Down a rolling road

The party is over... Goodbye dear van... Goodbye

hussyhicks — Tue, 8 Apr 2008 16:00:00 GMT

And as all good things must come to an end, our time has come to say a final goodbye to our beloved World Nomad Ambassador Van. It's not difficult to become attached to what has not only been a mode of transport, taking us almost entirely around the country, but also a home, a place to hang ones hat, to rest our weary heads at the end of a long day, a place where we belonged...

It had been wonderful while it lasted and as we cleaned the van for the last time, removing all traces of ourselves for the next lucky ambassadors I had a movie like show real of all the great moments we’d shared over the past 6 weeks run through my head. It had been the trip of a lifetime, and our estimated 10106 kilometres reached a final tally of 10913K’s, our trusty friend delivering us safely to our final destination.

It seems only fitting that I do a statistical round up of the tour figures…

42 days on the road
24 gigs
6 states and territories driven through
9 winery visits (and countless bottles of wine consumed)
1 blown up PA system
5 radio interviews
1 twisted ankle
3 hitchhikers picked up
1 breakdown – our fault, NOT the vans!!!!!
13 crocodiles seen in the wild
250+ CD’s sold
Countless friends visited and made
2 very happy campers who will miss their beloved van!!!!

So there you have it. We’d like to say massive thankyous to all the wonderful people who’ve made the trip amazing for us and a big special thanks to World Nomads and Travellers Autobarn who have been the best companies anyone could hope to deal with. We were asked to leave behind a gift for the van as a momento of our time as the ambassadors and we thought long and hard and decided we might leave a couple of things to make the new custodians of the van more comfortable. First we left 2 stubby holders, because the van was to be picked up in Darwin and after experiencing the heat of the top end we felt this was a necessity. Secondly we left our coffee plunger and some roasted coffee, items that helped us to get going every single morning and saved us from dreadful tasting servo instant coffees and from wasting funds on exorbitantly priced caffeinated beverages at hoity toity city cafés. We also left a copy of the Hussy Hicks album on the hard drive of the ambassador computer and on the ipod.

Now we’re off to jump on a big floating casino for 10 days to play music for cruise ship holiday makers and tuck into some genuine Vanuatu made Kava while we’re at it. I’ll do my best to continue to document our movements as we leave the ship and go home for a few weeks before taking off on a pretty ambitious world tour… but I think we’ve got some good practise in now, the only real question that needs asking is “Who’s going to give us a van to trip around Europe in?” Hehehehe…

Lonely Planet Great Guidebook Moment - Adelaide River Spectacular Croc Jumping

hussyhicks — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:59:00 GMT

We rocked up to the Spectacular Croc Jumping tour mid morning just as a football team of teenage boys headed out on their cruise. We decided to give that boat a miss and wait til the next one so we occupied ourselves by playing with the beautiful pythons that Craig (the boat driver and tour guide) draped over our shoulders. When it came time to hit the river we were stoked to find out that we would be taking the small boat out and our group was only about 12 people strong. Craig started up the engine and gave us the obligatory safety warnings which basically left us with the understanding that if we did have to abandon the boat, or ended up in the water for any reason then that would probably be it for us – over, done, kaput, no more…

We quickly realised why. Within 5 minutes of leaving the dock the first croc approached the boat. It seems these creatures have become accustomed to this feeding for tourism caper and can differentiate the boats that provide them with fresh meat from the ones that don’t, so they’re not shy in making themselves known to the meat providing boats. The first croc was what Craig called a nice little lady – a 2 to 3 metre female that was quite happy to put on a show of jumping most of her body out of the river to chow down on s big chunk of meat.

Now if you’ve never seen it, a crocodile thrusting itself vertically out of the water with its razor sharp teeth poised to snap down on its prey is really something to behold. Even this “little” croc was indeed spectacular. And as more and more crocs approached the boat you became very aware that we were in the domain of something much bigger than ourselves. It really wasn’t just a story… the waters of the Adelaide River are, in fact, crocodile infested. We had a chat to Craig and gave him the run down of what we’d been up to with the van and the gigs and the ten thousand and something kilometres and suggested that maybe Sanchez would like to get acquainted with the crocs. So Sanchez dangled himself over the side of the boat to try his luck with a 4 metre jumping croc. Now for those of you who aren’t aware, now is the time to let you know that Sanchez isn’t actually a person, but the little World Nomads logo and we’ve been snapping off photos of him on our travels. This particular incantation of Sanchez was a piece of cardboard with the logo printed on it which didn’t last long at all in the jaws of a spectacular jumping croc.

We were even lucky enough to have a croc known as Hannibal jump for us. Hannibal is the most famous croc in this part of the river purely for its size and ferocity. He is clearly the king of the castle at 6 metres long and estimated to be around 100 years old.

Anyway, as much as I rave about the intensity of this experience I’m not convinced that I can paint a complete picture with words so please have a look at the photos and see for yourself how amazing the tour is.

Definitely right up there amongst the highlights of the whole trip!

