Hit The Road Macs

We’ve finally managed to take stock the last few days here along the Great Ocean Road. We realise there hasn’t been much communication so we’ve had to try and get our bums in to gear to bring you up to speed. This will be the first of two instalments. Enjoy.

Well I guess we’ve got a fair bit to catch up on since our last instalment. It’s only been about 9 months!

At the end of our last update, we made the big mission to South Africa. This involved a 2 day drive from Mitchell Plateau to Broome, a 2 hour flight to Perth, a 5 hour wait until we boarded an 11 hour flight to Johannesburg, where we were treated to a 5 hour wait at the airport before boarding our final 2 hour flight to Capetown. It was a mission to say the least but the kids were fantastic travellers, kept entertained by the in-flight entertainment! A time and a place to be sure.

Our African adventure began in Capetown for four days where the kids and us found our heads spinning, back in a metropolis after the serenity of the Kimberley bush. Nevertheless, we had such an amazing time driving around the Cape, getting our fill of fresh and exotic produce whilst taking in the sounds, sights, smells and all the excitement of Southern Africa. The birds and wildlife were amazing, as was the hospitality from the locals. We caught up with Rosco Deane in Muizenburg (an old mate from London) before we headed further North to Stellenbosch and the Cape wine regions. Well, apparently Capetown had been in drought for the previous few years but you wouldn’t have known it. It was a bit of a shock to our Kimberley system having to wear so many layers again. We experienced flooding rains, there was snow on the Swarzberg pass, and ice on the windscreen so it was very conducive weather to enjoy Franschoeks full bodied reds!

Heading further North and East we passed though the Little Karoo, winding our way though that intriguing and arid environment until we had done a big loop, through Outschoorn and back down to the coast again where we enjoyed a few days with Karl and Mandy Nutt in Knysna. More wine. More food. From there we parked up in Jeffery’s Bay for a week where it was nice for us all to get our fix of salt water and waves without the fear of getting eaten by a crocodile. After a nice break we carried onwards, and literally upwards, through Addo National Park where we delighted at the amount of awesome wild animals we experienced up close. Elephants and zebras in plague proportions. The kids had an absolute ball spotting wild game.

From there we headed away from the safety of the garden route and into the untamed and remote Transkei. As it was for me on a previous trip, this was to become our favourite part of South Africa. It was the real and rural Africa which we craved and maybe our experience in the north of W.A had instilled in us a love and appreciation for the simpler and more remote areas of the world. It was a fascinating thing observing the kids playing and interacting with the poorest kids in Southern Africa, who largely spoke little or no English. It was a beautiful thing to watch the continuation and further development of a tolerant and non judgmental attitude towards people that are different to themselves in culture, that our kids have attained since living in the community. To them, kids are simply kids and no different to themselves (which is true I guess) despite their upbringing, their beliefs, the houses they live in and the food they eat. In our eyes, this is perhaps the greatest thing that our kids will take away from this whole trip, and we are so proud of that. That open mindedness will hopefully be one of the biggest gifts they receive in their life. Hopefully it counteracts the comparative lack of curriculum based academic prowess.

The couple of weeks we were in the Transkei were just so good for the soul. It was simple living at its best. We ate crayfish and oysters straight out of the sea. We enjoyed long walks though rolling green pastures where herders tended to their flocks of cattle, sheep or goats. We rode donkeys and horses. We dodged pigs and chooks on the rough roads through villages. We ate a freshly killed chook and mealie pap (maize) meal with a family in their unpowered mud hut rondavel. I surfed a truly wild and remote coast during the sardine run with literally hundreds of dolphins (and probably other large fish) schooling around me whilst I watched the whale highway at peak hour just beyond the breakers. I shared warm longneck beers with extremely poor but proud African men in the local shabeen where we talked politics and sport. We celebrated Byron’s 4th birthday with the local kids. It was surreal and magnificent and we never wanted to leave. But there were other good things on the horizon.

