Turtles, Turtles Turtles

Turtles Eh?

So It's that time of year for the turtles. Time to get together and do the birds and the bees thing. The turtle Stalk.
I say it like it's something Blase but it's something incredible to experience. No not the Turtles in union but the aftermath. When the female comes ashore to lay her eggs.

We scoped it out after doing a little research and headed down to a place called Jurabi Beach, or Turtle Beach which is on the West side of the cape, about a 30-40 minute drive.
Holly said..."We have to go there, that's where the turtles go to lay their eggs", we later confirmed that they didn't just go to that one beach, they went to the whole coast. Wayne summed the comment up perfectly by saying "Is there a special beacon on that beach that makes them all come there?" hehe...Silly.

So we went down about an hour before dark and looked around, saw some turtle action going on and decided that that would be the place we would come back to. After dinner and just after dark we headed over and not a second after setting foot on the beach we had a girl rush up to us telling that they were watching a turtle, please be quiet she said in her German accent.
We headed over and though there were stars in the sky the moon wasn't, so all we could see was a dark shadow flicking sand out of its nest. How cool! It's surreal being that close to what is probably a myth to all of us who don't live near warm waters. Very cool indeed. We did take a sneaky photo with flash when the German's had gone to capture the moment, I think Mrs Turtle was a bit busy to care.

Here is the turtle, we didn't want to get too close, her head is facing us. We will be heading down for an early morning visit soon as they will soon be hatching. Very exciting :)

We're moving out of our house-sitting house tomorrow, Tuesday as the American family is coming back from their holiday. Our last move in Exmouth before we leave, and we're heading to Karijini on the 17th.

Other than this there is not a lot happening in our little world, we're just existing and looking forward to the next moves. Stephanie may possibly be making this blog a true "Holly and Steph" blog again as she might be joining us in Bali while we're there, From what we can see Bali looks amazing. Temples, Monkey forests, snorkelling etc...and cheap hotels! Good times.

I think that's all for now, we'll check back in when something interesting happens,
Ciao for now,

David & Holly (David Eating a Smore and Holly's thumbs up at finding a nesting turtle)

Shoplifter

Hello Blogfans,

It was last week, tuesday I think when I, David walked into work and was hussled into the office by my boss and his boss and asked to explain a piece of video footage that made it look like I was stealing something.
It looks really bad but I can explain was my response, though they didn't want to rewind the tape and see that the item I was 'shop lifting' was actually a Bakery bag with a creamy pastry in it given to me by a friend of mine on her way to a progressive dinner at church.

What a day that was! We went above the Boss and got in touch with the shop owners and got them to make him review the tape, and so I got a call a few hours later with my job back and an apology. 

This really got us thinking and I think made us appreciate what we had here and what we needed to do before we left, consequently we are going to Karijini National Park on the 17th of this month for 5 days, returning to Exmouth for a few weeks and then heading down to Perth to see our Australian surrogate family for christmas.

We had a very busy few weeks between moving out from our friends' Catherine and Waynes house, we moved into a small house near our work and spent pretty much every day and night doing something.
We then moved to the house we're currently in to house-sit for and seemed to stop. I think it was so nice for us to be able to stretch out and relax without causing any inconvenience to anyone. It's been great.


I think we're ready for the next and pre-final part of our Australian trip, Karijini - Perth/Farm and then on the 3rd of January will be flying to Denpasar in Bali and spending 10 days there having a look around, seeing some rice paddy fields and some lush tropical scenery. After that we head to Jakarta for the night on the 13th then make the trip to Manchester, UK via Doha in the UAE, How wonderfully exciting and very very sad :(
We've both warmed very much to Australia but it will be good to have a change of scenery maybe.

One surely cannot live in a perfect 36 degree climate for ever...Wait..Maybe one could. 'Holly....Can we cancell our flights and stay...' You've seen how much fun we've had the past two years, but we'd make fun wherever we go. It's not where you are, it's who your with and what you're doing.

Untill Next time,

David & Holly

Different Language

Well we said that we would give you a blog overload and we have definitely failed.  This is probably the busiest we have been since we started travelling around Australia.  It's like being back at home.  Yikes.  The weather has been hot here, 30s every day.  Some days I feel like the air conditioner in the house is broken.  It probably just cannot compete with the heat.  

