Perth & Western Australia: The Pinnacles, Quokkas and Giant Trees

Perth may be one of the world’s most isolated major cities, but Western Australia is anything but empty.

In this episode, Malcolm returns to 1997, when he travelled from Singapore to spend two weeks with friends living near Scarborough Beach. Dave wasn’t on the trip, so he supplies the questions, reactions and occasional disbelief as Malcolm retraces his journeys around Perth and across Western Australia.

The adventure begins in laid-back Perth, beside the Swan River and its black swans, before heading to Rottnest Island for beaches, cycling and an introduction to the island’s famously friendly quokkas.

Travelling south brings an unexpectedly green side of Australia: forests, vineyards, wildlife and the Margaret River wine region. In Pemberton, Malcolm tackles the Gloucester Tree—climbing towards its former fire lookout using metal pegs spiralling around the trunk. Going up is one thing; getting down while other people are climbing towards you proves rather more alarming.

The landscape changes again heading north. Malcolm visits the strange limestone formations of the Pinnacles Desert before undertaking the much longer drive towards Shark Bay and Monkey Mia. Along the way are Shell Beach, wild dolphins and the extraordinary stromatolites of Hamelin Pool—living structures offering a glimpse of some of the earliest life on Earth.

There are also small hire cars, enormous distances, an improvised roadside repair and a confusing encounter with an Australian speeding ticket.

Malcolm finishes by recalling later visits to Perth, including watching Ashes cricket at the old WACA Ground, before he and Dave consider whether Western Australia should feature on a modern Australian itinerary.

Places and subjects mentioned

•  Perth and Scarborough Beach 
•  Swan River and Perth city centre 
•  Rottnest Island and quokkas 
•  Margaret River and Western Australian wine 
•  Pemberton and the Gloucester Tree 
•  The Pinnacles and Nambung National Park 
•  Shark Bay and Monkey Mia 
•  Shell Beach 
•  Hamelin Pool stromatolites 
•  Western Australian wildlife 
•  Driving distances and road trips in Western Australia 
•  The WACA Ground and Ashes cricket

If you have any question on this or another travel topic, just contact us at contact.unraveltravel@gmail.com

Our theme music is Traveler's Blues by Jerzy Gorecki from Pixabay (with licence)

https://pixabay.com/users/jerzyg%C3%B3recki-2233926/

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:09

Welcome to Unravel Travel. Where every journey has a story.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

So there are these white lines across the road, painted across the road, every kilometre or something. And I got pulled over by this police car. I think it might be coming into Gerald's town. There was a policeman at the side of the road and he just waved us down and said, You've been speeding. I said, Well, I haven't, you know, I've just come to the city. He's only got three cylinders, officer. And two of them were only working. And he said, No, we have aerial speed checks. There's a plane up there, and they time you between the white lines. Yeah, I guess that was where it was going. So he said you were speeding like 50 miles back. The Gloucester tree, which I might have mentioned to you at some point in the past before now. Yeah, you might have. It's a tree, that's the first thing. Really? Is it from Gloucester? No, it's not. But you might well be able to see Gloucester from the top of it. It's a very tall tree which has a fire viewing platform built into the top of it. So this platform, this sort of wire box at the top, was 53 metres off the ground. Oh yeah. And and do you want to know how do you get to the top? Ladder? How? Do you know steel bars they use in steel reinforced concrete? Yeah. Somebody's hammered one in at the bottom, and then they've gone a foot up and a foot round and hammered another one in. And a foot up and a foot round and hammered another one in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they spiral all the way to the top.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

Travelling in a fried-out combi on a hippie trail, head full of zombie, I met a strange lady, she made me nervous. She took me in and she gave me a breakfast. And she said I got a bit excited there, didn't I?

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Yeah. Uh I I'd just like to reassure listeners that no sandwiches were harmed in the making of this episode.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

I was gonna say, does that is that representative of your uh of your experiences? Did you meet any strange lady?