Gallery: Darwin

hussyhicks — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:59:00 GMT

pics from our gigs in Darwin

Darwin city lights

hussyhicks — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:29:00 GMT

After cooling our selves in the croc infested water of Edith Falls we hit the road for Darwin, stopping in at the Adelaide River Inn for a bite when it got to dinner o’clock. The Adelaide River Inn is famous for its Barra and Chips and for its enormous stuffed water buffalo, Charlie. Charlie starred in Crocodile Dundee alongside Paul Hogan and quite possibly stole the show with its beer drinking and playing dead antics. Apparently he was so well loved that he has now been forever immortalised in the front bar of the Inn for the enjoyment of locals and tourists alike. We kept driving and stopped to camp just before hitting the city and experienced our hottest van sleep to date. Darwin seems to have the uncanny ability of heating up even after the sun has gone down, making our van somewhat of a convection oven and after a few hours of suffocating heat we drove in to Darwin in the wee early hours of the morning.

Darwin, it appears is actually a proper city. After weeks and weeks of one horse towns and thousands of miles of nothing we were quite overwhelmed with the hustle and bustle of Darwin. Obviously my first priority was to find a battery charger for my camera so I could visually document the days to come and the second priority was air-conditioning. If we were going to survive this city we’d have to drop our blood temperature by at least a few degrees!

We ticked off priority one then found a nice cool juice bar to chill out in until we worked out a game plan for the next few days. We had 2 gigs booked in Darwin, one at the Happy Yess which was a funky little community run youth venue alongside a couple of local metal and “screemo” bands. The gig was brilliant fun and a great insight into the arts scene of Darwin. The other gig was an Easter Monday arvo session at the Ski Club which is a wonderfully casual outdoor bar with a stage looking out over the crystal blue waters of the bay. We took Brian (Taffys friend) up on his offer to be our tour guide and even ended up camping in his backyard for most of our stay. During our time in Darwin we got a call from an agent friend of mine who asked us if we’d be able to fill in last minute for a south pacific cruise ship gig as the band that was booked to do it had fallen through. So before we knew it we’d been booked on flights to Sydney and cut our Northern Territory trip short by a few days to jump on a big ole boat to play some music across the seas. Luckily we had one full day of touristing before we had to fly out so Brian and his mate Al took us on the tour of all tours – the Spectacular Jumping Croc tour of the Adelaide River. Now this was definitely a highlight of our trip, so much so that I think it deserves its own story…

Lonely Planet Great Guidebook Moment - Edith Falls

hussyhicks — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 15:27:00 GMT

As we drove out of Katherine we felt a desire to find a good swimming hole, since we’d been taunted by hellishly hot weather and plenty of inviting looking water that we couldn’t (absolutely not… under no circumstances… don’t even think about it) swim in. Our lonely planet guidebook informed us that we could cool ourselves in the water of Edith Falls as long as it had been opened after the rains, so we pulled off at the sign to try our luck. After indulging in a picnic of cheese and crackers we headed down to the waterside and found a ranger who explained that the falls had been reopened that day after passing the 3 day saltwater crocodile survey. The ranger sounded confident that the water would be saltwater croc free but told us were we to come down to the swimming hole at night we’d see dozens of little red eyes belonging to the freshwater crocodile population which was apparently thriving in Edith Falls. According to every local we’d spoken to in the top end it would be almost impossible to get ourselves maimed by a freshy but we still approached our swim a little gingerly and watched every shadow suspiciously.

The water was divine though and our swim mission ultimately successful. We even took Sanchez for a bit of a dip!

Gallery: Katherine Gorge and Edith Falls

hussyhicks — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Photos taken on the Nokia due to my camera being out of battery!

Katherine - welcome to the Northern Territory!

hussyhicks — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:11:00 GMT

Before completely leaving the Kimberley behind I have to mention my little washing day incident. It had been a few weeks since we’d managed to find time to wash our clothes so I had about 3 loads of washing to get through in Kununurra and whilst loading tonnes of dirty clothes into one of the machines I dropped a pair of underpants between the washing machine and the clothes dryer. I stuck my hand in between the machines to pick up the undies and grabbed onto something smooth and scaly. As you can imagine I jumped back screaming like a girl and very cautiously peeked into the gap where there was a huge blue tongue lizard that was now proudly wearing my undies as a hat. As far as I know he’s still running around the hotel with my undies on his head… I decided to let him keep them!

Ah, but anyway… onto Katherine, which was to be our home for the next few days. We arrived in town and were surprised to discover that Katherine was actually a decent sized town. There were cafes and supermarkets and even mobile phone service which was a nice treat after several weeks of being out of range. We said goodbye to Remi who was off to find a ride to Darwin then we located the venue we were playing at and made our way inside to introduce our selves to the staff and get acquainted with the place. Walking into the Katherine Hotel for the first time was like walking straight into a Footrot Flats comic… a stereotypical small town bar in the Northern Territory. The front bar where we would be playing was a large smoke filled space with a handful of poker machines in one corner and a bar filling the entire length of one wall. The outback bar was obviously designed to be hosed out at the end of a messy night and this morning was filled with patrons milling about sipping form cans of light beer. The Katherine Hotel only served light beer until midday, and the bottle shop didn’t open til 2pm so we decided to pull up some stools and kill half an hour absorbing the atmosphere until we could reward ourselves with a nice Coopers on tap. We came to realise pretty quickly that top-enders are generally tougher than us city dwellers. When striking up a conversation with a Territorian you can pretty much guarantee that they’ll throw some great stories at you… particularly if you’re a first time tourist to the top end. Obviously with our fascination for Crocs we received countless tales of these prehistoric predators and their penchant for reigning terror among people and animals alike and we were told we had to go for a boat ride on Adelaide River if we wanted to check it out for ourselves.

