here is a quick update on what i have been upto so far on my wild trek up north west. The first day out of perth was all exilleration as you can imagine- just wanting to get as far away from the city as possible. We managed to find a nice spot on a beach to stay in some place called port denison. The next day we travelled to Kalbarri national park to check out a couple of gorges, which no-one pointed out thaT they would be dried up. None the less a great view and gave me more of a desire to find a gorge to go swimming in. We didn't feel like leaving the park that night so we found a quarry and hid from the ranger to avoid being kicked out. For some crazy reason it rained like mad all night and i realised that i shouldn't have drilled so many holes in the roof...leaks were coming in from everywhere. I just assumed that it doesn't rain up north. Bongo is still covered in red mud from leaving the park that morning,,,makes her look like a hardcore off road vehicle.!! We left kalbarri to head towards monkey mia. We eneded up driving through some wierd tropical storm all day and then tempted fate by driving into the peron national park through 4WD tracks to get up to an outback hot tub. It is a large tin can that heated bore water flows through, surrounded by the greenest grass i have ever seen...surrounded by the redest dirt.We then picniced on the beach and were cooking on the sheltered side of the van. half way through cooking we realised that the tide had come in and water was surrounding bongo... yikes. We then got to monkey mia and saw the dolphins,. Fi got to feed one. probably the best event of the day was watching a dolphin and a pelican fight. (honest). We saw our first turtle off the jetty there as well. We met a couple in a van from italy and camped with them off the side of the road. Manau is a chef so we ate great pasta... just like mamma makes it. Funily enough he has no idea how to drive and got his van bogged in the morning so we had to flag over a couple of sheilas in a ute to pull him out....Truely outback now. I started my sands of Australia collection with the red dirt he churned up.. This is where we paint a picture with superglue on bongo and then throw dirt at it. In denham we went to the fish factory, and then visited a beach that is completely made up of tiny shells. suprisingy it is called Shell Beach. We had lunch at this place where there are living rocks (Fascinating??) and this goat named billie kept jumping up on the table and stealing our tomatos. the homestead owner treats him like a dog. \that night we pulled up on a place that i would suspect resembles the grand canyon...possibly the best sunset ever. Next stop was Canarvon where we went on a Bannana plantation tour. I love bannana trees. mmmmm bannanas. The best bannana split as well. We headed out of there and got lost and then were going to run out of enough petrol to make it back to canarvon when we accidently found our way onto someone's homestead. It's a sheep station but campers are allowed to stay. We were the only campers there and had the pick of the spots....so inevitably i drove down the 4WD recommended track to park next to the beach. I'm telling you this is the place dreams are made of, a whole bay that is sheltered from wind, blue water and clean sand. Apparantly the surf goes off here but there was no swell; which is good since our surf boards were stollen off the roof of the van in Scarbrough two days before we left. We snorkelled and found the largest clam i can ever imagine seeing. I tried my luck at knifing fish but i am too slow a swimmer. However i did later catch a Norwest snapper from the rocks. But since i know nothing about fish i asked another fisherman if i could eat it. he laughed at me cause the fish was so undersized and gave me a fish he had caught. Later the homestead caretaker came to see if i had caught anything and laughed as well, the next day he gave me about a kilo of fresh fish. We firetwirled on the beach at night with the caretakers Jim and Bec Reluctantly we left the sheep station and a couple of days later ended up in coral bay. We went out on a boat tour there and swam with turtles and saw some great coral formations. Because of school holidays ( and our great planning) we could only stay in coral bay for a night as everything was booked out. So we headed to the cape range national park, near exmouth. It is still on the ningaloo reef and snorkelling off the shore is better than that off a boat in coral bay. We managed to get the best site, with beach access. We have made a few friends in the park as we stayed there for five days... We ran out of ice and food and home-brew. At night our campsite is the party with firetwirling and big feasts. I have decided i'm not a great fisherman, so I make friends with the people with boats and help them increase the amout they are allowed to catch...win win situation. Finaly i found a gorge that i can swim in. It is yardie creek gorge at the south end of the park. we walked around the top with a couple of german girls from our camp and then climbed down and had a swim. Absolutely brilliant. Days seem to go so fast and most of the time i have no idea what day it is. My hours of operation are generally dictated by the rotation of the earth in relation to the sun... which means i'm up at the crack of dawn...everyday. I have no idea what i'm going to be doing tomorrow and we don't bother making plans anymore as they always change. (ideas only). Oh, so after spending two weeks living in the national park out of exmouth, Fi and I scored a job working in a caravan park by inviting a couple of strangers on the beach to our "fish festival" at our camp table. Working in the park was great fun, riding quad bikes, driving tip trucks and mowing lawns. We met a couple of good friends in exmouth. Ben, a workmate, came over most nights to our site and we helped him with his fishing addiction. He would get us to follow his ute down the beach and wherever bongo got stuck in the sand we would light a fire and fish. I gave up the fishing part and kept the drinks going. At the moment Fi's tally of fish caught that we ate is triple mine...good to know she can put the food on the table. I did however catch a small shark...their skin feels awesome, one way it is like sand paper-the other way slimey baby bum. When we woke up in the morning Ben would tow us out and we drive to work. Another exmouth friend is ken. The dude from the hardware shop is always a great choice when starting a firestick business. After seeing us six times in one day and from all of our stupid questions he finally asked what we were doing. when we said firesticks he organised for us to perform at the variety splash