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Uh well I wouldn't call her strange, but yeah, uh, and she probably did give me breakfast. Might have had Vegemite as well.

SPEAKER_02 2:33

Actually, now I think of it. So do you do you want to tell people what this episode's about in case they haven't guessed, of course they're not from the 80s.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Um we're gonna talk about Western Australia. I mean, they've probably seen the title already, so I mean it's probably uh I've keep forgetting that they probably has clicked on the title. Yeah, good point. Anyway, do you want to kick a kick off? Yeah, well we're gonna talk about Western Australia. I don't think you've been to Australia, have you, Dave? No, I haven't. Alright. Um I've been to Australia as I think I mentioned in our travelling for for business episode quite a few times, you know, in a private capacity as well as for business. And Perth, you know, it's uh it's not really very close to anywhere, but if you live in Singapore, it's relatively close. So I went in for for the first time in ninety-seven while I was working in Singapore. I didn't get that much time off, but I managed to get myself nearly two weeks off, or maybe it was two weeks, it's a bit lost in the mist of time, in nineteen ninety-seven, and I thought I'd go and visit my friends Neil and Penny, who emigrated from Oxford about eighteen months, two years beforehand. I've mentioned before where I booked a flight to Sydney. I wondered if it was this trip, yeah. So, you know, I I was I mean, I'd I was obviously living in Singapore, but relatively new to booking independent travel at the time, so that was a close call. Wouldn't have been such a close call if you'd have gone ahead with it. No, that's that's true. Yeah, because uh Perth is nearer to Jakarta than it is to Sydney Sydney. It could have gone to Indonesia instead. Yeah, so it would have been a pretty colossal cock-up, I think it's fair to say.

SPEAKER_02 4:29

We've all been there where we didn't get paid quite so much, so you know, free accommodation's not a bad thing, especially if you like the people you're staying with.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Yeah, well, I wouldn't go as far as to say that. Okay, that means we can't afford it the TRX friends to listen to the side. I'm only joking.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

They know I'm only joking. I mean, it also means that you get shown the sort of right places, you know, they'd already been there for 18 months, two years, so they knew the lie of the land and a load of interesting places to go to. So that made it meant I packed a load in to a sh relatively short period of time. So they lived on Scarborough Beach, which is a sort of north Perth suburb, almost outside Perth at the time. Uh Perth's probably grown a bit since then, so it might might be a bit more surrounded by now. And a little house just up from the beach, all very Australian and scenic. It was sort of winter time in Australia. I remember people walking around in coats and strange, strange things like that. You know, and we were going dipping in the sea and everyone else was studding their coats on the beach, shaking their heads, looking like we were mad, you know, that sort of that sort of thing. But it seemed quite warm compared to the North Sea. We just sort of initially just explored Perth City, just you know, went to some park, mooched around the city centre. It's rather strangely, it's built on the s well, it's built on a sort of lake. There's a big harbour just uh in from the the sort of sea, and then uh a river heading off in in country, the Swan River, and it has black swans. Ah, first ones you'd seen? Yes, the first ones I've s seen, and they only come from Australia, black swans. Oh, is that right? Didn't know that. Yeah, only from sort of the southern region of Australia, so sort of Perth and across the bottom round to sort of Adelaide, that bit. I mean that's a big bit, but but that's yeah, they originate from there. They had one at Blenham Palace for a while, which I think was a gift from the Australian government.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

Yeah, I've seen them in England. I had no idea that they were actually Aussies, though.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

So there you go. Black Swans. So yeah, we had a a look around Perth and did all those sorts of things, and it's quite nice. It's uh it's got a funny sort of vibe to it because it's so isolated. I mean, you know it's isolated, so I don't know if that affects you know how you I was gonna ask Australia as a whole, how does it feel?

