Today marks the second anniversary of the day we left England for the first leg of our travels in Goa, India. Two years ago we were larking around with Sam in London before making our way to Heathrow and seeing Jeremy Sheffield (the bloke from Holby City, the Natalie Imbruglia music video and the Renault Clio advert) standing in the queue for security.
Now we’ve been back for six months, not in Manchester but the Shire. I’ve been working as a Technical Author again (something I didn’t think would happen) for about four months now and Tace starts her new childrenswear design job in a couple of weeks after a stint as an administrator at the Environment Agency helping to save the planet.
What’s changed since we’ve been away? If you want a telly it’s got to be a flat screen one and they cost rather more than the old fashioned variety. Hair-gel-and-thick-tie-knot ‘executives’ are driving Audis instead of BMWs. Petrol and diesel are ridiculously expensive and at one point the price seemed to be rising on a daily basis. House prices (as I predicted) are coming down but they’re still ludicrously high. Public transport seems to have improved and cities and town centres seem cleaner. We’ve got a recession on our hands (as I predicted) but I wonder if we will ever fall back to the level of the early 1990s when vast retail parks stood empty and you could buy a house for £30,000.
I was really dreading coming back. I was expecting everything to be costly, the roads to be terminally congested and the weather to be cold and rainy. I’ve been pleasantly surprised really. A weekly grocery shop doesn’t set us back as much as expected (being used to Australian prices it seems cheap here). Bedfordshire roads seem to be nicely free-flowing. The weather has been a lot better than expected. I sit here writing this in early October and outside is blue skies and sunshine. Since I got my job I have been cycling the 11 mile round trip to work and back along a disused railway line. I only have to use about 400 metres of quiet country road in my whole journey and it’s a delightful ride along a river, through farms, woodland, a country park and past a couple of lakes. There’s plenty of wildlife to see and it’s interesting to watch the changing seasons and the farms at work as I cycle by. And you know what? It’s only rained on me once. I got a serious soaking that day – luckily it was on my way home where I could take my time getting dry.
Having experienced living out of a backpack and an old VW van we’re keeping our lives simple these days. We couldn’t have timed it better, to having paid off all our debts and learned to live a simple life puts us in a very good position to weather this recession. We also know that no matter how bad it gets we have found plenty of beautiful - and most importantly very cheap - cheap bolt holes where we can escape the misery (although have you seen the price of flights lately?).
Hi to everyone who’s followed the blog and who we met along on the way. Here’s to the last two years. Who knows what the next two years will bring.
I’ve been taking advantage of the combination of joblessness and broadband and got all our travel photos online for your perusal! http://www.flickr.com/photos/jwt/sets
For those of you that didn’t know… here’s a quick sum-up
After we earned all that money on the farm in Carnarvon we drove up the rest of the West Coast of Australia. At one point we did a bit of a convoy with some Italians and some Germans. Once we’d all parted company, we headed from Broome to Darwin but Bessie broke down about half way (melted piston) so we got a 300km tow off some strangers, spent a night in a Road Train depot office, rode on a Road Train with Bessie on the back and made it to Darwin where we got her fixed. And went on a yacht. We met up with friends Ant & Winnie who we met in Carnarvon. We partied. Then Sue & Ian (who we met in India, and bumped into in Singapore) made an impromptu visit and we partied again, before giving them a lift down the centre of Australia to Melbourne, taking in Litchfield National Park, Daly Waters, Devils Marbles, Alice Springs, Ayres Rock, Coober Pedy, Adelaide and the Great Ocean Road on the way. Then we got some more farm work 100 miles north of Melbourne picking Apricots and packing plums and saved up even more money. Then Tace’s mum came over for a few weeks and the weather was very very bad and Bessie was even worse. We went to Sydney, down the coast to Melbourne and over to Tasmania before she had to go back, after which the weather became a heatwave. We took Bessie to a wizard mechanic in Sydney who had her running better than ever and we sold her to some silly French boys. With the money from selling Bessie we got flights over to New Zealand to spend just over a week with Claire & Steve and flew back to Britain via a 10-day stopover in Malaysia to chill out on a paradise island.
Now back in the Shire, we bought a Big Red car and are looking for work. We’re more than a little confused about what to do with ourselves.
Worked on a farm, got a muscle in my arm
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Published by H October 22nd, 2007 in WA, Carnarvon.