One of the highlights from our time at the Katherine Hotel was morning Karaoke which occurred every Thursday and Friday and was predominately patronised by the aboriginal community. We were treated to some great all in sing-a-longs of pub classics like Hotel California and Sweet Home Chicago - not to mention some brilliant dancing and generally happy vibes.

We spent 3 nights in Katherine, camping in the backyard of a backpacker hostel run by a guy named Coco and his mate Tony. We got to chat with some interesting characters that were also passing through for one reason or another, like Yvonne who was a German woman who lived in Argentina and spent several months each year residing in an Aboriginal community 2 hours down the road and had some wonderful tales of her travels. We almost joined her on her mission out to the community to stay a night or two but when we found out we’d have to take on 30k’s of dirt road and cross a creek to get there we thought better of it.

We also met a guy named Taffy who lived in Katherine with his wife Noreen and ran boat tours through the Katherine Gorge. Taffy was a great big rugged Northern Territorian Santa Claus of a man and after chatting to him for a bit he invited us to come down to the gorge and jump on a tour gratis.

The Katherine Gorge is definitely a must do if you’re in this part of the country, it is so immense and breathtakingly beautiful and we even got to see our first real life crocodile in the wild, an apparently harmless yet still menacing freshwater croc measuring in at about 2.5 metres. Unfortunately today was the day that my camera finally ran out of battery after losing my charger somewhere many kilometres back down the road so I missed out on capturing it in the photographic realm. On the boat tour Taffy introduced us to his mate Brian from Darwin who said he’d show us around once we got into town and on the walk back to the car after jumping off the boat we all got a special little bush tucker lesson from Noreen who picked berries off bushes here and there for us to eat, pointed out the wild mint which apparently makes a great cuppa and as a grand finale reached into a tree to pull down a green ants nest which she crushed up in her hands and held out for us smell – a very strong, sharp smelling almost concentrated eucalyptus-esque scent which was supposed to be brilliant for fixing colds and flues. We also had to taste the green ants themselves so we picked a couple from the thousands that were crawling up her arms and bit off their tales which exploded a sweet yet sour liquid into our mouths.

So Katherine was good to us. The gig was great fun with a lot of local crew (the ones that didn’t go camping, fishing or hunting) coming along and making it fun for all and by the time we did roll out of town we’d become quite fond of the place and it's endless array of interesting characters. Next stop: the city lights of Darwin!

Gallery: The Road to Katherine

hussyhicks — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 13:53:00 GMT

Lake Argyle and pics from the drive to Katherine

Leaving the Kimberley - The road to Katherine.

hussyhicks — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 13:40:00 GMT

So our next show was on Thursday night in Katherine. We’d booked this one in with Pete who took a lot of convincing that it would be a good idea. Because it was still wet season Pete kept telling us that if it kept raining we wouldn’t be able to get in to town and if it stopped raining then everyone would leave town to go fishing. So we decided to leave on Tuesday to try and give us the best chance of getting through and making the gig happen! While we were filling up with petrol and supplies in Kununurra we met Remi, an Estonian backpacker who’d been hitching his way around Oz and had been trying to get himself a ride to Darwin for a good 6-7 hours. Now 6-7 hours in the heat of wet season is a pretty top effort and he offered to chuck in some cash for fuel so we thought what the hell and told him we could get him as far as Katherine. Ha, Mr Woolfe Creek Murderer, you’re no match for us now!

Remi was great company on the drive telling us about the interesting characters he’d met along the way and teaching us a bit about Estonia. Remi was surprised to learn that I’d visited Tallinn, Estonia a few years earlier when I was singing on a cruise through Northern Europe, I think I was the only person he’d met on his whole trip who’d been there. Before crossing the border we all decided that Lake Argyle was a must see so we took a little detour to check it out. We also saw a couple of decent sized snakes on the road, Remis first snake sighting in Australia. Lake Argyle is enormous. It is the result of the damming of Lake Ord in 1972 and usually stores about 5.8 million megalitres of water and has a surface area of about 1000 square kilometres making it the second largest reservoir in Australia, and a pretty stunning thing to behold.

We missed the afternoon cruise by a few minutes, but got a spectacular view from the lookout and snapped off a few photos. I just found a picture of Lake Argyle from space which I’ll put in the gallery… it’s pretty impressive!

Anyway, after our tourist stop we were back on the road to Katherine and as we left the Kimberley behind and crossed over the border we were welcomed into the Northern Territory by a beautiful rainbow forming over a distant rain cloud. We were also welcomed by more snakes. Lots of snakes. The Territory left West Australia for dead with the amount of snakes we saw. Lots of pythons but a few browns as well, luckily we were inside the van and they were outside and we planned to keep it that way. We passed by lots and lots of creeks and the further into the NT we got more threatening the names became. Scorpion Creek, Mistake Creek, Skull Creek… we were almost ready for Crocodile Creek or perhaps Dead Tourist Creek, but as the sun was setting we pulled off the road to walk over a footbridge across the Victoria River and take in the beautiful skies and try to spot some crocs from the safety of the bridge! No crocs but some nice sunset photos none the less! Not long after, we pulled into Timber Creek to get some fuel – our most expensive to date at $1.87/litre – and considered grabbing a meal but were put off by the plethora of big tough VB drinkin’ croc wrestling types in the bar and thought it best to keep on moving. We thought we might grab a 6 pack of beer in Timber Creek so we’d have a few wind down drinks on hand for when we pulled up to camp but our enquiries at the bar informed us that we’d have to part with twenty bucks to get ourselves 6 CANS of VB so we politely declined and drove off empty handed (and empty walleted after the fuel purchase!).