SPEAKER_02 6:47

Because obviously it's not European, but it's predominantly well, maybe not so much now, but was predominantly um European inhabitants, or at least originating. But that's probably so far in the past now, it's probably got its own vibe going on, I would imagine.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

Well, I would say it's a bit different, even though Perth is closer to Asia than than the other side. I would say Brisbane, which is the other place I've spent a lot of time, on the other side, definitely has a and Melbourne uh have a more Asian type feel than there's certainly more Asian restaurants and people around, I would say, than there were than I remember seeing in Perth. Yeah. Um it may be that I was living in Singapore at the time and therefore I didn't notice that particularly. Well maybe that could have something to do with it. But uh it seemed uh a bit more European, and certainly the feel of the place is as we'll come on to getting out of Perth uh in a little while and how the scenery and stuff changes. But it does have a sort of isolated feel to it, and maybe a sort of robustness or something like that, you know, a sort of uh the rest of Australia I always think of as being a bit brash, maybe. Really?

SPEAKER_02 7:54

No, who could have thought that? I've got to say I do love I mean, I've not been to Australia as we said at the outset, but I do love AZ um Aussie uh dramas. Do you uh there's a cer yeah, there's a certain as you say, the brashness can be appealing at times.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:10

Are you thinking of Priscilla Queen of the Desert or No, as I was thinking no, I don't know which ones I was thinking of, but there's been some good uh Aussie horrors as well. I've re-watched the Nick Cave documentary at the weekend since we went to see him. Uh and he talks about an Aussie's uh get up and go sort of thing attitude, which seems pr pretty accurate, I would say, from that those that I have met. I've always actually quite got on with Aussies.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Yeah, I would say so. I I think there's a sort of calm sort of self-confidence about Australia and and I would say particularly I think more about the the Perth side, just you know, you've got to be prepared to get on and do things, don't you? I mean it's Perth is a city of two million people now, but I think it was smaller than that. You know, this is thirty years ago nearly when I was there the first time. So we looked around Perth in terms of Australian culture. I had one enjoyable moment. There was a England we're playing Australia because it was at the summer in England at the same time. There was a test match going on, an Asher's test. And I mean I was you know very into following all that sort of thing then, and I noticed that England were doing particularly well and very likely to win the game. And but of course there's no internet around at that sort of time, really, or not very easily. So I went into several shops. I took the opportunity to go into several shops and said, excuse me, mate, you didn't know what's going on the test. This was every five minutes, was it? I did it two or three times and uh uh and got that sort of look that made me think.

SPEAKER_02 9:43

Did you put on your best excuse me, sir? I didn't ask a waiter that wasn't a very good one, but a very posh English accent.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

I certainly didn't ask a waiter before he brought me my dinner, that's for certain. So they this was sort of slightly out of Perth, and there's a port nearby. We went to see an aquarium and stuff, and then we got we went out on a day to Rot Ness, which is an island just off the coast of Perth. It's Rot Nest Island, R O D, and it was named by some Dutch explorer.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

Oh, I was gonna say it sound sounded German, but close enough.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Yeah, uh f the there are these quakers they're called, which are like sort of small marsupials, I think. And uh well they probably are marsupials, and but they look like giant rats, and the guy thought it was uh uh an island populated by giant rats. Rats nest. Yeah. But it's an interesting little island. We went out there and did some snorkelling, you know. A lot of people from Perth go out there and you know you can cycle around and stay, and there's probably a golf course on it and stuff like that. But it was um yeah, that was quite nice, and people do. My kids have been back to Perth since and they all went there. It's the sort of thing people do when they go to Perth. And you know, it's a little bit off the coast, you have to get a ferry out there, so it's a sort of day trip, which is quite nice.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

Always like a boat ride.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

Yeah, yeah, it's good. Uh and there's plenty of coast around there, so good. And I remember the snorkeling being quite good. But again, we I think did we we might have hired some half wet suits. But there were people on the you know, people on the beach with woolly hats on and coats and gloves shaking their heads at us looking what mad English people.

SPEAKER_02 11:25

Yeah. What was I I I don't expect you to remember exactly, but roughly what was the temperature that they were woolly hatting.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

It was probably 20 degrees, I should think. That's what I was thinking.

