Western Australia

[juliet]

So far, it has rained a bit, and I have had some very nice wine. And cycled 20k very slowly (due to stopping at a cave, and an Aboriginal cultural centre, and the place with the wine and some lunch), and 35k really quite fast.

Then I had to put up a tent on *deliberately placed gravel*. "There's a [somethingorother, didn't catch the word] for your tent", the campsite owner said, showing me where I was headed on a map. The somethingorother is a patch of dirt & gravel (mostly gravel) with some kind of nylon close-weave net over the top, on which you are expected to pitch your tent. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WHY. Took me 35min to put up a tent which normally takes <10min, because I could not get the *bloody* pegs in the ground. I have vibration ouch on my peg-holding hand now. Grumble.

Last night I spent being The Only Grownup In The Village, at a caravan park in Dunsborough. It is Schoolies Week, which is when every 18-yr-old in Aus, having just finished their exams & thus their school career, goes in search of a beach and quite a lot of alcohol. The caravan people said, doubtfully "I'm not sure you'll *want* to stay here, and normally we don't let anyone else in while they're here", but I assured them that sleeping in a campsite, even surrounded by inebriated teenagers, would be preferable to sleeping on the side of the road, so they charged me $14.50 and sent me over to the back of the site. The teenagers all looked at me as if I'd grown an extra head (I checked: still only the one), and I had a couple of conversations that went:
"You're - not a leaver, are you?"
"No, about 12 years too old."
whereupon polite conversations about what I was up to were held, and my tent was admired. (One lad asked how old I was, and looked quite shocked to hear the answer "30. Three-zero.". They made a hell of a racket all night but this did not bother me in the slightest, so all was well.

Nearly sunset now so I should go sort my dinner out. Off to Augusta tomorrow, & to the Cape Leeuwin lighthouse - apparently one of only 4 places in the world where 2 oceans meet. A long day though - I'm not stopping at Augusta but heading 20k or so inland, to a national park campsite which has only cold showers. HORRORS.

Comments

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

wait, i can think of more than four, easy! although it does involve the artic ocean, which might be cheating...

cape of good hope (atlantic and indian)
tiera del fuego (atlantic and pacific)
this one (hold on, i don't remember there being a "southern ocean" when i did geography????)
somewhere round indonisia (pacific and indian)
baring straits (pacific and artic)
somewhere above iceland (atlantic and artic)

also if we're having "southern" ocean, it must join to the atlantic and pacific somewhere, right?

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

also, bless the kids, obv :) you should've fixed the site owner with a steely glare and said "ten years of glastonbury mate, i can sleep through anything" ;)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I was just about to say something about Noisy Kids >>>>> New Bands Tent On Friday Morning With Perry Hangover...

[juliet]

Noisy Kids have a lot less bass to them, I find.

[juliet]

Heh, I did say to Ver Kids who came to talk to me (when they said "er, I hope you'll sleep OK...") that it would be pleasantly reminiscent of festivals. They did not seem to recognise the name "Glastonbury".

(Glastonbury; also the Marks & Spencers loading bay I lived opposite in 1st year. BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP this vehicle is reversing every morning at 5am... only woke me up for the first 3 mornings, thereafter no problem. I adapt even faste r these days.)

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Indonesia doesn't really count, as there are some fairly well delineated seas between the Indian and Pacific oceans all the way from Singapore to Australia. Not keen on this Southern Ocean business, but I suppose the join points with the Indian/Atlantic and Atlantic/Pacific would be Capes Horn and Good Hope. This also gets round the tip of Graham Land being a boundary point. The Arctic and Atlantic are divided by the Greenland Sea, but TBH, the Arctic is kind of a wack ocean as well, being well tiny by the standards of the three big ones, and being much more connected to the Atlantic than the Pacific. Might as well call the North Sea the German Ocean.

[juliet]

Had they invented Australia when you did geography? ;-)

I have 0 idea, when I did geography we didn't do where-places-are type geography. Instead we did people-type geography, and some stuff about glaciers which I have mostly forgotten.

My geography in the where-places-are sense remains appalling; I'm quite impressed that I managed to navigate myself halfway round the world, except that in practice I relied on trains which are nice and straightforward and do not require you to know much about where you're going. I suspect my Australian geography is now better than my UK geography, which is a bit shaming; despite fernasto's best efforts I still have only the vaguest idea of where Manchester is. Other than "about 2h30 out of Euston", that is.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

Do Young Persons count as another beast for yr Australian beastwatch?

[juliet]

I'm certainly not bringing any of them home for you!

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

That's ok. Just the koalas will do.