From: Poste Restante, Main GPO, Queen Street, Brisbane 4000

To: Steve Parker Mechanical Repairs, Kununurra

cc: Ivanhoe Holiday Park, Hidden Valley Holiday Park, Town Caravan Park
cc: Nomad's Big Boab Backpackers, Kununurra Backpackers



Dear Mr Parker

I recently brought my Holden Shuttle to your workshop in Kununurra and asked you to diagnose and repair a loud whirring sound that was coming from the rear of the vehicle. I told you that the Holden dealership had already diagnosed the problem to be a worn differential bearing.

I specifically explained that, as a traveller, I could not afford any work not related to the noise. I also told you that the van was my home and that I would not be able to leave it in your workshop overnight.

After a test-drive you insisted "it ain't the facking diff." Instead, you told me that the noise was coming from the rear wheel bearings and the uni-joints. You charged me $73 for this alternative diagnosis.

Because of your confusion over public holidays and a subsequent problem with the tailshaft, I had to leave my van in your workshop overnight. No one apologised for this. Your wife, Sherie, threatened to increase the agreed hourly labour rate if I complained.

After you had completed the work, for which you charged me a further $900, the same loud whirring sound was still there (a worn differential bearing). You said this wasn't your fault (I disagree) and you didn't even offer me an apology.

In addition, I was shocked by the aggressive way in which you and Sherie spoke to me. If I spoke to my customers the way that you and Sherie spoke to me, I would very quickly lose my job.

I am extremely unhappy with the service you provided. I am therefore writing this letter in the hope that other travellers will be able to avoid the poor treatment that I received.


Name supplied.

All my plans to minimise the cost of Bertha's repair have backfired. Remember that when I originally took her to the Holden garage the whirr was diagnosed by them as a worn differential bearing? And remember that Steve Parker then test-drove her and said the whirr was definitely not the differential? Remember he said the whirr was coming from one of the rear wheel bearings or from one of the uni-joints? Well I've just been to collect Bertha, complete with her new rear wheel bearings and new uni-joints and guess what, the whirr is exactly the same as before. And the work that has been done wasn't cheap. The Holden guy was right all along. If any of you ever travel to Kununurra I can heartily recommend that you steer very clear of Steve Parker's garage. I am so annoyed I feel sick.

Bertha's parts arrived two days early and she is at the garage as I type, so I'm at a bit of a loose end. Here's what's happened since last time I did the blog.

Determined to see a Saltwater Crocodile, the largest living reptile, Bertha and I clanked and whirred our way north along a forty mile dead-end to the tiny rusting ex meat factory townling of Wyndham. Wyndham lies just inland of the Timor Sea and is surrounded by the crocodile-infested (yeah, right) estuarine mudflats of the Ord River.

As soon as I started walking from the campsite to Wyndham Port (reported to be the prime crocodile-spotting spot (yeah, right)) a gap-toothed local in a shredded minging shirt pulled over and offered me a lift, which I warily accepted.

I then spent an hour impatiently scanning the mud with my binoculars but I didn't see any crocodiles. Some Aborigines fishing nearby explained that many of the loose (dangerous) crocodiles are trapped by, and held captive at, Wyndham Crocodile Farm. By law, only crocs which have been bred in captivity may be killed for their meat and skins so the captured crocs are held for safety, breeding and tourist purposes only.

As soon as I started walking back towards the campsite another minging gap-toothed local pulled over and gave me a lift.

Then I was given a guided tour of the biggest campervan I've ever seen. It used to be a big school bus but had been converted into a mobile home complete with kitchen, lounge, TV area, bedrooms, a full-sized washing machine, tumble drier, dishwasher, external PIR security lighting, and a car on a trailer behind.

The next morning I was woken up at half past five by the amazingly loud grating cacophony of a thousand cockatoos so I decided to get up early and go to the feeding-time tour at the crocodile farm.

As soon as I started walking from the campsite to Wyndham Port a rather less-minging more-comprehensively-toothed female local pulled over and gave me a lift.

Whilst I waited for the farm to open I had a chat with 'Trog', an aptly-named house painter who declared, inconceivably, that he thought the current daytime maximum temperature of 33C was "fucking freezing".

The crocodile farm tour was brilliant. I couldn't believe a) how stupidly big the captured males were - 17 foot long, 1300kg monsters with a jaw-closing pressure of 3.5 tons or b) that they were so close to the wire fence that you could reach your hand through and stroke them. The fences had holes where the crocodiles had jumped up and bitten through them. They easily swallowed their dinner (cow spleens and cow cheeks) whole. They burped a lot.