The real reason we had come to this amazing land was to share in the celebration of our good friends Lee and Anita Cummings’ wedding. We met up with them just North of Durban in Umhloti, a week prior to the big day. A group of dedicated travelers from all over the world had made the journey to see these two awesome humans wed (again). And it was here that we started to meet them all. We had the best week in the lead up to the big day. It started with a huge bucks show in Durban where we jumped off a bridge, drank our weight in lager and ended up dancing to the rhythms of Nigerian Jazz in a nightclub in a completely dodgy part of town. The hens day was a more civilised affair (sort of) with day spas and cocktails on the menu. We all made the journey to a private game reserve where in luxury, we marvelled at the diversity and scale of African wildlife. We were treated to true Zulu hospitality complete with a dancing performance. We all trekked up into the Drakensberg mountains to see the stunning beauty of the area. And over that week, the eclectic group that had made the trip, truly bonded. We felt so lucky to be a part of this celebration.

In the last of the lead up, we all hung out together in Umzumbe, south of Durban, where we surfed, ate, drank, shopped and generally chilled. The day itself was so awesome to be a part of. I was lucky enough to be part of the bridal party and Elsie was very chuffed to be appointed with flower girl duties. It was an incredible ceremony where love was the real winner. The reception carried on well into the night where there was live music performances, flash mobs, fires, dance offs and the most incredible gin. It was a collection of simply fantastic human beings, championing omptimism and positivity and above all, LOVE!

And it was from the next day, that people started to peel off and go their own ways, exhausted but content. It had been a truly amazing African adventure. We feel so lucky and privileged, that not only did we get invited, but also that the community gave us the time off to make it happen. It really was the trip of a lifetime for us to do as a family and we will always remember it. We feel so fortunate of where we have come from and the opportunities we have had to allow us to partake in such an adventure. We acknowledge the hardship that many South Africans have been and still go through. We are thankful to have stayed safe throughout the journey and to have met the people we have. We all still laugh at things like vervets getting into our room and stealing bananas (cliche right?), Harvey hunting an octopus in a milky brown river in the Transkei (which we ate), doing a dodgy cash deal for a zebra skin in the car park of a service station, the kids going down a waterslide out the back of a pub where the water temperature must have been close to zero and they all turned blue and had to hand back their left over tokens. For Byron, it was such a blur and we’re not sure he grasps the concept of being in another country as he keeps talking about it like it’s a part of Australia, and I guess it’s great that these times blend into one big amazing experience. It was just superb and a great little holiday in the middle of our trip around Australia. Kez and I didn’t say no to much and left a few notches longer around the belt. The colour, culture and diversity of South Africa will long remain with us and we feel blessed at having experienced such a lekker place together.

While we were in South Africa we received the unfortunate news that the community could not fund our tutoring position past the last term so we were left with some decisions to make….

To be continued……..

Well here we are, 14 months on from leaving our safety net of Margaret River, and we find ourselves in one of the most remote parts of the Kimberley’s, indeed Australia and perhaps even the world, living and working in an indigenous community amongst the most unique and pristine bushland I’ve ever had the pleasure of immersing myself in. Yes, over a year on and we still find ourselves on the best side of the Western Australian border, still not being able to bring ourselves to cross it. It’s fair to say, that this place has got under our skin a little bit. 

Having left our friends on the Gibb, we made our way up here in October in a convoy made up of our Hilux and a bit of a wet season hack Toyota Landcruiser which we had just bought and completely loaded to the roof full of supplies to get us through the next six months. The roads are bloody terrible to put it lightly. You just can’t grade bare rock. We were fortunate in that we only lost one wheel off the car on the journey up and that on an otherwise deserted road, a trio of cars came to our rescue and sprang into action chopping down trees to jack up the vehicle to make the necessary repairs. We stole a wheel nut off each wheel and on we went. Just in time for our first ever build up to the wet season. And what a wet it was!! The plan was, for Al to settle Kez, Harvey and Elsie into the community and then head back with Byron along the Gibb River Road to Over The Range Tyre Repairs near Mount Barnett, to caretake the place for a month whilst Nev, Leonie and Mira were away. We settles in to our one bedroom longer, the 3 kids sharing one room and the two of us, sharing the lounge room and kitchen. It felt so big compared to the caravan. We have a fridge, a washing machine, air conditioner and a television with no reception. We have no phone and no internet and it’s a wonderful thing. 

