Posted by clip

Hiya, we're in Airlie Beach today. It's full of traveller sorts and thankfully sunny again. Our tans were beginning to fade due to the non-stop very noisy stormy weather we've recently been having. But hopefully things are now back on track to return home looking like Aborigines.

Things have been a little stressful the last few days; the east coast of Australia is proving to be a little too over-populated and too much like home, for clop's liking. Although I must admit I did prefer our time spent in the Northern Territory far more.

I think we're both looking forward to leaving to go to Asia more and more. Hopefully we'll be able to afford to experience much more of the traveller lifestyle that we both expected there.

After three months of meeting chatty, laid-back country folk and pootling along remote, empty, super-smooth (generally speaking) outback highways, cheerfully waving to and being waved at by other happy motorists, the populated east coast of Australia heralded the return of every depressing aspect of 'civilised' life I'd been happy to forget. The roads are dug up and bumpy. Nobody waves back at us anymore. Everyone is grumpy and tense. Everyone is in such a desperate rush all the time. No matter where we're driving or what speed we're driving at, there is always someone right behind us, impatient for the chance to accelerate past us as hard as they possibly can. I remember that this is how it was in the UK too.

Where is all this stress coming from? Why are people in cities so self-centred and hostile, competing and fighting with each other, finding fault and bitching, and venting their unwelcome opinions on things that don't concern them? Perhaps it's down to the modern disease of insecurity, the pressure of over-ambition, or the struggle to stand out as an individual in an overpopulated homogeneous society. Whatever, I think at least part of it is learned and reinforced behaviour, and I reckon most people, given the choice, would prefer to live in a friendlier, more thoughtful and more co-operative way. I know I would.

At some point in the past, a clerk at the White Line Painting Division of Queensland's Highways Department misread a number scrawled on an order form and mistakenly authorised the purchase of enough white line paint to fill Ladybower Reservoir. I can just imagine them all on delivery day, standing there together in front of thousands of paint tankers, scratching their heads and trying to decide what to do. Well this is what they did: they sent white line painters to every road junction, pedestrian crossing and roundabout in Queensland and got them to paint every single possible bloody motor vehicle trajectory onto the tarmac. The result makes every intersection into a black and white version of the floor of a school sports hall. It's a nightmare. I'd rather be a finalist on Krypton Factor than turn right in Queensland.

A sickening invasion of privacy is being embraced, heartily it would seem, by the supermarket shopping public of Australia. Perhaps the spores of this malignancy are already airborne and heading for Europe. I hope not.

Every supermarket in Australia now has a sign at the door: 'It is a condition of entry that you present your bags for checking.'

Frequent, irritatingly-sing-song tannoy announcements: "Please present your bags for checking, if requested, at the check-out. We thank you for your co-operation!"

Signs at the check-outs: 'Please present your bags for checking.'

Of course, I have to carry my little rucksack with me everywhere I go. It's got my tickets and money and camera and palm and playa and gps in it. And more often than not I am asked to open it by the check-out operator. Is it just me or does this seem really wrong somehow? By law, they cannot physically touch your bag and, in fact, you are not actually obliged to open it for them anyway; if you refuse they can ban you from the store. Let's face it, you'd have to be a pretty stupid shoplifter if you volunteered to show them what you were nicking.

At first I grudgingly opened my bag for them to look in, but then I decided they could get stuffed. We don't lock people up from birth on the off-chance that they might rob a bank in middle-age. A few times I managed to seriously hold up the queue by emptying every tiny little item out of every little zippy pocket onto the check-out (whilst trying not to laugh), but now I just refuse. I haven't been banned from any shops yet but the vitriolic glares are excellent.

I've received the following supportive email from a Kununurra resident. Nice to know I'm not the only one that has problems.


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Hello (clop)

I work in the office at (Kununurra-based company) and read your letter. I have lived in Kununurra for three years and am buying my house here. I came here on my own not knowing anyone and soon found out how some of the locals (I call them "bush pigs") here behave when it comes to tourists and travellers and non locals. It is appalling and I just hope that you don’t think badly of Kununurra people in general. I wish you well in your endeavours and hope that S Parker eventually does the right thing by you. Good on you for voicing your opinion. Cheers to you!

(name supplied)

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I am now over halfway through my trip. For some reason the halfway point was an important event for me, psychologically.

