Hello Everybody!!!

Well we're off again officially. In mid November we took off from Brissy with our friends Fraser and Sherese from Winnipeg to do the epic round Australia road trip. It all started in sleepy Charleville on Melbourne cup day and the local Charleville races. Check out our hats (best in show for sure) and us as we show our winning tickets. We took home about 170$ and drank it all at the after races party. What a great day! From there we took off up through the land of the Jolly Swagman where they wrote Waltzing Matilda and saw a lot of space, sheep and flies. So many that you just couldn't keep them off of you and eventually just gave up trying. Fraser tried his hand at "fly whispering" but I don't think it really helped. The little bastards stayed with us all the way to Melbourne.... Next stop: Mount Isa,a big mining centre where we tried our hands at the life underground. We played with some of the equipment and we all had a go with the pneumatic drills. Tough work, they can have it. After the Isa we were into the Northern Territory, the Big Red Centre, and it was big and red and I believe geographically in the centre. We're still finding the red dust in stuff now. The NT had Road Trains. Massive scary trucks with up to 4 semi trailers behind the prime mover (aussie speak). They have complete right of way on the roads and can take up to a Km to stop so when they're coming you get off the road and fast!! The NT was beautiful. Lots of great scenery and cool rock formations like the Devils Marbles where Fra and I did a little rock remodelling with our brute strenghth. We did a little off roading and there was even a little rain and the occasoinal wild camel to make things interesting. We spent some time in Alice Springs and Kings Canyon. On the day we took this photo there it was 41C!! We drank a bloody lot of water and even splurged on an aircon room for a couple of nights. On the way to Uluru (Ayers Rock) we snapped this picture of a dingo. We saw quite a few but people still shoot them on site so they don't exactly pose for pictures!! Uluru was amazing. Hard to describe it. On the downside there were so many people it lost some of it's spiritual wonder but it was a great experience none the less. We climbed it and had a bottle of Moet at the summit after the girls did a little calender photo shoot for us. Nice. On the way out of the Territory Fra and Reese showed their true colors in Kulgera on the South Australia border. Just into SA we stopped in Cober Pedy, it's an opal mining town in a truly desolate landscape. It's so bad that over 75% of the town is built into the old mines!! What a place. We stayed in an underground campground (no flies) and checked out the Serbian church and a couple of the show homes. Very cool.  Then we heard about this old charachter named Crocodile Harry. He's a Latvian Baron who came to Aus after the war and made a living hunting Crocs and Opal mining. Then he deceided to hunt virgins!! No kidding. He advertises for backpackers or who ever to hang out and live/party/whatever at his place for free and then leave a piece of lingerie as a momento!!! He lives in his old mine that had been the set for many movies including Mad Max III and Pitch Black. His house is FULL of lingerie, what a guy. The girls posed for this shot on his knee and the cheeky bugger snuck a little titty sidewall kiss as they were getting off on him!! Further south we left the desert behind along with the heat and the dust (the flies stayed with us though). We say lots of Koalas in SA and quite a few had little ones. There were also ugly spiders like this massive Red Back (a baddy) in one of the public toilets we became so well accustomed to. We did a day of wine tasting in the Barossa Valley but for some reason nobody took any pictures, hmmmmmm. When we'ld recovered we left SA and snuck across into Victoria and Great Ocean Road. GOR was another of the "must sees" that really lived up to it's reputation. The coastline was gorgeous. Sadly that was it for Part 1 of the Great Aussie Road Trip. We limped into Melbourne for some much needed showers and washing at Cheryl's bro's house. Brad took us down to the airport the next day for our flights to Tasmania, but that's another story..............................