21st July 2009 - Tuesday

I'm leaving Perth now, on a long adventure. I plan to use this site as a 'blog' for mates and family to check in to see where I am and get some pics!

I had planned to leave yesterday but my 12V laptop charger hadn't arrived, and poor Harry still has a pile of junk ('selling' possessions) still in his garage which I have to deal with. Luckily Bill (skipper of 'Jack Tar', the racing yacht I've been crewing on) has been incredibly generous at short notice and allowed me to store my 'keeping' possessions in the rafters of his garage. I'm going to go there tomorrow to help him glass up a new rudder for the boat (he lost his - luckily I wasn't on board when that happened!). I'm going to take the pile of junk there and take it to the Karrinyup swap meet on Sunday. Then *finally* I should be ready to leave Perth!

More later, and some pics...
The big sell-off

24th July 2009 - Friday

What a mess things have been! As I was leaving on Wednesday morning, Harry, my landlord came to tell me he wants $40 for the 2 days I've been parked in the driveway since cleaning the other bedroom! It leaves such a bitter taste in my mouth. I've given him $50 for forwarding my post to me, so he's got me over a barrel really. How unbelievably mean!? I HATE being forced into giving such a disgusting person money. I really have no other options for my post though. I thought about telling him to take the $40 out of the $50 and I'd pay him for post as-and-when. It makes me feel very low that I'm forced into kowtowing like that...

... but the kowtowing didn't end there! I left Marina Bvd thinking "well at least I'm free now" - HA HA! I arrive at Bills, to be immediately forced and guilt-tripped into working on glassing his rudder for him. I've thought for a while that he thinks I don't do enough work on the yacht in exchange for crewing experience - he's certainly calling in the returns now.

Bill is SUCH an ARSE! For example - I suggested practising vac-bagging on a small piece. His reply at the time: "oh nooo, we'll just go for it". Then we go to the shop, and the guy there suggests not only doing a practise piece but also a dry test-run beforehand. So we did the practise piece last night, and today: "bloody glad we did that practise run last night". This is one of several similar examples of this. Then this morning I got scowled at for not making him a coffee. I nearly just drove off and left him to it! More kowtowing... more depression...

In the mean time, Bill's been not letting me be with Lally at all. I'm under such pressure to help him, I've barely got time to feed her in the mornings, take her for a walk, make sure she's warm enough... She's slipped somewhere and split open the pad on the underside of her front paw. It was getting caked in puss and blood. Plus she's had incredibly runny poo for days - at Harry's she was waking up about 3-4 times during the night, crying to go out. I had to go with her to see where she was going so I could clear it up before Harry saw it. I was doing the same here, but Bill said to just let her out... So I did last night.

Then today I finally got a chance to clean up the paw wound and I bandaged it and held it together with tape. Lally isn't very comfortable with it (she almost refused to walk back with me when we finally got to go out for a walk at 5.30pm), so I tried to help her into the van and she let out this almighty and dramatic cry of pain! Not sure why - I was lifting her with both arms under her belly. So because I didn't want her to risk hurting herself and getting sand in the wound again jumping out of the van, I shut the van door and went in to accept some chicken casserole on offer. Started watching a film but too worried about Lally being in the van, and when I got to the van there was a huge pile of shit on the van floor. Luckily nothing on my bed!

So we went out for a short walk before bed and she went racing off after a cat or something, catching on her collar. We played stressful power games for half the walk until she finally gave up and walked behind me without pulling.

All of this has left me feeling very wretched and miserable. I feel like such a walk-over - pathetic, constantly apologising to everyone around me, having to ask permission to just *be*. I wonder if the Prozac is not working at all. The doc said to just keep taking it and I didn't stand up for myself and ask to try something else. It seems to be self-perpetuating; the more I run around with my tail between my legs, the worse I feel about myself, the more I dig myself into situations where I'm apologising for myself...

Now I'm wondering whether to publish this.

30th July - Thursday

Finally I've left! I guess I decided to publish the last post. Feeling a lot better now. Tonight I'm in Jurien Bay, north of Cervantes. Had planned to get to Geraldton today, but the gps led me down a sand track to get me here! After about 5km of sand and corrugations a large bush was blocking the way and Lally was looking at me like "are you sure about this?", so I turned around while I still could and headed back. The real road to Jurien Bay wasn't on the GPS map!

Saturday I took Lally to Two Rocks dog beach. I let her off the lead and she saw three old ladies and their little darlings in the far distance. She was OFF! I walked quickly to catch her up and twenty minutes later one of the ladies had put her on a leash! I measured her stride length on my way, and I swear it was about 2m! She was a speck on the horizon! The ladies were none too impressed and I was admonished appropriately. When they were out of sight again, I let her off again and could only get her to come back to me by turning around and walking in the opposite direction. Not sure if I'll ever get her to come back to me when she's called!

Saturday night I spent a very pleasant evening with Lally's foster mum, Kim, her husband Marco and their friend Jason - all of them are instantly relaxing people to be around, it almost makes me want to stay in Perth! Just as I find some kindred spirits I'm leaving! Kim taught us how to make Sushi which was delicious.

I stayed far too late, til 11.30, so it was about 12.30 by the time I got back to Trigg. I thought I'd wake everyone up, so I drove up the road a short way and just parked. Lally was up about 3 times in the night, and I was very grumpy as I needed to be up at 4.30am. I just put her green spiral lead on and opened the door for her. Poor girl.

