After booking my trip to Exmouth, I had just 3 days to prepare before departure. That meant delegating tasks for various assignments for my classes, buying some heavy-duty sunscreen and packing my bags. "No worries", as they say here (and so does Stig Tøfting, but nevermind...), I still had more than enough time to play in the first scrimmage match for the Erica Underwood soccer team against x-Guild players (yes, sounds like a group of superheroes..) on Saturday. Our team is shaping up to be quite good, but these guys were undefeated when they played for Guild House 2 years ago so they gave us a good fight. Eventually, we lost 5-4, but we should be ready for the 'real' games on October 16 and 23, when the tournament is played.

I also took time to go to the Perth Royal Show (farmer's market a la Roskilde Dyrskue) on Sunday with Daisuke from my flat. It took place at Claremont Showgrounds just west of Perth and lasted a full week. The showgrounds were packed with Australian families and youngsters out to have a fun day. The show included everything from food stalls and cake competitions over rollercoasters and fireworks to animal judging and contests. A great day that ended with 30 minutes of fireworks accompanied by music - truly spectacular! But then it was time to head home, empty the camera and charge it to be ready for the next day - departure day!

04.40(!!!!), Monday, October 27... Michael was in no mood to get out of bed, but decided to anyway... Afterall, the one week trip to Exmouth was about to start! (A map of all the stops can be found here: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=da&msa=0&msid=113796187506092731029.000491c828d9b0e33492a&z=5). I met with my tour group and our guide/driver Murray in the centre of Perth at 6.30 anxious to get going. Right away though, I have to say I was a bit disappointed with the group. Around me in the bus were several old people... where were all the fun, young people I had been promised?? (To be fair, they were all nice people - just not what I expected). My saviour would prove to be Nadia, a Canadian girl who had the same prior expectations about the trip as me, so we hit it off right away. First stop of the day was The Pinnacles, which is thousands of rocks standing upright in the dessert. After lunch, we headed to the sand dunes for some sandboarding. Up the coast we reached Kalbarri where we spotted some whales from a lookout point while watching the sunset. In Kalbarri we spent the night at a hostel socialising with a group of students doing the same tour as us on another bus.

Day 2 started early (once again) since we were heading to the Z Bend Gorge to go hiking before the temperature rose too much. However, the flies were up early, and they made every attempt to make our lives as miserable as possible. It was a nice hike into the gorge and a couple of the others went abseiling (jumping down a cliff side while wearing harnesses). However, as we started to head back up, the hike turned into a climb and became very challenging for a couple of the group members that nearly had to be dragged out of there. After this rough start to the day we headed to Nature's Window, a natural arch with a beautiful view. In the afternoon we reached Shell Beach where we went for a swim in the very salty waters (almost the same as the Dead Sea). After a long drive we finally got to Monkey Mia, where we relaxed on the beach in the evening, spotting dolphins and witnessing a spectacular moonrise.

The next morning we got up early to see the dolphins get fed - unfortunately, the school holidays meant that hundreds of others had had the same idea. After a quick stop in picturesque Denham at Shark Bay we hit the road to Overlander Roadhouse, stopping only at Eagle's Bluff lookout. At Overlander we left half of the group who were headed back down south since they were only doing a 4-day tour. At Overlander I also had a closer look at a roadtrain (a truck with 3 trailers) and noticed the local SWAT Headquarters. After that we were in for another treat as we had frozen chocolate covered bananas after several hundred kilometres of driving in Carnarvon. The longest day of driving was, however, far from over as we had to reach Coral Bay for our overnight stay.

On day 4 we took a magnificent boat tour from Coral Bay out to Ningaloo Reef where had the chance to snorkel with thousands of colourful fish and a manta ray. It was a wonderful experience to see it gliding along the bottom as we snorkelled along the surface struggling to keep up in the big waves. Later, I spotted some more whales and we got very close to them on the boat and we saw turtles at the Turtle Sanctuary. The highlight of the day (at least if you asked our captain) was at our final stop where we went snorkelling. The captain was throwing fish food in the water (and on my head) without us knowing it, causing 20-30 big fish to charge us in the hunt for food. The fish were slimy and had sharp fins and it was the creepiest thing I have tried in a very long time... I was out of the water in a matter of seconds, which is very unlike me... Not my proudest moment... After the boat trip we pushed north to Exmouth where we would stay 2 nights.

From Exmouth we took a daytrip out to Turqouise Bay for even more spectacular snorkelling at a beautiful beach. The temperature peaked at around 35C so it was very hot in the sun. In the water we cooled off and saw catfish, cods, and huge coral beds in all the colours of the rainbow. After building an exact copy of the Sydney Opera House of sand, Murray and I tried to get the others to play volleyball with us, but with little success - it truly was a tough crowd, but he did his best to make everyone enjoy the trip anyway. In the evening, we even managed to track down a bar in Exmouth, which was full of people dancing to the break of dawn.

On day 6 we started the loooooooooong drive back to Perth (1200 km in total). Not much happened during the day, but we ended up at the Northbrook Farmstay outside Northampton for our overnight stay. At the farm we quickly decided to go for a swim in the pool despite the fact that the water was freezing and the air temperature had dropped to around 17C (we even felt the need to wear jeans and sweaters for the first time in many many days). After the swim, dinner was ready as the farmer had prepared a traditional kangaroo stew (tasted like beef), chicken stew, squid stew and a side of rice. This was our last night so we made a fire from wood we had collected in the bush at the roadside earlier in the day. Most people stayed up till late ("late" was defined as after 9.30PM according to their guestbook...) and we watched the stars and enjoyed the quietness of the countryside.

The final day (and final day of me being up at 6) started with alpacas practically knocking on our room door. Before heading to Perth though, we had to stop at the Principality of Hutt River, which is an independent sovereign state the size of a farm, which broke free from Australia 40 years ago. We were greeted by HRH Prince Leonard and HRH Princess Shirley and immediately noticed that this was no ordinary place (some even called it a 'freak-show'). They were both around 80 years old and very passionate about their life's work. The government offices/post office served as the arrival hall, where we had our passports stamped with visas for the day. The walls were covered in various memorabilia such as old notes from countries all over the world, pictures, stamps, maps etc. After the introduction we proceeded to the church to have a history lesson and to have our pictures taken in their thrones. Finally, we headed to the information centre/souvenir shop for more crazy memorabilia including the Hutt River Lager, the flag of the state, copies of their Defence Force Journal and their national passports, which the Prince claimed he had used to travel through Asia with (don't know about that...). From the Principality of Hutt River we headed to Greenough Wildlife Park south of Geraldton. It was a nice little oasis with a lot of native Australian animals such as kangaroos, emus, dingos, and cockatoos. We got a bag of animal food and walked around before having lunch in the shade. They had a tame pet kangaroo, which was completely irresistible! The final stop of the journey was a pub at the beach in Lancelin, where we had drinks in the sun overlooking the water - a perfect way to end the trip.

After some much needed sleep Sunday night it was time to get back to reality on Monday morning with laundry, grocery shopping, home work, and group meetings. I am wondering if I will ever get to see those places again..? At least I can now tick that off my list - doing the trip up the coast was one of my main motivations for coming here (oh yes, and studying of course...). Little more than a month remains of my time at university here, so I have to get to work on planning my next trips.

Michael