We drove for another hour or so before pulling in to a rest stop and calling it a night. Tomorrow we hoped we’d make it in to Katherine safe and sound and flood free.

Kununurra - the land of great day trips and waterfalls!

hussyhicks — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 12:37:00 GMT

Our first trip to Kununurra definitely left us wanting more… specifically more in the way of four wheel drive capabilities, because the locals all kept telling us of amazing springs and waterfalls and great little get away spots but unfortunately all of these required more than our trusty little van could handle and again we learned our lesson with off road adventures early in the piece!

We did, under the guidance of our bar manager Jarred get out to a beautiful little spot called Molly Springs. Only 30k’s out of Kununurra there’s a little track that leads out to the springs and being wet season meant that the waterfall was running and we were lucky enough to have it all to ourselves. We packed a picnic and trudged through the long grass and sloshy sand (still with crocodiles on our minds) and set up for a relaxing day of swimming, eating and drinking. I’d been excited about going to a waterfall since we left Perth and Molly Springs was a big ole tick on my list.

The Kununurra gigs were fun, with a few memorable local characters, like our “Coach” as dubbed by the bar staff who was loveable but insisted on following us around with musical advice and repetitively slurring “I used cho ssssing in bands yyyou knooooow!”

But the town and particularly the pub treated us well and we had a great stay. Next time we’re definitely coming back with an off road vehicle and plenty of time to explore all the things that were recommended to us. This was our last stop in WA before crossing the border into the Northern Territory... looking forward to our next adventure!

Halls Creek and Kununurra - welcome to Croc Country!

hussyhicks — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 19:56:00 GMT

So we got a bit of an inkling that there might have been some confusion

when the security guard in Fitzroy Crossing said "Hey aren't you playing in

Halls Creek tonight, it’s written out front of the pub."

In a bit of a panic I left dinner to make a call to Yasmina at the Hotel Kununurra, who booked the gig for us. She assured me that I was right and we were due in Halls Creek on Thursday the 13th of March. Anyway we arrive in Halls creek to cries of "Better late than never" from the staff swimming in the pool and head inside.

Apparently the hotel thought we were coming the previous Thursday, then when we didn’t show they thought it had been changed to Wednesday, the night before, and so by the time we actually arrived they had pretty much given up on us. The rooms were all booked out and for a while we weren't sure we could pull off a gig. After a quick chat with management, we put the communication difficulties behind us, and decided to make the gig work. The hotel rang around town and let the folk know there was a show on. As if it was meant to be a booking was cancelled and we even got a room to stay in. Fortunately, for promotions sake, the grapevine is very strong in a small town and we ended up having a cracker of a gig.

The next morning we got up early, well not early enough to catch breakfast but thanks to the amazing staff we had a great specially cooked breakfast of mushrooms on toast and headed off to our next destination.

A woman we met at the Halls Creek gig had told us that the east Kimberley is god’s country and we were in for a real treat with the upcoming drive. She was right. All the way towards Kununurra the colours we're amazing and the different rock formations were up there with the most beautiful terrain we'd ever seen. I've driven all over America and I remember once thinking the drive through Colorado from Denver to Telluride to Vegas was one I would never match but wow! The Kimberley's are spectacular. I just wish we had more time to explore; it would be so great to take a flight over the Bungle Bungles.

We are yet to see any Crocodiles but gee the waters are looking very ominous. One scary moment came when we approached a part of the road which was under water. It looked pretty clear but we weren’t sure how deep it was. Now this may have been stupid but Leesa got out and walked across to check the depth. We didn’t think much of it as she got out of the car but she called the van across with such urgency that I raced across, she jumped in and we were both a little spooked. We’d read all the tourist literature that says not to go into the creeks and rivers around this area, and shortly after the walking incident we saw a big sign saying “Welcome to Crocodile Country”…

We arrived at the hotel Kununurra in the early afternoon, were shown to our room, handed meal tickets and shown to the bar where there was a perfectly good PA all set up and ready for us to play. The system is working.

Derby back to Fitzroy with a Diamond mine and a Lonely Planet Great Moment in between!

hussyhicks — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 19:10:00 GMT

We made the most of our last 5 star morning and ate an enormous breaky in the restaurant before packing up our gear and hitting the road. We wanted to drop in and see Cowboy before leaving and our temperamental air-conditioning belt had started screeching at us again so it wasn’t til after our social visits and a stop in at the mechanics that we actually made our way out of Broome. We headed towards Derby and just before town we pulled in to check out the “Prison Tree” which is an enormous Boab believed to be around 1,500 years old. It has a girth of 14.7 metres and was once used by early police patrols as an overnight lock-up.

I don’t know if the 5 star accom has gone to our heads or if we actually deserved it but as we rolled into town in the sweltering heat we decided not to camp tonight. Our first stop for accommodation was the Boab Inn where we were a bit surprised at the $160 off season rate for a pub room. We joked with the manager about playing a gig for food and board which received interest, just not for a Monday night! Wedrove around the town to check out our options and found the Derby lodge which had a nice little air-conditioned room for only $100. We checked in and had all intentions of taking the owners advice and watching the sun set from the jetty over a nice cold beer, but instead we got comfortable, tuned in to watch our friend Anthony on ‘So you think you can dance’ (sadly we’ve become addicted) then went to sleep ... a nice air-conditioned sleep ...

