Our WA Trip - Part Six - Long-Distance Driving and Drop Bears

So, Jen survived her first day of school yesterday, with all the little kiddies and everything. She found a cockroach as long as her thumb inside a binder first thing in the morning, and that kinda threw her for a loop for the rest of the day. She says her class is "very chatty" and that they are about to have a rude awakening - apparently her kids haven't had to do a lot of homework up to this point (as in, a math sheet once a week? In grade 5?) and that's not gonna fly in her class. The next few weeks oughta be interesting.

We also survived our return to trampolining last night - only barely! Six weeks off was a long time, and we both felt it by halfway through the night. I was glad to be able to sleep past six this morning, that's for sure!

I swear I spent pretty much the entire day on the 'puter yesterday. I'm gonna try and actually get outside for a bit this afternoon, but it is currently pouring rain. And I'm not complaining! This is the first rain I've seen since the day we arrived in Canberra back in December. Yikes.

Anyhow. In the meantime - back to our WA adventures...

Jen and I stayed at Monkey Mia for two nights. On our second morning there, after all the cruising and astronomy we'd done the day before, we still managed to drag ourselves out of bed for 7:30 so we could go and watch the dolphins again. There were fewer dolphins at the beach this morning, but that's OK. There was a little dolphin calf, and it was totally showing off for the crowd! While we had seen the calf the day before as well, today it seemed that it was much more comfortable with all the people. It kept leaving its mother's side and swimming in furious loops and swirls, tossing up big wakes. It even jumped right out of the water a couple of times, but I wasn't quick enough with the camera. So cute!

Once we'd said hello and goodbye to the dolphins, it was time for breakfast and then we hit the road. Our original plan had been to drive back to Geraldton and spend the night there, and then drive the rest of the way back to Perth the following day. However, we changed those plans and decided to get all the way back to Perth in one day. There were several reasons for this. First, like I explained yesterday, the hostel in Geraldton gave me very bad vibes. I think I forgot to mention that there were warning signs posted throughout that hostel about the threat of bedbugs, and what to do if we were bitten (i.e., tell the management in the morning. Fun.). Secondly, there hadn't exactly been a lot to see in Geraldton on our way up the coast, so we saw no point in wasting an evening's hostelling fees to stay somewhere with nothing to do. And thirdly, at some point in the previous two days, Jen had been bitten by... something. What with the random creepy bugs on her pillow in Cervantes and the bed bug signs in Geraldton, we didn't know what to think. The bites were almost all on her forearms and her calves, and also across her knuckles, so we were pretty sure it wasn't bedbugs. On the other hand, the bites swelled nicely and were terribly itchy, so we figured it was time to head back towards civilization to find some antihistamines.

The drive back to Perth was only about 8 hours, but we sure had our adventures along the way. Driving back along that mind-numbing scrubby road was boring, to say the least. And the lack of radio stations was driving us mad! We finally caved when we reached the main highway and one of the roadhouses, and bought a CD of party tunes. These turned out to be mostly bad, bad disco from the 1970's. We listened to "Kung Fu Fighting" over and over and over as we continued south. Groan...

I swear there are at least 8,000 variations of the word "scrub" to be found as you drive south from Shark Bay back towards Perth. The emptiness of the landscape was incredible, all the more so because when you look on the map of Western Australia, we were still well into the inhabited part of the state! We saw hardly anybody else on the road in either direction... to the point where we were waving at the drivers of oncoming cars because (a) they were so rare and (b) it was something to do to pass the time. Good grief! When we finally reached the edge of sheep country and returned to a landscape of completely empty fields with fences, we felt like we'd reached civilization. This country has given me a whole new perspective on the term "empty"... and I've driven through Northern Ontario! :-)

Another bit of insanity on the drive were the road trains. We encountered these on most of the highways we drove in Western Australia, although I know they're found all across the country. A road train is basically a truck dragging up to three full-length eighteen-wheel trailers behind it. In Western Australia they're "only" allowed to be up to 35m long, but still, that's pretty long! Living in Toronto for so many years means I'm not easily intimidated by big trucks, but having a road train breathing down your neck is more than a little unnerving. (I just kept thinking about inertia, and what would happen if I had to suddenly brake!) Most of the time, though, we were driving faster than they were - which meant we had to pass the blasted things. Fortunately there were lots of passing lanes all along the highway, but still. We were driving a dinky car with no pickup whatsoever - and there were several occasions where we just couldn't pick up enough steam to get past a road train in the passing lane! Gah.

We had one other little misadventure as we headed south, which had to do with the lack of, well, anything even remotely resembling a bathroom along the way. Jen and I discovered at one point that we both had to visit the little girls' room. Badly. I mean, really - we were being good Girl Guides and keeping ourselves hydrated by drinking lots and lots of water, but such actions do have consequences. Problem was, we were on a particularly long, empty stretch of road, with no stopping place for well over 100kms, and with nothing around us but scrubby trees. And although we tried, there was no way we were going to last until the next town. So we ended up having to pull over to the side of the road and wade into the bushes/trees to find, um, a private place.

So picture this. It was stupidly hot, there were about eight kajillion flies following us around, and we really had to pee. We stumbled into the bush - carefully - watching for snakes and god knows what else - and found a screened spot under one of the few tallish trees in the known universe. Thank goodness for a bit of shade! Everything was quiet. We were about to - ah - spread out a bit to take care of business, when all of a sudden, these THINGS dropped out of the trees and right onto our heads! It was kinda like having furious cats attached to our scalps! So there we were, stumbling madly in circles, shrieking, trying to get these critters off our heads. After a few seconds of struggle, the creatures leaped off our heads, scrambled up into the trees lightning-quick, and sat there, snarling. They looked sorta like koalas but somehow more menacing. (Since we'd gone into the bush to pee, the camera was still in the car, so I have no pictures.) What the...??? Well, we sure weren't going to stick around! We hightailed it back to the car and took off! We would wait until the next town to use the bathroom - no more attempts at peeing in the bush for us!

We finally made it to a gas station with a toilet and dealt with that issue. When we went back into the little shop to buy some cold drinks, the guy behind the counter asked us what had happened to our hair (we looked more than a little worse for wear!). We described the creatures that had attacked us, and he informed us that we had been the victims of drop bears. Apparently we had unwittingly walked into their territory. Good grief! And here I though I needed to be worrying about snakes! But there was no real harm done besides badly messed up hair and a case of the shakes, so with cokes in hand, we headed back to the car and continued south.

We made it back to Perth with no further misadventures, thank goodness. We didn't get into town until around 7pm, so we stopped at a random pizza joint for dinner before heading to Pat and Rob's house. Once we got there, because we were a little worried that we might have brought bedbugs with us from the hostel in Geraldton, absolutely everything we owned went in the wash - sleeping bags, pillows, and all our clothes. We sprayed our suitcases and shoes and everything else with Raid and left 'em out in the backyard to air out. Pat was so kind to let us use her washing machine over and over and over throughout our stay! Jen and I took turns scrubbing ourselves head to foot in the shower, and then we practically collapsed into bed. What a day!