Tropical Living

 Well we're back in Darwin, we both got our old jobs back more or less (Rachael's job is a bit different this time), and so we're living the dream in the top end.
 We drove the bus back up here and stayed in the bus for a while, but now we've finally sold it (a big turning point in our lives) and we're staying in an apartment with a friend until we can save enough to buy a house (or maybe a bigger bus)...

 Solar Cars in Darwin - Having the most sunlight of anywhere in Australia every year the solar cars kick off their race to Adelaide from Darwin. We watched them go down the highway which was pretty cool. They look like heaps of fun racing them down the Stuart Hwy. Some of them apparently can get up to 110Km/hr, we didn't notice any doing that when we got stuck behind them in traffic...

Frilled Necked Lizard I found when I was climbing up a mango tree. It's mango season at the moment, and I'm loving the free mangoes growing everywhere

 Kakadu Plums. They are growing everywhere at the moment with the wet season starting. I'm trying to learn about bush foods and am finding a few just cycling around the bush around Darwin. It's good living in the tropics. Kakadu plums (or Billy goat plums) don't taste too bad (a bit dry though).

 Magpie geese on an oval - you might have to zoom on this photo to see them all. These are an annual visitor to the NT, and they have a lot of character. You usually see them hanging around mango trees eating the fruit falling to the ground. There are literally thousands of them. They are a tasty bird as well, a lot of people eat them during magpie goose season. Apparently some aboriginal people got admitted to hospital recently because they were shooting magpie geese with lead buckshot and not picking it out properly and had to get all the lead removed surgically, and were admitted with lead poisoning.

 Brian the snake getting his mexican hat on

More of Brian getting legless on vodka

The shittiest solar car I saw on the day. It cracks me up, it was only going about 40Km/Hr, makes you think it might be possible to enter your own car into the race if you didn't mind travelling 3000Km's at 40Km/hr

 Another crappy looking solar car (I really liked the shitty backyard cars)

 Tawny frogmouth hanging out in the walk in aviary at the Territory wildlife park

Freshwater croc hanging with a turtle

Wild Guava - one of the bush tucker plants growing naturally around Darwin. Not nearly as good as a real guava, but still a cool plant to find growing around the place

Not much new is happening really, we're just hanging in Darwin. I got a new push bike last weekend and had a crack at riding some of the tracks around Darwin, it was really good. Some people in Darwin complain that there isn't anything to do in Darwin, but there is always HEAPS to do, you just have to try something different if you start getting bored. We're playing a lot of sports too (soccer and netball) and probably drinking too much (which comes with the territory). Lifes pretty good.

Darwin to Uluru

 We've really been having a good time since the last time I wrote on the blog. But, after looking through my camera I've realised I've been really slack at taking photos. And now there are some massive gaps in our travels, so I'll have to pull out some Pulitzer descriptive writing to compensate...
 So far, I have dispensed with the PhD, a very unresponsive supervisor and a lack of funding have made that a waste of 6 months, also we've decided to settle in Darwin. We love that city, and it doesn't make sense to live anywhere else.

 So, after living on the sunshine coast for a while, (not a bad area, but a bit too busy, and with lousy surf). We headed back up to Darwin, where I worked for a while, and did all the usual stuff. Which was great.
 Then we headed on a road trip down the centre, through Douglas Daly hot springs, Mataranka hot springs, Edith falls, Litchfield national park, the Devils Marbles, Kings Canyon and Uluru.
 I really wanted to go back to the Flinders ranges and climb st Mary's peak and see the area after some rain, but we ran out of time...

 Hyso with a fresh caught mud crab

Banded Sea Krait swimming around in the mangroves 

I'm not sure whether this is a type of banded sea krait, but I'm pretty sure. I think it was a bit lost in the shallow water

 

Mindil Beach Sunset - Darwin showing off

 

Mud Crab Round up - There were too many crabs, and a bunch of them escaped. We ended up giving a few to some nearby Aboriginal women, they were stoked

 Walking the mudflats

Mud Crab

 Cooberpedie - A really weird town, its pretty cool, most of the buildings are underground, its a bit depressed though, not much going on..

