A Pilgrimage of Sorts

I'm afraid this is another of those blogs I really should have written a few weeks ago. The passing of time dulls the memory and unfortunately the amusing little anecdotes seem always to be the first to go. Consequently I can assure you that our journey from Broome to Perth was a lot more interesting than I am about to make it sound!

That said, much of the 3000km drive is more sodding bush. Trust me, the view loses it's magic after a couple of days. The one beacon of hope was a trip to the World Heritage listed Shark Bay. Those of you from Uxbridge will most likely be unable to contain yourselves about now as you will probably have driven past the "Denham, twinned with Shark Bay Australia" sign on more than one occasion. Well I can confirm that Denham Shark Bay does in fact acknowledge us in return as you can see from the photo.

My ambassadorial role extended to me telling a bloke in the pub that I was in fact from " the other" Denham, to which he replied "Well we won't hold that against you, you pommie bastard.". Not quite the reception I had expected, but undeterred I told several other people, with the owner of the local gift shop being the only one to show any particular excitement by our visit.

Western Australia is one of the most sparsely populated areas on Earth, and when you're there it really shows. A traffic jam consists of any three cars within a radius of 200 meters of each other and a "big town" has a general store as well as a petrol station and a pub. However, almost at a flick of a switch, once you pass Geraldton about 300km north of Perth, the landscape suddenly changes from the arid scrubland that bored the hell out of us of 2500km, to a glorious land of rolling hills and perfect rainbows.

We only spent a couple of days in Perth - just enough time to wander round the shops and have one night out with an amusing German couple. We had another camper to pick up and another mammoth drive ahead...