My hand swipes the beads of sweat that are increasingly
developing on my forehead as the sun forces itself through the window. I lie there for as long as possible reliving
everything that’s happened over the past seven months until the heat becomes
too much to bear. I open my eyes to see
the golden rays shining brightly illuminating our once lively room. Now it’s bare. No posters or photos on the wall or objects
on the floor. Sergeant Spliff sleeps in
her cage on the desk top peacefully shaded by a piece of card. Mike and Tanwyn are still asleep. I get the feeling as though it’s going to be
difficult for Mike to get up due to last night’s festivities at the Civic
Hotel.
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| TimTam - Navigating |
I couldn’t believe the time had finally arrived. Excitement filled the stifling midsummer air
as I forced myself to get up and begin loading the stuff into the car. The mercury in the thermometer was hitting
above 40 degrees, so we were happy to jump into the cool air-conditioned car
and hit the road. We said an extremely
quick and shallow goodbye to our housemates, secretly celebrating never to live
with them again and fired Walter up. I
know it’s highly unorthodox for a car to be called a man’s name but it had a
resemblance to a middle aged man, still going but not with the power of a
twenty year old. The purr of the
4-cylinder engine vibrated through the laneway behind our house as we navigated
our way onto Beaufort Street and headed towards the city centre for one last
time to bid farewell to the streets we had grown to call home. Beaufort Street is one of those streets that
offer everything that one could possibly need in life. It traverses through many suburbs and houses
many boutiques, bars, cafés and shops.
It’s a street that I would want to live on again should I return to
Perth. As we diverted to Northbridge,
where the partying and art happens, there were celebrations going on for
Chinese New Year and the gold decorations glinted strongly in the afternoon
sun. We preferred to think it was a
goodbye gesture for us. Mike, Tanwyn and
I continued past the Heath Ledger Theatre and over the railway bridge that acts
as a dividing line between the Northern suburbs and Perth CBD where the
business happens and where I had spent six months worked. We were heading towards King’s Park to shoot
a final goodbye message to the city and set out our plans for the next couple
of weeks. King’s Park is an iconic
location in Perth as it was here where I visited on my first day in Australia
and got my first real glimpse of the wonderful city of Perth. It was cold and largely deserted back in July
but in January, the sun brings locals and tourist to the top of the hill for
sun bathing on the grassy slopes or to kick a ball around.
Loose. That’s how
best to describe our plan. We knew that
our final destination was Tasmania where we were going to find work on a farm
and to get there we were going to travel across the Nullarbor via the South
West. But where we’d stop along the way
was to be decided on a day by day basis.
Most people have pessimistically anticipated Walter’s demise before we
even leave the Perth metropolitan area.
Having had older cars in the past, I am only too aware of the anguish
breakdowns cause and the post-breakdown nervousness it causes. The last thing we would want, and our worst
nightmare, is if the car brokedown in the middle of the Nullarbor plain. With our final message recorded, we took our
last glance at Perth, hopped into Walter and drove off towards Margaret River.
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| Bussleton Jetty |
Perth’s cityscape slowly disappeared from my rear view
mirror as we made steady progress towards our first stop, Busstleton. The strong sun was getting lower in the sky
as the afternoon went on and it began to scald my right arm and cheek forcing
me to find some sun screen. A couple of
hours later, we pulled off the freeway and into Bussleton where the longest
timer jetty in the southern hemisphere stretches out into the Indian Ocean. I had previously walked the 1.8km jetty with
Matt Duncan but thought Tanwyn and Mike would appreciate it and what a
beautiful day it was to walk along the wooden planks suspended above the shark
infested ocean. My walk was interrupted
when I tripped over a fishing rod and got my flip-flop tangled with the
wire. As I was thinking to myself how
inconsiderate the fisherman was to leave his rod in the walkway and began to
open my mouth to make some smart sarcastic remark, I looked up and noticed a
familiar face. It was none other than
Paul Del Prete, one of the managers at Health Corporate Network whom I used to
work with. What are the chances of that? I swallowed my retort and instead had a brief
conversation and bid each other farewell.
The end of the jetty arrived soon enough and we congratulated ourselves
with a humorous video of Tanwyn kicking a dead fish of the end, a pastime he
had grown quite accustomed to ever since the filming of our Christmas video on
the banks of the Swan river.
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| Pay attention to these signs... they're not messing! |
We returned from our walk and decided that we needed to get
back on the road as the light was fading quickly and we still had a way to go
to get to our first camp spot in the middle of the South West Region. As we got to Dunsborough the light had almost
gone and we entered the Danger Zone! The
worst time to drive in Australia is dusk as the Kangaroos wake and become the
biggest moving obstacles on the roads.
With our eyes peeled we turned left onto Caves Road which winds its way
from Dunsborough southwards to Augusta on the Southern coast. Mike had been saying that he really wanted to
see a… SCREECH!!! My right foot quickly slams down hard on the
brake pedal as two kangaroos jump out of the trees. “There are your kangaroos
Mike!!!!” I said as we narrowly escaped collision. If we hit a kangaroo, it is unlikely that we
would survive without a ‘Roo bar’ it would most likely come straight through
the windscreen. The rest of the journey
to the campsite was slow and careful. I
have heard stories of how people have been killed by the car in front or the
car coming the other way hitting a kangaroo and it rebounding into their
car. It’s highly dangerous and my heart
was in my throat the rest of the way to the campsite.
Following a few wrong turns and moments where we thought we
were going to be killed by Wolf Creek mimics, we arrived at the campsite, it
was completely dark and the only lights that illuminated our surroundings were
our own. It took us a while to figure
out how we were supposed to pay for the campsites, but after a hunt around the
dark, lifeless visitor centre, we found a small shack where you fill in a
registration card and put some cash in an envelope. We drove through the open boom gate into the
trees and navigated quietly around the site trying to find a spot that would
accommodate us for the night. It took us
two rounds and a stop at the toilet but we found our perfect spot. Mike got out of the car to direct me in as it
was pitch black but unfortunately within only a few hours into our trip I had
put the first dent in Walter as I overlooked a short post which got very
intimate with our left side skirt… Oops,
that’ll knock a couple of dollars off the selling price!
With Walter in his spot for the night, we opened his rear
end to retrieve our homes for the next few weeks. We had bought some bargain tents from K-Mart for
$15 and were about to test them for the first time. Since we hadn’t put them up before, it was
certainly an interesting experience putting them up in the dark. After about half hour, the tents were
erected, our sleeping bags were in and we were ready for our first night in the
wild. Our dinners were retrieved from
our IGA bags and opened with a swift tear, Cheese and Bacon Balls for me with a
dessert of Jaffas. It didn’t take us
long to turn our attention up to the sky where nature had laid out a
magnificent display of stars for us to gaze at and ponder the meaning of
life.
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