After I'd looked at the thousands of cute baby crocodiles slowly growing and nearing the day when they would be shot in the top of the head with a .22 calibre bullet I went into the cafe and bought myself a Crocodile Toasted Sandwich. Hmmm, crocodile meat is white and looks like a cross between chicken and cod, but it was rather bland and a bit rubbery. I won't be rushing to have it again, especially at $26.99/kg for tail fillet.

As soon as I started walking back from the farm to Wyndham Port an old couple pulled over and gave me a lift, crouching carefully over a Gaz cylinder in the boot of their jeep.

Then, as soon as I started walking back from Wyndham Port to the campsite a couple of Aborigines pulled over and gave me a lift in something that looked like it had been stolen from a scrapyard.

And all this without even sticking my thumb out! Maybe I should just sell Bertha and hitch-hike everywhere instead.

In the evening I drove to the summit of Mount Bastion and watched the sunset from the Five River Lookout.

I am having a peaceful restful time while clip is away; it's almost as if I am on holiday from my adventure. Still in Kununurra, each morning I get up and feed bread to the Straw-necked Ibises which gather expectantly around my fold-up camping chair, while I drink coffee from my blue plastic mug. Then, after a shower in the urine-warm water that passes for cold here, I pack my rucksack with some blackcurrant cordial, two litres of refrigerated water and some apples, and go exploring. I return to the campsite when it starts to get seriously hot (around 2pm) and spend the rest of the afternoon sunbathing and swimming in the park pool.

I've made a few friends here: travellers from England, Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Australia, Switzerland and Israel, and at least a dozen 'Grey Nomads'. The couple from Israel are actually the same ones who got the time wrong with us in Adelaide and stood pointlessly at a bus-stop for over an hour. Together we've been to Kelly's Knob (a small rocky hill that gives good views of the town and surrounding area), the Zebra Rock Gallery (a riverside hovel selling overpriced polished stripey pebbles) and Hidden Valley National Park (a region of layered sandstone hillocks similar to the Bungle Bungles).

I've seen Double-barred Finches, White-quilled Rock Pigeons, Red-tailed Black Cockatoos, Fairy Martins, White-bellied Sea Eagles, and a group of more than forty Black Kites circling together above the park.

The other day a Racehorse Goanna over a metre long appeared from some bushes and walked right past my sunbed. I almost screamed. The smaller Skinks basking around the pool immediately threw themselves into the water to get away from it.

Many of the travellers camping here spend their days working at the local fruit farms. They start at 6am and finish at 4pm and get paid $11 (4.50 pounds) per hour - that's 32 pounds per day. One Swedish lad has signed up for watermelon picking. On his first day (yesterday) he single-handedly picked and placed ten metric tonnes of melons into a tub attached to the back of a tractor in burning sunshine, then repacked the same ten tonnes of melons into big cardboard boxes in a shed. When he got back to the campsite last night his wrists were visibly swollen and he was having trouble moving them. I wonder what state he'll be in if he manages to complete his three week contract.

It's official - that knob bloke at the Holden garage yesterday didn't have a clue what he was talking about.

I've been phoning around a bit. The labour rate in Katherine is $77 per hour, and in Darwin an incredible $87 per hour. You'd think it would be cheaper in a big city but apparently not. I took Bertha round a few local garages and have now chosen Steve Parker to do the work. He's a big greasy smoking dude from Dudley (yes, our Dudley) and he test-drove Bertha at 120kmph down a town street, stamped hard on the brakes, skidded round a bend, put Bertha on a hoist, and gave me his opinion of what's wrong. And it's got nothing at all to do with the differential! His labour rate is $69 per hour.

Unfortunately, parts have to be shipped in by truck from as far afield as Perth (nearly 2000 miles away) which means hanging around for a week waiting for them to arrive. This is actually a good thing for me because I'm waiting for clip to come back, and there's plenty to do round here anyway.

Stand by.

Hmmm Bertha's whirring noise is coming from the differential bearings. We've driven her almost 10000km since we bought her and the noise only started 800km ago so I think it is just bad luck wear and tear.