Well, our first experience of the community was the morning after we arrived, and due to start our school tutoring careers. As we made our way down into the community and into our ramshackle tin shed of a school, we were greeted by a dozen barking dogs and a friendly, yet snotty little girl who appeared the age of about 5, but who told us she was 11. As we struggled to understand what she was saying, we both looked at each other and wondered what the hell we were doing here. Without an adult in sight, it was the kids that took us under their wing and showed us how to make contact with the outside educational world!! We soon had kids of all sizes all around us, eager to discover the newcomers, particularly the new pale skinned children in the area. It was an overwhelming, confronting and completely amazing experience, not to mention a complete uppercut on every one of our senses. It was incredible. Oh, and the 5 year old was indeed a 5 year old, just playing a bit of a misunderstood trick on the new teachers!!

So, off Al and Byron went, leaving the others in a completely unfamiliar territory trusting that all would be well. And indeed it was. Over that month, Kez, Harvey and Elsie, were given the grand tour of this amazing part of the country by the people who know it best. And they thrived. 170mm of rain in October. Billabongs, creeks, birds and wildlife, hunting and fishing and lots of snakes!! Despite the good time they had, it was a relative bore down on the Gibb so it was good to get back up for Al and Byron. And it certainly was starting to get hot!! The build up continued and everyone began to find their feet in this amazing corner of the universe. On their arrival, we all moved from the community over to the Outback Spirit Safari camp, which we were to caretake for the wet season. It’s only a kilometre or so from the community but there are two creeks to cross, and we were to find out later that they certainly swell to raging torrents after biggest mobs of rain. 

School had it’s ups and downs as it still does. It was certainly a real eye opener for us at the level of education up here, and it makes you realise how far the gap is to bridge. I mean, you know people whinge about education standards in cities and down South. They really need to come up here and check it out. We’ve got 12yo kids here that don’t know when their birthday is. The school of the air education system, whilst so incredibly valuable to remote kids around Australia, is by nature a little bit clunky, particularly given the technological difficulties we experienced when the rains started to come. The internet and phones would often drop out, and when the rain fell on that little tin shed, you couldn’t hear yourself think (it was sometimes respite from the nagging kids however)! Temperatures inside our school shed were in excess of 40 degrees regularly, not ideal conditions for learning. Anyway, the teachers have been amazing support for us, however trying to tutor these kids from such a very low baseline, whilst trying to manage teaching our own kids, coordinating the 9 different students classes at various times during the day and also keep Byron busy has certainly been a challenge. And take it from me (Al writing here), if you think the idea of home schooling your own kids sounds romantic – think again!!! It sux!!! The boundary line is very blurry between teacher and parent and it becomes very hard for the kids to differentiate between the two. We certainly didn’t do much strict home schooling in the early parts of the trip and now we were doing it with structure, but with a handful of other kids in the class. And I don’t mind admitting, that out of a classroom full of kids from an aboriginal community, our kids were by far the worst behaved!!! Battles have been frequent. Of course when they are online dealing with their teachers, they are just little angels. But when it comes time for us to do set work in the classroom, forget it. Too much other stuff going on around them. And I have to say, my prior aspirations of becoming a teacher one day have completely gone out the window. Keryn is far more patient than me, as women seem to naturally be, but even so, we have both had some major meltdowns with our own offspring. And so it was, that we were all looking forward to the school holidays.

