What has Andy gone and done now…?

I wish I was in Carrickfergus….you know the song – Phil Coulter – I would sing it but best for everyone if I don’t…well anyway, all I can say is that Phil Coulter clearly hadn’t been to western Australia when he wrote it..!!..

I really don’t know how to describe any more about how cool the west coast is, but I’ll try a quick post just to get us up to Broome and then we can all head to Melbourne…

So, I left Coral Bay on the easyrider bus and we headed to Exmouth via another nice spot called Turquoise Bay to do another bit of snorkelling…up to this point I was a little disappointed that I had spent four days in Coral Bay and hadn’t seen a turtle – so I was hoping this might be my chance…we snorkelled over the ‘best bit’ and saw lots of fish etc….but no turtles…everyone then just lay on the beach and sunbathed, which isn’t really my thing, so after a while I grabbed the snorkel gear and went back in on my own just beside where everyone else was lying….oh….my…word…this is where it gets exciting people…after a little noodle around I was just floating there and lifted my goggles up to clean them…then just as I was putting my head back into the water I was aware of a big dark shape just below me – a MASSIVE turtle…easily the length of me including my fins…just swimming around slowly….unbelievable. I frantically tried to get everyone elses attention on the shore (without giving the impression I was drowning!) and finally everyone came in and were able to see it to…it hung around for 10 minutes or so before getting freaked out and swimming away…brilliant…

The three girls were planning on staying in Exmouth for a while, so I was now travelling with a different group of people for the second half…lots of nice people, and we were all together for the final week or so, so it was pretty good fun.

The view from the bus…LOTS of this in between towns…

OK, I’m now going to be quick – we stopped off at Karajini National Park, which is spectacular, Pardoo Cattle station where I danced on a table to Take That – Relight my Fire, went swimming in some awesome pools, and basicaly just had great craic the whole way up to Broome…

Nice spot for a swim

Monkey boy andy just had to climb up on the tree stump and jump in…

Fred, Sally and I finally arrived in Broome

Broome was really really hot…35 – 40 degrees and very humid…we were there for a couple of days and just chilled out in the sun, and had a good time all round. The photo above shows Fred, a Swiss guy who it turns out is a legend – he was flying to Melbourne too so we hung out in Melbourne the past couple of days but he has now sadly left. Sally it turns out is also a legend – she’s now in Adelaide, but I’m heading there tomorrow morning for a couple of days to see her before coming back to Melbourne for Christmas.

So…I’m afraid I just couldn’t really do the rest of the west coast justice with this post (after the rather exhaustive last post!), but just take it from me – it’s awesome – GO THERE!!

It has also taken me about a week to piece this post together and upload it – weird satellite internet connection thing in the house which is pretty slow, but I’ve just got to an internet cafe and am now back in broadband territory so can finally hit the publish button…while I’m here I guess I’ll maybe put some Melbourne photos up on another post – two for the price of one, can’t beat that…