 Kings Canyon - Absolutely stunning landscape

 Kings Canyon

 Cliff jumping at Darwin

 Uluru at Sunrise - We got up at about 5:30 in the morning to get out to Uluru before the sunrise. Except when we got there it was completely overcast, we couldn't even see the sunrise...

 Mudcrab Cook Up - There was a big mob of Aboriginal people, these ladies were cooking a huge pot of pippies. They were pretty happy to throw some crabs on the fire too

 Banded Sea Krait from above

Beach Stone Curlews - You might have to click on this photo to see them properly. I've never seen them before, but they are just an even cooler version of stone curlews who come out during the day. I really like Curlews, they are very cool birds

Doglas Daly Hot Springs - One of my favourite stops in the Northern Territory. I took this photo in the morning when the mist off the river is best, but my camera died on the first shot, just after squeezing this off the wind whipped the steam up into two steam whirlwinds which looked really cool. I gotta get a new camera one day

Golden Trevally - I went spearfishing with a few guys off Moreton Island while on the Sunshine Coast, we didn't get any great fish, it was pretty murky, but one guy got the big Trevally which was pretty cool.

 

Devils Marbles - I took this photo off some website, my camera was dead when we headed through the Devils Marbles, but it was a really nice spot to stop, a Dingo (3/4 Dingo 1/4 Dog really) came into the camp as well which was cool

That's everything that was in my camera. In the future I might be heading to Tamworth, or to the Torres Straight Islands until a job opens up in Darwin. Time will tell.

 As far as the Lemon is concerned, we drove the old girl down from Brisbane recently, and while we were driving at night with the headlights on the volt meter was dropping really fast. So I assumed the alternator must finally be cactus (I've wanted to replace it for ages) so we drove down to the Blue Mountains during the day (and relied on the solar panels for power), then we got down and I went to take the alternator out to get a new one, and found out the alternator belt had loosened off somehow... It would have been good to know that earlier..

 Anyway, we are stationary for a bit, so I'm getting to do all the jobs I've wanted to do on the Lemon. We've emptied it out and repacked everything, and tomorrow I'm finally going to get on top of some rust which has been developing. I've also finally fixed the mystery oil leak, it was a small leak in the oil pressure switch, it was a nice easy fix for a change

 

The east coast

 The trip has ended now, we've done the full lap, but we're still going to head out on smaller trips in the future, and hopefully do another lap one day. This is why I've been so slack with the blog. Writing this last post puts a definite full stop on the trip..
 The whole idea of doing the trip around Australia while we were young and mortgage free was so that we could go somewhere else like Europe for our grey nomad years where it wouldn't be so physically demanding.
 That being said, after doing the trip all I can think about is getting back to the NT and west coast. So hopefully this is more of an ellipsis. There are already plans in the works to get back up to Darwin for territory day, so that's something.

 Anyway, after hanging out with family in Tassie, we stuck around in Hobart for a bit, we went to the Taste festival, we did the mt wellington walk, we headed out and kayaked down the Picton river and then we  headed up the east coast of Tasmania to Bicheno for new years, and to see the penguins coming to shore.

The boat 'Hot Prospect' coming in from the Launceston to Hobart. Most of the people we met at the boat club (Including Richard who let us stay at his place) were on this boat. They did pretty well apparently

These are some street performers who were down for taste festival. They were really happy and friendly guys

 This was a really bad idea for new years, Bicheno was dead quiet, the only people on the beach were a few drunk teenagers... But the penguins were pretty cool, they were everywhere.
 The locals are a bit ambivalent about them, some of them even complain because they nest under their houses and stink like fish. Being tourists though, we loved them..

Penguins making their way home from at Bicheno. They come in really late. Apparently if they don't come in after dark then seagulls and other birds will dive bomb them until they throw up the fish they caught

 After Bicheno we headed over to mainland Australia again. We got in pretty late (about 7:30) and decided to drive all the way over to the east coast from Melbourne that night.
 This would have been fine, except we haven't had to drive anywhere at night for a really long time.
 After it started to get dark I put the headlights on and everything was fine, we drove for like an hour with no problems, then we noticed people were flashing us from behind.
 Everything seemed fine from our end, but after stopping, the rear of the bus had no lights on at all, every park and brake light was out...

