cue: violins

finally home, mum's off to the supermarket to buy me food that i can turn in to an adequate dinner tonight. Her and dad are going to a ball, what a joke, dad has a bow tie. 

Today is friday, i;ve been home since tuesday morning. I think I have finally caught up on all my sleep. 

Before i left perth i got my lip pierced and britta and i dyed lis' hair brown. Oh and i saw rach bailey in for a cider back at little creatures in freo. Once i was back in perth i met britta and lis at perth station. we went to price attack or somewhere like that were they have a hairdresser as well as all the take home boxes of hair dye. Lis spoke to the knowledgable hair master who told her that as a blondy blonde she had to put this stuff in her hair before dying it brown so it wouldnt go green, who knew? So we bought all sorts of boxes of colour and went on our way with a complicated list of things we had to do to not stuff up lis' hair. lovely hairdresser, so helpful. 

Then we went to get my lip pierced. i really wanted a ring and wasn't keen on a stud but someone i met told me i could have a ring straight away so in we went. This was flatly rejected by the lady at the piercing place. She was very strict, giving me an epic list of things i wouldnt be able to do for either two weeks (alcohol and kissing) and 8 weeks (changing the stud) then she asked me one million health questions like 'are you lactating' and have you been drinking. due to the cider from earlier on she told me i;d have to have a quick snack and come back so i wouldnt vomit or pass out (which apparently happens on the regs) just as we were discussing this i started feeling a bit queasy, the place was underground and there was all this incense and heating. lis says 'romy?' and i thought she was asking me if i was ok. i look at her to tell her i'm fine as her eyes roll back and she falls, luckily into the arms of teh lady behind the counter who was surprisingly agile. we put lis on the floor and she looks like she is seizing, the lady asks 'is she epileptic?' shiiiiiit i didn;t know, well i did actually but at the time i worried that she might be. luckily she stopped and woke up. we fed her water and the lady brought her chocolate. so much excitement! 

after chocolate milkshakes we went back for my 3.30 appointment. i was super nervy thinking that i would throw up, imagining all this blood in my mouth etc.. the actual room where they do it reminded me of the dentist. it didn't hurt at all, less than an injection. i thought he was just prepping the area but he was done. how underwhelming. so now it's been four days of having a pierced lip and i'm still talking like a bit of a spastic but it doesn;t hurt at all. 7 weeks and three days until i can change the black stud to a silver ring. 

we asked the piercer man if we could take some of his medical plastic gloves but he said no. i thought he was joking until he never said, joking, here you go. very strict man. the chemist only had a box of 24 which would couldn;t afford (this was for dying lis' hair) so we got lots of free plastic bags. 

back at the hostel we raided the kitchen for a bowl and a cup for mixing and measuring hiar ingredients. my towel was sacrificed. lis is now a brunette. 

chris pointed out that my 'friends of convenience' necklace has fish bones on it. he told that his nickname is fish, how fitting. 

Goodbyes were not fun. i haven;t improved at them, i always play it ridiculously cool and then feel awful as soon as the person has gone. i said goodbye to nicolas the night before, lis at 9, then chris and i went to the kitchen to see what we could make. all we came up with was teh delicious and nutritious meal of pasta and tomato sauce, of ketchup variety. Britta refused to join in, she jsut watched us and laughed at our pathetic meal. 

Then Britta and Chris walked me to my 11pm bus. Chris carried my bag which was surprising and a little bit lovely. Perth highlight: you can get to the airport from the city for $1.50 with a concession card and $3 for normal people. 

As soon as i got to the airport i discovered that my flight was delayed and wasn't going to take off until 2.30 am. There was not much to do in the airport. I found a toasted sandwich and that took me about an hour to eat with my piercing. then i wrote in my journal and eventually napped on the airport floor (all seats taken). 

It was really upsetting thinking about finishing writing in my journal, i thought about keeping on writing in it once i got home but it seemed wrong. so i finished as we started landing. It felt like another goodbye to a new special friend. 

i landed two hours late, poor mum, and there was steam coming out of my mouth as i waited 30 mins for tiger to start sending bags through. Bloody tiger makes you wait for luggage outside. freezing.  