Let's tell you about some of the interesting things.  The other day, Sam took David spearfishing with his new spearfishing gun.  The guys around here are huge into it.  Some of them can hold their breath underwater for like 8 minutes.  I would see a big fish, panic and that would be the rest of my breath gone.  When you spearfish you free dive (so without any apparatus) and sometimes you will see sharks and snakes....Or if you catch something you have to be able to bring it back up to shore as well.  Definitely the non-lazy way of fishing.

As always, immigration/government has decided to be annoying.  The school here had asked me to teach here with a contract for a bit until the end of term.  This meant having to get my visa extended (long story, boring to tell).  Immigration said they would get back to me in 5 business days and it has now been like two weeks.  I have been calling them heaps, getting a new person every time.  I finally gave up.  So my last day of teaching was on Tuesday.  I will be going back to working full time hours at the IGA.   I will miss teaching.  I loved every minute of it.  The last class I was teaching in was a Pre-Primary class (that is kindergarten back home). I was teaching them how to say the letter 'o' and when I came to orange, I said it different from the kids.  One of the boys piped up and said, "that's because you speak a different language!" talking about my accent.  I thought it was pretty cute.

Halloween is celebrated here in the town of Exmouth because without the American influence there would be no town of Exmouth.  Saying that, I did not get candy (or as they say here 'lollies') ready for the kiddies.  We only ended up getting 3 kids anyways.  Sounds like all the kids were out and about getting their lollies though.

I think we will stick around here for a few more weeks and then it will be time to say our goodbyes and travel a bit more, see Australian family for Christmas and then head on our merry way back to the freezing...

That is all for now.  Check back again in the next few days as we will try to have a blog here every day until we leave the house we are housesitting at.  Hopefully get caught up on the well overdue photos as well.

Holly and David

Look out for the humpy!!

Whale Watching

Okay, SUPER delayed blog!
We have been super busy, well as busy as you can be while living in a small town like Exmouth.  David and I have managed to find work to keep us busy. At the moment I am sitting next to two little joeys sitting in little home made pouches popping in and out as they hear different noises.  The American family that we have befriended here get to take care of them as a lady goes to work certain days and needs someone to babysit them. 

Since we last blogged we have moved around quite a bit.  After our week at Cathryn's we stayed in a caravan park for a couples days (where kangaroos, in the night stole shoes and wrecked the left over ones).  A lady named Deb (the American mom) messaged us asking us if we would like to stay with her and her family while her husband was away in America for the week.  So we moved in with them and became a part of their family.  Her eldest daughter was so excited as I was also going to be teaching her classroom a couple days that week so not only did she get taught by "Miss Holly" she also got to live with "Miss Holly."  The youngest is almost four and he cannot contain his excitement everytime Mr. Dave and Miss Holly come over to play with him.  They have given David and better and more positive view of Americans.  They get cheap shipping over here so they have tons of yummy American things that we can only get back home....reece's peanut butter cups, marshmallows, pop tarts, gushers....the list goes on.

After living with them, and almost becoming homesick as I was reminded of all the things I am missing out on back home, Cathryn asked us if we would like to come and stay with them again for 2 weeks as the all decided they wanted to have us back.  We obviously accepted and enjoyed another two weeks with them.  David and I also took turns with them cooking dinner.  I have been giving the opportunity to help Cathryn out with a girls group that she does every second Friday.  It has been fun doing that kind of stuff again and David enjoys his Star Wars lessons and movie watching men's night with Wayne and Zac.  We have had many tea times with Cathryn trying out her many different kinds of tea. 

The other day Wayne offered to take us out on the boat to go whale watching.  It was awesome!!! There were so many humpback whales everywhere and they would come so close to the boat.  It is amazing how massive they are.  We ran into a group of 7 or 8 whales chasing around each other and playing...imagine 8 1 tonne whales at pretty fast speeds jumping on each other and playing around...its cool and scary, we kept our distance.  My pictures do not do justice at all.  When we were not chasing the whales we were sitting in the boat listening to them talk to each other under the water and hearing their blowholes pufff out of the water, so loud!  We cannot wait to go out there again.  AND apparently there are still whale sharks hanging around in the golf.  I so hope we see one again!  

The weather has been super hot here with a record day of 42 degrees Celsius.  Apparently most of the summer here is 40s and 50s, I am glad we will be leaving here by then.  It sounds like the opposite of our extreme winters.  I do not know which would be worse.

