Perth..viruses, theft and lost time

Australia! A continent that has its own way of doing everything: The animals, plants and customs are different here than anywhere in the world. They have marsupials, the outback aaannd they put Vegemite on toast. Now if anyone has ever tasted Vegemite, you might agree that putting it anywhere near your mouth and enjoying it is pretty unique. We were excited to visit a place neither one of us has been to yet and to experience all the amazing things it has to offer. Beaches, vineyards, seafood, diving the barrier reef and a road trip from Perth to Sydney.
We flew from Singapore via Kuala Lampur in Malaysia to Perth. The first leg of the trip was easy and we landed in Kuala Lampur and had several hours to kill until our next flight left for Oz. Unfortunately for us the airport in KL is a barren waste land. We were in a security area and couldn’t leave because we didn’t want to pay for the visa upon arrival, for only a few hours to leave the airport. So we settled into a restaurant where we had bad overpriced coffees and food. It was so cold in the airport and we couldn’t escape the cold and we didn’t have any of our warmer clothes with us. We were trying to kill as much time as possible by walking around, checking out the shops, the duty free, but there really wasn’t much in this airport. We got so busy trying to find something to do that we almost missed our flight – and we didn’t realize there was a time change between Phuket and Kuala Lampur…the flight was only an hour so we assumed there would be no time change…oops. We just heard “Tiger Airways is calling Passengers Miss Ewwwwa Stolarz and Mr. Shad Radka. Please report to gate A3A for immediate departure”. We ran to the gate and were the last passengers to get on, first time that that’s happened! But we were on and on our way to Perth. It was a five hour flight with no on board entertainment, drinks or food unless you paid. It was official we were leaving Asia where the free airline food and drinks and friendliness were so nice!

WTF? Christmas snowman made out of dirt. AKA the Christmas poo.

We arrived in Perth at night and were surprised that you could buy duty free once you got off the plane, score. Australia is very serious about protecting themselves against all foreign pests and animals that could contaminate their very fragile eco system. Upon arriving we were asked to declare anything that may cause harm to their environment, including items such as wood and straw. Why would anyone bring in wood? We would normally ask that question but before leaving Phuket Ewa bought a wood hair pin…if there were any worms in it could cause huge problems for them. The same goes for food, you cannot bring any food into Australia; none, not even the food you had left over on the airplane which most countries allow. Everyone is interrogated and bags are x-rayed and you have to declare everything, even medication. Since Ewa had a straw hat and an item made of wood security checked her bags. We didn’t think that normally people would bring in food. There was one passenger that we saw who tried to bring in an entire suitcase of food. We heard the authorities tell her she would be fined, heavily, and everything would be confiscated. Turns out we over paid on our visas because the website told us we needed to get a certain type but that information was incorrect and we paid about ten times more. But hey...now if we want to, we can enter Australia multiple times for up to three months for the next 12 months. Our tradition after leaving a city is to take the map from the previous city and tear it when we arrive in the new city. It is a symbolic end of the past and a fresh beginning. After all of our fight and visa troubles, we didn’t even have a Singapore map to rip up when we landed in Perth, so we tried unsuccessfully to rip up a baggage tag. Little did we know that this would be a bad omen for future troubles.

Chad at Lake Thetis

We arrived at our hostel in Perth and went for a bite to eat in the area. The first thing we noticed was that everyone was completely drunk in the streets. It was like a busy weekend night in a bar area on a Thursday night and it wasn’t even 11pm. Then we realized it was Christmas Holidays and we were in a “bar area” of town. Since all the restaurants were closed because it was so “late” (a shock coming from Asia where everything is open all the time!) All we could find to eat was a kebab. It was good ;)

That is one thing that is very strange for us, the fact that Australians like to either go to sleep very early or they don’t like to work very late. Restaurants, internet cafés, shopping centers, grocery stores all close before nine. People disappear from the streets and only the shadies stay out. We think that everyone is either really lamo and has a self-imposed curfew or they’re at the bar because all the Pubs and Bars are usually full.
We were feeling tired the next day so we didn’t do much except go to the grocery store. This was our first “day” in Australia and we realized pretty quickly what people were talking about when they warned us about the Australian Sun. It was 10am and we were cooking! No kidding ozone hole! SPF 45 seems not enough here. We decided that it would be impossible to do anything between 11 am and 4 pm. On the plus side once we reached the grocery store we were so excited to have such a large selection of fresh fruit and veg! Organic food! Local food! Whatever we were craving we could get here. The hostel owner put on a Barbie (BBQ) that night, it was all you can eat and it was delicious, there were steaks, lamb sausages, and Greek salad.