I wonder, where to next?

little creatures visit freemantle

today, being my second last day away from home, was nice. we had an epic sleep in after our night out on the town. then we went to freemantle for the market, fish and chips on the waterfront and then to visit the little creatures micro brewery. all in all a day well spent. also made plans to see rachel bailey tomorrow during her uni break.

our late dinner last night was a huge fail, chef nicolas tried to improvise with the random ingredients we had and used milk instead of coconut milk in our thai green curry and added tomatoees instead of other vegetables we didnt have. it was awful so we had to throw it out and find second dinner.

we went out to try and meet lis. she told us mustang bar so we walked through northbridge in that direction. apparently northbridge is the most dangerous nightlife in australia, tour guide mark told us he doesnt go there unless he is armed. when we got to mustangs we had to line up. i was unimpressed, there were creepy people everywhere, including a girl wearing a shiny ballgown with a tiara and a miss something or other sash. i didnt want to go there but lis' friend was meeting people in there so in we went. we had to have our id's scanned and photos of our faces taken like at the airport. there were police everywhere. it was a weird venue because it was like a saloon cross bar cross pub cross nightclub. very awkward. and tehre were people of all ages, like 16 to 60. so many girls wearing clothes that dont fit or with red knickers under white dresses. oh and a drag queen and some trashbag having her hen's night there.

towards the end of the night, when britta and i had decided to leave, lis and britta left the dance floor to go to the toilet. it was just me and chris on the dancefloor, so naturally that was my cue to go and sit down but i had to walk past this african boy who had been harassing me a bit, so i walked past and he stopped me and kept touching my hip and asking what i was doing. i was trying to tell him i was going but he implied that he was leaving with me and kept going on and on and i was having trouble getting away, i said i was leaving with a friend but then he was all 'i could be your friend' so eventually i did the whole 'i'm leaving with my frrrriend' and pointed at chris. it was a low point. dignity; gone. he then told me once he came home that he considered shaking his head 'no' to the boy. jeeeesus, i would have died after the most massive panic attack ever if he had.

right now chris is on the phone to his baby brother and talking about this trip to vegas that he has coming up next year with all his english friends, there is like 20 of them planning on going and so he is describing it to his brother and called it 'the last big blow out before we all settle down' hahahhaha i could not control myself, the laughter would not stop. have had the pillow over my face for a good minute trying to control my behaviour.

oh, so these are some things that i meant to say yesterday. in kalbarri (where we saw farmer wants a wife) lis, britta and i bought these silver ingot necklace things and had friends of convenience WA engraved on the back, only it's 'foc wa' the guy read it out loud and was like fuuuuuuucckwaaa, what? the same guy asked me what i was studying and before i answered he is like i know 'forensic anthropology becuase youre just like bones you know from that tv show!' highlight of my life. caroline; so unimpressed. actually i assume you all are, except maybe chip.

another thing i meant to write was an apology to caroline downes, for all the times i have given her a hard time about slaving to the man for apple, when my ipod went blank the other day i texted her saying what do i do and she text back with very complicated instructions which lis helped me with and lo and behold, ipod back in action. thanks cazz.

gosh i'm dying to go to the toilet but i want to finish this quickly so i can go to bed. oh, bought internet time for tomorrow for uploading blog photos to make these last few posts more fun. can;t do it now cause im on chris' internet so i wont be mean and waste it.

last thing to add, we drove thtough this place geraldton which wasnt big enough to be called a city in the 80s when the queen visited and decided she liked it so waved her wand and it became a city. dont get me started on the bloody queen. so anyway, this city has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in either WA or australia, i think australia. so anyway, it's so bad that the government sent in these researchy people to find out what was going. after all this money spent and time and effort the conclusion reached was that geraldton is a windy city where the girls skirts blow up. literally. that was the scientific finding.

bed time.

farmer still looking for a wife

in perth. feels strange to be in a city. a bit sad, the adventure is coming to a close. chris britta and i are in a three person dorm and nicolas is in with a rando somewhere down the hall. this hostel is like an old school or old people's home.there are little hokey pokey rooms everywhere with windey stairs and high ceilings.

cannot remember what i last said about mark, our guide. i cant actually remember when the last time i wrote was.oh yes.. from the bus when we first got signal. so since then we met the head tour guide who was a very scary lady, alm9ost a female equivalent of our guide. tough as guts, rude, loud and sort of funny.