SPEAKER_02 11:36

It's a bit like Africa when they're always wearing woolly hats, and you go, Yeah, this is boiling. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

So th uh that was sort of Perth, and then uh we did a few trips away from Perth, uh initially heading down towards Albany. So Perth's sort of located on the Western Australian shoreline, sort of I think three quarters of the way down, and uh and you sort of Albany's sort of slightly around the corner onto the bottom coast, but only just a little bit. But you head south of Perth and you could almost be in Europe, it's just big forested areas, it's almost like Bavaria with these obviously native trees, they're not planted by Europeans, they've got their own particular uh tree types, but but uh it it's r it it just has that sort of big forested feel of a of a Central European location. You know, you could be in parts of Czech or something, and then sporadically dotted around. Well, certainly when you get down towards sort of Margaret River, lots of vineyards and fruit tree plantations. You think of Australian wine as being Hunter Valley on the other side, but Margaret River is the sort of main area on the in Western Australia and it's you know quite a good wine growing area, so there are lots of big vineyards and things like that. So it has a uh like I say, a sort of strangely familiar feel if you're a Western European. Yeah. I would say. Yeah, I thought it would. I mean, you know, obviously I I was there in sort of Western European temperatures because it's the Australian winter, it might feel quite different in the Australian summer.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

Were you wearing your safari suit? Uh no, I don't think so. Pith helmet, you're suggesting stuff like that. No, just a nice khaki outfit. Actually, it's not they're not khaki, are they? Khaki's green. I always think of khaki as brown, but anyway.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Yeah, I know what you mean. That sort of sandy desert, big shape.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

Exactly. That's the one. Ice cold in Alexander.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Uh we went down to Bunbury, which is a town down the coast, and stayed somewhere there and did a sort of a saf a safari.

SPEAKER_02 13:51

Do you see lots of kangaroos?

SPEAKER_01 13:53

We saw, yeah, kangaroos and you know, fruit bats and stuff like that. It was a sort of evening safari. It was it was just a guided tour, really. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

But it was quite I've never seen a kangaroo in the wild, obviously, so you know, it'd be one to tick off, wouldn't it?

SPEAKER_01 14:08

Yeah, definitely. It it's um it was quite nice, you know, interesting. And then cooked up um Billy Can tea. You know, we sat on the beach at the end with uh what's that thing Australians make famously? The sort of bread with lard, I think, on a hot rock, you know, something like that. Anyway, so we did that. That was quite sort of nice, different thing. I don't know how many people he normally takes out, but it was only the three of us went with him. Um so I don't I guess it's well out of season for normal touristy things. And then we headed down further towards Margaret River, and like I say, we did a a vineyard tour. It was the first time I'd done that, you know, a wine tasting, and but but this is very different to the ones I've done in Czech. It was a sort of proper industrial scale commercial vineyard, right? Big stainless steel tanks and you know, loads of people sat doing a wine tasting, not very intimate experience. What was the wine night though? It was great. I wasn't driving, so so it was fantastic. You'd forgotten, didn't you? Well, no, I think I think I mentioned the wine when we did wine tasting in check that I'd been to one in Australia.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

Ah, okay, in which case I'd forgotten.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

But yeah, it was good and I bought some wine and took it back with me to Singapore. I wasn't particularly a wine drinker, I'd say, at that time, more a beer drinker, probably. But uh but I enjoyed the experience. And Margaret River itself's quite a charming little town. The thing it has which is of particular significance, or the thing that stuck in my memory, was uh the Gloucester tree, which I might have mentioned to you at some point in the past before now. Yeah, you might have. It's a tree, that's the first thing. Really? Is it from Gloucester? No, it's not but you might well be able to see Gloucester from the top of it. It's a very tall tree which has a fire viewing platform built into the top of it, which is like a big metal cage. Yeah. And peop because there are fires in that area, probably not at that time of year, but when it's really hot and dry, and it's obviously not particularly well populated, they get people up these tall trees into these fire viewing cages, and then they can see if there's a fire somewhere and direct people towards it. Oh, okay. So it this is I mean, it's still there and active, but I guess it's from an earlier time.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Yeah, you you'd use drones or whatever now, but yeah, I don't think you have mentioned that, or if you I I don't remember it anyway.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