Australians sweating. In some parts of Australia it can certainly get pretty hot but there are also parts of it, like Melbourne, where the climate isn't all that different to the UK. However, in the UK, sweaty armpits and B.O. are considered extremely undesirable and are even ridiculed (remember how Tony Blair's damp underarms actually made front-page news? how laughable is that?) whereas here they are just accepted as a normal part of life. Without meaning to be unkind, the groups of Aborigines I have met have been even less concerned about body odour (in fact I wouldn't be surprised if they view it positively) and it makes me wonder why we Brits have become, in less than a century, so conditioned and utterly obsessed with hiding and eliminating something that is so perfectly normal.

Just south of Katherine we stopped to look at the graves of the characters of 'We of the Never Never', a book written by a lady who moved from the city to an outback cattle-station with the 'Maluka' around 1901, and chronicling her first year there. I had read the book back in Kununurra and it describes a very basic but contented lifestyle. It was surreal to stand before the actual graves of 'The Fizzer', the stockmen and Lee the Chinese cook, and walk on the original site of Elsey station homestead.

Before Daly Waters we pulled into a layby and took some photographs of a Shell road train from about fifty yards away. The grumpy driver climbed down from his cab and spent the next five minutes telling us off for invading his privacy?! Ha ha ha. What a twat. It's funny. So many white Australians have gone out their ways to impress on us how intimidating, unfriendly and dangerous Aborigines are, yet I'm still waiting to meet one who isn't nice and friendly and the only hostility we've had has been from white Australian men. Having an English accent and travelling in a campervan just seems to invite trouble from them.

At Tennant Creek we turned east across the Barkly Tableland, a vast area of savannah grasslands infested with termite mounds and used predominantly for cattle-farming. After 400 miles we reached Mount Isa, a depressingly-industrial town set right beside a dirty great mine. The mine has over 1000km of tunnels and a smoky smelter chimney 270m high; it's among the world's top three producers of silver and top ten of copper and zinc. It took us less than a day to rename it "Mount Scheisse".

You could be forgiven for thinking that the Federal Highways in Australia are like British motorways, or maybe even dual-carriageways, but they're not; for example, the 2000 mile road from Adelaide to Darwin is only two lanes wide, like Bayton Lane. Overtaking isn't an issue because the roads are so straight and you can easily drive for ten minutes without seeing another car.

After Mt. Scheisse much of the so-called 'Federal Highway' degenerated into a very narrow strip of very rough tarmac with rubble strewn along the edges. Oncoming and overtaking vehicles are forced to drive onto the rubble and, as nobody seems to bother slowing down, risk smashing their windscreens to pieces every time they pass each other. Cars aren't so bad but things get really hairy when you have a 120 ton road train approaching at 65mph.

We smugly arrived, windscreen intact, at Cloncurry. 'The Curry' holds the record for the highest temperature ever recorded in Australia: 53.1C (127.5F) in the shade. By chance, we arrived midway through Cloncurry's four-day rodeo so we decided to go along and check it out.

This rodeo was not the gentile family-day-out that we have become accustomed to; this was true Hicksville Heaven (or Hell, depending which way you want to look at it). Everyone, including the children, was wearing boots, cowboy hats, checky shirts, blue jeans and belts with comically-big buckles. Most of them were perched astride sweaty horses. Country music cantered lazily over the PA system. There didn't appear to be a single non-participating spectator. We looked ridiculously out of place in tiny workmen's shorts and pink, unspurred flip-flops, but we tried to ignore the amused stares and took our seats on a wooden stand to watch the Restricted Open Campdraft competition. After sixteen riders had chased bunny-eared beasts around an imaginary slalom course we suddenly realised that all the Hicks around us had entry stamps on their wrists. We decided to leave before anyone noticed we'd inadvertently snook in without paying.

The 300 mile section of the Federal Highway 1 cart track from Mt. Scheisse, through Cloncurry and north to Normanton, was littered with literally hundreds of dead cattle; some recently killed (probably hit by road trains), some grotesquely blown up with their legs splayed out like over-inflated balloon animals, some rotting and stinking and being pecked at by eagles and kites, and the rest neat white skeletons arranged alongside wizened hides.

At Normanton, close to the Gulf of Carpentaria, we looked at a life-sized replica of 'Krys', the largest Saltwater Crocodile ever 'captured' (read 'shot whilst lying on a riverbank minding his own business'). Krys was a staggering 8.63m (28' 4") long. I could not reach my arms around one of his front legs.

We drove a further 400 perilous miles along the Federal Highway 1 footpath, through the goldfields and gemfields of Georgetown and Mount Surprise, across the volcanic landscapes of the Undara region, and camped for free in an antique railway siding at Ravenshoe where I helped the caretaker push an old quad bike into a rusty rat-infested caravan.