i read 'the game' you know that book about 'pick up artists' men that are socially useless who band together to come up with tricks of seduction. it sent me into a search through my memory of boys i'd me out over the last few years since the book had been published. devoured the book in 24 hours. hardly spoke to anyone that day. mostly because it was my day to be co-pilot up the front with mark.

we've lost lis (turns out i have been spelling her name wrong - sorry lis!) she's staying with an irish horse trainer friend. but we're seeing her tonight for drinks and an explore of perth at night.

so we've been making our way down the west coast and in the last few days we've passed through shark bay, shell beach, monkey mia, the stramotolites, kalbarri (where we met the farmer from farmer wants a wife!!!! win.) and today we saw the pinnacles just outside perth.

at shell beach tour guide mark was being creepy/annoying again, throwing shells at us and then pretending it wasnt him. we started ignoring him after a while and it kept going for bloody ages. then lis was trying to give people special shell massages and i tried to get involved and sropped lots of shells on nicolas' head/down his neck. i dont think he enjoyed this because he picked me up and was going to throw me in the water (cold) lucky i have such lovely friends who prepare me for these sorts of situations. i intuitively kneed him in the face. job well done, i did not have a swim although i did feel a little bit bad for my violent reaction.

we got up super early yesterday to go to monkey mia to see the dolphins being fed. turns out we went so early so mark could have a huge breakfast at the cafe, we had hours to wait. then the dolphins didnt show up, for 15 minutes, and then 30, and then an hour. we were about to give up, sad that the wildlife had evaded us again (we missed the sharks at turquoise bay and the manta rays in coral bay) but then they came! annoying people we're blocking the way, even though the man kept asking them to move back. typical.

so yesterday when we were walkiing around kalbarri national park we bumped into another tour guide who only had one person with him. he told us that one of the farmers from farmer wants a wife was going to be at the pub. hahahah i was so excited. a couple of months ago, or maybe a year ago we had been talking about applying, i remember al and aimee being especially keen. so after dinner, and a few to many very strong vodka drinks (we were low on mixers) we headed off.

as we approached chris looked a little bit nervous. mostly boys and they were rough. but in we went, desperate to meet the farmer, well no one else quite so much as me. britta had thought that i was joking when i';d said we were going.

i really hate whoever put a video camera on normal cameras. this trip the video recorder has seriously damaged my cred. hahah, no but really. i just saw videos of me dancing on a table, on my own. it was so much cooler in my head, on camera it plays like a scene from Bridget jones' diary.

oh so i met the farmer, we had a fake wedding, he picked me up and nearly broke his wrist. then he told me the backstage goss fromk the show and how it works, some details have left me, the jugs were flowing (at $16, bloody west coast) he was a bit old for me to want to marry him (aimee? interested?) but he was very lovely. there was also a group of trendies hanging around, i was trying to guess where they were from, most of them dressed well but normaally but one girl loooked like she stepped off a fashion shoot. ingruiging in kilbarri. so i made friends with one of the boys and then went and sat with them. the girls were not so fun. then the others came over and joined me and they girls were a little bit more friendly seeing that i wasnt trying to steal their (dull) men. then i spilt my beer on one of them and friendship over. they left.

one of the farmer's friends, oh yes he was a pearl farmer, wanted to continue 'partying' at his house and i nearly got sucked in until the others talked some sense into me. so back to bed we went. not before tackling chris in the dorm and waking up nicolas by climbing all over his bed. he loves me, really.

today we were useless. teh one not hungover and sleep deprived person was co-pilot so in the back there was zero conversation. no more games of shoot shag marry and no more girls vs boys bickering.

we were meant to start making dinner at 7.30 but now it's 8.21 and nicolas is still in the shower, britta is on the phone to her sister bella (snap) laughing her head off and talking a million miles an hour in german. i need to remember t film her laugh, it;s so good. chris looks like hugh hefner reading a book on his bed,.

terrible news: britta and i forgot our half full bottle of vodka on the bus.

good news: we could feed a small country with the amount of food we took off the bus that would have been thrown out otherwiise.

up to date, oh yeah, part two of two

this is a quick apology for the retarded state of the last two posts. i wrote them on notepad which is difficult and now im uploading as we pass through carnarvon on the bus bumpy all the way.