Roadtrips are expensive, even when Australian fuel is roughly half the price you’d pay in the UK. After making our way from Perth to Esperance and then heading North, we realised we’d have to make a pitstop to work again if we were going to see more than 5% of this vast country.
So after a thoroughly enjoyable first leg of our trip, we arrived in Carnarvon with just enough money to get us to the next possible source of work if Carnarvon didn’t come up with the goods. There are plenty of plantations here growing pretty much everything from bananas to watermelons and it’s a well-established spot on the ‘harvest trail’ making it a pretty good place to run out of money. However, the town itself is pretty grotty and run-down with more than its fair share of down-and-outs loitering around.
The challenge was set, to find jobs and save up $6000 (£2600) in six weeks so we could carry on North before the rainy season got into full swing and hopefully make it all the way to Melbourne in time for Christmas without having to work again.
To achieve this financial goal, we’d have to live very basically and work a lot of hours. Caravan parks would be a bit expensive so we’d have to try a combination of parking up in lay-bys and asking our employers if they’d kindly let us camp on their land (which would have the double benefit of saving us fuel from commuting). We’d only have to put up with these living conditions for six weeks so we reckoned it’d be difficult but achievable.
First, we decided to try asking at the backpackers hostels. The ‘go west’ magazine positively gushed about the Fish and Whistle (it also had a funky and modern looking ad) and recommended it as a place to find work but we couldn’t find it - what we found at the address given was a very old, dingy and uninviting building called the Port Hotel that had no obvious entrance. We gave up and found the YHA which had quite a promising looking noticeboard for jobs. We spoke to the receptionist (who looked like a female version of Lurch from the Adams Family) and she basically said we’d only be given a job if we stayed at the hostel ($220 per week) and if we left the hostel she’d phone our employers and have us fired. So great terms there, then! We said we’d prefer to live in the van in the yard behind the hostel and she said she’d give us a $10 discount if we did that! Looking around the place, it seemed to be full of stoners and borderline-alcoholics so we left in disgust to try and locate the elusive Fish and Whistle.
We found that one of the boarded up doors of the Port Hotel actually opened so we stepped inside and asked if this place was in fact the Fish and Whistle. It turned out that it was, so we asked about jobs. The friendly (and human-looking) receptionist said there were no jobs and no rooms available but suggested that we drive up and down the two roads running parallel to the river, as this is where we’d find the plantations which would usually have notices outside displaying “workers required” if they needed help.
So, we head off up and down South River Road and North River Road. The weather was too hot and it felt very intimidating driving up to farmhouses and asking for a job. The nearest we got was swapping phone numbers with one grape farmer, who also said we could camp on his land if we were given work. We also spent a nice couple of hours touring a banana plantation and being shown what kind of work we could do, but when it came to the crunch, the farmer was only willing to give us five hours’ work per day, in return for board and lodge when what we needed was hard cash. He showed us a beautiful camp spot under the mango trees but it wasn’t enough to tempt us.
Pretty disheartened, we decided to check out the famous one-mile jetty (can you guess what it is yet?). We took the fishing rod (as a last minute decision, just in case) and a little picnic. After paying our $4 each(!) we started our mile stroll, asking other fishermen coming the other way if they’d caught anything. None had.
We took a seat under a kind of pagoda thing and tucked into our sandwiches, then noticed a row of three or four men reeling in fish after fish. Once we’d finished our sandwiches I wandered over to stand beside them and cast my line out, using no real bait, just soft-plastic lures. Within literally 30 seconds I could feel a bite on the line. I looked down into the water and could see a huge swarm of fish surrounding my line! A few seconds later I knew I’d caught a fish and quickly reeled it in, a funny looking long fish, which one of the experienced Aussie fishermen informed me was a Snook. So this continued, every time I threw the line in, it came back with a fish on the end of it after less than a minute. This was amazing! Soon we had quite a collection of fish to take home for dinner and we’d ended up having a fun and productive day after all.
As we left the jetty, proudly carrying our catch of the day, we remembered our purpose in Carnarvon (although we had considered opening a fish stall to raise money) and asked the guy we’d paid to get onto the jetty if he knew of anywhere locally who’d be looking for workers. He gave us the names of a couple of places, so we decided to check them out the next day.
That night, once Tace had masterfully gutted our catch, we had an immense supper of barbecued fish and those ever helpful and sympathetic Aussies kindly provided us with some tinfoil to wrap them in. All that fishy goodness would mean we’d be super brainy for our job hunting mission!