4.30 came around far too soon and I blearily reversed back down the road and into Bill's driveway, only to discover a banging party was on next door, making way more noise than I would have! I loaded up the stuff for the swap meet and was on my way again to Karrinyup. Big sign saying No Dogs had me worried, but Lally just lay low under a sheet and nobody checked. Poor, poor Lally. After I'd unloaded and after the no-cars-moving kerfew I let her into the back, but she was stuck on the front seat for about 2 hours...

I did pretty well at the swap meet, but still had the tow bar, roof-rack and chairs - the big stuff that people couldn't really carry. Put everything up at "offers" on gumtree, and amazingly I sold the tow bar ($90) and roof rack ($120) and a few other things on Sunday/Monday night.

Did a day's work for Bill on Monday, but I had to tell him I wouldn't help him on Tuesday. I got loads of stuff done instead - fixing bits and bobs on the van, making up with Lally for being so awful on Sunday, bandaging her paw, cleaning etc etc. Finally on Wednesday I gave up trying to sell things and took the lot to Good Sammys! What a feeling! Everything I own in the world is now either in Bill's shed roof or in this van!

I still had some stuff to do Wednesday - I took the language books to Leederville bookshop, bought a pair of speakers for the ipod that Marco gave me - thanks Marco!! Finally I stopped in on Harry but there was no post for me. I explained that he could just write "please forward to" on the envelope and put it back in the post for free. He didn't seem to believe me. Perhaps there was post for me but he didn't want to give it to me - who knows.

I vaguely had thoughts of parking up at Two Rocks and driving back to get the post the next day, but once I started up the road those thoughts quickly dissipated! On my way at last! I did stop at Two Rocks to walk Lally quickly in the sunset. I let her off the lead again and she had fun jumping around in the banks of seaweed. I think she got bitten by a mozzie! There were no other dogs, luckily. I had to do the walking in opposite direction trick to get her back, but when she decided to come back to me she came *flying* towards me at full sprint! She's so beautiful when she runs! She almost disappears! She wriggles to her right a bit, kinda curved.

So I decided to go for it and head for Lancelin. Slow driving at dusk for fear of kangaroos. Couldn't face that on the first night away! Went straight for Lancelin Lodge and parked in their carpark for $15. Did some much-needed laundry which just seemed to redistribute the dog hair! Had a hot shower and a shave, had *toast* in the morning for breakfast... yummm.

Was told off this morning by the ranger for not having Lally's muzzle on! I tried to say she was a cross, but it didn't work.

It was a beautiful morning - crisp, clear sky, warm and sunny but not too hot. The laundry dried by the time I left, Lally's paw seems to be healing, her poo is turning more solid, the nights will only get warmer, I'm starting to relax...

Look what Lally can do with her back!

Walking in Trigg before I left I came across a notice put up by two Belgian backpackers. They'd parked their car in the beach car park for the evening, and theives had completely emptied the car. Everything gone; food, clothes, books, and of course the laptop, camera etc. It was a startling reminder that all the gadgetry I have on board is well worth breaking into my van for. And the van is probably pretty easy to break into. I guess I'll get into a routine of putting things away out of sight. Thinking of putting a few locks here and there.

So today I only made it to Jurien Bay, and I've splashed out again on a camping site - $23 unpowered, $26 powered, so I went for unpowered!

Now I'm going to do some fuel calculations!

No signal here, so will post this up with some photos next time I can connect.

Away at last!

31st July - Friday

No signal here either! It'll be a long post when it finally gets put up! Now I'm in Northampton, about 45kms north of Geraldton. Discovered $23 is very expensive for an unpowered site, and looked up Lonely Planet for the cheaper option around here. That meant driving away from the Vodafone coverage zone. That's ok though - Northampton seems like a really lovely place. Camping here for $15.

I left Jurien Bay after meeting an adorable long-haired jack russell puppy "Milly" and her friend "Banger", another terrier. Lally didn't think much of either of them!

It's been a stunningly beautiful drive today. Through rolling green countryside! It reminded me of Dorset! The WA winter really is very similar to the UK summer. This time of year the flowers are all coming out for spring too - very beautiful.

I detoured to drive through Green Hill and Leeman, topped up the tyre pressure, then drove to Dongara/Port Denison. Didn't stop but again detoured to drive through the town. Century-old fig tree-lined high street! They have these crazy huge roots which fan out like huge fins. On to Geraldton and straight to the museum. No dogs, of course, so tied Lally up in the shade and went in for a quick visit for a $5 donation. Pretty interesting but I was too worried about Lally to stop and read much. A little about pioneering history and aboriginal culture, and the history of the Batavia and other shipwrecks.

Then I thought I'd just push on to Northampton. Met what I think was a Swiss guy coming south in a van with two dogs. He said WA is particularly bad for not liking dogs, but NT and QLD are much better. He talked at me for quite a while about stuff - pretty interesting guy. Reckons there's free camping spots near Denham, so that could be worth a look.

I seem to be in "run" mode still... Not quite ready to stop still for very long. Perhaps when I get further north...

Anyway, $5 sausage sizzle here tonight. Beautiful spot, nestled under the gum trees. Sun should come up over the hill nearby and warm me up after what will be a chilly night. Days are warm though - I was in cami vest all day and sunnies; Happy Days.

Back to home page