalbarri National Park ranges from stunning coastal cliff walks where you can watch whales play just off shore to in-land canyons you can hike through to your hearts content. Another “few” hours (5 hours is a short drive in WA!) north is Monkey Mia where you can wade in to your knees with wild dolphins and even hand feed them fish. It was a truly amazing experience that lets you see up close the intelligence and humanity of these amazing creatures.

Do you enjoy breathing???

If you do you owe a lot to a little 3 billion year old clump of muck called a stromatalite.

We had to stop at Hamlin pool to pay our respect to the little single celled organisms that gathered together and created 80 percent of the breathable oxygen on this planet. Hamlin pool was one of the few remaining places you could see stromatlites in the wild and was the only place to claim to have one in captivity. Considering that they are a grey brown lump of rock I don’t know how they managed to capture it or keep in reigned in in it’s little fish tank but it was impressive none the less. We took quite a long walk through a very hot lime stone desert and then out on to a pier to gander at these wonders of nature.   Apparently, if you look real close and wait along time you can occasionally see one send up a little bubble of oxygen, Whoooooohooooo! None the less, all hail the stromatalite…founding member of the planet Earth!

Our next major stop was Cape Range National park in Exmouth. What a wildlife extravaganza it was! Turquoise Bay is perhaps THE best snorkeling spot in Australia. Picture a beautiful white sand beach with an outer reef breaking the waves about 300 meters off shore. In between the outer reef and the shore is a beautiful turquoise bay filled with heaps of coral and marine life. Seriously, the most fish we’ve ever seen snorkelling! Now, I said it was the best snorkel spot but I did not say it was the easiest. The trick here is too head about 300 meter along the shore, swim out 100 meters and let the current drift you back south while you float as if in a giant aquarium watching the fish and coral beneath you. As the current picks up you swim frantically back towards shore in the hopes you’ll reach the sand bar allowing you to climb out. Failing to reach the sand bar results in you being sucked out to sea through the gap and getting to see a tiger shark from the inside (i.e. do not miss the sand bar!). We saw turtles, reef sharks, octopus, trumpet fish, blowfish and huge schools of coral fish. We never did miss the sand bar but on our third pass Lisa did see a very large shark that she could not identify. Our best guess was Bull or Tiger, both of which are classed as your “leave the water” varieties. So that was the end our snorkel trip at Turquoise bay. After that Cape Range was all kangaroos, rock wallabies, echidnas, brown snakes and other cool creatures. It is a definite - Do Not Miss - kind of place.

Before leaving Exmouth we decided a bit more adrenilin was in order and dove one of the top rated dive sites in the world at Navy Pier.  Not only is the dive full of huge schools of fish & large grey nurse sharks within cm of your face — the adventure begins out of the water with a 4 m drop off the pier dressed in full diving gear on.  One of the best dives for uniqueness and for Lisa nearly bumping face first into a 3m shark before I yanked her back by the fin.  So when you’re diving Navy pier try not to get too distracted by the multitude of life around you or you may become a permanent fixture.

From Exmouth, we headed back south to Coral Bay for some relaxation on a crystal clear bay (Yes another one!  Also a bit busy but beautiful none-the-less) and to swim with Mantas. Yep Mantas! We hopped on a snorkel trip early one morning and quickly found 2 Mantas to jump in the water with. We swam above them as they gracefully motored along the ocean floor. It was pretty impressive floating along above them and occasionally free diving for a closer look. They are definitely one of our favourite see creatures.

After all this excitement you’d expect that things would settle down a bit…. BUT with so many adventures to be had, why would they?

But in the words of Hammy the Hamster — “That’s another story”.

(For those that are not familiar or Canadians/Pommies that want to relive a bit of their childhood look for the original 1960s “Tales of the Riverbank - Hammy Hamster” clips on You Tube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM5PjQW16r0

Hammy was the lead “actor” in a kids TV show which used live animals that sped around in toy cars and went on all sorts of hamster adventures.  There was a British and Canadian narrated version with the Canadian version always ending “but that’s another story….”)