The wet season holidays were just fantastic!! I have never seen so much water in all of my life. There’s just got to be a way to pump some of it down to the drier parts of the country!! The electrical storms were so intense. Weather-wise, it is a completely volatile area. We experienced huge nightly build up clouds with thunderous storms and heavy down pours. I have never heard thunder and seen lightning like it before. We experienced some huge tropical lows and also 3 cyclones. On the morning of Cyclone Marcus which was due to travel right over the top of us, we had a couple of the community kids run up and knock on the door of our donger, which I had been busily securing and tidying around. “Mister, Mister, you have to come quick”. They informed me that two of the teenage boys had headed off early that morning to hunt for goanna and had become bogged out the back of the air strip in thick bush. They had managed to get two cars bogged, one on either side of the track. So, I reluctantly headed off to rescue them, with the impending Cyclone Marcus bearing down. I managed to recover one of the vehicles and no sooner than I did, off he drove at 100 miles an hour despite me running after him waving my arms to come back. We weren’t out of the woods yet, literally. To put it lightly, I was a little bit cross. The explanation I got was that he was in trouble with Jeja (Grandma) and he’s gone back there quick smart. “Well it’s alright for him, what about us?” I thought to myself. Well the inevitable happened and I myself got bogged whilst trying to retrieve the other vehicle. It had started raining by this stage and the wind was picking up and I really didn’t fancy spending the cyclone sitting in my car amongst falling Bloodwood trees and Livistonia Palms. Anyway, I luckily had the keys to a spare vehicle parked at the airstrip and I sent the young fella to run the few kilometres to get it whist I kept digging. Fortunately we managed to get my car out and then in turn, the other vehicle so I was back at home with the family before things really started getting serious. Kez was out of her mind with worry. And it’s fair to say that I think Wesley and Wyatt weren’t in the good books with Jeja for a fair while.

The plateau is largely huge deposits of laterite and dolerite rock so it is normally possible to drive around the roads during the wet season as it’s so hard and not boggy. Just don’t venture off the main tracks and you’ll normally be ok. This also means the water runs away relatively quickly and into the creeks. The roads around the area turn into rivers so for months on end we were driving through floodways. We had a few close calls crossing creeks but overall we had a ball. The kids, our own and the community kids, just lived in the water. As we are 350m or so above sea level, and not far away from the magnificent Mitchell falls, there is no risk of Saltwater crocodiles, although we had a few encounters with freshies. It was just an incredible place to be. We received mail and food on the weekly mail plane, when it was able to land, once going for three weeks without contact from the outside world. Just prior to big rains, at one stage, the whole community, all of the rangers and Kez and the eldest two kids had gone into Broome (12 hours drive away) for the end of year school camp. Well, Byron and myself and Angie (Who was care taking the APT Safari camp) were the only 3 people on the whole of the Mitchell Plateau. It would have to be tens of thousands of square kilometres to ourselves. By car the closest person would have been at least 5 hours away, if you could get over the King Edward River. And then another few more hours to the next closest person. The isolation and remoteness of this place is one of the reasons why our family love it up here. It was such a shame when the roads opened up to here from the Kalumburu road and we started having to share it again!! 

During the holidays we had some great friends come and visit over Christmas as well as a few cyclones. Nutty and Nic and Cleo and Harty along with kids, made the voyage by air just before Christmas, and it was a fantastic time. They ended up having to stay 3 days extra as it ended up being too wet to fly out which was a bit exciting. We took the tinny out and got some fishing in down at the coast of Port Warrender, and made a trek into the falls. The kids had a ball!! Our Boxing Day Test backyard cricket plans went a little underwater however the well prepared pitch was put to good use by the kids as a mud slide. Other than that, we didn’t find the wet season heat too oppressive. I think the altitude certainly helps and also the fact that we had so much rain and a swimming hole right there to cool off in. All in all, we had 2.5 metres of rain from October to April. Gave everything a good clean out thats for sure. We also had Al’s Mum and Dad come and visit at the tail end of the wet and they had a jam packed week of boating, killing and cutting up wild cattle on the ground, hiking into the falls and helping us do a few jobs. It was great to see them and I’m pretty sure they would have had a good rest after they left us!! I was a bit over enthusiastic to get Dad to a favourite Barra spot on my boat and managed to break his tail bone whilst sitting up the front, but he put on a brave face for the week. Sorry Dad. 

So, anyway, here I sit writing this and it hasn’t rained for a couple of months now and everything is starting to dry out. In fact, despite us doing a lot of burning off in Autumn, there has been a few big fires around the place up here lately. But it all seems to be the norm up here. We finally managed to drive off the plateau last month into Broome town, for school camp. It was the kids second school camp and such an important event for all these students of school of the air to interact with each other. REAL COFFEE!! FRESH MILK!! BEER ON TAP!!! FRESH FRUIT AND VEGGIES!! It’s amazing what you miss when your out in the bush for that long, but to be honest, as the week drew to a close we were all glad to be heading back up the hill. Haircuts, Doctors, Dentists and shopping and the wallet was starting to bleed. During our time in town we renewed all of the kids passports as it was decided at some point during the wet season, that we would join our friends Lee and Anita in South Africa to celebrate their wedding. So we’re off next week and I have to say I am really bloody excited!!! It will be so good to have a family trip where we don’t have the stresses of school to deal with daily, we can actually go and have some fun with the kids in a new place. And we can enjoy some relative luxury. But most of all – we can swim and surf in the beach!!!!! Even if it is winter. Yep, not much swimming goes on in salt water up here. The kids have followed the local kids into the water down at the coast a few times but I didn’t for one second feel safe. I’ve seen some BIG lizards up here. 