The bloke who test drove her was a bit of a knob. When I asked for an estimate he sucked his front teeth and started umming and ahhing. He reckoned the new bearing(s) would cost $500-600 (230 pounds) and that it would take 7-8 hours to replace them at $77 (32 pounds) per hour for labour.

He didn't seem to know what he was talking about so I went to the parts desk and got a proper quote for the parts - a 'differential repair kit' is actually only 95 pounds. A pair of new front shock absorbers is 70 pounds plus an hour's labour. As a Big 4 member I get 10% off all these prices. The total cost of the repairs would therefore be around 390 pounds, 245 pounds of which is labour. I'm going to ring the Holden garages in Katherine and Darwin and check their labour rates before making a decision about what to do next.

Sometimes I wonder if it would have been cheaper to have rented a campervan for five months but the cheapest rate I can find for the most basic campervan is 30 pounds per day and this actually increases if the rental period is more than a month long. To have rented a campervan for five months would therefore have cost at least 4000 pounds. Bertha has only cost 1350 pounds so far (including repairs, stamp duty, rego etc.) and I will recoup most of this when I sell her, so I suppose she was the best option.

Other GREAT news: clip has managed to get a ticket back for 630 pounds. I pick her up from Darwin airport on June 6th. Yey!

Other DISMAL news: Flying cockroaches have invaded the campsite. I was not impressed to find them walking about on me in bed last night.

clop

Today isn't a good day. The loneliness comes in waves - I can be ok for hours and then I suddenly get really sad. Sometimes I feel so lonely I feel sick. I've made some new friends at Kununurra but it isn't the same. Unless I keep myself busy I start to feel miserable again. Evenings and early mornings are the worst. clip flies to Cyprus today.

There is a one and a half hour time difference between Western Australia and the Northern Territory. I am only seven hours ahead of the UK now.

The Holden garage was too busy to look at Bertha today so I'm taking her back at one o'clock tomorrow afternoon. A lad camping near me thinks it could be something as simple as dust build-up in the rear brake drums. Let's hope he's right.

I've been to the tourist information office to pick up some leaflets about the Bungle Bungles. It turns out that two wheel drive vehicles are not allowed into the park - the entry road is a dirt track that takes a 4WD three hours to drive along - so at the moment I'm not sure how I'm going to get in. I'm not paying 80 quid to go on a day tour.

Nothing else to report. I'm trying to keep myself occupied but the days are starting to drag. :o(

Only me.

Heh heh. This being-on-your-own lark is quite good fun. I drove west from Katherine and turned off the Victoria Highway up a thirty mile dirt track into Flora River Nature Park. I spent about five hours there in the energy-sapping heat, looking for turtles and crocodiles in the Flora River (being careful not to go too near the water in case I got eaten), and didn't see a single other person (nor any turtles or crocodiles come to that). I had planned to spend the night there but in the end the loneliness got to me so I drove back to the highway, continued west to Victoria River Crossing Roadhouse and rang clip.

Then I spent the evening drinking beer and playing pool and shithead (a very irritating card game) with three english nurses, an australian School of the Air teacher, two english backpackers, an australian helicopter pilot and the barman. At midnight we went out into the midst of about fifty wallabies on the helipad and set off fireworks and danced to Lenny Kravitz ha ha ha. It was a great night and of course the English beat the Australians in the pool competition! A rematch is planned for next week as I'll be staying there heading back east.

When there are two of you it's easy not to make the effort to meet anyone else because there's no need to. Once you're on your own it seems natural to strike up a conversation with almost everybody you meet. I think I've spoken to more people in the last four days than I did in all the time clip was here with me.

This morning I walked past all the wallabies munching grass in the campsite and stared in awe at Victoria River itself. The river is like I would expect the Amazon River to be... wide and hot, snaking its way through dense greenery, with tropical birds squawking and flapping about. There were at least a thousand cockatoos gathered on an island in the river; it was incredible. I spent a couple of hours walking along the red rock escarpment alongside the river.

This afternoon I passed through the quarantine checkpoint into Western Australia. It's a good job I'd actually eaten all my fruit and vegetables for once because they emptied every bag and every box and let a sniffer dog loose in Bertha. Nothing to declare.

Now I am in Kununurra for a couple of days. There's a Holden (Vauxhall) garage here that offers 10% discount to Big 4 members so I'm going to get Bertha's whirr checked out tomorrow. It's still very hot; it has been 36C in the shade today and I've drunk four litres of pop already.

Right I'm off for a swim xxxx

Hiya, clip here.