it was strange being on the 20 seater bus/truck with only five of us, especially as one person had to sit up the front with mark, our tour guide. on that first day i felt so sick so i dont think we spoke much. there was

a lot of sleeping and ipod listening, reading was not an option. we passed through port headland, the last place we thought we would have reception until just out of perth. we were meant to visit the brothels, quite an

industry apparently because the ratio of men to women i 21 to 1. we ran out of time though, too long cruising arounf the supermarket and bottle shop buying avocados and bourbon. two very precious commodities in

the middle of nowhere. mark is not difficult to get to know, he is very upfront, swears a lot, tells inappropriate stories but is actually very compitent as a tour guide in terms of safety and information. he is also very

easy to be upfront with. some of the things he says though, honeswtly bizarre, we have a list at the back of my journal of all the stories he has told us that he probably shouldnt have such as punching gays

and stories about naked and drunk girls on tours. we've all been taking turns sitting up the front with him.

we spent the second third and fourth night in karijini national park. fully owned and run by the tradition aboriginal groups of the area. we spent two full days hiking around the gorges, climbing along ledges of rocks

and through icy cold water to get to pools and amazing views. some of it was quite difficult but it was worth it. the information centre was also great, heaps and heaps of information on the history as well as

the environment. i got so caufght up in there i didnt notice that all the otehrs had left, they waited for a while until chris was sent in to get me, he game me such i fight i was so engrossed in stuff about the night sky.

each night before bed we would play president, often in sunglasses (you play better) with a drink in hand before bed. we were so tired at the end of each day. in bed around 10 each night. i suppose it was

the same with the other group but having so many different people around it wasnt so blatantly obvious. mark, our guide, thinks we are massive downers.

so after a couple of days in karijini we undertook the epic drive from karijini to exmouth. 800 kilometers of nicholas as co-pilot choosing the music, and enjoying marks company. i was lucky, i was co-pilot one of the days

in karijini which meant only about an hour in the hot seat. although the day after tomorrow i will have a long long drive in the front ahead of me.

in exmouth we drove up to the vla-something lighthouse, past the navy base, to see the sunset. what a romantic spot, and so perfectly fitting to bump in to our lovely honeymoon couple from the last trip. they

came running over towards us with arms in the air, hugs and kisses all round. very surprising but such a highlight. we figured out that we were in the same hostel and made plans to hang out after dinner.

and what a riveting game of cards we played. there was another group staying there and they invited us to join them for drinks on the beach but it was a unanimous no from us. so reclusive in our happy new family.

the next day, which was yesterday, i'm finally catching up, we went sand boarding just outside exmouth and snorkelling at torquoise bay in the cape range national park. other people saw reef sharks and turtles

but we only saw pretty fish. my mask kept fogging up and trying to fix it i kicked a bit of coral which was very upsetting, being a terrorist to mother nature so after an hour under water we called it quits. at

lunch i was an idiotusing my swiss army knife to cut up my kiwi, i tried to wipe my knife on my thigh but it cut my skin. it was not the greatest moment for me. we arrived in coral bay last night just before dinner time.

had free hamburgers and half price beer ($2 thankyou hostel) but were still hungry (they all think i have worms and mark has been calling me fang) so nicholas britta and

i went for a scavange in the back of the bus and found teh ice cream, the one thing that mark had told us we werent allowed to eat. so we hid in there in the shadows devouring this four litre tub of ice cream

like naughty little children, then i sprinkled some coffee all over the top which meant we had to eat even more so that the others woulld never know. when we came back to the bar and sat back down we got

harassed by random men, britta was convinced that these were all men on a 'boys weekend' on the loose for teh weekend. one man came and told us that he didnt like raw fish, then told us that the new zealander had

sushimi grade fish with all that wasabi shit and we should go try some. then liz was eating an orange and had half a piece in her hand when this tall man swept over and launched towards her, when he was

cms away from it liz realised he was trying to eat her fruit and pulled it away. chris fled the scene, leaving us with all our suitors. once we finished our beers we made a quick escape to our room to watch a movie,

where half way through the film fireworks were set off outside our dorm and then a drunk man poked his head into our window and harrassed us about staying in.

so close to finishing this epic post. we're sitting in our room still, since i started writing this post we have cooked dinner, eaten dinner, found christine, drank tea, came back to our room and went through photos and

videos from the trip. so many embnarrassing ones. britta and nicholas have disappeared outside for a sneaky cigarette while we figure out what we're doing over the next few days. today was our last beach day,

goodbye tan. we were so lazy, although we did walk to the shark sanctuary and visit 'the best bakery on the west coast' for lunch. mostly we were beached whales reading and lying in the sun. although we did

have a very quick snorkel where we saw a huge sting ray.