We’ve had such an incredible time up here and we all feel really privileged to be living on the country of and with the Wunambal people. They have been such a welcoming mob to us. We’re really thankful of the relationships we’ve been able to forge whilst here. The kids are just awesome. Harvey and his mate Winston are virtually inseparable and go on daily fishing, hunting and exploring adventures, making cubbies in the bush to spy on kingfishers and falcons, spotting dancing brolgas, setting up traps for dingos, and just walking around this country (barefoot of course) and taking it and it’s stories in. Harvey has really grown during his time here and his passion for birds and wildlife is so infectious. We’ve been on quite a few camping and boating trips together down to the coast and I’ve really enjoyed watching his enthusiasm for nature and also fishing. Elsie is a bright little spark. She certainly gives us a run for our money. She is FIERCELY independent and as stubborn as a mule, and although she is the source of most of my stress, she has grown into a great little bush girl. There’s two girls Shianne and Shanita who are both similar to her in age and she for the most part gets along with them swimming, picking flowers and colouring in. She has got so much energy and she is a real little fish in the water. She is such a confident little thing too, who always takes her chances humbugging the staff at the camps to help her colour in books. She has got so much character too, when she reads her reading books to us at night time, Keryn and I are both captivated by the stories, such is her expression, grammar and comprehension. She really does know how to get what she wants which can be a blessing but I suspect may be a curse and cause me many more headaches one day. Little Byron isn’t so little anymore. With his 4th birthday due whilst we are in Africa, he is just in his element up here. His two best mates up here are 3 year old Kingsley and a 14 year old boy with cerebral palsy who can’t talk but is completely mobile and these three just run around or ride around on their bikes around the community all day!! We often see Byron sitting on a trolley, ordering Junior to pull him along down the rocky hills. He just keeps busy all day and has turned into such a strong little bugger, yet so caring too. He often surprises us with his understanding of what is happening around him and his ability to portray it. Byron can swim now although it really was a worry for us that he might get washed away down the creek when it was a raging torrent over the wet season. One of the best things which we have noticed about the kids is their lack of prejudice. Kids are just kids and that is such a beautiful thing to see. They just accept what’s around them with this blind innocence and get on with it which has been so refreshing for both of us. Last weekend we managed a trip up to Kalumburu to check it out but also fix one of the Wunambul Gamberra rangers cars (Yes I’m getting my hands pretty dirty these days). There is obviously a very high concentration of state housing within that community. It’s kind of the stereotypical community that you conjure up in your head, car wrecks everywhere, heaps of dogs cruising around etc. Yet our kids just walked along the street and sniffed out all the other kids there to play with, and took no notice of the dogs, or the stark difference in property appearance and life up there. It just didn’t matter to them. They just wanted to kick the footy with kids. And it helps that they kind of speak like this mob up here now too. One lady said her older daughter came running over to her and proclaimed, “Mum!! Have you heard these kids talk?? They talk just like Kalumburu mob here now!” And her reply was “Oh well it’s not our fault – it was that mob up on Mitchell that broke ‘em in!!”. We had some of the traditional owners take us right up to the old Pago mission where we spent the day fishing with them, an awesome experience and such beautiful coastline. Such hospitable people.