We spent the morning catching up on some emailing and then met with Peter from Derby pest control who was giving us a lift to the Kimberly diamond mine where we were playing a show for the miners that night. After our little accidental off road experience the week before we had arranged to leave the van safe and sound in Derby rather than taking our chances with the Gibb River Road which is notoriously rough in the wet season (and difficult at the best of times from all accounts)

After a reasonably rough, very dusty and at times waterlogged drive we arrived at the mine site got shown to our VIP rooms and chilled out before the gig. We had a fun night and one of the locals, Fongy, played a set in our break. It was great to get a look into how the mining crew all live, the food was plentiful and really good quality with surprisingly great vegetarian options. We made friends with some of the local wildlife, well I got bitten by some bugs, but the thousands of Corellas were magnificent so Leesa took a few pics as we hung out the next day to get a lift back to Derby with Wort and Laurie, two of the miners who wouldn't fly in the small planes.

Like most characters from this region Wort had some great yarns to tell us on the drive, most memorably the story of crossing the Nullarbor with a mate in a sign printed promotional truck (hmmm… sounds familiar…) Apparently white line fever kicked in and the boys decided it would be fun to get a self timed photo of them standing butt naked (apart from cowboy hats and boots) in the middle of the plains. After the camera had clicked Wort ran back to the truck and sped off leaving his poor mate running naked up the road behind him. Wort said he left him there for about half an hour before driving back to pick up his sunburned and very unimpressed mate.

We played another show in Fitzroy Crossing that night and were disappointed that we didn’t see our friend Dorothy but had a good time none the less. Before heading east we decided to drive out to Geikie Gorge to enjoy some nature but we kept freaking ourselves out with our crocodile scenarios (and the fact that we were the only car there…) so we spent just enough time to snap off some photos and then we were outta there. On the way through town we stopped in at the Mangkaja Art Gallery where Dorothy and a bunch of local artists paint and display their works. It was an amazing experience, some of the paintings and artworks were absolutely amazing and it was really cool to see them at work. Dorothy was there and showed us which of the paintings on display were hers, but she was with her mob of family and friends and we didn’t want to intrude too much so after we had a good look around we said our goodbyes and left.

LONELY PLANET GREAT GUIDEBOOK MOMENT:

We made one last stop before leaving town because our lonely planet guidebook told us that Fitzroy was home to the oldest established hotel in the entire Kimberley region (1897). The Crossing Inn is definitely an experience… it’s an old shack of a pub that is surrounded by chicken wire and the pungent smell of millions of spilled beers seeping through the concrete. The outside of the building is covered in artworks by the local youth which makes its exterior almost as colourful as the characters inside. We ordered our beers with the gruff barmaid who had to be coaxed into allowing us to drink them from a bottle as opposed to a can. We sipped slowly on our beers and took in the atmosphere of the Crossing Inn, a bunch of local guys playing pool and groups of people huddled around their cans. Obviously being only midday we didn’t get the full effect of the pub, but we enjoyed the experience as long as our senses would allow and then headed off on the road to Halls Creek.

Gallery: The Kimberley

hussyhicks — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 22:37:00 GMT

The amazing scenery and people of the Kimberley

Day 21 - 23 Broome, Fitzroy Crossing and possible LIFE THREATENING SCENARIOS...

hussyhicks — Sun, 9 Mar 2008 22:30:00 GMT

Broome is a great little town. It's also very hot at this time of the year... so I have to admit straight up that we spent most of our days in Broome chilling out in our very plush very air-conditioned resort! In our defence we had spent a month in Broome last October and we really did all the touristy stuff then, including the awesome Stairway to the Moon, which happens 3 nights a month from March to October... It's one of the most spectacular experiences, watching the massive golden moon rising over the mud flats of Roebuck Bay.

But this trip we were mostly just happy relaxing at Mangrove resort. It doesn't make for particularly interesting reading though... so maybe I'll skip to Saturday when we drove out to Fitzroy Crossing to play at the Fitzroy River Lodge.

Everybody had primed us for an “interesting” experience of Fitzroy Crossing, which is well known up here for the alcohol restrictions which were brought in a few months ago to try and get a handle on the problems in the Fitzroy area. The restrictions mostly affect the sale of takeaways (which aren’t allowed at all unless you are a guest of the River Lodge and even then it’s very restricted) but can also be enforced on over the bar sales, in fact our impending presence in the town meant that they only sold light and mid strength beers for the whole day leading up to the show. The drive to Fitzroy Crossing was, in keeping with the reputation of the Kimberleys, absolutely stunning with massive Boab trees and what we’ve come to refer to as “Simpsons Skies” (as in the cartoon… ) because they look almost too perfect to be real. We crossed some very ominous creeks and rivers and tried to spy a croc but the closest we came was logs poking out of the water and two very overactive imaginations…

We got to the River Lodge in time to partake in their special luncheon for International Women’s Day which was a surprisingly gourmet 3 course meal with champagne to boot. Then we set up our camp and had a swim in the pool where we met Jeanie who was one of our security guards (we had a small army of security should anything get out of hand) and also worked in one of the big Diamond Mines. We chatted for a while about the life of a mine worker and decided it wouldn’t be all that bad – 2 weeks off at a time, great money, getting to hang out in this amazing part of the world – Jeanie seemed pretty content with it all.