So this platform, this sort of wire box at the top, was fifty-three metres off the ground. Oh yeah. So it's six that's about sixteen stories up. The tree was that high. God. No, the tree's higher than that, obviously. The tree's like sixty odd metres. Not on the top, so yeah. Yeah. So those big pines around the cabin that come down, I mean, they're 25 metres, 30 metres max. Yeah. So, you know, these are significant trees. I mean, big those big, big old oaks, you know, four or five people might not get their arms around it, that sort of stuff. And and do you want to know how do you get to the top? Ladder? How? Do you know steel bars they use in steel reinforced concrete? Yeah. Somebody's hammered one in at the bottom, yeah, and then they've gone a foot up and a foot round and hammered another one in, and a foot up and a foot round and hammered another one in, and they spiral all the way to the top of the tree. And there is no cage. Nope. I'm not sure I would have done that. Penny and nil didn't come up. Yeah, I went on my own. And honestly, the going up, not too bad.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

I was just that immediately I was jumping to how do you get down jumping to how do you get down?

SPEAKER_01 17:54

I was hoping there was some sort of absailing option or no, no, you come back down, and and if you're looking for your feet, you know, looking down below for your feet, that's very bad. You have to just sort of work out the cadence of the thing and just sort of put a foot down and find it. Yeah, yeah, you have to go down, yeah. Uh everyone goes down ladders, but I I I love people when I see them going down ladders the wrong way around.

SPEAKER_02 18:17

Oh, yeah, I know, but that that's fine for a ladder. Yeah. But this thing is spiralling.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Yeah. So you're sort of like having to reach for so you can't be looking back for your feet because that's just very disconcerting. You have to just well, and and let me just add another level of scariness for you. What happens when you meet somebody coming up or coming down?

SPEAKER_02 18:36

That's what I was thinking.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

Do they stop people going up while you're coming down and vice? There's no sort of management of it. So one of you has to go out to the end of the thing and hold holding on to it.

SPEAKER_02 18:45

I I one of you has to go out to the end.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

I mean, these poles are probably 80, 90, it doesn't matter to me to hold on to anything at that point.

SPEAKER_02 18:53

When I just done that, I definitely wouldn't have done that.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

You're holding on, obviously, with your hands and you're and you're resting with your feet, and somebody's coming down the inside of you. Oh, no thanks. So yeah. Get the shit out of me. I did that, which has stuck with me for some time since. I'm not surprised. I've got some photos somewhere. Uh I took a camera up with me. It's a hell of a long way down. I mean, just looking down, it's like I took a while before I put up the courage to come back down.

SPEAKER_02 19:24

I'd have still been there.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

And they've actually now they've actually now lowered the height of the cage. They've brought it down to about 40 metres. Uh oh yeah, that make all the difference. Yeah, yeah, because if you fall from that height, I think you've already reached terminal velocity.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Exactly. Oh well. Better man than me, Matt. You're listening to Unravel Travel on Western Australia.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

Quite close. I mean, it's all quite close to the coast, that whole bit as you go down towards Albany. And there was some really nice remote sweeping beaches. I mean, it's not particularly well populated Australia, is it? Per head of you know, density of population. Yeah. Even around those, you know, and and most people live in Western Australia, live in Perth. So these towns outside Perth, there's there's hardly anybody lives around there. And so there's some lovely beaches, big caves. I haven't looked it up, but I have a feeling that that sort of home and away might be based down there. That yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:29

Yeah, I was saying drama, not sitcom. Although I did use to watch it.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

Anyway, so if you're thinking of trying to imagine what it's like, that sort of beachy feel.