In the morning, we rocked up at a company called Double G. With a name like that we expected to be dealing with melons! However it was a tomato packing shed. We noticed the bright, airy and relatively clean working environment, the music playing in the background and a sense that the workers were having fun. We stepped into the manager’s office and met Mark, an affable enough chap who wouldn’t entertain the possibility of employing us unless we promised that we weren’t Manchester United supporters. That hurdle easily overcome, he told us he couldn’t promise us anything but he was pretty sure a couple of people were leaving at the end of the week, so it’d be likely we could take over from them. He asked how long we’d be sticking around for and we told him we’d leave in the next day or so if we didn’t find work and left it at that.
The next morning, Mark phoned us to say he’d found us some work at his friend’s farm, that he’d passed on our phone number and to expect a call soon. Sure enough a guy called Glenn phoned to invite us over to his farm for three days of watermelon seed planting! So there was a melon connection after all… We agreed to arrive for work at 1pm the same day. The trip there wasn’t without mishaps unfortunately. We’d stupidly left our solar shower on Bessie’s roof, so at some point it fell off never to be seen again. Then we went to completely the wrong farm, jumped out of the van ready to start work and were not exactly given a heroe’s welcome! Eventually we found Glenn’s farm and it turned out to be one we’d been to and declined a job the previous day!
Glenn showed us to the field we’d be planting and showed us how it was done and off we went. It seemed quite easy at first, but the constant stooping soon took its toll on our backs, buttocks and thighs. Nevertheless we soldiered on and before we knew it, it was 5pm and we could leave, recover and be back for 8am the next day. We really got on well with the two other farm hands, Laurie, a bemulleted hillbilly type but a great guy nevertheless and Shannon, the first aborigine we’d met since arriving in Australia.
Our second day of watermelon seed planting was sheer pain. Laurie and Shannon were making jokes about having backsides like Jean-Claude Van Damme but it was true, the muscles in our thighs and buttocks tightened up so much that they felt rock solid, but not in a good way. We enjoyed the hour-long lunch break (with a huge box of biscuits) and blitzed the field, finishing a whole day ahead of schedule! We’d done ourselves out of an extra days’ pay but we didn’t want to prolong the agony. Happily, Glenn rewarded us for our swift work with a bit of extra cash than we were expecting and some cold beers so that was a result! He also informed us that Mark from Double G had sent us over to Glenn as a bit of a test to see if we were slackers or not. I also reckoned that he’d tried to get us some work pronto so we wouldn’t leave town before he got back to us with a job.
On what would’ve been our third day of melon seed planting we were so thankful we’d finished because we simply could not move. Our bodies had totally seized up. Luckily we got to relax for a couple of days before becoming tomato-meisters at Double G…
We packed tomatoes for six weeks, seven days a week (although we did have one day off at the end of our first week as our friends Lisa & Trevor who we’d met in Esperance were in town and we took them fishing at the jetty and got drunk). We befriended a German girl called Froggy who had met the Hoff so we were well impressed by her. It was mind numbing work but very physical - the job involved lifting and carrying 10kg, sometimes 20kg boxes of tomatoes constantly. I worked out that on average, we each lifted one tonne of tomatoes per hour. Needless to say we both developed big biceps!
At first, we were still working on the idea that we could get away without staying in expensive caravan parks and Mark had hinted that his brother might be able to sort us out so we could camp on his land, just around the corner from work. Meanwhile back at the caravan park, all the wealthy ‘grey nomads’ with their super posh Winnebagos and huge caravans were taking pity on us in our little VW and every day we’d arrive home to find some kind of gift of food or utensil or whatever on our little table with a little note! 
Eventually one couple of long-term residents, Diane and Red, offered to lend us their trailer-tent as they were living in a static caravan. We weren’t altogether sure about this, we’d become quite set in our ways and loved living in Bessie but it was getting a bit cramped and messy in there since we’d been working and getting up at 5am every day, then being totally knackered after work. One day we got back from work and saw this huge tent up in the camp spot we’d had our eyes on for a few days (it was closer to the entrance and had a power socket so we could use our laptop) so were a bit disappointed. It turned out it was for us to stay in! Diane and Red gave us a guided tour - now I know it must seem strange to those back home used to bricks and mortar for us to describe a tent as palatial, but that’s how it was!
