The Final Chapter of the Northwest Trip: Episodes 7-10

 Thursday, March 11th

Boy oh boy, we got to sleep in on Thursday! We woke up at 6:30, which was nice for a change... not that I didn't wake up at 6 anyway out of the instinct ingrained into my skull over the past week. After a lame breakfast as always, we were out of the camp by 7:45. Little did I know today was going to be the best day of the trip.

Walking to the gorge within which we were going to spend the majority of our day, we saw a lot of gorgeous scenery. It was quite pretty. After a few kilometer walk, we started to walk down into the canyon, and things got even prettier. Walking down into the canyon was quite easy for me, being the buff athlete that I am, but that wasn't the case for everyone, so climbing down was a tedious task. At one point we all climbed down a ladder and Barry was calling out numbers as we did so while we spotted us. He told me "8." Apparently he was rating everyone's asses, and I believe mine was the best out of the entire group.

Once we were on the floor, we walked a kilometer or so along it, climbing up over rocks and crossing ledges covered in water. It was quite cool down there, and a real pleasure to look up at the canyon from the bottom.

As you can see, I'm holding up this giant boulder to my mates could pass with safety. I am truly special.

Our first stop on our trip was a watering hole called Circular Pool, and boy was it beautiful. Apparently soon after we arrived and dove into the water, a King Brown snake slithered by us. This snake is one of the deadliest in the entire world. The average person could die 63 times with one single bite. Yikes. apparently Barry, who saw it, said he couldn't hear it as it slithered over dry leaves. Spooky!

Circular pool was absolutely fantastic though! It was such a cute little watering hole. The water was so fresh and tasted so good (a lot of us drank as we swam!). There was this cool little ledge that we were all jumping off of (see me below! Thanks for the picture, Justin!). The water wasn't too cold for 9, 9:30 in the morning, especially since the sun hadn't hit the water yet. It was such beautiful spot; I feel lucky to have visited! I also included a picture below of me posing in a speedo and cape, because I don't have any shame and I am quite a silly person. :-p

After climbing out of Circular Pool and drying off, we walked several kilometers (backtracking a bit) along the canyon to our next spot. This was probably my favorite walk of the entire trip because we walked through the coolest places ever. It was like walking through a whole new reality! The whole lot of us walked passed a python (not venomous) in a single file. There was a big scare until Barry realized it was only a python, not another King Brown.

Upon the end of our walk, we ended up at my favorite place on the entire trip, and the coolest place I've been to in Australia. Meet Fortescue Falls. I absolutely LOVED it there.

The water here was really, really nice and warm and tasty. The rocks were gorgeous and great for climbing and sitting on. The waterfall was really great but the rocks were in no condition there to slide down. We spent an hour and a half there at least, lounging around, playing in the waterfall, tossing a tennis ball off the cliff next to the falls, and having a generally awesome time.

After Fortescue Falls, we climbed back out, had lunch, and went to the Karijini National Park visitors center but it was really boring so I'm not even going to talk about it anymore than I have. I feel like I wasted space just mentioning it. It started to rain a bit while we were in the visitors center and we thought our tents were screwed (but they were fine). After we got back, we sent out on another adventure.

We headed back to Fortescue Falls (which you can see in the left of the frame down below) because hidden behind it was a third watering hole treasure. The walk from the Falls to the next watering hole was really cool too. just before the watering hole, I saw my first bats!

After the bats and around a corner, we arrived at Fern Pool, which is considered sacred by the aboriginal population. Fern Pool isn't on the map because they don't really want people going there because it is sacred. They believe a giant snake spirit lives in there (I didn't see it). It was nice there, but the only place to hang out there really was the fall way in the back which was a pain to swim to. It was a really cool place to visit nonetheless.

At lunch time earlier in the day, I used collected yellow ocre and the red dirt below my feet to tie dye a white t-shirt I brought along with me, specifically for the tie dying. I washed in here in the pool before we left. I haven't really worn the t-shirt yet and I'll have to be careful washing it because I was told the red dirt, which my running shoes are stained with as well, might wash out after a while to some extent.

We went back to the Falls as it got cloudier and started to drizzle. This however meant we got a rainbow. The BEST rainbow I've ever seen. Ever. If you look closely you can see a second rainbow on top of the first one. It was really fun being there and seeing it, as it was that bright for at least twenty minutes. My friend Paul and I climbed along the cliff below the rainbow until people started to follow us. As Paul put it, we trusted ourselves not to fall, but not others, which sucked because I wanted to keep going! It took this picture from there too, and it's one of my favorites (just above).

On our way out of the canyon, Ben took this picture of me shooting a rainbow, and I saw a dingo from the distance! My picture isn't that great, but one of my friends got really close to one earlier in the day. I'm really jealous.

Dinner consisted of a weird chili on pasta which was okay, nothing special. Post dinner was filled with ghost stories around the "fire" (the kerosene lamp) during which I heard the ending to Paranormal Activity. Sounds scary.