Well as clop has already said, I'm back in the UK. I came back for two reasons really. Firstly because one of my very close friends was getting married and I didn't want to miss being there for her on her big day, and secondly to see my family. I'm a very homely person and four months away from them hasn't been easy for me. But, even though clop doesn't seem convinced, I am going back. I'm looking on the internet every spare minute I get to find a suitable flight. It's been really strange being back without clop. It's easier for me than him I'm certain, but it is still quite lonely.

Next update from me will be when I arrive back in Oz. I'm not looking forward to another 44 hours travelling though.

Thank you everyone. After the last blog update I received sixteen emails! That's normally a month's worth! Everyone is being very supportive and it really cheered me up. I'm sorry I don't have time to reply to you all now but the internet is super-expensive here and I've got a long way to drive today.

After clip left I sat around miserable and not eating in the hostel for a couple of days then I decided it was pointless moping and that I'd feel better if I went somewhere. After I knew she'd got home safely (it took her 44.5 hours to get from Darwin Airport to her mum's house in Leeds) I checked out of the hostel and drove 60 miles south to look at a bit of Litchfield National Park. I went into a pit toilet there, shut the door and sat down, then looked up and saw the Huntsman Spider on the back of the door, it's huge shiny black eyes looking straight at me. Huntsman spiders are supposed to be harmless but you wouldn't think it to look at them. It was absolutely massive; I guess the abdomen was an inch long and the leg reach about four inches. It looked like a grey tarantula. Needless to say, I (quite literally) shit myself.

Then I spent a couple of days in Katherine, kicking back, doing some washing, sunbathing and reading my books. I'm slowly getting used to being on my own and it seems much easier to get chatting to people. It's kind of nice to have time to myself and I think I'm going to be ok.

clip's dad has offered to lend her the money to fly back to Australia in a couple of weeks but at the moment I'm planning as if she might not come back. This week I'm heading over into Western Australia to look at the Bungle Bungles and feed some turtles in Victoria River.

Thanks again for all the emails.

clop out

At last I can explain why we have been in such a big rush to get to Darwin over the past few weeks - clip has gone home.

Her friends are getting married in Cyprus next week and she wanted to go to the wedding. We couldn't afford to buy her a return flight from Australia to the UK so she has had to use the inbound portion of her round-the-world ticket to get home.

I told her that I didn't want her to go but that she should make her own decision - she chose to go home.

I don't have much of an opinion on whether she has done the right thing but I hope the people she is flying back for appreciate how much she has given up for them, and I don't mean just the flight tickets and her trip.

I took her to the airport in Bertha and dropped her off. It started to rain for the first time in over a month. It was a very difficult farewell for both of us. We've been with each other day and night for 120 days; now that she has gone I am in shock. I don't want to be here on my own and I don't know if I want to continue my trip without her. I hope she can find a way to come back.

Bye for now everyone

clop xx

I hope you are sitting down when you read this.

Bertha's rego has arrived!

It only took five and a half weeks.

The rego sticker is a joke. I was expecting something similar to the UK tax disc, with Bertha's registration number and an official stamp. Nope. It's a plastic car sticker with a number 10 on it (for October). That's it. It looks like something Radio Aire would hand out at a roadshow. There's nothing to show that the sticker has anything to do with Bertha at all. I think Western Australia is still struggling to become a second world country.

After a moving 'Bertha is finally legal' rego stick-on ceremony (complete with Queenesque speech from clip) we went to the cinema if for no other reason than it was air-conditioned. I almost soiled myself when I saw that one of the icecreams on offer at the food counter was called a 'Double Header'. Ha ha ha ha ha crikey. Cheap at $3.90 I thought.

Quite a big bit of news coming in the next update...

Hello, clip here. I've just been looking back at our blog and I'm amazed just how much we've done and how much we've seen. You don't actually take any of it in when you're here, it's really strange. The blog is going to be great when we finally arrive home as a reminder of everything for us. I just wish I was better at filling it in.

The weather is getting beyond a joke; India was chilly in comparison to this. I constantly look knackered and sweaty. It's so tiring. You can't stay in Bertha because it's too hot. All having the windows open does is make my hair into one big knot that I can't untangle without tears pouring down my face. In places I look like I'm suffering from alopecia from just ripping the knots out! If you step outside of Bertha you have to walk with your backside against things because it looks like you've wet yourself and then you get a mouth, ear and nose full of flaming flies! And this is supposed to be the most comfortable time to visit the Top End! It's just nuts.