Ok, so the gig… it was an awesome night, one of the best nights of the tour. The crowd were incredible, particularly Dorothy who was an aboriginal lady who was the first to get up and start dancing. Her dancing was incredible and the whole crowd gave her some pretty rapturous applause, oh, and so did the band! We chatted to Dorothy after the show and she told us she painted down at the gallery and we said we’d pop by when we passed through again later in the week.

Anyway, we had an absolute ball, so much so that we arranged to come back and play another show the following Wednesday on our way to Halls Creek.

We had one last show in Broome on Sunday afternoon so we got going reasonably early the next morning so we could get back to Broome and chill before the gig. But about halfway there we noticed the temperature gauge on the van start to rise and heard that awful engine bubbling sound that no one in the middle of nowhere wants to hear. So we pulled over and waited for the bubbling to stop before opening the motor cover. It’s always funny being in the situations that you imagine when going through all the possible scenarios of what could go wrong on a tour. The van breaking down in the middle of nowhere was certainly one of the possibilities we’d thought of and put in the “I really hope that doesn’t happen” basket. In the hours and hours and hours of driving we’d come up with a lot of scenarios… Julz is the master of “what ifs” and they have been getting more and more elaborate as the kilometres accumulate. There’s the obvious ones, like “What would we do if we hit a water buffalo, and it was still alive and the van was smashed up and we couldn’t get out of the van because the Buffalo would be sure to attack” and “what would you do if I got taken by a croc and the only thing you had to fight him off with was a mobile phone?” then there’s “If the Woolfe Creek murderer had a small knife to your friends neck and you think you can get to the tire iron are you best to run at him with the tire iron hoping he doesn’t have time to slash your friends throat, or do what he says, hoping to find a better escape plan?” or “If one of us was standing near the river and one of us was in the driving seat of the van and a croc had em by the leg, should you get out of the van hoping to find a rock to bludgeon the croc with, or try to drive over the croc, avoiding the friend under attack and try to pin the croc down and free your mate?”

This list goes on and on and on… but back to us being stuck broken down on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere…

3 cars passed us while we were waiting for the motor to cool, and neither of us had come to a firm decision on “if you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere and could flag down a car, keeping in mind that the chances of it being the Woolfe Creek murderer are extremely high (being within a 500km radius of the Crater) would you lock yourself inside the van and hope that you would come up with an ingenious plan to fix the engine, or would you take your chances and most likely end up with lock ties around your wrists kicking yourself for making the wrong choice?”

Thankyou television, Thankyou.

Obviously I’m still here writing about the incident so it clearly ended well… Julz and I have both owned old cars and have dealt with their idiosyncrasies a lot so we’re reasonably savvy with these kinds of problems, not to mention that we have the utmost faith in our trusty van. It turns out that the radiator cap had blown off the radiator and a lot of the water had spurted out (thus the bubbling sound) so we had to wait until it was cool enough to restart and slowly fill with water and hey presto, 45 minutes later and we were back on the road. Whew.

The rest of the trip appeared to be trouble free until we were about 40k’s out of Broome and we noticed a massive storm forming right in front of us. We somehow managed to just catch the tail end of it and enjoy a pretty spectacular cloud and lightning show as a bonus, but later heard that the storm tore up Meekathara quite severely. Our last gig at Mangroves was great fun and our next stop is Derby before a massive week of 6 gigs and a whole lot of driving in between. Here’s hoping it’s trouble free!

Day 18 - 20 The Road to Broome

hussyhicks — Thu, 6 Mar 2008 21:28:00 GMT

So it’s become apparent that we’ve undertaken a bit of a task with this drive to Broome. Everyone we mentioned it to at Nannup looked at us as if they thought we had gone completely mad… usually the conversation goes something like this:

Random person - “so, where are you off to next”

Hussy – “We’re driving up north to play some shows in Broome”

Random person – “Oh, wow, that’s a long drive. When are your shows?”

Hussy – “Wednesday”

Random person – “Oh well, at least you’ll have a week and a half to enjoy the trip”

Hussy – “Er, no, Wednesday as in 3 days away”

This is always followed by a look of disbelief and a head shake… this is the reason I think we may have bitten off more than we can chew. Hmnmmm…

So we start the drive at midnight after we finish playing our last gig of the festival hoping the south west’s kangaroo population will make themselves scarce for the late drive. The post gig euphoria lasts for a good 100km or so before exhaustion sets in and so we pull into a rest area to get a few hours sleep, planning to wake at sunrise to get in a full days driving. We didn’t do too badly considering the huge weekend we’d had, only pushing the snooze button on the alarm twice before actually getting out of the horizontal position and into the drivers seat. As I’m a better morning person than my co-pilot I did the first stint and luckily it wasn’t too far to the nearest servo for a strong coffee to help with the wake up. We had to stop into Perth to pick up our cowboy friend and though we were a couple of hours later than our rather optimistic planned time we still got on the road by about 9:30am.

