E=MC2

Monday 21st March

When Einstein initially laid down the foundations for his idea of
 Having said that perhaps Schrodinger could have potentially used one to outline his famous paradox instead of his poxy cat in order to demonstrate the possibility that multiple states can coexist in a box at a single time.

In order to prove this all one needs to do is to climb aboard a Toyota Hiace campervan and fart in the kitchen, for in that single moment that fart not only exists in the kitchen but also in the dining room, lounge and bedroom.

Unfortunately we have been replicating this particular scientific experiment a little too regularly to the point where I now wonder if our vehicle can be classified as duel fuel due to its high abundance of gas.

Anyway, amazingly we have somehow made it as far south as we can and are in the process of heading east towards Adelaide to visit our friends.

We spent a few days in Perth and the surrounding areas which were really nice, we started out in Cottlesoe, a place that I could move to tomorrow for its postcard perfect beaches and abundance of beautiful architecture.

We were fortunate enough to have turned up during their annual sculpture on the beach event which meant that for the next few hours Pauline and Tyler witnessed great feats of contortion as I tried in vain to get the perfect picture.

Crowds were out en mass and it seemed to me to be the perfect location as both families and art lovers alike meandered around the various exhibits before taking the opportunity to relax on the beach and soak up the atmosphere.

Following this we paid a visit to the science museum in order to whet Tyler's appetite a little and catch up on the many months of science lessons that we should have been doing on this trip.

The place was amazing with activities everywhere that would be guaranteed to keep the average child's mind amused for hours and as if to prove this we lost Pauline for the majority of the day as she became hooked on a single exhibit.

They had set up a giant phosphorescence demonstration that allowed you to temporarily freeze your shadow onto a giant white wall by simply clicking a button, running quickly over to a wall, posing and voila!

In no time at all Pauline had commandeered the exhibit and was pulling handstands and cartwheels much to the complete amazement of the majority of young kids who had gathered around wondering what facility she had just escaped form.

Eventually Tyler and I managed to drag her away from her many adoring fans so that we could escape before they locked up for the night.

We headed down into Freemantle and witnessed a bush fire in the distance that had just started and in no time at all seemed to have spread to the point where we spent the evening watching helicopter after helicopter dumping water on it.

The following day I successfully convinced Pauline that we should check out the reptile centre nearby a place absolutely teeming with snakes, many of which seemed to be allowed to have their windows open during the day.

I was in my element, Pauline was in the parking lot and Tyler was once again trying to get as close as possible to anything that is in anyway dangerous, perhaps this is just his way of indicating that he has had enough of travelling with his parents.

Nevertheless as soon as they mentioned the possibility of bringing out one of the larger reticulating pythons for a little while, Tyler was at the front of the queue again, I think he had even polished his neck for some reason.

Unfortunately due to my over enthusiastic photography earlier on during the snake feeding session my camera died yet again so I couldn't record this spectacular feat of idiocy.

Following on from this we continued to head south and decided to stop into Honeymoon Pool a site in the middle of dense woodland that we had been recommended by Derek and Ellie the people whom we had met up in Coral Bay.

After missing the turn off multiple times and having every bone in our body shaken to the point of fusion by yet another 4 wheel drive road that would invalidate our rental agreement, we finally managed to locate the place.

Scarily just as we drove in, there were Derek and Ellie sitting by their nice sparkly new campervan as if the very fact that they recommended somewhere meant that they actually had to stay there in case you dropped in.

It was great to see some friendly faces and have a proper natter but unfortunately they were heading out first thing the following morning so it was short and sweet.

The camp itself was wonderful, there was no power and you felt totally cut off from the outside world at night, Tyler had instantly pulled out his "snake stick" which had been sanded and carved for him in Coral bay.

This basically consisted of a long branch a little shorter than himself which had been carefully cut into a point by Jodi whom we met at Coral Bay (this alone ensured its continual usage as Jodi and Barney were Tyler's new idols who have inspired him to become a kite surfer!).

The remainder of the evening was spent locating two additional snake sticks so that Pauline and I could be protected too, we even fashioned them into primitive spears in front of the camp fire, a thoroughly enjoyable evening surrounded by mother nature.

The unfortunate thing about mother nature though is that she doesn't have a volume switch that you can adjust when it suits, which is why we found ourselves being woken at stupid o'clock in the morning by scavenging ravens intent on destroying our campervan.