I was shocked by the sudden change in climate. Normanton and Georgetown had been hot (32C) and dry. Ravenshoe, at an altitude of almost 1000m, was cold (15C) and wet. I saw brown soil and green grass for the first time in four months. I saw Fresian cows for the first time in six months. It was like being near Cropton in the Yorkshire Moors (except for the cockatoos). Overcast rolling hills with green fields and woods, and mud and rivers, and drizzle. It was so much like home that I felt really funny inside.

We started to see roadsigns warning of Tree Kangaroos and Cassowarys (an aggressive emu-sized bird, with a sharp square horn on its head and razor-blades instead of toes, that runs at you and can kill people).

We went to see Dinner Falls and an amazing 140m-deep crater caused by a volcanic gas explosion. We saw the Curtain Fig Tree and stood inside the Cathedral Fig Tree.

We freewheeled ten miles from the top of the Atherton Tablelands down into Gordonvale, then used petrol to drive the last bit into Cairns. So far Cairns has been a huge disappointment. It's very glitzy and American; like an improved Blackpool. And it's still raining.

Well what a tricky time I've caused. As clop explained, my tickets have disappeared, and even though we weren't told any of this by either the travel agent we booked the flight with or by Singapore Airlines when I changed my flight home, there is apparently nothing we can do about it. So there goes five or maybe six flights that I have paid for!

It looked like I would be going straight home from Australia and clop would be going on the next bit by himself, but I'm pleased to say clop came up with a great plan and I'm now able to travel with him. We're not exactly sure how it's going to work yet, but it's worth a try. So, all together now... For clop's a jolly good fellow for clop's a jolly good fellow for clop's a jolly good fellow and so say all he's travelling with etc. etc.

Lots of tears and lots of thinking and we've come up with a new plan.

We will fly from Brisbane to Singapore together on the 15th September as previously arranged but I won't use my Singapore-Hanoi ticket. Instead, we'll travel overland through Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia into Thailand. From there we can do a loop through Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos.

clip will use her existing ticket to fly home for Christmas on the 11th December from Singapore. We're not sure how we're going to get her there yet; I may have to travel back through Malaysia with her, drop her off, then return to Bangkok for my flight to Delhi, or we may just buy her a flight from Bangkok to Singapore.

I'll fly from Bangkok to Delhi and somehow find my way across India to Bombay for the 16th December.

clip won't be able to visit India and neither of us will be able to visit Nepal.

I fly home from Bombay on 8th January 2004.

Bad news. Very bad news.

When clip went home for the wedding in May she used the Brisbane-Singapore and Singapore-Manchester sectors of her round-the-world ticket to get home. When she got to England she bought a new ticket to come back to Australia, going via Singapore, so that she could continue our trip.

Yesterday we rang Singapore Airlines to finalise the dates for our Singapore-Hanoi, Bangkok-Singapore, Singapore-Delhi, Delhi-Kathmandu and Bombay-Singapore sectors. Very very bad news. All clip's tickets have been rendered void because she used the last sector of her round-the-world ticket out of order. We've explained the reasons for her going home and we've pointed out that no-one told us about this rule but Singapore Airlines are refusing to reinstate the tickets.

So at the moment, the only valid tickets clip has are Brisbane-Singapore and Singapore-London, which means that she will not be able to travel through Asia with me.

Hiya, clip here. Things are going extremely well. We've started seeing cute creatures again - wallabies with joeys and thousands and thousands of screaming fruit bats! It's great. We're leaving Katherine tomorrow and heading towards Cairns. I'm looking forward to seeing new places, and now that the near-starvation-inducing budget week is over, I'm looking forward to stuffing my face with full-price goods!

Despite almost a decade of service and almost a year's notice, my previous employer would not allow me to take this trip as unpaid leave; I had to resign. I really loved my job and it has always been (and still is) my intention to return to it when I get home. At the halfway point, I'm not surprised to learn that my previous position has recently been filled. Congratulations Trevor! I was expecting this to happen but it is upsetting all the same.

The towns in Australia are so far apart, and the roads between them so empty and straight, that all the haulage companies here use 'Road Trains'. In the UK our standard articulated lorries have a little traction unit pulling a long trailer. A standard Road Train has a giant, American-style traction unit pulling a long trailer pulling another long trailer pulling yet another long trailer! A standard Road Train is 54m long. These things are everywhere - they even use the outback dirt tracks.

We stocked up on food and pop, said goodbye to Darwin for the last time, and drove eastwards along the Arnhem Highway across the monsoonal 'Top End'.

We visited the Window on the Wetlands Visitors' Centre and, after pretending to be mudskippers in a mudskipper simulator (yes, really), we went on a crocodile sightseeing tour on Adelaide River. We saw about twenty wild Saltwater Crocodiles. Many of them swam menacingly up to our (rather tiny and open) boat and lurched out of the water to rip chunks of meat from bits of string hanging around the sides. This was spectacular enough on its own, but the crew decided to give us an even better look at the largest crocodile, a 5m long, 800kg nightmare called 'Snaggletooth'.