Ewa at Hangover Bay

The following day we finally caught up on some much needed banking and found some really funny charges on our credit card from Winnipeg…don’t remember going to or buying anything in Winnipeg – crap someone stole our credit card number! This is the first time on the trip that we have had this happen to us, we are pretty lucky considering all the countries we’ve been to! We called Visa and went through all of the charges that weren’t ours and they are investigating it. Too bad for us we now don’t have our travel credit card, luckily our debit cards work at the ATM’s and Chad has a backup credit card. What a pain! We also didn’t know where we would have the new credit cards sent to; we don’t really have a permanent address. Next problem we ran into is our computer. We got a bad virus and it crashed our system. After countless hours trying to fix it on our own, we called in a ‘pro’. The pro wasted two of our days (confusion with when he was supposed to show up) and in the end simply wiped the hard drive. Great, there goes all our data! The following day Chad went down to the place where we were renting our road trip van from, a company called Wicked Vans. Basically this van has everything you need for a long term road trip in it; a bed, camping chairs and table, dishes, a sink and we splurged to make sure we had AC. When he got there they needed the credit card he used to make the booking to pay for it…oops yeah we don’t have that because the number was stolen. No worries Mate we take cash, debit or another credit card. Great, do you take American Express? No. Oh ok, I’ll pay debit. Sorry it was declined. That’s impossible, try it again (they tried 4 times until realizing that Australia debit works on Visa debit which is not the same as interact used back home in Canada) All we have left now is cash. Our bank won’t let us take enough money out in one day. So we had to go to the bank a few days in a row and call them to up our limit just so that we could take this van! We were ready to get out of Perth and get on the road. It’s a bit sad but with all the troubles we had, that we didn’t get to actually see much of the city and spent the time instead sorting out issues. Soon enough we were off like turtles, with our shell on our back… across Australia!

Ewa, Chad and 'Root Toot' our home for the next 3 weeks

Finally on December 22nd we were leaving Perth and on a whim went to the Indian Visa office realizing that if we wanted to see India we should maybe send our passports away now before Christmas and New Years. We struggled if we wanted to go out of our way and find the office without all the right information, or just wait and send our applications by mail into Sydney later. We had the applications mostly filled out but were stuck on a few questions we didn’t know how to answer. So even though we were running late leaving the city (as always) we went to the office and it was the fastest most amazing Visa office we have ever been to! We were helped right away, no line and the visa officer helped us answer our questions, essentially telling us to ignore everything we couldn’t fill out! He was so fast! “Write this here, here and here, sign here. Glue your picture here. No you don’t need that. Yes sign here. That’ll be 220 dollars. Thank you and Happy Christmas”. Literally that is how fast we were in and out, and yes here in Australia, or at least Perth they say “Happy Christmas” not “Merry Christmas”. Chad joked he felt violated… that’s just how fast the process was! And we were on our way across Australia! We will be driving over 4000km from Perth all the way to Sydney, it’s sad that we haven’t done this in Canada. We’ve seen more of Australia than we have of our own country and when we get back we really want to see more of our side of the world.

Ewa at the Pinnacles

We travelled north from Perth to check out the amazing pinnacles Ewa had heard about. Imagine Drumheller, but in Australia and in the middle of the desert. A national park in the middle of nowhere, we drove 300 km North to check out this natural beauty. We left from Perth, and travelled as far north as we could in one day, and stopped at the first caravan park we could find after sunset. Apparently it is quite unsafe to travel at night in Aus, with most of the wildlife being nocturnal. On the long drive up we were treated to an amazing sunset and beautiful skylines. The pinnacles and the area was amazing, being surrounded by the dessert, whipping wind and the limestone pillars. The wind was so strong at times that it almost was enough to blow you off of your feet. After leaving the pinnacles we stopped at a little beach called Hangover bay. This bay was amazing. Brilliant blue waters, really soft sand, but super cold water. We didn’t stop much longer than to take a stroll on the beach and snap a few photos but it is certainly worth the side trip from the pinnacles. If only we didn’t have such a strong dislike for cold water, it would have been much better! We also stopped at a ‘primordial’ lake (Lake Thetis), where there is cyanobacteria that is supposed to have been the initial building blocks of life on Earth. It was a lot less interesting than we thought, but hey, that’s what roadtrips are about, just stopping to see things that may be interesting! The after our trip to the pinnacles, we managed to make it all the way back down to Perth for the night, to stay at a caravan park outside of the city before continuing south.

Sunset along the drive from Perth to the pinnacles

Perth..viruses, theft and lost time

Perth, Australia