SPEAKER_02 20:40

Basically, watch home and away and you'll get to see what Malcolm saw.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

That was sort of south of Perth. So, like I say, you know, really quite a sort of European, not European level of health and safety, obviously, but a European sort of feel to it. Which is quite pleasant. I could I could definitely see myself living there, you know, quite comfortably. Lovely.

SPEAKER_02 21:02

Can I can I just say there's quite a few people that would probably put a little bit of money in a kitty to get you out there? Sorry. From several countries now. Exactly. Just none from Australia.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

And then we did some trips going north up the coast as well. We did a sort of day trip up to the pinnacles. There were sort of are are they the the best bit of Australia? There were sort of it appears on lots of the photos of Australia, maybe not quite as much as Air's Rock, but it's a similar sort of feature but on a much smaller scale. So it's a sort of desert sandy environment, but with all these lumps of rock sticking out, weathered, spiky bits of limestone. Limestone, okay. I I mean again it might be slightly better controlled now, but there was a sort of tracking just sort of drive through them. I mean you could be getting out and chipping bits off and doing whatever you wanted to. There's nobody really around. But it's quite a reasonable. Sized area of these things, and they're very sort of mysterious, weird things. They've been forming for nearly thirty thousand years, so you know they've been there a long time. If you imagine sort of an old stone circle with weathered rocks, so a natural stone circle. But totally natural, and obviously not in a circle, they're just loads of them dotted around in this sandy environment. Quite an interesting thing. So we went up and had a look at that. And then I wanted to go up and do something a bit more interesting to go to Sharks Bay, which is called that because of the sharks. Which sort of sharks? All sorts of sharks. Did you go swimming? Uh I went paddling. Yeah. That's enough. That's enough. I I probably went swimming, yeah. I think I did go swimming. I mean, I think they also have whale sharks up there. Okay, cool. You know, I think uh because you saw whale sharks in the Philippines, didn't you? I did, yeah. And uh they're probably available off Indonesia as well. You know, you're not that far from as we just said earlier, it's the same bit of sea.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

Yeah, yeah. You can see them in Thailand as well. They're all over there.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

That's the Indian Ocean that butts up against the side of Perth. Uh they have Dougons and manatees there as well. Dougons, yeah, manatees.

SPEAKER_02 23:17

I've gone to see Dougons in uh the Philippines, but I was I wasn't feeling brilliant, so I didn't didn't go in the end, which is a bit of a shame, but you know, thought something to do in the future. So do you see that? Do you go swimming with the?

SPEAKER_01 23:28

Well we no, we went to the I mean they're properly wild, so we went to a place where you can often see you can see the sort of kelp beds, you know, where they're or the the seagrass beds where they're feeding from a sort of high cliff. So the water's so so clear that you can see down into it and you you you know to a place where you should be able to see them if they're there, and but we couldn't see them. Oh well, yeah, you went but still you had a go. But this place is you look at it on a map, it's quite amusing. It's 775 kilometres from Perth to Sharks Bay, yeah. Which sounds like quite a long way, but it doesn't look like very far on a map of Australia. Ah, a couple of thumbs. Yeah, basically, you feel like you've driven forever and you've you know hardly moved. So if I mean there were no sat naves then, but it wasn't particularly difficult to navigate because it's just the main highway uh and it's pretty much straight, of course.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

And was that given that's Sharks Bay, was that more or less following the coast, or were you going more into the interior?

SPEAKER_01 24:33

No, it was more or less following the coast, although at times we were probably 50-60 kilometres from the coast, and at times we were yeah. That's still on the coast, though, isn't it? But it does get into properly sort of what feels like desert like Australia. Sketchy, red don't break down kangaroos, don't don't break down. So I think it was probably the first time I'd ever hired a car. Right, okay. Like ever hired a car. Yeah. I didn't really have very much money, so I just went to the higher car place in in Poland.