At least that's what it sounded like, although when I finally managed to convince my body to get up and take a look they were actually eating all of the dead locusts off of the front of the van, perhaps if we left it there long enough they may even clean it for us.

So blearry eyed we once again headed out, this time down to the St Margret river region famous as "THE" wine region of Australia, yipee, and all I want is a pint of fosters which 'apparently' isn't actually sold in Australia.

After the lack of sleep from the night before we decided to splurge a little and booked ourselves into a hotel for the night, we had high intentions of spending the day ambling around town soaking up the sights but ended up lounging in bed until 4pm.

When we did finally move we were informed that there was a celebration in town to mark the annual wine festival, this basically consisted of a handful of craft stools, some of the worst live music that I have ever endured and a giant slide that hurled you into a massive vat of grapes.

Much to Tyler's disappointment you had to be at least 10 to go on the giant slide and although he tried his best to convince us to lie initially, when we finally bore witness to the slide in action even he said it was too lame and lost interest.

We could have walked down the slope fast than any of the participants and soon got tired of watching and decided instead to do something far more scary, we went to watch the live entertainment.

To give you an idea of what it was like we arrived during the children's entertainment to find a woman bent over in the middle of the stage brandishing a whip and swinging it around her in a rather provocative manner.

Sadly after that things went down hill rather rapidly so we decided to cut our losses and retreat back to our nice little hotel room for the evening.

I guess the funny thing about the annual Margret River wine celebration is the complete and utter lack of wine that was to be found anywhere, I am guessing that if they tried to advertise what was actually there nobody would turn up.

We sadly waved goodbye to our hotel room and continued our journey the following morning without even the slightest hint of a hangover.

On route we passed a lookout that potentially offered some spectacular views over the forests and rivers below so we decided to pull in and take a look.

This is the moment that we discovered our starter motor was dodgy, stuck in the middle of a forest quite a long way away from any major civilization.

Amazingly the friendly man from the RAC arrived 20 minutes later, hit the underneath of our van with a hammer (which we will attempt to claim caused the bent arm from the crash) before giving up and giving us a pull start.

For the remainder of the day any tourist activities were restricted to those that thoughtfully built themselves on the top of hills (the valley of the giants) and bypassing those that had not (the really cool looking land of the dinosaurs and reptile park) but even then Pauline and Tyler had to push us off.

We had initially wanted to stop in Denmark for the evening but decided instead to continue through to Albany in case we got stranded somewhere that didn't have the part to fix it.

Unfortunately as it turns out Albany also falls into this category so we are currently holed up in the local hostel awaiting news on the fate of our campervan and the possibility that we could be here for several more days.
I am not sure that his universally excepted equation would have gained the same traction if his advertising campaign had pictured Tyler and Pauline pushing a crappy old campervan out of a petrol station and down a hill in order to gain enough momentum to start it, although I could be wrong.
mass–energy equivalence I somehow doubt that he had a Toyota Hiace campervan in mind and even if he did I very much doubt that his one had a dodgy starter motor like ours.

Monkey Mia, Here we go again!

Thursday 10th March

Well it has taken a few days but we have finally got over the fact that I almost killed us all in a car crash! Although its going to take some time for our bodies to get used to the fact and both Pauline and I are still hobbling around like old aged pensioners.

Tyler seems totally immune to it all and still thinks that it was great fun to be flying through the air in a beaten up Toyota Hiace, he keeps telling people that he was in zero gravity and how cool it was.

As a special treat for almost dying I upgraded us to a shack in the caravan park and it had a wonderful thing called "air conditioning" which should have allowed us to get the first solid nights sleep for weeks if we hadn't both just laid awake replaying the accident over and again.

After what felt like a few minutes sleep it was time to check out and discover the marvels of Canarvon whilst we waited for the hospital report (They let us keep all of Pauline's x-rays, which I am sure is not totally above board but is way cool!).

Unfortunately the advice that we had received about Canarvon turned out to be correct, there is absolutely bugger all to do in the town, we figured we would go to the cinema but upon checking the listings it turns out that its only open twice a week and appeared to be playing films that had been made 20 years ago.

After several hours of driving around or scrutinising every single item on the shelf of the local supermarket we finally managed to grab our hospital report and headed out as quickly (but safely) as possible.