So anyway, we’re pretty sure we’ll finish the year and do another wet season up here. We’re over in South Africa for 6 weeks, which will give us a nice spell. And then we’ll finish the school year within the community and then move over as we did last year to caretake the Outback Safari camp. It’s just too good an opportunity to leave. We have a great job, so varied and rewarding in so many ways. It’s such amazing country and the experience for the kids and us too is just invaluable. We’ve had the chance to hunt for and sample local delicacies like dugong, turtle (Fresh and saltwater), goanna and emu. We’ve had snakes in the school, snakes in the house and snakes in the car! We’ve had the arrival of the dreaded cane-toad. We’ve learnt how to catch Barramundi and baitfish. We’ve been to corroboree’s and swam at cascades. We’ve seen rock art and rare birds. We’ve flown in choppers and cooked cherabin on the coals. We’ve felt the spirits of the lands on the wind. We are all learning so much. And also, we feel like we have started this educational journey with some of the kids in school and feel we owe it to them to take them a little bit further along on that journey. There is some classic people around the Kimberleys, all with several stories to tell. Really welcoming, salt-of-the-Earth, genuine characters and I must say that it’s just a complete pleasure to hang out with them. Of course we miss our friends and family back home, but gee whiz, the quality of some of the people up here is incredible. 

Aside from the people, it’s the environment and way of life that has really stuck it’s claws into us up here. It’s complete remote wilderness, one of raw beauty. It’s stark and scary, empty yet entertaining, powerful yet peaceful. It is BIG and it is OLD country. Prehistoric looking in many ways, where you expect a big T-Rex to come bursting out of the bushes at any moment. As it is, we’ve only seen frilled next lizards and crocodiles, but you sense that their distant ancestors certainly weren’t out of place here. It’s also so refreshing to be in an environment where image is not important and bureaucracy takes a back seat. Everything is so laid back and relaxed and just happens on Kimberly time, if at all. Once you step out of it, you realise what a fast paced and stressful life we live in the Western first world, often not stopping to smell the roses. So it’s kind of nice to be out of that bubble for a while. And that’s why we’d like to stick around. 

If you can brave the ridiculously rocky and rugged roads, we encourage you to come and visit. Bring 2 x spare tyres.

And that’s about it…

Well, here it is. The first entry. It was a ridiculous fortnight lead up to the day of departure. Where do you start?? Renting our house out for a year, decking out our modes of transport and tightly trying to cram it in like the most intense game of Tetris you’ve ever played, packing up our lifelong acquisitions and treasured belongings, compartmentalising them into seemingly trivial piles – “to throw away”, “to take with us”, “to keep in the sea container” or “to take to the Lions shed”, then there was redirecting mail, finalising bills, selling cars and most of all saying goodbyes.

It was an arduous task. Made easier we have to say, by having the kids take a week of school holidays down to the farm in the Scott River. That and the generous help from our neighbour Josie and the “get it done” attitude from Mum and Dad. I reckon we both would still be standing there scratching our heads if it wasn’t for the enormous assistance from these list crossing angels. Even still, we had our work cut out for us and by the time the day finally arrived, we were well and truly buggered before the trip had even begun.

One of the saddest tasks we had to do was saying goodbye to our beloved dog Chevy, whom we sensed knew of the impending departure without her, but as she always does, took it in her stride and we took great comfort in the fact she will be loved whilst we are away by the O’connors (thanks guys). Nevertheless it was sad, but all part of the plan.

A plan to take a trip around Australia. To do the big lap. A scout around the big back paddock. With a Hilux, a Jayco, a tinny and three kids in tow. Could we survive, or would we turn around after a week or two and come back. It remains to be seen. But what we do know is that it was a hell of a ride for us to get here, much heartache and toil, and we’re really not sure where the road takes us to from this point. But adversity has taught us that we are pretty solid as a family unit, we’ve got a few pennies in the bank, kids at a good age, and an opportunity in front of us which we have decided to grab. We’re scared, excited, nervous and in awe of the challenges before us. Can we successfully school three children on the road, and at the same time combat budget strain, vehicle fatigue, incessant noise assaulting our ears plus the day to day pains of finding accommodation, cooking food, avoiding idiots on the road and the like. It really is quite strange to get our head around, but it feels like the right thing in our hearts to do. 

So we decided to create this blog, firstly for us to look back on as a diary of sorts, to reminisce about in future times. And secondly to let our family and friends know where we are and what we are up to, just in the hope that our paths may cross and that we may have the chance to combine our journeys around this amazing land of ours.