we've been playing a lot of shoot shag marry over the last couple of days. mostly with people from the group of 20 but we ran out of combinations pretty quickly. so we hadnt covered anyone from the group for a while

until tonight when britta and liz and i were discussing the brazilian boys and jasper, the youngest boys on the bus. we decided that you had to marry all three but one would be from 25 to30, the next marriage would be

from 30 to 40 and then you would have a two year midlife crisis and then your last marriage you have to be with forever. so we decided the best combination would be marcelo for 25-30. pedro from 30-40 (for child

bearing, with that lovely skin of his, and then jasper for life becasue he is such a chiller. so we were discussing who could have who when just as chris walked in. he was very unimpressed that we were

deciding these boys futures for them. typical chris, such a masculinist.

anyway, this has taken far too long, im sure no one has read all this but still. done.

oh yes, hostel for perth booked. home soon.

blogging on the move part one of two

writing my blog from chris' miniature lap top in our dorm in coral bay. internet is stupidly expensive again so i am writing i8t here and then going to move it over quickly to the connected

hostel computers once i'm done. ah, t5hisese keys are sosmall and my fingeers are too bi8g! oh macbook how i misds you.

i need to get my journal out to remember what i was going to write about. last time i wrote was my first day in broome i think.

i'm going to make these into seperate posts so they arent too confusing. but the next three are actually all written from coral bay on wednesday the 4th of august.

both days in broome were spent at the beach, actually yhe last time i wrote i hadnt been over

to cable beach yet, i'd spent th ewhole morning at the supermarket and then doing washing, and then blogging. well the rest of the day was spent splash9ing down on cable beach before showering (what a luxary!)

and then heading into towwn on hte $3.50 bus to meet the others at tracys amazing apartment for beers before successfully watching the staircase to the moon which we had missed the night before.

it was stupidly beautiful, i know i have said that about a lot of things lately but the moon looked so big and it all happaened so quickily, the colours changing and the light coming and then goi8ng, all in a couple o9f minutes

it was an impossible choice, to photograph or to watch? luckily we had nature photographer extraudinaire tracy taking lots of professional shots so the rest of us could relax and enjoy the spectacle for the most part,

although it was difficult to resist trying, you had to keep your cameera veery very still so that it wouldn't blur, at one point my flat head became a tripod for the brazilian camera however i'm fairly confident that my photos

still came out better than theirs.

after the staircase to the moon was over we wandered over to the markets for dinner, ate on the grass and then walked back to tracys 'party house' for more beers. we were all a little delirious, maybe from sleeping

without swags or maybe because our numbers were dwingelling quickly, we'd gone from 21 to more like 15 and were loosing traacy the next day. whatever it was, an outrageous attempt of caapturing eachother in

every variation of photograph was attempted. i dont think there was a moment where there wasnt at least one photo or video being taken. marcelo soaked up the limelight making vidoes of himself in his gay

persona, he's a very good at acting the part. georgia, pedro and i were captured in possibly hundreds ofphotos where we were shaking our heads as fast as we could, jasper and nicholas once again spent a

huge portion of the night outside rolling and smoking cigarettes.

the second and last day in broome was spent entirely at teh beach, from when we woke up (after a huge egg bacon avocado breakfast) until sunset and goodbyes to tracy, we did not leave our fort of three

umbrellas set up by cory/cody whoi drills holes in the sand and looans you an umbrella for the day for $10. pedro was burried in the sand and then underwent cosmetic surgery where his sexuality became even

more confused than before.

layers and layers of sunblock were applied, note to self/any readers, do not ask pedro to do it, i'm proibably still absorbing the sunblock he put on my back. britta liz and i had ice creams up at the cafe were

i got served by my new friend in my dorm, this was a little bit awkward, not sure why. we brought georgia back her soy chocolate milkshake which was laughed at by the mean brazilian boys who had taken to

asking whether everything single thing she went to eat was gluten and lactose free.