You cant help but wonder if the locals create pot holes on purpose just to give themselves something to do and to ensure that they get a steady flow of tourists dropping in from time to time.

Originally we had planned to stay at a place called Eagles Bluff which has a raised platform overlooking the sea where you can simply look down and gaze upon the plethora of sharks, rays and other exciting marine life coming into the shallows.

When we finally got there however the place had signs everywhere telling us that we couldn't camp or we would receive a hefty fine so instead we just took the opportunity to saunter out to the viewing deck and try to catch a glimpse of jaws.

I am not sure how anyone has ever seen anything there, it was so windy that you couldn't keep your head in the same position for more than a couple of seconds without it being violently thrust to one side which meant that anything that could have been in the water acquired a heavily blurred look to it.

There could have been all sorts down there for all I know but when you are desperately trying not to get swept over the side by gale force winds you tend to have more pressing matters on your mind that identifying species of fish.

So, with our heads hung low, partly to protect them and partly due to feeling gutted that we had driven a hell of a long way to be blown away by sharks and instead almost got blown into sharks, we called it a night and decided to drive straight through to Monkey Mia.

I am so glad that we did, we were just driving out of Denham when we suddenly saw something move on the crest of the hill and it wasn't until we drove past that we manage to identify what it was.

Right in the middle of the road, looking a little mythed as to why a slightly broken looking white box on wheels was circling it and making excited noises and flashes, was a big blackish brown snake.

Since coming to Oz I have become absolutely fascinated with them and much to Paulines chagrin Tyler and I have brought a couple of books to identify any that we see and work out if they could kill us or not.

After taking dozens of photos we moved on again, only to see yet another snake slithering along the side of the road, slightly smaller but no less exciting as it shot past us with incredible speed.

Two seconds later we saw yet another one, unfortunately this one was dead but it was huge and probably didn't mind me circling it in my broken looking white box on wheels making excited noises and taking dozens of photos.

By this time you can imagine how it felt to be Pauline, not only was she still in a world of pain from the crash, she didn't sleep a wink the night before and now she knows that our next destination is literally surrounded by snakes.

That night I slept better than I have ever slept as I knew full well that Pauline would be up all night listening for hissing noises and guarding the van.

Monkey Mia is famous for its dolphins who are abundant along the shores of the resort and although they are still wild many have become so used to human interaction that they are now reliant on them as a source of food.

When we arrived we headed straight down to the beach and straight into a pack of dolphins, merrily swimming along the shore front minding their own business.

One moment there were three of them and then a few seconds later there was a weird looking one that had popped up alongside them.

Yep, sure enough Tyler had immediately jumped in and started to swim with them, totally unfazed as though it was the most natural thing in the world, one things for sure, I am going to need to keep a closer eye on him if we do go swimming with the great whites!

The following morning there were hundreds of people gathered on the beach in an attempt to watch someone feed the dolphins, to me it all looked too forced and the dolphins may as well have been in the zoo as they were literally surrounded by tourists.

As there is such an abundance of marine life here we decided to book ourselves onto a boat tour to see if we could see some of the larger species up close and personal, the trip that we finally decided on was cancelled for the day as the boat was broken so we decided to extend our stay and relax a little.

That evening we tried our hand at fishing again, we had picked up a reel, a float, a hook, some bread and a moldy melon, which I believe constitutes everything you could ever possibly need to catch everything you could possibly catch.

Tyler was really excited and we waddled down to the jetty, fully expecting to nail ourselves a whopper, we even sat triumphantly amongst the professional looking fisherman with their "rods" and other silly gizmo's.

We stuck our bucket on the floor retrieved our hook, shoved a piece of bread onto the end and then launched it gracefully through the air into the beautiful turquoise water beneath.

The bread instantly fell off, so we tried again and again and again until I struck onto the idea of using a moldy piece of melon to wedge it onto the end and for a minute we thought we had cracked it, the hook sunk to the floor, the float bobbed and Tyler wandered off to go swimming.

I sat there for ages watching that damn float bob about on top of the water until finally I got bored and pulled it in only to discover that there was nothing on the end of the line after all, some greedy little dinner fodder had gone and grabbed it ages ago.

Obviously because I looked so dejected the lady next to me gave me a big bag of bait that she had finished with, which basically consisted of a load of little fish that I could easily have told Tyler I had caught.