 So we free camped in a really crappy neighbourhood for the night and then headed off the next day in daylight.
 We eventually hit the east coast, and a really nice spot (mystery bay) in NSW and I managed to diagnose the problem.
 It was actually two problems; the brake light switch had a plug at the bottom of it bumped loose somehow (that was easy to diagnose and fix,  ...who knows how long we didn't have brake lights for...)
 The parking light problem took AGES, following every wire, pulling apart the headlight switch and drawing up a wiring diagram for the circuit, in the end it turned out it was a bad connection in one of the fuses... I actually checked they were all working and there was no resistance across any of them, but didn't check they had connected across the terminals properly. Rookie mistake...
 It was so simple, but took so long.. Its always the way. I think we hadn't had park lights since all the way back at Karratha when we had a bad earth. It shows how often we had driven around at night.

  After Mystery bay we headed to Canberra. We went from batemans bay and headed up the steepest hill I have ever seen in the country. It just kept going up and up, it made the hills in the blue mountains seem like a joke. The bus handled it really well though. I'm super proud of her.
 There we met up with one of Rachaels old friends and had a good weekend playing board games.

 Then we headed (via the flat route) to my mum's place in the blue mountains to do some hardcore bus maintenance. The old girl has got a lot of scratches and chips on her journey and so she needed some tlc. We totally sanded the old girl back and resprayed her. We didn't bother using 2 pac this time and just went with enamel paint. Its less than a third the price, and if we have to respray her anyway after using 2 pac I figure why bother.
 While we were there we lived it up for a while in the Blue Mountains as well, canyoning, liloing and bushwalking.

 Then we headed up to the sunshine coast where I've started doing a PhD on sea sponges, which is really interesting. I'm really enjoying it, Its a strange feeling being excited to go to work every day. We'll see how long it lasts.
 Now we're gonna stay on the sunshine coast for a while, and probably won't update the blog for a while until heading up to Darwin next. Its a pretty nice place, we've only been here a few weeks but we're both liking it alot.

 Here's some photos;

 Liloing down mount wilson river -  A very nice trip

Climbing out of a cave in split rock near Lithgow

 

A rock slide on one of the canyon trips

 The view from inside split rock - Its actually split into three sections but hard to photograph

 Some glow worms inside on of the caves - I tried to take a photo of them all with the flash off but it wouldn't work...

My Mum Canyoning

 Scmick looking new bus, with its brand spanking sr400 motorbike (a gift from my Mum) on the back. This photo doesn't do justice to the 2 weeks which were spent fastidiously sanding back every imperfection, chip and scratch in the buses paint before respraying it. She looks great now.

That is all for now.

 As far as lemon news is concerned I've noticed a bit of an oil leak from the engine, only it doesn't come out of anywhere... its an intermittent leak which sprays the engine housing under load (but not always). I've been trying for ages to find out where its coming from but I can't figure it out.

 I'm down to 2 options, its either through the threads of the bolts which hold the fuel pump on (which apparently often cause an intermittent leak like this in reconditioned red motors like ours (because they aren't sealed well after reconditioning)), OR its from the oil filter, for some reason there is a z303 filter on there, when it takes a z300! I'm not sure if it matters too much, they look the same, but the last mechanic to touch it might be at fault here (as usual).

 More to follow in about 6 months I guess...

Geelong, Melbourne to Tasmania

The southern half of Australia has been pretty impressive so far, and Melbourne and Tasmania haven't let down this half of the country. The weather has been absolutely shit though...

 We stayed in Geelong a couple of days, this was a really nice town, and reminded me a lot of Newcastle, except way colder. We had a good time there, and visited the Australian wool museum. That sounds really boring, but it was actually really really cool, and the people running it were really friendly.

 Then we hit Melbourne for about 4 days, which was fantastic. We blew heaps of money on food and clothes, that city has a lot to offer, public transport is excellent there and it has a great feel to it. Definitely in my top 3 favourite capital cities.