At the moment it is school holidays.  I like how the school terms run here, much better than back home I think.  They have four terms that each last about 10 weeks with two week breaks inbetween minus the summer holidays which is more like 5 weeks long.  Much nicer on the teachers and students.  After the break I have to cut down my shifts at the IGA because I will be getting heaps of teaching work with the school.  I had lots before the holidays as well due to a flu going around the town, I have been lucky and have still not caught it.  I am also doing night fill at my IGA on Wednesdays and Saturdays.  It's my fitness for the week. haha.

Sorry there are no photos up yet.  We are currently living in a place that does not have internet.  As soon as I have more time at a house with internet there will be an overload.  We are house sitting at a house this weekend and in a couple weeks time Deb and her family are going for a 3 week trip back to America, at this time we will be house sitting for them with plenty of time for writing blogs and putting up photos. 

Well that should be a big enough update for now, hopefully the next one will not be so far off in the future.  It is feeding and toilet time for the joeys.  So I am off.

Holly & David

Squid Rings

I am currently sitting under a fan trying to cool off.  The days here seem to be getting hotter and hotter and apparently it only gets worse.  Not sure if I want to experience the heat they get, although we will experience Darwin heat, which is worse than here.  Blah.  Since I have updated you last we have had a few interesting experiences. 

The "freak" weather keeps following us around Australia.  First we have the freezing temperatures in Perth and then we have cold and rain in Exmouth. We have been told by all of the locals here, especially the older ones, that it has not been this cold and rainy in Exmouth in all the years they have been here.  So after a few days of rain and being tired of it the only indoor place to go was Grace's Tavern (secret planning on my part as I was meeting some ladies for dinner there later on.).  Sam's brother and sister-in-law, the Irish couple, Pete and I all headed there. (David and Sam showed up later after work)  After a few games of pool a man, whom we have seen around the town a fair bit carrying his backpack and is not the cleanest looking person ever (if you catch my drift), asked us if we wanted to play a game of pool with him.  After playing a few games with him we really started to enjoy his company.  He broke the ice by telling us a poem that he wrote about the game of 8 ball.  We later found out that he is a Travelling Poet and has been travelling around Australia for 27 years, hitchhiking. He was carrying his life on his back.  Stories after stories, jokes after jokes... He had us wrapped around his finger.  In the end we all ended up buying his little book of poems from him.  After the night there we took him to a beach by where we were staying where he ended up staying the night and hitchhiking back into town.  His plan was to stay in the town until Sunday, go to church, and then head off. 

We decided that we didn't want to stay in the caravan parks and that we were going to try and do some free camping (as the ranger is away for a few days).  Sam, David and I headed to a beach just out of town one evening and made it our home for the night.  We also did a little 4x4ing in the sand dunes before watching some Mighty Boosh in our little outdoor cinema.  We had a pretty cool set up.  After a wonderful sleep on the beach we woke up to a local man on his horse yelling at us that the ranger was going to catch us and we would have to pay a 500 dollar fine.  Little did he know we have talked to many locals in the town about where to go, what the ranger considers "free camping", etc.....  After our rude awakening we decided it was time to get some breakfast and have showers.  The boys were pretty keen on getting showers at the caravan park that we have had so much hassle with.  I felt a little uncomfortable, especially in the place we parked but I followed.  As soon as I got out of the shower a man came up to me asking if I was staying at the caravan park.  I told him that I wasn't at the moment, that I had been and that I was planning on checking in that afternoon.  He didn't take any of that well.  So, apparently he had a spy that saw David and I go in (but not Sam) and we got fined 10 dollars each.  I guess our WHITE van was a bit more noticeable than the boys thought.  I paid the fine while he waited for David to get out of the shower.  A tad embarassing and a bit on the wild side for me.  I'm such a rebel...lol. 

After the stressful morning (for me anyways) I decided that I would rather just play in safe.  A couple nights before one of the guys we met offered to let us stay on his driveway for 10 dollars a night.  So we thought we better take him up on the offer.  But that night I went to a "Cook Off"  where a bunch of ladies and I cooked up a bunch of meals to freeze and hand out to people in the community when they are needed.  At the end of the night Cathryn, a lady I have gotten to know over the past few days, asked us where we were staying and offered to let us stay at her house for the evening.  So, we took up her offer and the next morning she told us that she would like us to be a part of her family for the rest of the week.  She has been amazing and so helpful.  Her children are wonderful. We have been trying to help out as much as we can. 

