(Holiday Blogs delayed!) Thurs 8 May

Nathan and I just returned from a fantastic vacation in the North West of Australia. Rather than try to cram all the cool stuff from our holiday in one overly long Blog entry, we've decided to replay our holiday delayed by about 10 days.

Thursday 8 May--
Work was frantic (as always), but more so with our impending vacation and the fact that I had been sick for the days before. I had promised Nathan that we would hit the road by 4 pm. I told everyone else I needed to leave by noon, in the hopes that we might actually get out the door on time.

While I was scrambling to fit 10 days work in 8 hours (I went in at 6 am!) Nathan had the responsibility of preparing for our road trip. He had new tires, a car service, upgraded his broken CD player, and packed the car with the items I had set out the night before. (Unfortunately, we forgot to pack CDs so with no radio for most of the trip we brushed up on show tunes and hymns).

He began calling at noon (are you ready to go yet? no--by 2pm.) At 2 pm (are you ready to go yet? one more call.) At 2:45, I actually left work to finish off the packing still making calls to my admin Annie (who is a saint) on my cellphone all the way home. We quickly grabbed Jake (for a trip to the Kitty hotel) and began our vacation.

After dropping Jake off, we managed to just catch rush hour traffic on our way out of Perth. Finally at about 5:00 pm, we were outside of the city, heading North into the Australian bush. Within 45 minutes, we began to relax and realized neither of us had eaten anything all day. We made a quick stop at the GinGin Hotel for a beer and classic fish and chips. While waiting, we chatted with the locals who were amazed that we were planning to drive another 3 hours after dinner.

You see, kangaroos are a lot like deer. They come out at dusk and linger along the roadside, waiting to leap in front of your car, in mass suicide attempts. Unlike deer, kangaroo eyes do not reflect your headlights, so you can't actually see them until you are within about 50 m of your bumper. Driving at night becomes a video game--trying to avoid the roos, and still keep a reasonable average speed. Most Australian's don't drive past 5 pm, its too aggravating with the potential loss of property and life. That's one of the reasons the locals thought we were nuts to grab our dinner and head for the car.

BUT, Nathan and I have not lost our habits of a decade of roadtrips together, and carried on to Dongara/Port Dennison another 2.5 hours along the highway. Dongara/Port Dennison is a seaside town, planted with beautiful trees, dotted with classic Australian shops. But, you can't really appreciate any of that after dark, so we went directly to the Priory Lodge Historic Inn. It is limestone and brick, with deep verandas to give shade from the Australian sun. The Inn was built in 1881, serving as a hotel, then nunnery, then girls school, then hotel again..

With this colourful history, it was rather shocking to enter the bar and discover the barmaid in "skimpies." This colourful Australian term means she was just dressed in bra, underwear and high heels, serving beer to the patrons. I can only imagine what the nuns thought. (of course, the nuns might have been more troubled if the male bar staff had been required to dress in their underwear and high heels.)

So not lingering long in the bar, we made our way to a reasonable room (nothing fancy, but clean) to rest up for the rest of our big vacation.

Tomorrow-exploring the City, and a trip to Shark Bay and Denham.