Driving long distances is a really quick way to get to know each other and so we all jibbered on for a bit, Julz and I alternated driving with sleeping (Zeph opting out of the driving due to an unfortunate absence of a licence) coming up with the kind of conversational topics that only arise when you’re facing a two and half thousand kilometre drive in 2 days. It’s actually quite amazing how many things there are to talk about, obviously with Zeph being a fully fledged cowboy he became an authority on all things country and we plied him with questions like “Do cows get sad when other cows get killed?” and “Would a crow eat another crow if it was roadkill?” and “Are the camels up north one or two hump camels?” and a whole host of other useless questions. I also decided I really wanted to see a camel and pointed at every ant mound screetching “Camel?” excitedly. We passed though a station that Zeph used to work on and he told us the property covered one million acres and we tried to get our heads around how much land that was. We drove through that property for 120kms which gave us some idea of the vastness. We stopped at the dots on the map to fill up with $1.77 per litre fuel and at one of the ‘dots’ got chatting to the roadhouse attendant about life in the town with a population of 11. She told us the story of the local transsexual who at one time used to be a male goat farmer. It’s almost impossible to imagine how one would go changing gender in a town like that… apparently she wasn’t too fond of the town people either and put a curse on them all in a ceremony on top of a pile of rocks near the roadhouse. Unfortunately we didn’t get to meet her in our brief stay at the town but most of the population was in the roadhouse escaping the heat with a couple of tinnies at the bar so we feel we got a good handle on the place. Back to the tranny though (as you can imagine she became a popular topic of conversation in the van), we reckon in a town of 11 there’s a maximum 6-7 guys (most of whom were at the bar) and we’re not sure, don’t get us wrong we know that WA is progressive, but we reckon the ratio of county Aussie blokes who get into a bit of tranny lovin probably still hovers a little over the 6:1 mark. So we’re wondering how she gets along at the local dance.

We also passed through a little town which had a very odd but elaborate lighting system rigged up over what we could only imagine was once a bowling green. Or a turf farm… or perhaps some kind of whacky hydro set up, but I do like the idea of a thriving little community getting out and playing midnight lawn bowls once a week.

Anyway, I’m rambling… you can see what those thousands of kilometres has done to me! But let’s cut a long drive short and give you a quick brief of the high and low lights in point form.

A few k’s past Newman we saw a sign to the Eagle Rock falls and decided we could use a swim so pulled onto a dirt track (and I hope Traveller’s Autobarn aren’t reading this!) thinking a couple of hundred metres of dirt road wouldn’t hurt… 45 minutes later, after a good 40 minutes of procrastinating over whether to turn around or not, and we got to a sign saying Eagle Rock Falls 34km. So we aborted the mission and decided that on the map it looked like the dirt road we were on linked up with the highway just a few k’s down the way. Another half hour and we were starting to get a little concerned. We found a road that looked like it led back to the highway but instead it took us to a weird tunnel under a mountain that must’ve been a mine at some stage. Or perhaps it was the Wolfe Creek murderer’s lair. Hmmm. We kept driving (very slowly and carefully, I promise) and got to a little mining settlement where we ignored the signs that warned us to keep out except in emergency (well, it was almost an emergency… I was really starting to get cranky!) and a nice mining chap told us we had to take the next left and we’d be back on the main road in a jiffy. Whew.

Our trusty map book told me that there were some aboriginal rock carvings at a rest stop so we decided to make it our designated lunch point. Unfortunately we couldn’t find any trace of rock carvings and instead of the nice picnic we’d planned we ended up being more than a little irritated when we realised our destination was in fact a fly festival and we were swarmed with the little black critters who were dead keen to get into every orifice and on every scrap of food. Then, when hopping out of the van quickly to minimise the fly colony inside I twisted my ankle quite badly and we ended up chomping down a sweaty and teary feed in the back of the van with the army of flies buzzing at the windows.

The 100 and something k’s we did out of Port Hedland in the early evening where we spotted 6 brown snakes on the road – I think we only ran over 2.

The distinct lack of kangaroos on the road, we only saw one group of about 3 or 4 roos and it was in broad daylight. Woo hoo.

Zeph came up with a challenge to find all 16 towns in Oz that end in “atta” – I did really badly at that one… Coolangatta, Wangaratta, Parramatta, Cabramatta… hmmmm that’s all I got.

And the biggest highlight of all – arriving in Broome and realising that it wasn’t as big a mission as everybody said it would be! Yee Har.

We got in much earlier than we expected and Broome has really put on some amazing weather for our arrival. We’re staying (and playing) at the Mangrove Resort and the view from our bar is absolutely breathtaking. There’s no use trying to describe it because I couldn’t do it justice, but I’ll put up a photo so you can see for yourself.

We played a lovely little gig at Mangroves in the evening as we watched a storm come in over the bay and sipped on glasses of wine. It’s a hard knock life for us

Gallery: The road to Broome...

hussyhicks — Thu, 6 Mar 2008 17:53:00 GMT

Pics from our drive to Broome and the Mangrove Resort

Day 15 to 17 - Festival vibes

hussyhicks — Sun, 2 Mar 2008 17:56:00 GMT

Nannup Festival was our next destination, we had been given 3 shows on different stages over the 2 days and wanted to get in to town by Friday night when it all kicked off to get into the festival spirit and catch up with some friends. We had coffee at Caves House and spoke to the staff about maybe playing a show there on our next trip and then we were Nannup bound. Rosie Burgess from Melbourne was also on the line up and we planned to meet up for some pre-festival drinks and a jam at our campsite. Luckily we’d stopped on the drive down at a local sheep cheese farm and picked up some of the most divine cheese we’d ever tasted so we were planning yet another cheese and wine session. Unluckily for Rosie she doesn’t eat cheese, and so it was up to me, Julz and Rosie’s violin player Sophie to devour all of the yummy gourmet goodness.