We were excited and overjoyed at this luxury accommodation so we decided to stay in the caravan park which was at least a 10km drive away from work so our financial target was looking hard to achieve, especially as there weren’t many tomatoes to pack in our second week, meaning we worked shorter hours and took home less money…
So did we achieve our target? Our bank balance on our last day was $5800 but the pay week ends on Thursday which means that next Friday we’ll get our last pay packet which should be around $200. Mission accomplished! In the end we didn’t live badly at all. We ate very well, had one great night out at the pub (followed by a 6am start and a 13 hour, very hot day) kept up a reasonable social life and managed to treat ourselves to a Magnum ice cream each payday.
In the end, I think we’ll remember Carnarvon fondly. The weather is spot-on perfect for a start! What I really like about the place is that most people work with some kind of fruit or vegetable, so there’s a bit of a bartering system going on. We’d pinch a box of tomatoes from work and hand them out to people in the caravan park and in return we’d get grapefruits, starfruits, sweetcorn, bananas, red peppers, you name it - and it was all as fresh and tasty as can be. One guy at work had taken this to extremes and would always have loads of bread which he’d hand out to the workers. He’d also get seafood - we were invited over to his place for a barbecue because he’d got his hands on 40kg (seriously) of tiger prawns. Basically this guy never had to go shopping!
So now we’re back on the road and heading North, into the extreme heat. Wish us luck and Bon Voyage…
A Little Out Of Date!This is a little out of date now, as I wrote it many months ago back in Perth and never had the chance to put it on the blog! So apologies for the delay and hopefully we’ll be able to bring you up to date with all our more recent travel adventures shortly!
I sit writing this in a quiet, calm and peaceful office in my lunch hour, whilst looking through our travel photo’s on our blog site. I am now arm chair travelling like all you avid readers have been for the last 8 months! Thanks for the commitment by the way, we realise that quite a lot of the blog may be boring for some of you but at least you can laugh at the photos!? And boy have I realised how many really bad photo’s there are, some really should have been edited out before uploading them to the blog. I am also reminded how beautiful the places we’ve been are, I can’t help smiling from ear to ear as I look through at the places we’ve seen and the gorgeous people we’ve met along the way. Also how much I miss walking/riding/running down the road and being amazed at what I’d see whether it be beautiful or shocking. The extreme of emotions shown in people’s faces, whether it be happiness or extreme sadness and desperation, which you just don’t see in the westernised world. And I feel like shouting “I want to go back!!”
Which brings me to our (then!) current position on the globe -
We’ve been here nearly three months now and not really seen too much of it! Due to the immediate need for cash we have stayed in
So my opinion of WA was somewhat negative when we first arrived we did manage to have a fantastic long weekend down south a whole lot of wineries, cheeseries and my favourite the cidery, with our friends Lou & Glenn, fantastic company as always guys! The scenery was absolutely amazing, forests of the tallest trees growing for miles and miles. We pulled in at the tallest of all the trees that was used as a forest fire look out post and has a hut up on top of it for the look out men to stay in!! H and Glenn very bravely climbed all the way to the top. We caught our dinner in the sea at Margaret River, H catching his first ever fish!! And a ray swam right past our feet in the shallow water which was really beautiful to see.
There are trees in Kings Park that are amazing with enormous roots that spill across the ground like molten lava. The sky is so blue and the stars at night are beautiful!
I got to see the crescent moon with the single star above it, that symbolises the end of Ramadan, a week or so ago. It was so stunning!
When I worked at the Italian Café, my favourite part of the day (other than when I left) was on my drive there when I would come over the crest of a hill and see an amazing view of the Ocean. Slightly distorted by ugly grey, kit homes but if I squinted my eyes so I had a kind of tunnel vision that excluded the grey glow! I could see enormous waves breaking right out in the distance, which must have been immense if they still looked enormous from where I was about 10kms away!
We lived in Glen’s mum Roses house on first arrival (Thanks again Rose!!) And then moved to Hillarys Harbour with our friends Sarah, Jes & Bella, who we met in India, it was really lovely as we’d not seen them for a while we all had lots to catch up on. And lots of onion and garlic to gas poor pregnant Sarah out with (apologies again for our Viet Hoa nights!)
When they left for further exciting adventures we moved into a shed! A very nice shed, may I add! In Anne and Darcy’s back garden, near to H’s work, where H could bike to work and in the process I gained a new boyfriend who was at least 4 stone slimmer?! I managed eventually to find a lovely job, with thanks to Anne & Soph, in the office I write this from! (I never got around to putting this on the website while I was there so I am putting it on now a few months later!!)