And to top it off I've now seen two snakes! But thankfully no spiders... yet! clop thinks it's great, everywhere we go he searches for creepy crawlies and reptiles, where as all I want to see is nice cute fluffy stuff.

Australia is a lot nicer than I thought it would be, even though reading back what I've just written suggests otherwise I know. It's very varied and certainly full of animals, even the birds are amazing. They're all so different.

We're spending a few days chilling now, no driving thank goodness. I think Bertha will be quite pleased of a rest too, she's started making grinding noises which probably isn't good (I know nothing about cars).

The communication barrier between us and the Aborigine we picked up wasn't helped by the fact that he'd obviously been drinking non-stop since 1985 and spilt most of it or regurgitated most of it down his once-was-cream top.

We're off for our haircutting now, in the hope that it will cool us down!

Hot hot hot.

Approaching Tennant Creek at dusk we were flagged down by ten or so Aborigines standing next to a car on the hard shoulder. Our only experience of Aboriginal people to that point had been seeing them drunk or begging in city centres, walking barefoot through hot bushland, or being asked to move on for allegedly loitering inside shopping malls. We had not seen a single Aboriginal person wearing a suit or working in a shop but then, we hadn't seen a single white person wearing body paint either. There are various tours which allow you to go and meet an Aboriginal community on their own turf but they cost money and besides, we didn't feel that a community that entertains a bus full of tourists every day would have retained its true Aboriginality; Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in action. Nevertheless, we wanted to meet some and I always try to help people who need help, so we pulled over.

They'd had a puncture on their way into town and they'd been trying to get a lift for almost two hours in the sun and no one had stopped for them. We gave water to the group of people we left at the side of the road and took one of them into town where his cousin lived (to pick up a new wheel). It was very hard to understand him. He asked where we lived and we told him England and he asked which direction it was in - he had never heard of it, in fact he had no knowledge of any place outside the local area at all. I wish we could have communicated better but conversation was impossible. He also stank to high heaven and we were kind of relieved when we dropped him off, wishing him luck as he waved and grinned back at us.

As we headed further and further northwards it was obvious that the sun was climbing higher and higher in the sky. It was also getting much hotter and the arid red desert of the centre gradually changed over a few days into a greener lusher landscape of forests and creeks with water in them.

We stayed in a rough and ready outback town called Daly Waters and had a few drinks in the 'famous' Daly Waters pub - supposedly one of the best outback pubs in the Northern Territory. Things seemed quite authentic until the lad behind the bar said "hey up mate, what y'avin'?" and gave away one of the strongest Yorkshire accents you can imagine. He turned out to be a backpacker from Sheffield and he'd only been working in the pub for a couple of weeks; his girlfriend thought they were on their way to Cairns but he had already got them both new jobs driving tractors in a field with no toilets - he said she was going to go nuts when he told her.

Back at the campsite we found the corrugated tin sheds that doubled as toilet units were now full of green tree frogs. There were half a dozen of them in the toilet cistern and others sitting on the taps and climbing around the showers, sinks and ceiling. There were even frogs in the toilet bowls.

We stopped for lunch in a little town I can't remember the name of (just that the toilets were so bad as to be unusable) and met another Aboriginee - this one mistook me for an Australian bushman - maybe I should shave and do something about my hair.

And then we reached Katherine. Katherine River is the southernmost river in the Top End with water flowing in it all year round. We drove through lots of little bushfires with Black Kites soaring above the smoke watching for fleeing prey. We visited Katherine Gorge (Nitmiluk) and walked in 40C for four hours to Butterfly Gorge. The heat was unbearable. The next day we went to Edith Falls in a different part of Nitmiluk, walked the Leliyn Loop in similarly scorchio weather, paddled in the plunge pool, and saw another (bigger) snake.

And now we are in Darwin, the regional capital of the Northern Territory. It's very hot and the humidity is getting to us a bit. We've just been to the Post Office to collect Bertha's rego and guess what? Ha ha ha you got it, it wasn't there. No surprise there then.

For the last couple of months clip and I have been getting on better than we ever have before in our eight years of knowing each other.