It didn’t take long until other musos started wandering by and before too long we had a nice little circle of new friends and a great jam going on. The wine ran out, a whisky bottle appeared and at some stage the distant sound of music from the main stage opening concert disappeared. We eventually ran out of steam and called it a night, ready for a big weekend of more of the same! The festival was a wonderful event with a great line-up of acts, some very colourful carnival folk selling very colourful wares, vibrant street performers and a really great atmosphere. Nannup is a gorgeous little town surrounded by vineyards and farmlets and apparently full of music lovers because they really knew how to put on a show. Our mates Double Entendre from Freo were headlining the festival (along with Ben Lee) and they were definitely a highlight for me. A friend we met up north in Broome last year named Peter Brandy, a really talented indigenous singer/songwriter was also on the bill and we caught his set of songs and story telling. Our shows were great fun, the first one was a chilled lunchtime set and then we played in the evening at the Nannup Hotel stage. Rosie Burgess played the slot after us and we jumped up and had a bit of a jam on her tunes as well. By this stage all the festival excitement was getting a bit much for little ole me so we caught a bit of the Double Entendre show on the main stage and then hit the hay, missing out on a camp jam that apparently went into the wee hours of the morning. Sunday was another big day of gigs, we’d booked in an afternoon show in Margaret River at Settlers Tavern and then had to shoot back to Nannup to play the closing gig at the Hotel stage. Our drive from Nannup to Margs was about 100kms longer than it should’ve been with me having my first real shocker as designated navigator and sending us down the wrong road… Oopsie!

Blew Drew came along to help us out with the PA, blow some harp and be an all round superstar and the gig was great fun. Settlers Tavern is a definate stop for anyone who finds themselves in Margaret River, particularly on a sunday arvo!

We made it back to Nannup (this time taking the direct route) and went to see Double Entendre at the Town Hall. Wow, what a show, it was almost like one of those cartoons you see where there is a rocking band inside a house and the entire building is grooving back and forward. Amazing vibes from both the band and the crowd. We were lucky enough to get the last set of the festival at the hotel just as Ben Lee finished his show at main stage so we belted out a pretty rockin 45mins with Charlie from Double Entendre sitting in for most of the set and really finishing the festival on a high note.

Now we had the marathon mission of getting to Broome in two and a half days. Who booked this tour anyway?! Oh, yeah… that was us. We’ll keep you posted on our progress as we undertake the drive with Zeph the cowboy as our road crew.

Gallery: Nannup Music Festival

hussyhicks — Sun, 2 Mar 2008 14:39:00 GMT

the festival and it's people

Day 14 - Bunbury Radio interview and Closed Vineyards

hussyhicks — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:50:00 GMT

We headed south bright and early the next morning as we had a radio interview with Glynn Greensmith on ABC state wide and wanted to get in a good afternoon of wine tasting in Margaret River but alas on the way down the highway was closed due to a bushfire and then our trusty van started screaming at us, apparently not happy with it’s new air conditioning belt, so we only just made it to the interview and then had to rush to a mechanic to get the belt tightened. So we didn’t make it to Margaret River until after 5pm and manically drove from vineyard to vineyard hoping we’d find at least one that might sell us a bottle of wine. We were just about to throw in the towel, cut our losses, call it a day when we saw an open sign swaying happily in the breeze. We pulled off Caves Rd into the drive of Guinea Run vineyard, a gorgeous little family owned winery and were greeted by one of the owners who informed us that, actually they were closed and the family was sitting down to dinner, but she’d be happy to sell us some wine anyway. The vineyard was run as a biodynamic farm and we were assured that their wines were chemical free and wouldn’t cause hangovers. This was definitely up our alley so we tasted some yummy wines and ended up buying a bottle of Guinea Run Cabernet Sauvignon. We said our goodbyes and thankyous and mentioned that she’d just made our night complete as we were going to find a camp site and have a good old wine and cheese session and to top off the already wonderful hospitality she said if we were having cheese we really had to try their locally made stuff and gave us a nice chunk of caraway seeded cheddar free of charge.

We found a camp ground at Yulingup right near Caves House and set up for the night and with a glass of vino we nibbled on cheese as the night set in. We were intending to go over to Caves House and check out the place but were far too comfy in our folding chairs and decided it would have to wait til morning…

Lonely Planet Great Guidebook Moment - The Roundhouse, Fremantle

hussyhicks — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:01:00 GMT

We've been a little behind on our Lonely Planet moments so I'm going back to recap a couple ...

Feb 28th we decided to meet up with our mates Oops and Jodie to check out the Fremantle Roundhouse and say our farewells before heading south. Our mates rocked up on their new wheels, a $500 scooter they bought from a hire shop the day before so we admired their purchase for a bit then crossed the railway track and climber the stairs up to our destination.

The Roundhouse is the oldest public building in Freo and we'd been told there was amazing views and it was only a gold coin donation to go in, which made it right up our alley! Stepping into the roundhouse is bit of an eerie feeling, it was built as a prison and the lock up rooms were so small it's suffocating to even think about being stuck in one. To make things even more freaky they put weird decaying dummies in some of the rooms... The weather was divine which made the already beautiful view over the headland absolutely stunning... it had all the elements- sparkling water, deep blue skies, posh little yachts bobbing up and down and the clarity of a pristine sunny Fremantle day, all contrasting very nicely with the sandstone of the Roundhouse. It was a really cool way to check out some of the history of the area, specially when we didn't have a lot of time to spare. Definately check it out for a cool, cheap thing to do in Freo.