Perth greatly improved for me at this point, once the 7am, Sunday morning, 9hour shift at the cockroach infested cafe was dropped everything about Perth seemed a lot sunnier!
Especially once we bought Bessie! Our beautiful turquoise VW kombi! Who was just made for lazy Sundays tootling to Subiaco and listening to Ben Lee and has now proved herself to be perfect for Dolly Parton and all sorts of other Country Classics and long meandering drives through Australian terrain! Although not entirely convinced she’ll start every morning I hold on to one crucial mantra from years in education- “fashion not function!!”
Meet Bessie, our 1973 VW campervan! We both hankered after one of these since before we met each other but in Britain they are so expensive and often rusty. We had to be satisfied with peering around beautiful VWs during our annual visits to Bug Jam festival.
Not any more! We picked up this turquoise beauty for a bargain price and she’s taking us on an epic roadtrip around Australia from Esperance to Cairns in a huge ‘N’ shape across the continent.
Ha ha, perhaps you thought we were back in the UK. No, but we’re back on the net, and back in Western uncivilisation. A couple of paragraphs on what we’ve been up to since our last report back in April…
We headed back up to Malaysia, via the small colonial town of Melaka, which has a big boat and lots of red painted buildings to prove it has ‘heritage’. Besides this, our main motivation for going there was to see the Formula 1 racing exhibition. They’d turned the car park of what is essentially Malaysia’s equivalent to the Birmingham NEC into a racing track and let some F1 cars out there to show off for the crowds, plus a few motorcycle stunt men and local dignitaries. It was a good chance to see real F1 cars and hear just how deafeningly loud the things are! We then caught the bus back up to KL where we did plenty of shopping to update our wardrobes so we wouldn’t look like total scumbags once we arrived in Australia. We stayed in a very nice hostel in KL called Anjung 2 - should you find yourself there, we recommend it (but shop around for deals as there are a few new and nice looking places in the same street).
Before we knew it (actually the wait was excruciating) we found ourselves on a flight to Perth, Australia, home of the omnipresent (in this blog at least) Glen and, once the immigration paperwork got settled, Lou. Said couple met us at the airport and we were taken immediately to a pub called the Lucky Shag (no sniggering at the back, a Shag is a type of water-dwelling bird), before being dropped into the meet-the-family deep end at the birthday party for Glen’s nephew.
Princess Bella, with her parents Sarah and Jez, who we also originally met in Agonda (Perth turned into a bit of a Goa reunion), were also in town and after a week crashing at Glen’s mum’s house (Thanks Rose) we moved into a flash little apartment - with pool and sauna!! - in Hillary’s Harbour with Bella & co.
Despite the fantastic welcome we received (amazingly Glen & Lou even lent us a fab little car called Daisy) We found it hard to deal with the culture shock of arriving in Perth. In fact we found it harder to adjust back to this way of life than we did to the way of life we experienced in Asia. On top of this, the parts of Perth we were exposed to most at the start were the Northern suburbs which look like they were all thrown up last week, just endless, faceless, characterless new-build bungalows and vast retail parks. On top of this, we arrived in Perth feeling pleased with the amount of money we had in the bank. This soon changed as we blew through most of it in very little time as we adjusted to the increased cost of living.
Money quickly running out, we searched for jobs and cheaper accommodation. Tace quickly found work in one of the cafes in the marina by our apartment, but not before some degrading and insulting job searching. I fared a little better but found the process quite demoralising until I, on a complete long shot, secured an interview and one-day trial working in a garage!
Bella & co, eager to explore, moved on to Melbourne and beyond, so we could no longer (just) afford to live in the apartment. Luckily, thanks to the ever-useful gumtree website we found a cheaper place to live; essentially a well-furnished shed in someone’s back garden. We knew our aim was to buy some form of campervan and drive round Australia, so this would break us in gently to a life slightly more exposed to the elements…
So for the next three months we worked very hard and lived in a shed in Perth. Tace eventually and thankfully quit her awful cafe job and got a cushy number as a receptionist. We saved up enough to buy ourselves a campervan and head out on the road… and here I am in Albany, Western Australia updating the blog. Internet over here is surprisingly crappy and slow, plus internet cafes are expensive. Not to mention the 50+ hour weeks we’ve been working so hopefully you can forgive us for not keeping you updated.
Life on the road is great fun, we have a fantastic vehicle and we’ll try our best to keep the blog and our photo gallery up-to-date.
