Karrinyup Waters Caravan Park near Perth, Western Australia,is literally a world apart from Italy, a land of shorts and sandals, warm sunshine and screeching parrots, where English (sort of) is the lingo and we can read the signs, where we no longer preface questions with "Do you speak English?" where "G'day" replaces "Buon giorno."
Getting here took 40 hours with ten time zone changes on three airlines, Lufthansa, Etihad and Qantas, from Naples to Frankfurt to Abu Dhabi to Sydney to Perth. We are knackered! It will take days for our body clocks to adjust to the GPS inputs and even longer for our minds to adjust to our surroundings.
We rented a Toyota camper van, fully loaded with everything save food that we will need for the next five weeks. We have plenty of storage, a fridge, microwave, sink and stove, with pots, pans, dishes, camp chairs and bed linens and even towels. It will be our wheels, hotel and restaurant all in one, providing the freedom to go where we want, sleep in comfort and eat affordable and healthy meals - despite the fact that our unanimous vote for Meal #1 was good old mac and cheese!
Driving on the left seems more natural after our time in England but I must learn not to turn on the wipers when I want to signal for a turn. We completed all the errands this morning - laundry, food shopping, travel guides and a bird book and even mailing off our tax papers. It is tempting to hit the road but we'll stay here for a couple of days until we have recovered. Besides, there's quite an assortment of birds around, nothing new but ones we haven't seen for years
