Well guys we survived the flights to Oz last week (with a bit of a close call at Hong Kong Airport, only 40 minz to transferflights and change terminals !) but am pleased tosay we madeit to perth just in time for a few beers last Friday night, ya flamin' galahs.

In true Sparky and Whizzel style we managed to score our second free upgrade of the trip when we got to Perth, our holiday just wouldn't be complete without the mandatory upgrade.

We spent Saturday drinking cider in the sunshine getting merrily pissed, it's great, you only need 4 or 5 pints and it feels like you have had about 8 or 9, gotta love the effects of the sun for a cheap piss up! :-) needless to say that we did not get up until lunch time on Sunday, but hay what else are holidays for.

The real fun started at 6am on Monday morning when we picked up our tour from Perth which took us about 800km up the west coast to a place called Monkey Mia, which, for those that aint heard of it, is part of Western Australia's largest national parks / World Heritage Sites, proper beautiful and that. So we rocked up to this random mini-bus half asleep and bleary-eyed waiting for all the dodgy traveller folk to join us for the tour. Then, once the bus had picked up all the randoms, we began our journey up the coast. As always on these back-packer tours we spend the first 2 to 3 hours sizing everybody up and trying to cut the atmosphere with a knife. Then after the first fuel stop at the road house in the middle of nowhere, the ice breaks and you realise that the person you previously wanted to throw out of the window and feed to the dingo's becomes your new best friend.

So now the bus full of new friends continues its journey up the coast to our first night's accomadation. En route our tour leader decides to inform us there is a massive bush-fire right in our path, so the day's journey would now take us another 2 or 3 hours. To take the edge off that, we did some cool stuff like sand-boarding off a 50 foot sand-dune and checking out this place called the Pinnacle Desert, which is a long story - please feel free to Google should you require further info. To cut a long story short they are stones which are fossilised tree roots that used to be underwater but now they ain't.... looks quite cool though. Any how, after a massive detour, you would think we would be happy to get to our over-night stay... Oh how wrong you would be!! After watching the cockroaches climbing up the walls, I knew we were in for a long night!! A bottle of red wine and 4 Co-dryramol seemed to help though.

After making it through the first night, and having to wake up at 4:45 to make sure I got a shower before the skanky travellers, we were up for another long day. First up was abseiling at this gorge in Kalbarri National Park, so I don't have much to say about this, as I totally sucked and spent the best part of 10 minutes hanging from a rope in mid-air rather than actually abseiling. Luckily Gray managed to fly the Guernsey flag and showed us how to abseil properly. After abseiling we did some bush-walking and that. Then, in the evening, we arrived at the beach resort of Monkey Mia, which is where Flipper the Dolphin and his mates live. We had an appointment at 7:30 the next morning, so with time to kill, the tour group got pissed and had a BBQ, which - wait for it... are you sitting down? was cooked by Graham himself (please note that I am still alive 3 days later and typing this) The appointment with Flipper next morning was an amazing experience. Him and his mates were no more than a metre away from us.. well cool.

The next day or so was mainly spent heading back down the coast to Perth, stopping at random road-houses, which charged $5 for a bottle of water, and general points of interest. We did have one special stop on the way back to Perth where we got to hob-nob it with royalty. Yes it's true, there is this random guy called Prince Leonard who took the Australian government to court, claimed that 17,500 hectares of Australia should be given to him as a separate country (for un-confirmed reasons) and, due to a loop-hole in Australian law, actually won his case. He declared his new country to be the Hutt River Province, and we even got stamps in our passports when we crossed the border in to the province ... weird!

So after 3 nights of food that would be a health-and-safety nightmare and skanky back-packer accomodation (which I may add we did even pay in advance for a private up-grade - so not worth it) we were well chuffed to get back to civilisation and our hotel in the city.

Now, the only thing is, our hotel in the city may have been a little bit too comfortable, which could have had something to do with us missing our flight to Adelaide this morning. Or maybe it was because I thought the flight to Adelaide left at 14:00 when, in fact, it actually arrived there at 14:00 OOOOOOOPPPPPPPPSSSSS!!!!

With no chance of a refund on any flights (because we skimped and saved on the cheapo non-flexi fare) we ended up having to pay $383 for a new set of flights that does not leave until tomorrow morning. So here we are in our new hotel in Perth, drinking red wine and typing this blog for you all.

You know how they say every cloud has a silver lining, well I think sometimes it does. Ya see we were booked in at a reasonable 3 star for our first few nights hotel. Then this morning we had to check-out as we were "supposed to fly to Adelaide", so we had to find another hotel on last-minute.com. As luck would have it, the 5 star Sheraton in Perth came up at $170, which was actually cheaper than the 3 star hotel that we were staying at, so of course we bit their hand off, made the booking, and checked in 30 minutes later. Then, on check in, things got even better when the lady asked me how my day was. After telling her how crap it was, she kindly proceeded to up-grade us to an executive room with a river view, winner!

So that's the story so far guys. It's never a dull moment with us, and I'm sure there will be plenty more fun to come in the next few weeks.

But for now, we should really go to bed, as its 1 in the morning and we should really try to make an effort to get up in time for our flight in the morning.

Sparky & Whizzel (of Oz)

:-)