Australia and America

I like America. I can tell everyone here that I'm Australian and they respond that I have "such a cute Australian accent". I've discovered that I can also describe the crocodiles that walk down the "side-walks" in Sydney and ... they believe me!

I've also made two other discoveries. (1) Don't drink a huge beer after going for approx. 15 hours without real food (otherwise you end up writing blog entries like this) and (2) "small" coffees in America are very similar to "extra-large" coffees in Australia.

I'm tired. I've now been on the move for 28 hours and I'm still not at my destination (in fact I'm in Dulles Airport in Washington - which (in L.A.) they pronounced as "Dallas" - which happens to be very confusing on boarding!) On the Qantas flight across the Pacific I was lucky enough to be upgraded to "Premium Economy". The chap sitting next to me read two books. One on French grammar and the other on Wagner's Ring Cycle. He was off to New York for a week to watch the entire opera. I felt a bit embarrassed watching the James Bond films and various cartoons. Oh well, we both got chatting with the guy in charge of our section of the plane. He was full of interesting stories about ... well I'd better not mention them in case someone from Qantas ever comes across this blog!

My bag was literally the last off the plane in L. A. The airport is appalling.

Washington Dulles airport is very dull.

Anyway, back to Australia. I haven't described our wonderful trip to Cervantes. "Our" = myself, Mike, David and a visitor Alberto (who's very Italian). We were in Perth for a conference, but then decided to spend an extra two days travelling around. Oh gosh, lots of good things happened, but I'm too tired to try and describe them all. We went to Fremantle (by boat), had some very good beers, watched some fire jugglers, went around the market, watched the most amazing sunset (Alberto's facebook page got updated to say "... was about to cry yesterday facing the best sunset he ever seen, lost on the other side of the world"), took a very interesting train ride back (particularly so for anyone that's watched "Last train to Freo" - it had some similarities!). Then for our main road trip. We went through a burnt out landscape, met a huge thunderstorm in the "gravity discovery centre" (where all the power went out), drove for ages, saw large eagles, ate a lobster for lunch, saw a crazy dolphin pushing fish (we assume) up to the shore, watched dolphins swim under us as we stood on a jetty, went to the Pinnacles national park (incredible), played pool, drove offroad, saw stromatolites, walked up to viewing towers, watched Alberto swim in the Indian Ocean (the rest of us were much too British) and ate in a sleazy road house.

What a holiday.

Hopefully the photos do a better job of describing the scene than I can!

I'm tired.

z v (an addition from a young kid that just decided to start typing on my computer - his mother has now removed him)

Oh ... and how could I forget. We all lay on the beach looking up at the phenomenal stars. The Milky Way was directly overhead, we could see the Magallanic Clouds and shooting stars. We lay for hours!