The skipper drove the boat straight up the bank, then a lady dangled a chunk of meat in front of Snaggletooth to 'encourage' him out of the water and onto the mud. Everyone was crowded, staring and taking photographs, around the front of the boat, when Snaggletooth executed a sudden, unrehearsed and surprisingly athletic manoeuvre, and succeeded in getting his head and front toes over the edge of the deck. Everyone gasped and quickly moved back. There was a monent of panic. The lady dangling the meat warbled, "oooh no mate, don't come up here." in a worried kind of voice. Luckily, Snaggletooth must have understood her because he decided not to kill any of us after all, obediently collapsed back onto the bank and scrabbled into the water, covering everyone in the front row with mud as he did so.

On the way back to the jetty we spotted a White-bellied Sea Eagle in a tree. The lady dangled a chunk of meat from a string and the eagle glided down and snatched it impressively in mid-flight.

We spent the night at Mary River Crossing (the toilets and showers were clustered, partially hidden behind a bamboo screen, in one corner of an enormous corrugated-iron aircraft hangar) then paid our admission fees and finally made our way into Kakadu National Park.

Kakadu covers an area of twenty thousand square kilometres and contains the entire river system of the South Alligator River. The majority of Kakadu is a floodplain, bordered to the east by an escarpment beyond which the land is owned and inhabited by Aboriginal tribes.

Kakadu is renowned for its diverse flora and fauna, its natural beauty, its Aboriginal art sites and culture, and the extraordinary extremes of its tropical climate. Currently, it is the cold weather season (or Wurrgeng as the Aborigines know it) and the daytime temperature is down to a wintry 33C. Incredibly, many of the trees have actually shed their leaves.

We had a look at Mamukala Wetlands, visited the Bowali Visitors' Centre, and camped in Jabiru. The next day we saw some very old Aboriginal rock art at Ubirr, looked across Cahills Crossing, wandered around the Bardedjilidji Sandstone walk, and camped for free at Malabanjbanjdju.

Over 10000 different species of spider are known to live in Kakadu. Of these, only 2400 have yet been named. Named or not, the yellow monstrosity that clip found glaring from the wall of the ladies pit toilet has stopped her from using pit toilets ever again.

One nice thing about camping in remote bush is the silence. At night there is nothing to hear at all. At home there is always some kind of noise - road traffic or the central heating or a dog barking or whatever - but in the bush camps there is nothing.

The next morning we saw some rock art at Nourlangie Rock and climbed the Nawurlandja lookout and got lost. We went to the Yellow Water Billabong and visited the Warradjan Centre of Aboriginal Culture. We camped at another free campsite at Jim Jim Billabong where we saw at least thirty wallabies nibbling grass in a clearing.

Jim Jim Falls and Twin Falls are still closed due to the continued presence of some pesky Saltwater Crocodiles so we stopped at Bukbukluk Lookout instead, then left Kakadu and drove to Katherine.

We visited Katherine Hot Springs (Tepid Springs more like - yet another scene from Cocoon) and walked the Lookout Loop Walk at the gorge. We saw hundreds of fruit bats roosting in some trees (including some dead ones which just hang there dead because they can't let go) and a wallaby with a joey peeping out of its pouch.

Bertha has been to the garage to have her metallic rattle investigated. Luckily, it's nothing life-threatening - her gear linkage bushes are "flogged out" and we aren't going to bother having them replaced.

I am fast becoming something of an expert regarding the use of public toilets by the general public. It's a very interesting subject. The frequent total lack of inhibition, the variety of peculiar habits (many of which seem directly related to nationality), the range of almost cartoon-like sound-effects and the sheer unnatural potency of odours in confined spaces is just astonishing.

All kinds of puzzling mysteries present themselves. Such as, how do so many people manage to leave great smears of poo above the rim? I mean, just how is this possible? Either 20% of the public is profoundly physiologically deformed, or they defecate with their foreheads pressed to the floor.

In an attempt to reduce toilet paper usage, most campsite owners have seen fit to install contraptions of near- Rubik's Puzzle complexity to prevent you from tearing off more than one soggy shiny sheet at a time. You might as well wipe your bum on a crisp packet. I spend half my time in each toilet cubicle vainly pushing random buttons, fiddling with plastic levers and sliding my fingers along rusty grooves, to be rewarded with one corner of a slice of bog roll. It makes you feel like an experimental monkey.