It was around Alice Springs (in the Northern Territory) that we finally discovered, nine days late, that we should have changed our watches when we entered South Australia, as they are half an hour ahead of Victoria. This explains why we thought the buses in Adelaide were running so late and why the sun kept setting at the wrong time. Unfortunately we got it wrong yet again (without even realising) in the Northern Territory because it is the only state that doesn't observe Daylight Saving Time, hence, in practice, we had to turn our watches back half an hour from Victoria. Confusing eh?

We picked up a 'coming out' Dutch hitchhiker at Yulara and took him as far as Alice Springs with us, stopping off on the way to look at the rather unremarkable Henbury Meteorite Craters (they're all eroded and smoothed out - I was expecting a smoking pit with jagged walls) and see a wild camel.

Alice Springs is quite a nice place to say it's 800 miles from the next nearest town in the middle of a desert, but it felt a bit 'forced' to me, as though people have had to go out of their way to construct a settlement there. The campsite was quite nice; we saw some Port Lincoln Collared Parrots and I almost got knocked over going for a wee in the middle of the night by some startled kangaroos drinking from a nearby tap.

We spent a day in the West MacDonnell Ranges. First we checked out the Rock Wallabies (including a joey less than a foot high) at Simpsons Gap then we snook into Standley Chasm without paying (we didn't have enough money) and risked our lives climbing up slippery logs above rocky pools and wriggling through wormholes between boulders and finding an as-yet-unidentified snake curled around a big stone, whilst simultaneously trying to avoid huge orange and black flying wasps.

We also visited Alice Springs Desert Park (a kind of open-air Central Australian Zoo where the animals have got enough room) and saw Greater Bilbys, Hare Wallabies and mouse-sized marsupials. The nocturnal house was brilliant.

We watched the famous Ghan train pulling into the station at Alice Springs (you can take your car on the train with you) and had a look at the original Flying Doctor operations base.

At the supermarkets in Alice Springs you can buy frozen whole possums.

OK then so far I've seen, koalas (definitely need one of those), kangaroos (not too fussed for one of these, they're too leggy and spindly), wombats (so very cute and just like on A Country Practice), wallabies (smaller than 'roos but still leggy and spindly), birds galore (all really colourful), but my favourite animal by far has to be the Galah! They're fantastic, why don't we have these at home? And unlike what the guy running the campsite in Bordertown thought, its not just because they're pink! They always seem to be having a great time. clop has taken some fab snapshots of them.

We have seen so much in the last few weeks I can't actually remember anywhere I have been! Apart from Ayers Rock, but that's just because we were there yesterday. It's a terrible thing to say I know but I genuinely cannot remember a thing! Thank goodness clop has a far better memory than me. Ayers Rock (once we found the right large red rock) was rather pretty. The climb up it was far far too dangerous, my mother would never have let me go up it had she been there. Even clop thought it was dangerous and he's pretty fearless. My super-grip power pumps were slipping down the sheer rock face and the ridiculously wide, may-as-well-have-been-spiked safety chain built for dwarves with racquet-sized hands was no use at all, up or down. But I did it, and I'm quite chuffed with myself.

We are in Alice Springs now and it's nice to be back in civilisationish for a while!

Right enough of this, it's the end of Thrift Week and it's time to shop for things other than petrol!

clip

God love a duck. The replacement 'rego' has arrived in Sydney. We can't quite believe it either. All being well it should be waiting for us at the Poste Restante in Darwin when we arrive there next week.

We stayed in Melbourne long enough to collect all clip's birthday cards (thanks everyone) then jumped in Bertha and sped gleefully away along the Western Freeway. Escape from the city at last. We passed through Ballarat and Ararat then turned off the freeway into the Grampians National Park. Halls Gap is the entrance town to this mountainous scenic area but it was full of families on holiday so we rough-camped in one of the national park campgrounds. At last we managed to get a good look at some Kookaburras; these vicious-looking brown kingfisher things spent most of their time flying into clip's head, laughing, and trying to smash old chicken bones by banging them against a tree. We also hand-fed some cream crackers to a Crimson Rosella.

In the morning we stopped to see the Balconies and McKenzie Falls before continuing on our way west. We've discovered that we can improve Bertha's fairly poor fuel consumption by about 6mpg by driving at 70kph rather than 90kph. Unfortunately the speed limit on most of the main roads is 100kph so we get in everyone's way. As the main roads are also very very boring we have tended to travel on back roads wherever possible and this had made our journey much more interesting. Many of the placenames in Australia have Aboriginal origins and they're great fun to say. They are the kind of names you'd really like to name places as a child but adults are usually too dull to use. Here are a few examples...

