Perth, WA 08.01.2002

I'm off to Bali later today to see if the boy wonder has survived the scouting mission I sent him on. Its going to kill me leaving Australia though as I absolutely love the place and plan to return as soon as finances allow ! I hope you all enjoyed my photos and everyone at home isn't too depressed in the cold and the snow! If its any comfort, Nick reckons its ridiculously hot and humid up in Bali, like being back in Darwin and I'll be suffering that later on tonight. ( Nick, don't worry, I'm saving up the bail money and at least you'll get lots of sex in there mate! )

Anyway let me tell you what I've been up to the last couple of weeks. Firstly I should point out that Western Australia is fantastic. For all my fellow travellers who didn't make it over here you've missed an absolute treat. Perth is a very attractive city with really friendly people and great nightlife. It has great pubs such as The Brass Monkey, Dirty Nellys and The Lucky Shag!

It has great shopping for the prettiest girls I've seen in Australia and boasts a near perfect climate. It hasn't rained once whilst I've been here and there always seems to be a nice cool breeze blowing. There are great beaches within easy reach of the city not to mention the thousands of others up and down the coast that never seem to have more than a few people on them. Nearby Freemantle is a fabulous town where everyone seems to smile. I really enjoyed just wandering around the markets there and watching all the colourful characters enjoying life. As you can see I kind of like it here!

So what have I been up to? Ok first stop was Cottesloe beach for an emotional reunion with cockney Steve who has a residency visa for this place, the jammy bastard! After organising our transport for the xmas period, a battered old Ford Falcon with about a million kilometres on the clock, we headed down to Freo ( Freemantle ).

The highlight of Freo for me was going on board an exact replica of the HMS Bark Endeavour, a 'big old boat' that Captain Cook used to smash into the Great Barrier Reef amongst other places! We then headed south down to Margaret River where we tried our best to find somewhere lively for xmas eve.

Unfortunately, as we slowly inebriated ourselves, we forgot to buy booze for xmas day when of course, nothing would be open - Doh! So, after a brisk stroll on the beach and a boomerang throwing session we headed back to our hostel for xmas dinner and watched everyone else enjoying their xmas day beers as we drank, erm, tea! However, all was not lost.

Being miles from home and not having any family to share the festivities with, a nice Aussie girl down the road in Pemberton took pity on the three unwise men and found room in her stable for us, and provided us with much merriment, joy and thankfully lots of alcohol! It was on xmas day night that amongst many drunken visitors we met a guy called Dreadful ( apparently he isn't very good at anything! ) who invited us to the 'alternative' Boxing Day Test match. We happily accepted and following a Boxing Day climb of the 61 metre high Gloucester Tree ( for those brave enough eh Nick? ) we set off down to a place called Windy Harbour along with half of Pemberton for a drunken game of cricket by the beach.

We started drinking quite early on Boxing Day and after a splendid days cricket watching we cooked our BBQ and set up camp for the night around the fire. Steve impressed the Pembo lads with his unique method of fetching firewood, driving the car half cut, covering the bonnet in wood, speeding towards the fire before slamming the anchors on sending wood flying in every direction except the fire and scratching the bonnet to pieces in the process!

I woke up by the fire at 5am wet through in morning dew and freezing my tits off to discover that Steve and Nick had been abducted by aliens during the night. I found them on the beach helping a charming young man with his boat. He had obviously been drinking all night and after his warm greeting to me of, 'Do you wanna bust lip?' he offered us all in turn the opportunity to wrestle him. It was time to move on but not before he offered us a job in a potato slicing factory!

After Windy Harbour we drove along the coast to Walpole where we did the tree top walk through the valley of the giants ( big trees that is ).