When David is working and Sam is not, I am usually hanging out with Sam and when they are both off we are all together, and of course when Sam is working I am with David.  So, to the people we have met that do not know us too well, it has caused a bit of confusion, so we have had a few laughs over the past few days.  David was working the other night and we went for a bbq on the beach with some friends.  When we pulled up some of the people were referring to me as Sam's girlfriend and what not.  Then at church the next day a girl who I spent the afternoon with last week thought Sam was my boyfriend.  We realized we have probably confused them all because I am either with both of them or one of the other. 

Yesterday, I went to church and sure enough our friend from the Tavern was already there so I sat with him.  When it was communion, as we were told to drink he cheers'ed my glass.  I uncomfortably giggled and kept on with what I was doing and then he started to hiccup and pretend to be drunk.  Obviously, communion is supposed to be serious and he was not being.  It is definitely not something you really ever experience.  He sounds like he is disrespectful but he actually has a strong faith in Jesus.  I liked that he came just as he was a dirty travelling poet, smelly, not perfect by any means, you could imagine the judging that could have gone on.  But he did not care.  He came to worship God with everyone else and that was all that mattered.

David and I went out to the beach with Wayne (Cathryn's husband) and the kids.  He took out his boat so we got to go for a ride.  The original plan was to go out and see whales but they were not wanting to play so we went squidding instead.  All this consists of is casting out and reeling in, hoping to catch something on the way in.  Wayne caught one within minutes.  They actually look really cool.  We decided to do a bit of trolling (slowly driving with the fishing line out) and I managed to catch one! As I was bringing it in he was telling me to bring it in but keep it down, I didn't know if he meant my rod or the squid so I kept looking at both.  All of a sudden he yelled as the Squid INKED! I now knew what he meant.  Luckily, he didn't get inked.  We headed back in and cleaned our catch with a couple other couples and then headed over to Deb and Pete's house to have a big squid feast.  I have never tasted squid so good.  I do not think I will be able to eat squid when I get back home.  I ate soooo much!

Today I had an interview with IGA (as I have not been hearing from the school as much as I want)  and it was about two minutes long and I was hired.  So this town is a town of 1,000 people or so.. and it has two IGAs kittie corner from each other.  David works at one and I will be working at the other.  I also am getting paid way less (as I found out when I got home from the interview).  Oh well.  So I start tomorrow at 630 as a checkout chick.  I am excited to spend some days working rather than reading and walking around all the time. 

No photos today.  We do have some though.  I will hopefully get around to putting some up on facebook in the next few days again. 

Holly

Phinally Photos.

David and his catch!

I have finally spent some time uploading photos onto facebook.  I have got Kalbarri - Shark Bay photos up.  So if you can remember back to those blogs you can put these photos in those memories.

West Coast Pt 1

Little update

David and I went fishing with Sam, his brother and wife and Laura, Damo and Peter (the Irish..) Damo, Peter, Sam and David were all lucky and caught some reef sharks..just little ones..but it fed us all very well that night.  David was also lucky enough to catch a seagull...Let's just say after that they left the bait alone in the water...stupid birds.  It has been cold and rainy here for the past few days.  Apparently it has not been this cold in 26 years (18 degrees Celsius) But today is finally sunny and clearing up! Back to happiness! haha.

Thats all for now.

Holly

Quick one...

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Echdina, we had stop for him to cross the road.

Friendly Emu checking out lunch

So we have decided to spend a little time in Exmouth as David has found a very well paid job, IGA (40,000 yearly salary...crazy!).  When I get relief teaching it is good money as well.  This will all help to have a wonderful finish to the end of our trip.  At the moment we are back living in the caravan park.  It is a pretty nice set up.  We hope to find something a bit cheaper, we also do not get the nicest customer service from this place.  Rather not deal with them on a daily basis. 

We have invested in a cheap allarounder fishing rod and have gone out a few times.  Still not as lucky as our first fish.  Sounds like we were pretty lucky catching that one.  David and I have gone to the National Park a few times but it is getting a bit hotter here.  David and Sam have gone surfing a few times (David body boarding) I am still working up the courage after seeing that guy.  Blah.  I hope to have tried it before we leave. 

Anyways, update to let you know we are still alive.  I must get off as my time has run out.

Holly