oh, i can hear temper trap playing somewhere in the diistance. our room is a huge mess. there are five of us in this six bed dorm, thankfully the sixth bed is empthy, that could be awkward for that person. actually,

christine, one of the girls from t he group from darwin to perth is arriving here in coral bay tonight and staying at the same hostel., will have to keep our eyes open. it's been really strange, since we left broome

we have bumped into christine at two random truckstops and now she will be here tonight and we also bumped into aurelie and michael, the french honeymoon couple, in exmouth at teh lighthouse watching the

sunset. they were also at our hostel that night, we all played cards until 9.30 when no one could keep their eyes open any longer.

ok, back to broome, once tracy said goodbye we went back to our respective accomodation, most of us to cable beach backpackers but some lucky ones like georgia over to their single rooms at the kimberly club.

nicholas, french chef, cooked us thai green curry for dinner. then georgia came back over to our hostel (she got in a car with seedy drunk boys and ended up lost cruising around the streets of brroome buit made it safely

back into our arms in the end) they others started playing table tennis and pool, two games that i am appalling at, while i had a sulk with britta and chris, two other non gamers. eventually we went over to the

divers tavern, possibly the worst place i have ever gone out. there was a 'comedian' rhyming about the best sex he ever had. so so bad. and the guy from reception was lurking all around this girl fromour

hostel being a massive creepo. georgia and i went to the toilet and found some laminated signs advertisiing the miss broome compition which we yuanked off the wall and put up our tops. georgia was wearing a flowy top

so you couldnt tell at all with hers but i was wearing a maxi dress so i had to walk very strangely so that you couldnt see the sharp lines near my hips. had to walk with straight legs and hips forward. safe to say, we did an

excellent job and both posters made it out of that place unnoticed. while the others played pool britta pedro nicholas georgia jasper and maybe some others began playing the serious game, sort of like the blinking game but you have to

keep a straight face or you loose. such owild kids letting loose on the streets of broome.

on the way home from the tavern (they stopped serving us at 11.30 at shut at 12) to the hostel, a five minute walk, maybe 10, i realised i really needed to pee and could not possibly hang on for all those steps,

so i decided to pee in the bushes, i found a perfect spot off the road and then marcelo decided that if i was not going to wait then neither would he, ever the gentleman he asked if i would be offended if he peed with me.

i said no, so i went but then i couldnt, deciding that i was not relaxed enough marcelo thought a massge might help, it didnt. being in a maxi dress was tough enough as it made balancing a callange. eventually

though i got it done, there was no way i was going to let him think that i was funny about peeing near a boy (maybe i should be, dont know, but at the time i would not back down, surprise surprise) then without

the others we got lost on the wway homel, thankfully pedro had the skills to direct us back (in portugese) we linked arms and skipped home, i started on the outside but apparently in brazil boys still walk on the

road side to protect the girls and for once i didnt make a fuss about this sort of silly gallant behaviour.

sad that no where was licensed we all ran off to our dorms to search for any remnants of alcohol we had left over. on the table was my 1.5 litre bottle of vodka and raspberry cordial, jaspers absinthe and lemonade, and

bourbon. no one needed anything more to drink but we were reluctqant to go to bed as we were all splitting up the next morning, britta liz, chris, nicholas and i leaving at6.30 and georgia leaving in the afternoon. just the brazilians and jasper

would be there the next night. so we had lots more to drink and taking silly photos. georgia and i were running around like little kids taking photos of her bottom as a special treat for the rest of the group. eventually there were only four of us still

awake, britta and i, jasper and marcelo. reverting back to the serious game we played in absoloute stupor for what seems like hours or perhaps only minutes. as inebriation progressed the game regressed, becoming more like seedy chicken until

it was well and truly time for bed, with only a couple of hours until departure.

i should have packed the night before, the next morning my alarm didnt go off, or maybe it did but i turned it off in my sleep. either way insteead of waking up at 5.50 i woke up at 6.12 when i got a text message from adam

sending it from a couple of hours ahead in melbourne. thankyou adam. that morning was mayhem, i was trying to pack in the dark, still drunk, with clothes still on the washing line etc... i cannot believe that

i managed not to forget anything and to only be five minutes late. lovely jasper woke up early to say goodbye to us, so sweet, and we said goodbye to christine.

and this is where that chapter concludes.

sorry, could not connect to network at this time

speedy blogging, 6 dolla per hour for internet in broome. have had zero reception for the last 10 days or so so i am going crazy with my mobile phone and the internet. well it feels that was in comparrison to the dry spell i have just survived.