SPEAKER_02 25:02

Give me the cheapest thing you've got.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Oh the cheapest thing you've got. It was a three-cylinder. It was a Japanese car, three cylinders it had. Nice. So it was a cheap engine. I mean, you know, three cylinders, so they're sort of balanced in a some sort of slightly strange arrangement. Uh I I don't I didn't know they made three cylinder cars. I mean, probably in Eastern Europe they did for a while, but but anyway, and it was just Penny and I that went, Neil needed the car he was working while we went up there. So we got we went we went all the way 775 kilometres in a day. I didn't think we were quite going to make it at one point because the the car started making some horrible noise and performing very poorly. So we stopped in the middle of nowhere, one of these cartoon classic roads, you know, straight and long and disappearing to the horizon, you know, over a couple of you know, like like like it would have been um what's it the next car that's passing is three days' time. Well, yeah, uh and we pulled over at the side of one of these roads, you know, uh and I had popped the bonnet and uh luckily I noticed one of the HT leads had come off the spot. Okay, yeah. It had boun it had bounced off, so I just pushed it back on and we were off again. Phew to great to great relief all round because that's um you're a long way from anywhere. Um and you know, you pass you know towns or settlements once you get out of the area around Perth. I mean there's Geraldstown, which is a fairly big town on the way through, but other than that, very you don't see very much. You see these big road trains. I mean now there's more train lines because it's it's big sort of mineral extraction, iron ore and stuff up that part of the world. Uh you see past these big lorry trains. Uh and I got nicked for speeding.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

So that happened to you in Czech as well.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

Yeah. I mean I've not I've been. Wanted on how many continents for speeding? I haven't been nicked for speeding in England since 1996. Well, that's still three. Well two continents, two continents. So there were these white lines across the road, painted across the road, yeah every kilometre or something. And I got pulled over by this police car. I think it might be coming into Gerald's town. There was a policeman at the side of the road and he just waved us down and said, You've been speeding. I said, Well, I haven't, you know, I've just come back.

SPEAKER_02 27:21

He's only got three cylinders, officer.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

And two of them were only working. Uh and he said, No, we have aerial speed checks. There's a plane up there, and they time you between the white lines. Yeah, I guess that was where it was going. So he said you were speeding like 50 miles back, and they just radio in there's a small blue Japanese car coming, and uh just pull him over. I mean, they didn't find me, he just gave me a warning, said, Look, we'll be checking for you further on. You couldn't have been doing much over the speed limit anyway, could you? No, probably a hundred kilometres an hour, and I'm thinking I've got 775 kilometres to do, and there's no traffic, and it's a dead straight road. Yeah, I'm gonna drive faster than the speed limit for sure. So but yeah, so so that was entertaining. The other thing about Sharks Bay, I think we stayed there for two nights and came back. I'd just like to say your dad would be proud of you getting caught speeding. There's another podcast there just to talk about those things. I I mentioned the hand feeding dolphins, that was at Shark's Bay. Oh, cool. Or I mean wild dolphins, but they've been obviously they've learnt to come into the sea and uh uh to the me deep rather than hamburgers or anything. Yeah, fish. No vegemite sandwiches. Yeah. And the other thing in that area are strum stromatolites. Okay. What's that? Which are the earliest form of life. Three and a half billion years ago they date back to. Wow. They're basically living, and if they've been around that long, can you have much of a conversation with them? Oh, we got on really well. They're they're basically a living rock, and they there are only two colonies of them left. This one in Western Australia, I mean in the very remote, remote place near Sharks Bay, and one in the Bahamas. And they're basically microscopic life, and they sort of live together and create this. It's like sort of coral type thing, but it's a solid lump of rock.