 After that we headed over to Tasmania on the Spirit of Tasmania car ferry. The ferry ride surprised me a bit, you got a nice room with nice beds, a shower, there were 2 bars a games room and lounges and a theaterette. It was actually really nice, way better than flying over.

 We're in Tasmania now, and we've spent most of our time at Pirate Bay with family, which is on the south east of the island on the Tasman peninsula. We've also done some tourist things in Hobart as well (headed to Mona and the local markets and shops and junk), but it's the national parks around Tasmania we're really interested in. We managed to paddle out to a local fur seal colony on the Tasman peninsula off fortesque bay, this was a great spot to visit. It's not advertised at all but is definitely worth doing. You can either kayak out from fortesque bay, or you can walk out to cape hauy which is a 2 hr walk and then at the end scramble down the cliffs and swim the narrow channel over to the seals if you don't have a kayak. Either way its definitely worth doing, swimming with seals is becoming one of my favourite things to do, they have so much energy its contagious.

 The freezing cold city of Hobart from above - the temperature reached 25 degrees and that was meant to be a warm day. This is in summer.... That's just atrocious weather

Fat car at the Mona art gallery - There were so many cool artworks in there but my camera ran out of battery after this photo (I don't learn). It was a really cool (and disturbing) place. Some of the artworks just looked like regular junk though

 Some tasmanian devils fighting in the Tasman devil park. This was an excellent place to visit, Tasmanian devils were so funny, they'd be fighting one minute, then sleeping the next. Funniest animals ever.

 Tasmanian Devil - It looks ferocious but its actually yawning

 Tasmanian Devils eating dead wallaby - They are carrion eaters, and they can eat a big chunk of meat and bones amazingly quickly. It was pretty impressive

 A live wallaby getting pats from Rachael - Very cute animal. I don't know why you can't have wallaby's as pets in Australia, if you could then maybe all the feral cats and dogs wouldn't be such a problem. You can't really get feral wallabies running around.

 Tawny Frogmouth

Another Tasmanian devil (I went a bit crazy on devil photo's, they were just hilarious animals)

Box fish - We went for an obligatory scuba dive with eaglehawk dive centre, I'm liking scuba diving less and less every time I go out.

Leafy sea dragon with a bunch of eggs - I think the female keeps the eggs, but then the male keeps the kids maybe? something like that

Southern rock lobster (they are still called crayfish in Tasmania) - some would argue the best tasting lobster in the world

Spotted quolls at the tasmanian devil park - very funny animals, the keeper guy went in to feed them and one jumped right up to his hand and bit him. He was not impressed.

Pirate Bay on the Tasman Peninsula

Pirate skull - I'm not sure if this is why pirate bay is called pirate bay, the scuba guy had never heard of this, but the rocks in the cliff look just like a giant skull.

If you went in, there was a bit of a blowhole under the chin which would probably be pretty cool in a big swell.

Fur seal showing off off of fortesque bay, There were some scuba jerks swimming around at the seal colony and the seals were doing laps around them, they were so slow in all their scuba gear. It was a good feeling swimming around them just snorkeling.

 Freediving is definitely the way to see seals, they are really fast and there is no way you could keep up with all the gear you have to wear to scuba dive.

Sea cliffs - At the end of the cliffs you can see two small rocks out at sea, in between the last two rocks is where the seal colony is.

Kayaking out to the fur seal colony

Southern Stargazer - apparently we were lucky to see this fish when we went scuba diving, I'm very glad we got to see one, you don't get them up north. Weird looking fish.

 

 

 

 Fur seal scratching
 

Thats everything so far, as far as the lemon is concerned we haven't had any new problems, I don't want to say it, but maybe the old girl has stopped breaking down (famous last words there...) Tasmania is pretty hilly and winding so we've been going really slowly, and really pissing off the locals...

 Otherwise everything is going fine, we're parked at the local boat club at the moment, it's an interesting place, full of a lot of interesting salty characters. They are all happy for us to park here as long as we want so we'll probably park here for a while as a base while we see the rest of Tasmania.