so, as said, i'm in broome, the weather is deliscious, lovely friends made on the trip from darwin to broome. don't even know where to start, it's been so long since my last post the thought is a little bit over whelming and once agin this keybard is shit. so excuse the millions of typos to come, i'm rushing to get over to cable beach to join the brazillian boys in colourful speedos.

liz from scotland is sitting next to me, she was my tent partner the one night we slept under a roof, so to speak. She will be coming with me all the way to perth. liz is from a farm in scotland and so has been both excellent in terms of practicality and excellent for laughing at over her accent.

aside from us, everyone who is not at the beach is doing washing at the moment. liz is doing her banking and talking to herself.

ok, where to start. not sure if i wrote on here my plans to track down mark, the awkward but lovely tour guide from kakadu. well i wasnt sure if i should be a stalker and track him down or not, i made a friend at the bar of my hostel and we tossed a coin, the coin said track him down but then i got distracted by this new friend craig from england. and then anoter boy spilt his beer next to me and bought me one (craig wasnt so lucky.) he was stoned and hilarious tellnig us all about his best friend that rochelle that he is in love with who he followed to darwin from perth and now they live together but she doesnt know he loves her and how he dies a little bit inside whenever rochelle has boys stay the night.

stoned beer spiller then went stumbiling away just as mark the tour guide walked in. perfect. i was three beers down and i think i overwhelmed him with my excitement at seeing him. but over the night we had a few awkward chats. craig was lovely though, he told me about traveling with ocd and how it makes dorm rooms difficult. then a girl from his dorm room came over with her latest special friend 'vin diesel' and they decided to call me christina ricci (surprise) an we made plans to go out but it was 2ish and i had to get up at 5.30 and craig was starting to get creepy and lurky so i decided on bed instead.

called adam on the telephone, cannot remember what about except maybe connors kissing some babe at rosie's house.

woke up in the morning to disruption from the bunk bellow mine. this was my first encounter of romance in the dorm and so i panicked. didn't know what to do so i decided to set off my alarm to give the new couple a heads up. turns out i had forgotten to set my alarm the night before so i suppose i owe them a thank you.

waiting in the travel agent for almost an hour for our truck/bus to arrive i met to pretty brazilian boys who were gonig to be on my tour, pedro and marcelo. early in the morning they were lovely... give it 12 hours and they would become evil tormentors.

the first day we went to edith falls, had been there before between alice and darwin but we had more time this time so we got to do the walk up to the waterfall which was amazing. so beautiful. i'm probably not even going to bother trying to explain all the walks through gorges as they will all sound the same but i'll just say now, what a beautiful part of the world.

we slept that night near katherine, right next to a crocodile infested river. marcelo offered to have his swag closest to the river and i was second closest but then when i wasnt looking he moved his a couple of inches so that i became the sacrificial camper.

on the first two days i sat up the front with adam our tour guide. it was great because i got to be dj as well as asking him all the questions i could think of. he told me about his first tour where a boy was being silly trying to take a photo near a ledge in kaherine and fell off into the water. they ran down and made a stretcher out of waterbottles and a swag i think to get him accross the river and keep him still because he had serious serious breaks and wouds. they had no real pain killers or medicine because the tour guides arent legally allowed to carry it and it was too late for the flying doctors to come out because it was going to get dark in a couple of hours. so they waited while he died. it took three hours. his brother was there. and all the girls were in hysterics. once he was dead they could call the police to collect the body. it hadn't really struck me before just how remote it can get here. you are actually on your own. without a satellite phone you mght wait hours and hours just to see another car. if its after lunch there is huge chances that if you get yourself in trouble no one will be able to help you until morning.

on my second day i got sick. i lost my voice and had this really awful can't breathe cough. luckily we passed kananara (spellling) the last town for days, and two canadian doctors that were on the trip convinced me to get cough syrup and these codine painkillers. thank goodness they did, the day walking through the bungle bungles in 30 degree direct sunight for hours and hours was impossibe, if i hadnt had it i dont know what i would have done. almost better now, it only hurts when i laugh but i told that to the pharmacist this morning and she gave me some medicine to help get my laughter back.