SPEAKER_02 29:28

Two things came to mind. One was coral, so it's like coral in the and then the other was the Borg. But anyway.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

So uh so I went to see those, which was interesting. I mean they didn't move very much, they didn't put on much of a show, but but it was interesting to have seen. You should have waited until it got dark. So that was sort of my first trip uh as a proper, you know, holiday tourist to Western Australia. I've then been back a few times since for work, and I went back with uh Tracy and Joe 2002. We went to sp for a week again staying with some relatives there. We went to see the uh test match um the Ashes at the Wacker in the middle of uh Perth. I don't play at the Wacker anymore, they built a new ground out of the city. A Western Australian Cricket Association, famous, bouncy, difficult uh place to play cricket. Yeah. Uh we had tickets for the first two days of the test, and uh we didn't bother with tickets for the third day, and it was over before lunch on the third day. England got absolutely annihilated. So you weren't going into that many shops to ask what the score was.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

No on the third day.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

No, no, not really. England ended up with one man in hospital, another man unable to bat, and the last innings it was a pretty diabolical. Although I had some interesting conversations with Glenn McGrath on the ground on the boundary, but that's maybe a conversation for another day. You exchange phone numbers. No, he got very annoyed with me. So which which sort of made up for the whole thing. Yeah, because we were gonna lose anyway, so and that time we probably spent quite a lot of time in Fremantle, which is really nice just south of it's sort of connected to Perth, but it's like a it's much more laid-back, sort of hippie type place, single-storey wooden buildings, cafes, you know, Vibe, very nice. And the last time I think I went was 2012. Again, I tried to go to the Wacker to see I mentioned about this before, I think, um, to see Sash and Tentalka's last innings, but I had a an uh a plane malfunction at Heathrow and didn't make it in time. Malfunction, wasn't that the one where the they sort of well they didn't emergency exit us, but they exited from the airplane after spraying it down with foam. Was January 2012, and I was staying at the hotel across the ground from the Wacker with the Indian cricket team and John Cleese. Yes. Did I mention that as well? I can't remember if I mentioned that. Yeah, obviously paid for by somebody else. I don't normally play it, stay in those sort of hotels. So I mean that that's Australia. Uh well, Western Australia. We'll talk about the other side of Australia uh another time, but it really is a wonderful place. I mean, there's so much variation there, I think.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

We haven't got too long left on this episode. But the reason one of the reasons I've not been to Australia yet is well, firstly, because it's so far to go, and I think you need a certain amount of time to do it.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

It's only five hours from Singapore.

SPEAKER_02 32:21

Yeah, okay, but it's 12 hours or 14 hours from the side.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

Yeah, but you go to Singapore and then you go to yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 32:29

It takes me as long to go to the Philippines and Indonesia as it would to Australia now. I realise. Yeah, but that I'm saying previously that was the reason. I just haven't got round to it. Now I'm doing these longer trips because I kind of like to see it as you need minimum a month. Maybe that's not right, but I would like minimum a month.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

It used to be a cheap place to go, Australia. Now it's now that the exchange rate isn't so good, it's it's going to cost you much more to go to Western Australia for a month than it would to go to the Philippines for a month.

SPEAKER_02 32:55

I think to be honest, I think that's probably why I haven't gone since I've been doing these longer trips, because it's nice to go somewhere where your money goes a bit further.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

Yeah, but you know, you could afford it, and it's very interesting. I mean it's a different thing.

SPEAKER_02 33:07

Probably one to do with Izzy, I think. Uh you know, when she's retired, it's something we could because she won't I wouldn't mind going to New Zealand as well. She wants to go to Fiji, you know, we can combine the whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

Yeah, a sort of round-the-world trip.

SPEAKER_02 33:18

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

But no, it's very good, and and a lot of people don't go particularly to you know, when people go to Australia, they go to Melbourne and Sydney quite often. They don't go to Western Australia because it's so flipping far to the other side. Yeah, you know, and often the flights I think have come down in cost quite a bit. They used to be quite pricey to fly across Australia, but now they've come down. And in fact, I think I think some airlines throw in an internal flight as well. Okay. When you're getting an international one. Yeah. So that's Western Australia, but we'll talk some more about the other side of Australia another time.

SPEAKER_02 33:48

Very good. Not uh as as it's become apparent, not a place I know very much about, but very interesting to hear about it. Thank you. Thank you. Speak to you all soon. Bye.