We spent a very stressful week preparing Bessie and ourselves for our epic roadtrip. Just before I left work, Frank, my boss at the garage and I had given Bessie a full service and fixed a few little niggly faults. Tace and I also had to make some improvements to the interior so we’d be nice and comfortable driving and living inside a small van for nine months.
The day after I finished at the garage I’d agreed to pick up Anne (our landlady at the shed) from the airport. It rained so hard it was ridiculous and we had a mad dash to get Anne and her luggage inside the van before both got totally soaked. On the road out of the airport, the windscreen wipers began making a whining noise. Then they started slowing down and eventually ground to a halt with a long and pitiful groan. No matter what I did, I couldn’t coax them back into life on the petrol station forecourt I’d pulled into, so I decided to try driving through the torrential rain without the use of windscreen wipers. This proved easier than expected and we got safely back to the shed.
I’d also agreed to collect Tace from the train station later on as she arrived home from work so I immediately set about trying to repair the windscreen wiper mechanism. To do this required me to dismantle and remove the whole dashboard! A bit of WD-40 and this amazing spray grease called Sabesto that Frank had given me freed up the windscreen wiper motor and mechanism nicely and I watched with glee as the whole thing slowly came to life, going faster and faster until the windscreen wipers were working better than ever! I even managed to get everything reassembled well enough afterward that I could pick Tace up from the train station on time.
The next day I went out shopping for tools (to use in case Bessie broke down) and new foam for the seat that converts into a bed. All was not well with Bessie; disturbing the numerous 33 year-old electrical connections behind the dashboard had caused a domino effect of electrical nightmares and with each one I solved, two others would appear. On top of this the weather was terrible with wind and rain making it very difficult to work outside and of course, the dampness was playing havoc with the already temperamental electrics. Fortunately Bessie had come with some workshop manuals containing very detailed electrical diagrams and my GCSE physics finally came in handy as I was able to understand the various symbols and colours well enough to relate the spaghetti of wires and connections with what was in the diagram. Progress was very slow but at least there was progress.
Another day closer to leaving Perth and I still had electrical nightmares to contend with but I needed to find some front seats to replace the very worn and uncomfortable pair that Bessie had come with. I had contacted a few local scrapyards and one told me that the front seats from a SAAB are an almost perfect fit for a Kombi so I headed over to the other side of Perth to check them out, knowing that SAAB have a reputation for fitting some of the most comfortable seats of any car manufacturer. On arrival I was shown around various SAABs in the scrapyard with seats in various colours and condition. However, right at the back of the compound I struck gold, another VW Kombi like Bessie, with an interior in fantastic condition! Even better, the manager of the scrapyard agreed to give me the seats for half the price of the SAAB seats, plus I could take any other bits and bobs I wanted.
With my brand new tools I began dismantling the poor old VW and scavenging all the parts I wanted for Bessie. Those seats were immaculate and the cushion foam looked almost brand new. I was thrilled. I was there for at least two hours. Even the bed was in perfect condition and I cursed the fact I’d just spent quite a lot of money on new foam. I couldn’t get the new seats to fit into Bessie straight away, which was a shame - it turned out that neither Bessie’s seats nor those of the donor Kombi were original VW items and that some modifications had been made to both vehicles to make them fit. I had to do some extra work so I paid for what I’d taken and went back to the shed.
The afternoon weather was at least dry but very windy. I set about making some (rather brutal and heavy handed) modifications to Bessie’s seating fitments while listening to my new Killers CD on the rather impressive in-van stereo system. That evening I’d agreed to meet Tace at Glenn & Lou’s house so we could have a few farewell drinks with Lou, who was heading off to Brisbane the next day and wouldn’t be around to see us off (Glenn was already on holiday in Italy). I’d just about got the seats fitted so it was possible and mostly safe to sit in them when it was time to go. Listening to the Killers for all that time had killed the battery! I thought no problem, Bessie has dual batteries so I can jumpstart the engine using the second battery. The second battery was also dead! Luckily, Anne turned up in her car and I could quickly jumpstart Bessie and get going.
