My, what big teeth you have ...

Big Croc
Originally uploaded by Johnnie Shannon.

... and they were quite close to me.

Photos from the Red Centre and Top End, illustrating the Red Centre and Top End, can now be found on Flickr. Of course.

That is all.

Say Hallo - Wave Goodbye

In the last 12 days I have met 54 fellow travellers and 5 guides. I guess I had at least one decent conversation with about half that number, clicked and got on with about half of them, and made good friends with about half of them. We saw the sights together, eat together, drank together, slept together (no, not like that) and shared loads of great times and memories. I doubt I'll see any of them again in my life.

Most people I've met on travels are predisposed towards being sociable and, so long as any language barrier is surmountable, it's quite easy to fall into easy going friendships. The shield against the sword of Damocles is the swapping of email addresses as you say farewell to your new friends. It may just be me, but what follows tends to be receipt of sporadic group emails detailing the latest travelling escapades of whoever, that then tail off into eventual silence. So now I pretty much only divulge my email to real or potential good friends. If you're reading this, you're obviously on the A list by the way.

It's great meeting people, sad saying goodbye (to some anyway) but hey, that's life folks.

Red Centre and the Top End

Ayers Rock. Uluru if you like. It's big. It's red. It's in the middle of bloody* nowhere. Nothing there at all. Oh, except, remember I mentioned that Alice Springs had flies? Well, now I know that Alice is where flies go when they want to get away from all the other flies that live at Ayers Rock. Jeez, there's millions of the buggers.

Many, many people went for the fashionable flynet look. I thought I'd go for the whole outback experience, develop the Alice Wave, and went sans flynet. It was tough, but on the whole, I managed it. Aren't I the hero eh?

Anyway, Ayers Rock is very nice and all. Saw it from a distance at sunset, then walked around it. From a purely aesthetic point of view, the Olgas (or Katja Tiju - maybe, something like that) were more beautiful. Sunset at the rock aren't quite the wilderness experience it may seem. There are heaps of tour groups, all serving some kind of champagne or the other, clammering to take piccies.

On to Kings Canyon, which was rather groovy, then three of us went on to camp at more remote locations, before heading back to Alice.

The trip up to Darwin was long, long, driving days. Still had time for a brief walk or two, but essentially having to travel over 500Km a day in a coach puts the mockers on any other activities. Got a good impression of how vast the landscape is though.

Then it was on to Lichfield and Kakadu national parks. Very beautiful, full of fantastic waterfalls and warm water swimming. And mosquitoes. Hell, for the first time in six months mossies bothered me at night. Not bad I suppose.

And then it was out of Darwin and on to Perth, and here I am now, staying with Steve. Raining hard at the moment, but I'm sure it will clear up.

*Heard that Australia Tourism's "Where the bloody hell are you?" campaign has been banned in the UK. Sorry if I bloody offended any bleedin' person there with the use of that "bloody". Oh, for the sake of whatever god you pray to; grow up UK. It's only a bloody word.

Ice Cold in Alice

Err, it's not.

And there are flies also.

Anyway, photos of Tassie now on Flickr. Go, go go!

Walking Tasmania

That's walking in Tasmania, rather than Tasmania getting up and wandering over to New Zealand or something. Anyhow, when I decided on coming to Tassie, I thought that while I was here I'd do some serious hiking, and that's been achieved in spades.

Tassie is fantastic. Really. And the weather isn't half as bad as it's cracked up to be; rather, over the last week or so, it's been sunny and warm, which has been great.

I started off from Hobart and headed out to the east coast. The scenery here is just beaut - golden beaches, crystal clear blue waters - if the sea was about 10deg C warmer there wouldn't been better beaches anywhere in the world. So, loads of coastal walking, and a trip up Mount Amos on the Freycinet Peninsular that turned out to be a bit more vertical than I thought it was going to be. Still, the view from the top was well worth the effort.

After a few more days driving, walking and camping, found myself in Cradle Mountain National Park. Wasn't going to do a long walk, but after going up one hill, thought I'd go on a bit more, then a bit more, then found myself going up Cradle Mountain itself. Again, this got a bit more tricky than I thought it was going to be, with a definite scramble/small bit of climbing involved as I got towards the top. Still, made it up, and again, fab view.

There's loads more I'd have liked to have done here, but time presses, and there's things to do and people to see: specifically in Alice Springs, which is where I'm off next. And I'm on a tour, so it's time to get sociable with other people again. Oh well!