Road Tripping

It's been over a month since I last updated my blog, a lot has happened so the idea of updating it now is a bit daunting. Sorry about all of the reading, to offset it I'll try to put in as many photos as possible. For the most part the photos will better describe our trip than words could.
I've spent the last four weeks on the road and it seems that I have another few weeks of road tripping ahead of me as well! This time though I'll try to keep more on top my updates, promise!
So where to begin.....?

I'll introduce you to our road tripping group first. Adam is from England and is the car owner, Tim, from Ireland was Adam's roommate in Melbourne and planned the trip with him. Sofie, from Belgium, was looking for something interesting to do with her time left in Oz and found Adam and Tim's post for extra travelers on Gumtree the same way I did. Henrike, from Germany, comes into the equation later. She had lived with Adam and Tim previously and we pick her up in Perth.
My first intention was to head to Perth, possibly carrying on to Broome, but not committing to anything. The week before heading west Adam, Tim and I met for coffee. It was a "lets make sure the other person isn't crazy before we spend five days together" meeting, and it went perfectly! What was meant to be coffee ended up being coffee, a few games of pool, dinner at a Malaysian restaurant and then a movie. Clearly getting on well wasn't too much of an issue. So on April 25th Adam, Tim, Sofie and I managed to pile all of our belongings into a Mitsubishi Magna. We marveled at how much four people pack and then pondered our ability to squeeze in Henrike, let alone Henrike's luggage. Because Adam and Tim were hoping to get to Perth as quickly as possible we traveled over 2500 km in the course of five days. Now fellow Canadians may be thinking "so?". The funny thing you come to realize about being Canadian is that a ten hour car drive is not too bad, definitely doable in one day, right? Well mention even three hours of continuous sitting to a European and you are faced with a bewildered, gaping stare in return. "How is it even possible to still be in the same country" they wonder.
On the road trip I had the opportunity to travel the longest straight stretch of road in Australia, maybe even in the Southern Hemisphere? (Australians love to make claims of that sort) I've heard that driving across the prairies was boring, and I think I've now been officially prepped for it. 146km of unbending road! We also drove through the Nullarbor. The Nullarbor is a massive, arid, treeless plain that stretches across the bottom of South Australia (SA) near the Western Australia (WA) state border. It looks surprisingly like many areas in WA so when driving it would be hard to determine when it begins and when it ends save the fact that they have signs posted.
I think one of the oddest experiences on our Melbourne to Perth trip was getting stopped by the polices just past the SA/WA border for a random breathalyzer check. I should note that it this is off because first of all it was in the middle of the afternoon, and secondly we were literally kilometers from the nearest pub, and even farther from the nearest town. Why someone would drive over an hour to grab a drink at the roadhouse/gas station instead of heading to the neighbourhood pub in town is beyond my comprehension. Unless there is some excitement in driving drunk through arid plains that I'm unaware of? More so, the fact that there were so few cars on this road that you actually got excited and waved when you passed one, and that if you were blind drunk and went off the road the biggest threat would have been a foot high bush about thirty meters from the road, meant that driving drunk wasn't the riskiest thing to be doing here. Luckily everyone in the car was 100% sober at the time. Unfortunately our Irish companion was driving when we were stopped which made him the brunt of many of our jokes that followed.
Our last overnight stay before Perth was the gold mining town of Kalgoorie. Kalgoorie is famous for three things. The first is it's "super pit", the largest open mining pit in Oz. The second is the high number of brothels Kalgoorie houses. You can actually go on a brothel tour! The third are the "skimpies". If the name doesn't say it all skimpies are barmaids clad in bikinis, and no they are not working on the beach, this town is inland. Not the place to be job hunting for a woman! After an afternoon of getting groceries, petrol and checking out the super pit we headed back to the campsite and left early the next morning. No stopping in at the bars, likely much to the guys' disappointment.