Unfortunately pride now got the better of me so instead of doing the sensible thing and lying through my teeth to my 8 year old son as per usual, I decided instead to try and snag myself a monster.

Well I can assure you that fishing is all down to the bait, its incredible how much the fish loved this stuff, no sooner had I loaded it onto the hook than they promptly devoured it.

I went through 6 fish in a matter of seconds and you could actually sit and watch the fish demolish every last bit of it from the hook, I swear I even saw one of them use the hook as a tooth pick.

I had basically become a glorified fish feeder providing an al a carte meal to them on silver service, in fact it must have been so good that in no time at all they had told their friends and a huge group of fish swam around my feet taunting me.

I finally gave up and started heading back to shore just in time to hear "Shark" and my heart sunk, ohh my god Tyler's in the water, it was a scene right out of jaws only this time "Brody" had a little more weight around his stomach and a bucket half full of moldy melon and dead sardines.

Luckily for me but unluckily for the Shark it was actually shouted by a fisherman who had just caught it, admittedly he had used a rod so had a distinct advantage but sure enough when I reached his pitch he was proudly holding a reef shark.

I quickly took a picture of them as I figured that I could probably super impose my face onto his later and immortalise my fishing prowess forever, as an added bonus he was in better shape than me too!

The following morning we headed out onto the boat for our cruise around the shark bay, we saw a few dugongs and turtles but by far the highlight of the day was our visit to Dirk Hartog Island.

The island itself is an uninhabited wildlife sanctuary and our boat was the first that had been there for a few days which meant that it was absolutely teeming with life everywhere.

I was fortunate enough to be the first to swim over into the bay and found myself literally surrounded by reef sharks and shovel nosed rays, some of which were far bigger than me, it was absolutely incredible.

We spent about an hour snorkeling around before it was time to head back to the boat and sail back to shore.

On the way back one of the staff happened to mention the prevalence of tiger sharks in the area of late which once again would have been useful information to have about an hour and a half ago, before we had naively jumped into the water completely oblivious.

Still, we all had the limbs that we had started off the day with so I guess its all good!
From here we headed down to Geraldton and as we needed to get the van serviced we decided that we may as well stay for a few days.

Geraldton is a pleasant enough town with some lovely quaint streets and a cinema that actually shows films from our decade on a daily basis, it also had traffic lights which caught me totally off guard when I saw them as its the first place we have been that's been big enough since Darwin.

I checked the car in and had a five minute chat with the mechanics which basically provided me with a very thorough description of everything that there is to do locally, which basically equates to absolutely nothing at all.

This is how we found ourselves at 09:00 the next day queuing up outside a grayish metallic building on the grounds of Geraldton Port eagerly awaiting to be admitted into the Geraldton Lobster Factory!

Did you know that when you keep lobsters packed at a certain temperature they can sleep for days on end, which means that lobster from Australia can still be alive and kicking when they reach the tanks of restaurants in China, no, well now you do!

See this is an informative blog after all!

Other than that I found the tour and the facility very cruel, they process 180,000 lobsters there at a time which is an incredible amount and I am amazed that this can be sustainable, I longed to pick up the little boxes and set them all free!

In the immortal words of Forrest Gump, "Well, that's about all I have to say about that!"

What does'nt kill you makes you stronger!!

Friday 4th March

Once again I have been a little remiss in updating this thing but this time I have a genuine and valid excuse.

A little known fact about Australia (at least to Pauline and I) is that the entire North West of the country effectively closes up shop for the winter wet season.

So other than provide detailed and vivid descriptions of the various roadkill that we encountered I didn't have a whole lot to update anyone on.

Whilst we were in Broome we decided to check out the Crocodile park that was just out of town, it was pretty pricey at $90 and only open for an hour and a half a day but we had been told it was worth checking out.

We pulled up to the car park a few minutes before it opened and were the only ones there, we figured it may be closed but were quickly ushered inside and allowed to roam around on our own for a few moment.

Then the local guide came out and we literally had a one on one tour of the facility which included allowing us to feed the saltwater crocodiles and getting far closer to the animals than we could have imagined.

They had some incredible animals there including a 20ft croc called Chomper who was quite possibly the scariest thing I have ever seen.

We managed to narrowly avoid being eaten by crocs or blown away by cyclone Carlos and quickly headed further south to avoid the newly developing cyclone before it had a chance to reach us.