aside from liz and the brazilians. jasper is from holland. he is outrageously chill. although.... the other night i was plucking marcelo's nipple/nose/monobrow hairs with a headtorch by the fire after a night of drinking games and jasper discovered his swag was broken so he demanded a spot in my double shvag(that is hw he says it) there is only one of those and it was my turn to have it. i said alright as long as he doesnt try to spoon me. he agreed but silly me forgot all about the dutch oven jokes they had been making all day.

the next morning i realised the rookie mistake made.


that's georgia and lis on the bus.

christine, a girl from norway who has been in australia studying for the last fiveish years taught us about the night sky one night, she had just finished her phd in physics, so that was really special, i can now locate the southern cross and use the poiters to find south. she showed us a lot more but i cuold not retain, the scorpion will never be in my constellatin repertoir i think.

georgia is from geelong but lives in footscray, she is bloody hilarious. her and marcelo made me seem quiet and reserved in comparrison, although, lak of voice helped also.

i've been keeping a juornal so lots of 'dear diary' jokes ahve been made at my expense. but i'm glad that i ahve kept it, even if it is almost impossible to read thanks to the bumpy gibb river road.

a couple of days ago we stopped off for drinks and ice cream at a caravan literally ni the middle of no where, as in the next town is hours away on all sides. it's this little old man on his own who has trouble speaking due to lung cancer. he wasnt very nice to me because i was from boring old melbourne. so random. this country of ours does not stop to make me laugh. the more i see the more i love it.

we've walked to lots of waterfalls and swimmnig holes. there georgia liz and i conquopred fears of jumping from big hights although copped a lot of shit for holding our noses, bikini tops and screamnigh all the way down.

oh my god, but seriously, the brazilian boys are so funny in their speedos. will have to upload photos when i get the chance.

this is all infecting and encouraging my travel bug. britta from germany was telling me about her parents four years travelling around the us and south america for four years in a campervan. i want to go now.

there are 9 of us staying all in the same hostel in broome for a couple of days. it's really nice all being together. i'm running out of time on my internet and the beach is calling.

miss you all dear friends, family and who ever else stumbled upon this useless blog.

table for one, please

Now i'm in darwin all on my lonesome. sharing a dorm with three trashy boys. the room is such a mess. the people at the front desk have begged them to clean it up. i was having confused dreams this morning and hearing all this birdsong. i thought the hostel was playing it over the speaker system. (i dont even think there is one) but turns out it was the boy in the bed bellow mine, snoozing his alarm every ten minutes from 6am (he had work at 7) until 11.15 when we all woke up.

this is my side of the dorm, i really should have photographed the messy side.

i was a massive battler yesterday at the airport. in my head i was all cool calm and collected but my body let me down. being all hot and cold and shakey and hungry etc. of course i was stuck next to annoying people on the plane. i had teh aisle seat, i neeeeeed it because it makes me anxious when im on my own not being able to go for an aisle walk or take a trip to the toilet whenever i like it. but of course when i get to my spot (19c) there are is a man in 19a and a woman in 19c with three kids in 19 d e and f. they ambushed me, telling me their kids are nervous flyers so would i sit next to teh windown to preserve the happiness of the bloody nuclear family. i said ok. but they were fat. and someone kept farting, awful awful farts, the whole way. i needed to go to the toilet because i had paniced at the snack bar and bought water and juice and banana bread. but the fatty family were all sleeping instantly.

oh, this is cazz marching me to the train to the airport.

i waited for ages writing in my journal and reading my soppy love story but eventually i had to push the man until he woke up. he was not happy, then he woke his wife and they both moved their legs to the side. but they were too large, i tried to be all acrobatic but even still i got jammed in the middle of them. it was very awkward wenching my right leg out of the depth of their oversize limbs. i see that i am being mean but it was so hellish i do not care.

today i have been to the supermarket to stock up on sunblock and the like (also shampoo, my shampoo exploded all over all my stuff last night., ) then i went on an epic mission to find a hairdresser who wasnt booked out for the day (it's massive tourism season in darwin at the moment.) one hairdresser was mean and sent me away but then a lovely one directed me to another one that was free. they also waxed my legs... all for $55. winner.

tomorrow i'm up bright and early to start my mission down the west coast. not sure when i will have internet next, probably not for ages. so mum, dad, grans, bell, friends if you are reading this, i am safe, happy, enjoying myself, looking forward to the next few weeks and not to be worried over. missing you all, even you caroline,