Perth & The Vines - Day 197-198
Trip Start
Jan 31, 2008
1
132
254
Trip End
Aug 02, 2013
The vines, Australia
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Day 197 - 05/09/08
The hire car is booked for my mammoth coast to coast journey. I leave the day after tomorrow! Found a reasonably priced hire car company who will allow me to drop the car off in Brisbane, excellent!
Today was manly spend preparing for my departure. Went food shopping, bought loads of canned food and dried noodles. Bought 30 litres of water incase of emergencies. Thought it would be sensible to buy two 20 litre gerry cans too, don't want to be running out of gas in the arse end of nowhere. 40 litres should give me at least 600km if I drive conservatively, should be plenty. Finally, I bought a cheap butane camp stove to cook with. I'm ready to go, I think!
In the late afternoon my friend and I went for a stroll on Trigg beach. I really idyllic suburb build right on the coastline. People were jogging, walking their dogs. Not a bad place to live I reckon. A really strong wind was blowing in from the sea and a couple of wind surfers were taking advantage of the favourable conditions. You could have a really good standard of living on the west coast, hmmm!!
Day 198 - 06/09/08
A nice day of relaxation, had my hair chopped. Hadn't been cut for over 3 months and badly needed doing. The cut cost me 15 times more than my last cut in Hanoi, Vietnam. Sat outside in the garden for most of the afternoon with my map and guide book deciding on a route and what I wanted to see of this vast country. Only have 3 weeks scheduled for the trip so I want to see as much as humanly possible on route in this short timeframe.
My route has now changed a little from my initial plan. This revised route will add a further 2000-3000km to my coast to coast adventure. I've decided to head north to Broome and Katherine via Shark bay, the Ningaloo reef and the Kimberley before heading south to Uhuru. Originally I was going to head east from Perth through the gold fields and the Nullabor desert to Port Augusta, but there's not a great deal to see on this route. This revised route looks a lot more attractive but it means I have to average well over 400km everyday, a grand total of 9000km or even 10000km with sightseeing detours. That's a lot of driving! If I'm struggling for time a couple of weeks in, I can maybe extend the car hire for another week.
