**GOING-GOING-GONE**

Down Under – West Coast   - Second Instalment   Dedicated to my dearest friend, Adele Evans (Affleck), travel writer and broadcaster, who died suddenly in September last year.  Fly, Fly Fly, my friend....  yellow-tailed black cockatoo  So, for those uninitiated   in to the art of road travel in Aus, living out of a campervan for three weeks, the question is, where does one even BEGIN?   For me, the answer is a no-brainer – in the centre – my stomach!! Having decided to explore the rest of the West Coast by car/campervan rather than fly/drive, Jelte and I had begun researching what type of vehicle best suited our needs.    Looking back, we find we made one major mistake, which shall not be repeated again.   Instead of opting for a four-wheel-drive, we went with the ‘safer’ option of a standard van.   At the time, we did not realize it, but it was to hugely restrict where we could venture once we were in the grea...

Side walk activities At a quarter to five, every morning, we are woken by the ringing bells of the Holy Ghost Church, a huge house of worship just around the corner from our residence.   This is, about fifteen minutes later, followed by the beautiful but loud, amplified, minaret calls of the muezzin, who urges his fellow believers to begin their daily prayer; not wanting to be left behind, (btw, the firecrackers of Diwali have kept us up all night) we hear the chanting and footsteps along our bungalow wall of many devout Hindus, on their way to one of their many temples, to worship another one of their many gods. Every market sells flowers for different forms of worship If this wasn’t enough and to complement this religious cacophony, at around seven the traffic system starts to get seriously into gear and within minutes, there is a swelling of noise of old backfiring cars, air polluting autorikshas (they all have impressive sounding horns) decrepit buses, tw...

These Australian   blog-posts are dedicated to my dearest friend, Adele Evans (Affleck), who died suddenly in September 2012.   Just two weeks in to our Aussie trip, we returned to Perth from our Albany and Denmark visit to be confronted by this awful, awful news.    Adele, I miss you dreadfully; still in my Outlook inbox are your messages sent to me, saying how much you were looking forward to reading and hearing all about our adventures in Aus.   I see you reading this, my dearest friend, with Paula parrot, your African Grey on one shoulder, shredding your ear-ring, Timmie, your yellow cockatiel on your other shoulder, whispering sweet nothings to you and Clarence, our moggie, curled up on your lap, knowing that you will protect him from those horrid raccoons.       We know how much you enjoyed our blogs in Tajikistan.   The images of cockatoos and galahs are especially for you; to me,   they are my constant...