West Side Story
17 March 2012 – A month ago, I was swimming at Manly Beach, NSW, in the Pacific Ocean. Today I’m facing the Indian Ocean, on the other side of the country. More than 3000k apart. Brussels to Moscow is only 2500km…
Hamelin Bay, this is as far as I can go heading west. From now on I’ll be heading north. I’ll still have the ocean on my left hand side but I can now drive all afternoon with the window down and not get a sunburn. Nice.
This has been a challenging few days, constantly looking at the temperature gauge, the water level, smelling for odd odors coming from under the bonnet. It seems okay so far. I’ll know more on Monday.
So I woke up this morning at five, this is the first time ever I’m jet-lagged while driving ! WA is three hours behind and it’s still dark when I wake up. Damn. Breakfast by the lake, with the sun coming up, and a tweety bird trapped in the car while I make coffee. I guess someone was a bit too curious.
I drive down the South Western Highway and go through familiar names such as Denmark and Walpole. Funny. I stop at the Valley of Giants to have a look at these humongous trees. Most of them have been around since Gondwana times, and are as wide as my car, and as twenty times as tall. They’ve adapted to the bush-fires and human pollution so that they’re completely hollow at their base, some in which you can walk in. I feel like a cartoon character, entering his house. Magnificent, makes you feel really small and insignificant on Nature’s scale.
Further down the road, I follow the south west coast on its last few miles. I go through a forest that was devastated by bush-fires. It’s an eery scenery with charcoal-black trees, yellow sandy soil, blue sky and bright green leaves. Bush fires in this area are so common that whenever a tree burns down, it’s only it’s bark really that burns, the core of the tree remains intact and within weeks, the green leaves are popping out already. Awesome colors !
Once I get to Hamelin Bay, this is the end of the South West Coast, I now am heading north, to Peter and Andrea’s and their two adorable little girls. We met in Noumea while Peter was working at Goro, and I used their container to ship some of my own stuff back to Australia. I’ll be staying with them for a few days while my truck gets looked at. A good opportunity to catch up with these lovely friends.
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Ah chouette, tout ça : non seulement on voyage avec toi mais en plus on a un cours d’anglais gratos :-s
Et te voilà en sécurité chez des amis, on respire…
Bonne m… pour ton char !
Ps : tout va bien pour nous tous, bizz