Just as I was about to go to bed, I went into two of my friends' tents, where the three of us talked for awhile. This was until one of them put their flashlight on the ceiling of their tent, and then the wall of the tent to reveal a 6-plus inch praying mantis. I mean that thing was huge. As a result one of the girls let out a blood curdling scream and woke everyone up. The other girl and I thought it was incredibly funny. I laughed.
Thursday: 9

Friday, March 12th
I heard a dingo howling in the wee hours of Friday which was really cool. I woke up, heard the howl, thought to myself "you're hearing a dingo howl, cool!" then promptly feel back asleep. We hiked back down to the Falls for a little while which was nice and allowed me to say goodbye. I really hope I get to go back someday.

We then left Karijini to drive to Newman, a mining town. Considering we were on the same highway from then until we reached Perth, we didn't drive that far. At all. Which annoyed us. Annoyed us all. I slept most of the trip to Newman which was a nice change. Because it's a mining town, Newman is incredibly depressing. Most of the people there are miners who work crazy long shifts for a couple weeks at a time before flying back home. The whole story of miners and mining makes me sad. Newman also has a crazy aboriginal population who just get drunk all the time. As such, you can't buy boxed wine unless it's Monday or Tuesday because they just buy it and get smashed all the time. That's even more sad.

Newman was boring and I hated it. This is what I did:

We went shopping at a Woolworth's complex.

I almost got run over by a giant truck.

I swam in a really gross pool at the campsite. I didn't notice the skin flakes floating in it until after I got out of the water.

Dinner sucked because we had like 2 hours to kill before we got it. Furthermore, I felt disconnected and excluded from the group. I ate dinner by myself. Everyone went out to the bar. But I didn't go. Why? Well because it was a scary and long walk and IT WAS IN A MINING TOWN. WHO DO YOU THINK GOES TO THE BARS IN A MINING TOWN? The answer is uneducated, homophobic, sexist, disgusting douchebag miners. That's why I didn't go. Turns out I was completely right about the bar. It sucked. Everyone went and didn't like it and was scared shitless on the way back because the aboriginals were drunk, a nuisance, and doing some voodoo dance (this is how it was described to me).

I spent my night talking to Craig who is really cool. I got a good hour in before some crazy, drunk miner joined in and made me feel uncomfortable. Another less creepy miner joined in later. Thankfully Craig had plenty to talk to them about since he knows mining quite well (apparently he used he used to mine but hated it even thought he money is crazy good). The miners creepily checked out my friend and took forever to leave. Oh well. I ended up having another late night conversation in a tent with a whole bunch of girls who complained about boys. It was sorta funny. Word.

Friday: 7

Saturday, March 13th
We woke up niiiice and early as usual and drove a long way, as usual. I got a bit of sleep on the bus and refrained from buying a $5 Mother (Australia's most popular energy drink) on our first stop, but ended up getting a Monster nearly that expensive at Shell just before lunch. And because lunch sucked so much, I went back and got another one and a bot of Tim Tams which started to rapidly melt within 20 seconds of going outside. Today was really boring and totally sucked.

We drove to a sheep farm that was several hundred acres. Pretty crazy. After hanging around the camp site for a while, we drove the 2 of the caravans to this nice little area to see a sunset which didn't happen because it was overcast. This is face I made when the sunset was lame as heck:

I really like Alison's face in the background. She's the praying mantis girl. The view from there wasn't too bad though:

Our sleeping quarters consisted of a giant barn used to shear sheep. It was really crowded so half of us, including me, slept outside under the stars (which were not impressive due to the clouds) without a tent. That part was pretty cool, but all in all, it was a kinda crappy day because I felt more disconnected from everyone and just wanted to be back at Murdoch.

Saturday: 5

Sunday, March 14th - The drive home.

We woke up... extremely early on Sunday. 5am. Pain of it was no one had their act together so it took us 75 minutes to have breakfast, get packed up, and onto the road. Everyone was eager to get back to Murdoch, hence the early wake up. However, waking up that early didn't end up being all that horrible, because we saw the best sunrise (which was better than all the sunsets too, besides maybe the one at Coral Bay the first night) I've ever seen.

Because someone completely new sat in the front seat, I was pushed back on the bus. To the way back. Between to German girls. ...it ended up going really well though. The German girl who I sat directly next to was really nice and we had some good conversations. Most of the Germans are (or were) really big fans of the Finnish gothic metal band Nightwish, who I really like. We played some on the bus and it was really cool to see my peers like a slightly obscure band as much as I do.

We stopped for lunch... even though nobody wanted to: we all wanted to keep pushing onto Perth! Alas, we had to anyway, and lunch was as boring as ever. Within an hour we were back on the bus though to make the final 2 hour or so push. We got in around 2pm and we were all extremely eager to bolt from the buses. After jumping up on the bus to unload bags one final time, and a quick goodbye to the tour guides, I ran my stuff back to my room, unpacked all my gross laundry, and ran to the laundry room. Cool German girl beat me there by 5 seconds, but we both got a laundry machine. Turns out most people wanted to do their laundry, for when I went to pick it up one of the Clark girls was unloading my laundry.

But yeah, trip finished.

Sunday: 7