The north west coastal region is made up of several fairly large mining towns where people are earning an absolute fortune and as a result the price to stay there is astronomical.

We met a guy in the visitors centre of Port Hedland who had paid $380 for one nights accommodation at the local holiday inn a place that made our camper van look ritzy.

Apparently there were no tourists in town at all, which wasn't a surprise as the only tour being offered was a tour of the local mineshaft so we quickly moved on and decided to drive an extra 500kms on to the next town.

Well at least that was the intent, however on the mind numbingly boring drive down we saw a little sign advertising the "80 mile beach caravan park" and thought we would take a looksy.

The place was incredible, we were literally the only people there other than the owners, a park ranger and a couple who had liked it so much they stayed there for 12 months.

The beach itself was staggering to witness, it felt as though you had been washed ashore on a gigantic island without another sole in sight for as far as the eye could see in any direction.

The beach was a combers delight with giant shells all over the place and various bones and other things, we even stumbled across some gigantic whale bones that had been washed ashore due to the strong cyclone winds, but were told that we would be fined $10000 if we moved them.

On the way back to our camper we were told that the ranger had just found a snake and would bring it down to have a hold if we wanted to.

The rangers car pulled up and out got Crocodile Dundee reincarnate, or at least a full size doppelganger replete with giant Aussie hat, shades and a stubby beer cooler.

When he told us that his name was Mick it only confirmed the fact that Paul Hogan was alive and hiding in this campervan park.

He quickly pulled out the wild snake that he had found earlier and draped it around Tyler's shoulder, then he pointed out that although it wasn't poisonous it would probably bite as they had a habit to panic.

Tyler seemed completely oblivious to this though and took it for a walk about, I am sure that he was contemplating keeping it but Paulines stern looks from afar soon got through to him and he handed it back.

Mick Dundee then told us he found one of the deadly king brown snakes the day before just behind the site but he apologised that he had released it already, I am sure otherwise he would have allowed us to get a group photo of us hugging it.

The park was so nice that we extended our stay a few days and literally did absolutely nothing at all.

From there we headed on down to the Ningaloo reef, firstly to Exmouth where we spent the night in the national park next to the beach.

The scenery was breathtaking and would have been a great place to stay if it wasn't for the lack of wind, massive storm and scorpion that sat underneath our door watching our every move.

We literally had about an hours sleep and drove on wearily through to Coral Bay, a place that we fell in love with not only because of its natural beauty but also because there were loads of other travellers there to chat with.

We were initially going to spend a day there but extended it to four and were still very sad to be leaving, we met some fantastic people and had a great time snorkeling and walking along the coastline.

Yesterday evening we went for a walk and waded through the water in a small bay that was about knee
deep, no sooner had we stepped ashore than we turned around and there were 3 sharks circling the area that we had just left.

It was definitely a change of underwear moment but once we had recovered our senses we quickly ran around the edge trying to get a better view of them, the bay was literally teeming with marine life.

Next time however, it may be worth us looking around before entering as there was a giant "Shark Nursery - Do not enter water" sign that we hadn't seen.

After a few sad goodbyes we headed south again in an attempt to reach Monkey Mia by the end of the day.

There is a largish town called Carnarvon about half way down but we had been told by at least 10 people that it is incredibly boring and that we should just carry straight on through and not give it a second glance.

So its a little annoying to be sitting in Carnarvon Coral Caravan Park writing this, especially after having spent the majority of the day at the hospital with Pauline, especially after having stacked the camper van into a pothole at 100kph and turning it temporarily into a flying space shuttle.

The entire contents of the campervan were literally floating around in front of our eyes as we majestically flew through the air screaming our heads off.

NASA should probably investigate Toyota Hiace campervans as a low cost alternative to all of that expensive training equipment they waste their money on.

Fortunately after some injections Pauline is fine but she literally couldn't move for the first half of the day, temporarily allowing her to experience what its like to be a man with a hangover.

Amazingly the van, which I had put down as a total write off, is in fact fine and apart from what the mechanics termed as a "bent arm", which cant be too bad as my arm bends and it hasn't done me any harm, we are good to go.

Pauline may even get a copy of her x-rays as a souvenir so it hasn't been a complete waste of time, the only challenge will be trying to find something interesting to do here for the next few days!