Bumbunga
Tabberabbera
Burrumbuttock
Tingaringy
Wandiligong
Boomannoomoonah
Dandongadale
Mullindolingong
Wulgulmerang
Tumbarumba
Yackandandah

plus the hilarious...

Spanker Knob

and my personal favourite (though clip doesn't think it's very funny)...

Gymbowen ha ha ha ha Gymbowen ha ha ha!

Many of these towns are so small they are literally one or two houses but Gymbowen was big enough to have its own Community Hall. Half the population turned out to watch us taking photographs of their signs - probably wondering a) why we were doing it and b) what on earth we were laughing at.

From Gymbowen we drove north through the Little Desert NP, west into South Australia (accidentally forgetting that you're not allowed to carry fruit or vegetables across state borders), stayed a night at Bordertown (cockroaches on the BBQ), on a free ferry at Tailem Bend, across the Fleurieu Peninsula (gorgeous green cattle-farming countryside) and down a very long hill (Bertha managed to attain a best-ever maximum speed of 110kph freewheeling down it) into Adelaide.

Adelaide is the most beautiful city I have ever been to. Basically it is a gigantic park (read nature reserve) with a little city centre in the middle of it. Most people live on the outer fringes of the park and travel into the city in buses that run along specially-constructed elevated busways through the parkland. We camped next to a river and walked into town along the banks of it, the trees full of the usual parrots and a few more unusual ones. We walked around most of the CBD, took a couple of buses here and there and took a tram to the beach at Glenelg. At first we thought we must have been seeing only the best parts of the place but after a few days it became apparent that Adelaide really is as good as it looks. There was no litter and no graffiti anywhere, just clean open safe areas, nice friendly people and good transport facilities. Cities like Adelaide make you wonder where we went so wrong in the UK.

Monday 28th April was the first day of Thrift Week, a self-imposed project to see how little we could spend for seven days. More on this later.

Australia is a big country but you don't realise quite how big it actually is until you start driving around it. To give you some idea, the distance from Sydney to Perth is the same as the distance from London to Moscow. 95% of the Australian population live within 50km of the coast. The road network is therefore very simple - there is a freeway all the way round the outside and a highway straight up the middle. In addition to these sealed roads (and a few other minor sealed roads) there are lots and lots of gravel roads and dirt tracks linking the more remote communities. These dirt tracks range from about 350 miles to 800 miles in length and they are very rough. Some of them need four-wheel drive, even in dry weather. None of them can be negotiated by two-wheel drive vehicles in the wet. Because the tracks are so remote, breaking down or running out of petrol can mean death unless you carry sufficient water and food.

We wanted to visit the Flinders Ranges NP but using sealed roads would have meant doubling back 150 miles to return to the northbound Stuart Highway. Instead we decided to use a 420 mile dirt track through desert, called the Oodnadatta Track. More on this in a moment.

We headed north from Adelaide through the wine-making region of the Clare Valley (very nice indeed), through Orroroo and on to Hawker. The people at Hawker told us not to attempt the Oodnadatta Track in a two-wheel drive converted minibus. They said the locals would not help us out unless we were in a four-wheel drive.

We had a good look round the Flinders Ranges NP (yet more rugged scenery), driving on roads that were basically just dry riverbeds, then telephoned the lady at the Pink Roadhouse in Oodnadatta to ask for advice on whether or not to tackle the track. She said "oh you'll be fine" so we decided we were going to do it and drove 50 miles north along a gravel road to Marree, the start of the Oodnadatta Track.

It was around this time that we first got an inkling of what the outback is all about. The main thing that hits you is the sheer quantity of red dust everywhere; it gets in absolutely everything, including your nose (when you blow your nose this bright orange stuff that clip calls "supersnook" comes out), your hair, your clothes, the bed, your rucksack, the food containers. Then you notice all the kangaroo skeletons along the sides of the road. Then you stop the van and get out and within seconds you are covered in blowflies - these are by far the most irritating thing I have ever encountered in my entire life. Dozens of them land on your face and walk into your ears and walk into your eyes and walk up your nose so that you have to blow them out again. Constantly. I'm not exaggerating. They do this all the time you are out of the van. It gets to the point where you dread stopping. Most people wear special face nets over their hats (it's like being on the Outbreak film set) but we couldn't buy ourselves any because it was still bloody Thrift Week.

