West Side Story

Leaving Broome was hard I had made some great friends and the place was fast becoming one of my favourite places in Australia the last things to do were to see the ‘staircase to the moon’ and some of the sights that we were to lazy to see during the two weeks we were there.

Before I talk about our remaining time in Broome we had to get some more people for the ride and I decided on taking three people instead of four so our first candidate was a French girl who on first sighting knew she would say a few days down the line that she didn’t want to go with us and this was confirmed by one of my Italian friends who described her as ‘very French’, however her bad luck is someone’s good luck and we lucked out with Salvador from Chile. When I first met Sal I immediately liked him and liked him more as the days went on but more on that later. It’s a strange thing having some much stuff in the car I liken it to how much someone earns for example if someone earns £15,000 a year they live to those means (well most men do) and if you earn £90,000 you live to those means so when there were two of us in the car there was still no space for stuff even though I can fit 4 peoples backpacks in and a swag with three people there seems to be less room than when I had four.

Sal



The staircase to the moon was one of the most spectacular events that I have ever witnessed and will doubt never witness again it started with everyone congregating on Town Beach which is not a very pleasant beach when compared to Cable but it has a jetty and is one of the best places see the event. 17:32 rolled round and on the horizon you could see the moon starting to rise as if like the sun the moon or we were coming into orbit of Mars as the moon was bright orange almost red and the reflections on the mud flats gave the moon its trick….the stairway.







While everyone was looking left I was looking right and got to see and take some of the best sunset pictures like something from a Sony Bravia TV advert with the sky there were a thousand shades of pink with hot purples and crimson reds and this is why the residents of Broome live here.









Broome has somewhat classed itself as the ‘Capri’ of Australia and nothing says this more than a game of horse polo on the beach with all the wealthy holiday makers heading to the top restaurant on the beach overlooking the Indian Ocean however I know that this is just overpriced and imported from Queensland still as some waiter said there you could put whipped cream on a dog turd and sell it for $30 and add some hazelnut and they will pay more……57cent noodles for me then.

To celebrate our last night in Broome we had a beach party to go to but that was later on in the evening so we headed back to our camp site where we had the worst experience with Australians I have ever had and ever hope to have, it was like a train wreck with David Brent x 1000 so let me start at the beginning……..the couple in mention the lady (Used in the most loose term possible) is 31 but looks more 41 and the guy is around 35 and they are either generally drunk or arguing or both (I mentioned after to others that they look like they are out of some domestic violence handbook) but this particular night they were drunk and they decided to sit with us for a beer, immediately the enjoyment in our group dropped then it got worse…a lot worse. Im not sure if words or this blog can truly let you in to some of the absolute shit they were talking but I try, where to begin well there is only so long you can continue with that fake laugh or fake interest and you generally can only do that when you have a slight idea what they are talking about as I have had conversations with Indians/Thai’s/Khmer who can speak little to no English and know the points where to laugh and where to look concerned and so on but this guy was borderline mental. Please see examples below:

Chris is distracting himself from the conversation by removing his phone and pretending to text someone anyone then the guy says are you typing English? Are you saying ‘HELLO’ Yes I replied all the while thinking fuck the plan has not worked in fact its done the total opposite, he then tells me how to spell ‘HELLO’……”You spell it L7” at this point I don’t know whether to laugh or wait for the punch line so I look at him like ‘what?!’ he then repeats it again “L7” not sure if im missing something I just look at him perplexed in the end I let it fizzle out hoping that someone may save me…..no one did.

Another classic from Morecambe and Wise was Vente (Italian for 20 those who do not know) divided by 4 = 100 mmmmmm yeah, this nugget of pure mathematical genius was repeated to us several times like you would tell a death elderly lady where the bus stop was.

There is still more…. A fireman’s lift is abbreviated PML (Phire mans lift)

More…..he started spouting codes circles within circles numbers become codes become fucking nonsense at this point I’m thinking he might have been a janitor at a college and he feels smarter than everyone else and when he see’s an unfinished equation he finishes it, his best friend in Ben Affleck too, either that or he has seen the Da Vinci code far too many times. Numbnuts girlfriend proudly tells us that he is a very clever man and has worked a lot of stuff out that not many people could do….maybe in planet of the apes but that may still be offensive to the apes.

It was at this point I felt I had a strong case to be flown to Switzerland and take euthanasia it was that painful.