The morning after a drunken Kath & Kim DVD marathon with Lou we’d promised to take her to the airport. Bessie’s battery was dead again (what is it with Bessie and airports?) so we had to take her in the ever-faithful Daisy. On the way back we picked up some battery fluid which was enough to coax the engine into life and we were able to drive Bessie back to the shed, feeling rather hungover. Tace busied herself with upholstering the new seat/bed and I tinkered about fitting a windscreen washer system (Bessie didn’t already have one!). When we needed to go out again, the battery was too flat to start the engine. Anne was out so we had to ask the elderly next door neighbour for a jump start but his car was too feeble for the job. He also tried lending us two battery chargers, which had no effect. We ended up getting a taxi to my old workplace and buying a new battery and it didn’t come cheap but at least we could reliably start Bessie up!
We spent the next couple of days ironing out the remaining electrical gremlins and fitting out the interior (all in the wind and the rain) and finally it was time to go. It was the first time I’d driven Bessie all loaded up with the roofrack full and the bikes attached to the bike rack and it felt very different. It was so windy and I found it hard to relax into driving, especially as all the stress of the past few days was still at the front of my mind. We only got as far as the Miami Bakehouse in Mandurah and Bessie conked out, with a loud double backfire. We stopped for a pie before trying to work out what was wrong. I couldn’t figure it out and the engine wouldn’t start, plus boring men kept interrupting me wanting to talk about old cars when I just wasn’t in the mood!
A stroke of luck meant that not only had we broken down in front of the famous Miami Bakehouse but behind the shop was a caravan park. A bunch of local lads helped push us into the park, where we could spend the night and look up a mechanic the next day (it was Sunday so everywhere was closed). We enjoyed a walk around the local area, taking in the estuary and the beach and watching the tail-end of an Austalian rules football game before enjoying some fish and chips. In the morning, I tried to start the engine and amazingly, it worked! We drove gingerly into Mandurah, trying several garages who were all booked up before finally arriving at Ultra Tune who could fit us in within the hour. We left Bessie in their capable hands while looking round the local charity shops. When we got back, the mechanic was just taking Bessie for a test drive and when he came back, he said she was running well. The reason she’d broken down was because when Frank and I had carried out the service, we’d used one of the three workshop manuals that Bessie came with to find out the correct settng for the engine’s timing. Only one of the three books had the correct setting for the Australian version of the engine and we’d used the setting for the American version! We also figured out that the reason the batteries had died were because the DVD screen had been left on since who-knows-when (flattening the second battery), plus I’d left the ignition switch on while listening to the Killers on the CD player, draining the main battery!
Happily, Ultra Tune didn’t charge us much for sorting Bessie out and we managed to reach Bridgetown just in time to catch last orders at the wonderful Cidery. Plus, we also had a great evening dropping in on our friends Dan & Simone who kindly gave us loads of tips, contacts, maps and stuff for travelling Australia plus a lovely warm bed for the night!
We’ve been on the road over three months now with (touch wood) no further vehicle-related hiccups. Bessie’s a good home, enjoyable to drive and looks great in photos plus we’re living our VW Kombi dream whilst visiting countless stunning natural wonders in the vast and fascinating country that is Australia.
Just when we thought we’d caught the best bus in the world to get to Cameron Highlands, the Business Class Transnasional service from Kota Bharu (a stone’s throw from the border with Thailand) to Singapore arrived. Once on board and settled into our sumptuous reclining armchairs we were each given a bottle of water and a plate of suspect-looking but very edible cakes.
I don’t remember much of the journey so I assume I must’ve slept for most of it. We arrived at the bridge linking Malaysia with Singapore during rush hour. A lot of people seemed to be commuting to Singapore for work. We had to get off the bus to go through customs, border formalities and warnings that we’d be faced with a death sentence if we had any drugs with us. Oh, and it was forbidden to bring any chewing gum into the country.
Once we arrived in Singapore, we teamed up with another British couple called Dan and Cheryl to find a taxi. In an experience quite opposite to any other taxi-related transaction we’d experienced so far, we had to grapple with drivers who didn’t want our business because they were ‘too busy’. Eventually we convinced a driver to take us but he was reluctant to take us to an ATM on the way to the hostel as he didn’t have time, so instead we paid using his amazing high-tech onboard credit card system which buggered up and ended up taking far longer than pulling over at an ATM somewhere. Singapore taxi drivers really are a different breed.
We were dropped off in Little India (which of course being in Singapore was totally free of all the dirt and unpleasant smells of real India) and Dunlop street which has a choice of hostels. We looked into a couple that were either too full or too arrogant to accommodate us so eventually we opted for the Prince of Wales whose reception/bar area looked and smelled so much like a British pub it was unreal. We had to hang around a while for our room to be cleaned so we headed up the road for our first proper Indian thali in ages! Yes! However it was much more expensive than we were used to… in fact Singapore was shaping up to be one hell of an expensive place already. It was to be our first time staying in shared hostel dorms during our trip and it was by far the most we’d paid so far for a night’s accommodation.