Marree was rather basic. The only things I can remember of it were that the urinal plughole was bunged up with dead moths and that clip had a shower with her eyes shut.

We filled up with petrol (including our jerry can), filled our 30 litres of water containers, lowered the tyre pressures, then set off along the Oodnadatta Track. We drove 180 miles along a mixture of dried red mud, dried grey mud, sand, rubble and soil in 35C heat to William's Creek in the middle of absolutely nowhere, during which time we passed only four other vehicles. In parts the road surface was so corrugated that we were reduced to less than 10mph. The landscape didn't change very much at all; everywhere we went looked like a building site covered in rubble and red dust. By William's Creek we'd had enough and took an unnamed dirt track for 100 miles west to the sealed highway at Coober Pedy. This section was the roughest of all and the ground was covered in enormous two inch grasshoppers that jumped as we approached them so that, for the last 50 miles, there was a constant clang clang clang clang clang clang as they exploded off Bertha's bonnet and got caught in the windscreen wipers; by the time we reached Coober Pedy it looked like a group of people had taken it in turn to throw up down the front of the van.

Coober Pedy is Australia's opal capital. There are more than 250,000 mine shafts around the town; the surrounding landscape is a vista of pointy piles of rubble. It gets so hot there that most of the town's small population live underground, in fact many of the shops were also underground and the B&B's offered underground accommodation. The enormous grasshoppers were everywhere. We had to cover our pans to stop them jumping into the food we were cooking. There were even grasshoppers in the urinals. When we got in bed that night there was an enormous grasshopper hanging off our curtain.

The next day we spent an hour noodling through the mullock and found some opals of our own. clip's has blue, orange, red, yellow and green colours in it. Mine only has green. Typical eh? We took them to a jewellers to be valued but the lady said they are only worth anything to us.

We continued up the Stuart Highway to Marla, best described as a petrol station with a bar and a campsite behind it. We bought some bottles of beer and had to sign an official document promising that we wouldn't sell any on to the local Aboriginal people (they're not allowed it apparently, though I don't see why I should have to uphold their laws for them).

Ayers Rock (Uluru) and the Olgas are at the end of a 160 mile cul de sac off the main road. Along the way we saw lots of Wedge-tailed Eagles pecking the insides out of dead kangaroos. Ayers Rock is in a national park and the local resort, Yulara, is wholly owned by a single company. Camping is prohibited anywhere except in the camping ground at Yulara and the company has seen fit to charge almost three times the normal rate for the privilege of being woken up at 5am each morning by the Ayers Rock Sunrise Brigade. Entry to the national park is by a three day pass only, regardless of the fact that you may be staying for just a day or two. Amazing isn't it.

We spent the morning walking the Valley Of The Winds at the Olgas - these thirty six orange mounds were more interesting to me than Ayers Rock itself.

The traditional Aboriginal owners of Uluru consider it sacred and everywhere you turn there are notices asking you not to climb it for reasons of cultural sensitivity and respect. Unfortunately, there are so many of these notices that in the end you are so sick of being told not to climb it that you can't wait to get up on the thing. I did have a minor battle of conscience with myself but then I thought "Uluru is sacred to the Aboriginals but it isn't sacred to me" and "how can anyone own a naturally-occuring big rock?" and "if it were as sacred and culturally significant as they're making out, they wouldn't be charging me a seven pound admission fee."

So we climbed up Ayers Rock. In retrospect it was probably one of the most immediately dangerous things I have ever done. The climb is closed if it's too hot or if it's raining but I really can't understand how it is allowed at all. It's outrageous. More than 35 people have died attempting it. There are no steps or anything - you just walk straight up the steep rock face trying to hold on to a single chain which is far too thick and set below knee height. I suppose the route takes you up the least-steep ridge from ground level but it is still so steep that you almost, but not quite, lose traction, even standing still. The gradient increases rapidly if you move away from the chain; if you were to trip or stumble there is no question that you would be seriously injured or die. The chain takes you to about a height of about 250m then the climb levels out to the cairn at 348m (the main danger at this point is the wind blowing you off). Coming down is more difficult than going up as you don't have enough grip to simply walk down holding the chain. You have to crouch and shuffle. I ended up with blisters on the tops of my toes. There were a couple of pools of vomit where people had got scared. A bloke in flip-flops had climbed it with his seven year old son; they were having serious problems as we passed them on the way down. Gobsmacking.

More to come...