Time for the girl to pipe up with a story of her own as everything she had said before that had been about drinking in Alice Springs (surprise surprise), the story was she tried to move a cow with a stick and instead jabbed it up the arse yep it went straight in im just hoping no animals were harmed in the making of that story but I cant be sure. It’s about now that I can not take anymore as all stories were directed at me so I started looking for a way out. Sal already had his ‘me no understand mucho English’ routine by staring aimlessly at the stars, DAMN that was a good one and I was right in the firing line of both these complete morons so I set the plan in motion yawning every 2 seconds then telling everyone I was really tired so after 2 minutes I was off to bed but let me know when we go to the beach party aka when they are gone, it was a cowards way out I admit but I couldn’t take it anymore so I left my band of brothers still in the trenches taking the mortars……I guess I will not be getting the VC for that heroic act in the face of boredom.

I could see from the outset where this event was heading from the moment I saw Dumb and so dumb im certified retarded so when I came back to socialise it was no surprise what direction it took. I decided to tell a friends story where the point was that the German language is quite aggressive no matter what they say so I hailed two German sounding words and described it as being translated as ‘Nice seat’ to which the guy came over asking what the German words were and in hindsight I should have uttered any two words the dipshit would not have known but I tried to explain to them it was a story and could not know the actual words to which him and his fiancé had a shit-fit and argument and somehow concluded that we were telling them to ‘go get fucked’ violence is never the answer but that was where it was heading so it made up our minds to head to the party. I would have suggested removing them from the gene pool but the guy already had like 15 daughters….100 years from now stupid people are taking over the world….FACT.

Beach party was cool bring your own firewood and booze this was the night I was taking it easy as I was driving the next day but I didn’t get home until 0400 ish and got up at 0600 the next morning when Jess woke me up to go for a early morning walk…….who does that that early?




We said auf viedesan to Broome and headed off to Karujini National Park along the highway and considering I had two hours sleep I didn’t do to bad driving three hours and now this was the point where I had to let someone else drive. There is a big difference in the highways of Australia and England in Aus the highways are only 2 lanes wide and the sense of urgency you get on British roads is non existent because if there is a cattle truck in front you might as well just slow down and soak in the scenery. The next day we arrived at the park and we decided to stay for 4 days so we could see as much as possible again the park consists of waterfalls gorges and pools where you can swim and I was surprised how nice some of the walks were but im not sure if my feet appreciated it and if they had eyes they would have cried, one walk in particular was to hike to the top of Mt Bruce (2nd highest peak in WA) it got hard in some places and there were times when I wanted to say every peak we came across was the peak but there is no feeling like it when you reach the summit.





Gorges





80 mile beach








The walks were also classed so class 2 was able for people with zimmer frames where class 5 was for high level of fitness with no apparent route. Camping in the park was basic but this was where Sal came into his own, he forgot to mention that he is probably one of the worlds best campers having camped in South Chile by the time I would take to put my tent up he had already got his and mine erected, cooking was another of his talents as camp cooking is normally boring but we ate very very well, there are some points where Sal makes me look lazy as he is always doing something fear not I will teach him the art of ‘chillaxing’. Part of the road in the park is un-sealed (no tarmac) so its dirt or gravel and parts of it did look and feel like a Colin McRae rally game I just needed the co-driver to utter instructions like ‘easy right over dip into medium long left’.





This type of road cost the car a tire and I was super glad I had bought a new tire in Darwin and the tire change would also make a Formula one change seem slow. We left the park and headed toward Exmouth where we would stay and then head down the cape to some places not in the Lonely Planet however our worst nightmares happened when our spare tire which was now on the car blew up (literally)……..Wolf Creek, Wrong Turn, The Hills Have Eyes, Tremors and Harry and The Henderson’s were all the films that flashed through my head…..it was 17:00 and we knew there would be no one else on the road we were on till the morning so we had to set camp beside the side of the road and wait till first light………well if we made it that far. Lucky for us I at least knew the international sign for help unlike the Canadian girl who thought mimicking the famous ‘Scream’ picture would be internationally recognised….it wasn’t.

All was not too bad as I did pay for the top breakdown service the RAC had but its pretty much no use when you have not got a signal on your phone so first we needed to get someone to make the call, lucky for us the Australians are very helpful when it comes to people breaking down and a lovely couple agreed to make the call….then what do we do, do we wait and hope they did or keep getting people to pull over?…our decision was made when they came back 30 mins later to let us know they had made the call now it was our turn to wait and wait we did in the baking sun it took them 5.5 hours to come 70 miles to get us so overall from pop to saved we waited over 20 hours. $200 down and two wheels up we were on the highway again to Exmouth.

waiting by the side of the road



Exmouth was not very charming to look at not sure if it was due to the weather but we were here for only one reason and that was to swim with the biggest Mammal in the Ocean the Whale Shark………….will tell all in the next blog.