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Hi everyone, hope all is well back in the UK. A rather different story has unfolded since last week… We are now back in Perth, after Kevin had a nervous break down in Albany. Turns out he wasn't really up for a jaunt across the Nullarbor Desert! But more about that later. The week started out great, and has certainly had its ups and downs.
Since our last entry we visited Mammoth Cave, just south of Margaret River, which had some great scenery. It was really interesting finding out how it had formed. From there we drove further south, seeing Augusta and Cape Leeuwin and we spent that night in Windy Harbour, which wasn't very windy. The lady caretaker of the site had a very dry sense of humour, so dry that we couldn't understand her most of the time. Laura thought she was quite scary. Laura got chance to test out a new wok she'd bought though, and made a delicious stir fry.
The next day, Thursday, we drove back up to Northcliffe, a very "Olde Worlde" type place that sits in a real time warp. It really felt like we'd been zapped back to the Wild West, and took the opportunity to take some sepia photos of Kev which I think turned out really well. From then on was a slow journey through to Walpole on the south coast. It was a really hot day and the camper's air-cooled engine wasn't agreeing with driving at the hottest time of day. We had to stop every 20 mins so the engine could cool down a bit and we could carry on. Somewhere along the journey a rubber bush decided to break in the gear linkage, making it near impossible to select 1st or 4th gears, which didn't help with the heat problem. Then the engine started smoking, the vitals seemed ok though and we made it to Walpole with a monstrous white cloud following in our wake. We got everything checked out at a garage where the mechanic swore blind he'd worked on the same VW a couple of years before. He managed to sort out the smoking anyway, and we carried on to the 'Valley of the Giants', where we followed the tree top walk. It wasn't incredibly interesting, there are much taller trees at Delamere Forest, and Go Ape's tree top adventure course is a little more entertaining, but the nature trail afterwards made it worth the money. It was an experience being able to stand inside a Eucalyptus tree.
We carried on to Denmark, and went to Greens Pool for our dinner. Afterwards we went for a drive to find somewhere decent to sleep, and passed an elderly man trying to put out a bush fire on his property. We pulled over to see if we could help which gave us chance to test out the fire extinguisher. After we'd emptied it there was still half the fire raging, but we managed to get it under control and went on our way. It rained that night, so no doubt everything was ok in the end.
The next day proved to be even worse for our poor old campervan. We got to Albany and went to some specialist VW garages to see if they could fix the annoying problem with the gear linkage. Even more annoyingly, the part needed to be sent from Perth, and would have cost just $15 to buy and have fitted, but would have cost another $30 to have sent and we would have had to wait 6 days to get it! I say "would have", because shortly after getting this quote it became the least of our problems. We headed off for Margaret and Karl's (our friends in Albany), and exiting a roundabout we heard the dreaded "knock, knock" of the big end bearing going inside the engine. To those not mechanically minded, this can be terminal for an engine and big bucks to repair if not.
Our journey, it seems, has come to an abrupt end for the now. Not that it has dampened our spirits at all. We spent the weekend with Marg and Karl, who have been awesome of hosts. And we've had a great time in and around Albany with them, despite the poor weather that seemed to follow us around, including hail on Saturday! However, the bad weather sent us some amazing scenery at 'The Gap'; see the pics and vids to see what I mean.
Our trip back to Perth was pretty direct, not that we had a choice. We jumped on the back of an RAC wagon for the run. With our travelling money being needed to repair poor Kevin's engine we have been out looking for work, with great success! The first place we walked into, Ciccerello's restaurant in Fremantle Harbour, took us both on straight away. We can work the same shifts and have as many hours as we want! We start tomorrow (Thursday) at 11am. Wish us luck! We have also applied for jobs on Rottnest Island, which will be great if we get them as they include accommodation.
We have spent the last 2 nights in backpacker hostels, Monday night in Freo and last night in Northbridge. It's pretty cool as it means we can meet up with more people in similar situations, and like-minded people at that. Eating out is cheap around here, and doesn't cost much more than buying food in.
With Kevin resting his wheels we found ourselves without transportation, it's not easy using public transport with holdalls big enough to fit bodies in, so we hired a car. We found a place that offered some wheels for just $16.50 a day, and we saw why shortly after picking them up. We drove a Ford Telstar (Ford Orion to those in the UK) that had been built in the dark ages and had several hundred rust holes the size of fists. There was a worrying clunking sound coming from the floor whenever I put my foot down, and the driver's seat didn't like to stay upright. We gave it back that afternoon, happy to be alive, and caught the train into Perth after all. We're looking at some "Wicked" campers later today to rent just until Kevin's running under his own steam again. We'll see where things go from here.
We plan to do our travels toward the end of our stay in Oz now, once we've earned some serious cash so we can do all the activities we want. We can cut out the south west now too, which will give us some more time elsewhere.
We are happy as we are for now, and we hope everyone back home is too. As always, enjoy the pictures and videos, we're also adding some stuff we missed last week if we remember.
All our love, from James and Laura xXx
Lots of big hugs and kisses xXx
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