Over our Thali, we were getting on like a house on fire with Cheryl and Dan. When we got back to the hostel our dorm was ready so we offloaded our bags and took the opportunity for a decent shower and change of clothes. I don’t know how the next bit happened but we ended up spending all day in the bar of the hostel drinking hideously expensive wine and playing Travel Scrabble!
Dan and Cheryl had met some Singaporeans on their travels in Vietnam or somewhere and arranged to meet with them that evening, kindly inviting us along. We’d seen nothing of Singapore so far other than reluctant taxi drivers and the inside of a bar that looked and felt like a British pub so we agreed to join them. Really glad we did as we had a great time being shown the sights, local food and so-on by a pair of locals, whose names now escape me. It was fascinating to speak to them; highly educated people. It was like talking to Google - any question we asked was met with a comprehensive response including facts, figures and statistics! Amazingly they insisted on paying for everything - 0ur meals, taxis, the lot and it was clear we were offending them by offering to at least contribute.
Singapore came across as an exciting, vibrant place and not quite so anally retentive about cleanliness as I’d expected although there are signs everywhere stating the fine you’d have to pay if caught doing someting you shouldn’t, such as eating on public transport (S$500). The locals are all immaculately turned out. We felt like a bunch of proper scruffbags. Our tour was topped off by a cheeky toilet stop at the incredibly posh Fullerton Hotel. After going in there we were loathe to return to our hostel!
The next day we decided to check out Orchard Road, which has loads of shopping malls. Basically it seemed like Singapore was all about the shopping. No wonder everyone was so well dressed what with so many shops to choose from. Interestingly, nobody shops online in Singapore - why? Well if you live on a little island that is all but completely taken up by one city with shopping malls dotted all around the place why would you ever need anything delivered… We managed to pick up a few items of clothing to smarten ourselves up a bit, despite wincing at the price somewhat. All these shops and all the well-dressed people made me wonder if such a highly disciplined society allows itself to rack up huge credit card debts as is happening in the West?
We decided to visit Sentosa, a little island just off the South coast. We accessed it by cable car but there was also a train that closely resembles a suppository. Sentosa is the closest to countryside Singapore gets and it is highly manicured with escalators taking you up and down the hills! There’s also piped music! I tried to figure out just where this music was coming from, a hard task as it just seems to be in the air with no particular source. Eventually I found a small green dome nestled in a flowerbed that bore the brand of well known speaker manufacturer Bose on top of it!
Sentosa really was surreal. We looked around for a while, visiting the beach and what was supposedly the most southerly point in Continental Asia. We visited the Merlion which turned out to be a very tacky tourist attraction indeed. The trip back on the cable car was more interesting as a huge cruise liner had docked, so we got a great aerial view of this massive ship with all the luxuries on deck.
One night we were wandering around Singapore and noticed these strange UFO type things in the sky. As we got closer, it turned out they were in fact remote-controlled kites (with little motors and propellers on them and LED lights all along the wings). The inventors were putting on a display to publicise the product. They really looked like great fun and will probably be the next big thing next Christmas!
Just before we left we had the fantastic opportunity to meet up with Sue & Ian who we’d travelled with all that time ago from Agonda to Kerala and around! They got to hang about in Singapore with us for a few hours while waiting for their connecting flight to Australia. It was so great to see them and we just fell back into the old conversation like we’d seen each other only a few days ago, rather than a few months! They treated us to a Singapore Sling at the famous Raffles Hotel before they had to shoot off to the airport. We enjoyed every minute of their company, even Ian getting us lost on the way to the hotel!
We never went to Singapore Zoo (which is what most people ask if you say you’ve been to Singapore) and decided to head back to Malaysia as we’d seen what we wanted to see. It was certainly a big change from the Perhentian Islands and indeed anything we’d done so far. To us, Singapore is just a massive rat-race of working your arse off in a big shiny skyscraper for a big company, then giving all your pay to another big company to make sure you’re dressed nicely, whilst making sure you don’t give yet more money to the police by breaking any of the many rules. However, the people of Singapore seem happy with it and in many ways they put us lazy, decadent Westerners to shame because of how hard they work and how much they value achievement and success.