bash charity thing. We were quite happy with that idea...oh and the 10% off our steel poles was a bonus. The crowd clapped and cheered. We smiled....our first ever performance was a blast. So we set up a stall at the market and have sold a few sticks and poi. People generally get trapped in exmouth because it is a primo joint. So when our chance came we skipped town. Aparantly there are two markets in Broome, one of them a night market. and we are so sick of 'working for the man' that we have become gypsies and will sell our wares for food!? Out of the cape, we headed into Tom price for a night where we were taken in (from the pub) by an explosives expert (BLASTER). He fed me steak....mmmmm steak. and we carried on. i passed out before the local football match. Blaster reakons i'm a shue in for getting a job in the mine driving a Truck...you know one of those big yellow tippers that is on that Virgin MMS add. I reakon if i need money i'll head straight back to tom price. But our sights were set on Karijini national park. Pristine gorges.... it was amazing Fi and i spent five nights out there. We walked down every gorge in the park. There is nothing like walking off the trail and bush bashing down along a gorge that has no trail, then sitting naked by a rock pool all afternoon without seeing another soul. Picked up our shit and headed to yule (dry) creek where we gatecrashed a 60th birthday party and taught the birthday girl how to fire twirl...sick. visited port headland for the annual wheel barrow race where we got run out of town at 3am by the local drunken louts leaving the pub.... we stayed in PARDOO!!??? now we are in Brume. and it is freaken scary seeing a population and traffic and shopping centres....lots of all that. We spent our money on piss and stayed on cable beach on the nudie side... twas primo. The beach is nice as the pictures, shame about all the camel poo. Broome has become a little less daunting now and we are quite enjoying the wide beaches. So much that we have spent three nights camped on Cable beach. We even did a 40 hour stint without leaving the beach. My ass is red-raw burnt; serves me right for not using sunscreen; or shorts. Currently looking for work.... wEll five weeks have passed now in broome and things have gone from great to awesome. We went hard on the markets with our firesticks and have made quite a reputation in town. The sticks and poi have been selling consistantly and we have explored other avenues including kids toys. Last week was the monthly stairway to the moon markets which are held at night. we made a killing and had a great time doing it. We did a performance for the people waiting on the beach for the moon to rise and were met with cheers and claps. Aparantly Today Tonight have been doing an ongoing Broome special and were doing a section on the Broome Moon last week, with footage of us twirling... A positive identification has been assured by a lady at market that saw it. I'm going to try to get the footage of GWN> After the stairway market a friend of ours held a trance party on the beach. I was amazed to see a van that had more speakers than bongo, but i can understand as he also has a full DJ setup and does a few residencies around town. Twas an awesome night, and to me what i was waiting for since leaving old Melbourne town. The music, the fire the people....and best of all no ranger to close the party down. To save money We have generally been getting out of town after market day and heading up the coast a small bit to Willie Creek. Here we can relax and have our workshop without any disruptions. The waters of Willie creek are Croc infested but when you haven't had a shower for four days there is no choice but to have a quick dip. Last week we decided to head a small bit further so we drove 160km up a 4WD only track towards cape leveque and came across a beautiful spot called middle lagoon. Absolutely stunning, clear water that you could see the fish through and a beach that doesn't have 400 toorak tractor tracks on it. mmmmm. Actually it is quite pathetic that i was overtaking new landcruisers and nis-patrols up and down the track there. We are so proud of bongo, but you should see the looks we get from people, as if they have never seen a van up that way before. We decided to try and see the coast by applying for a pearl farm job. The next day we headed out to a potato farm. The employment agent must have a hearing deficiency. Well it was quite fun ferretign through the ground for sweet potatos the size of a year old child, taking them back to the shed and cleaning them individually. This was only two and a half days a week, the rest of the time was Broome time and and markets. Business got better and better, with the next stairway market helping us have a $800 turnonver in a week. Going through a whole role of kevlar. We packed up happy and left Broome just before the toll gates were built on the ramp to the beach.... On our way south again, our alternator shit itslef and left us lucky to get to Newman. A horrible change to our plans that made us miss out on seeing Karijini NP again and visiting lonely water holes in the middles of no wheres. So we spent a week waiting for an overpriced alternator at the tropic of capricorn road-sign....Its about 200 metres from the tropic of capricorn roadhouse. One morning Fi was trying to push start bongo when a couple passed by and helped us get her started. Then they invited us to their house to stay until we needed to go again. So we spent a week with Andy the mine communications technician and Sarah the department of community development social worker. Well Fi and I spent as much time as we could lazying on their leather couch and looking into their deep chrome refridgerator. Mmmmm civilisation. And a king size bed. It was time for us to head out to Jigalong Remote Community School to give the students a taste for fire twirling. On the way out there we found a new track that the principal and most staff didn't know existed for travelling to school. It saves about 20km out of a 160km journey. Howerver it ads about an hour onto the trip, we did not recommend they take it. We ran workshops with the children during the day. At night the school threw a disco for the community and we let the kids loose with glow in the dark poi and sticks. They went crazy. Fi and a primary school student did an act with glow poi, then a high school student did some fire twirling. It is hard to get aboriginals to perfrom in front of their peers, so we did well getting these two up. After that Fi and Az put on a fire spectacular that blew their socks off. The next day we were gone// Headed straight down the gust to Perth... Not northwest trippin no more.