Happy Pancake Day, dear reader. I must say that you are looking fabulous today.

Shrove Tuesday is one of the very best days of the year. Days when pancake consumption (with lemon juice and sugar, naturally) is encouraged are to be celebrated heartily!

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, which is (rather appropriately) the day that Anti-Smoking laws change here in Victoria. This will mean that smoking at bus or tram stops will be illegal. This may signal the start of long delays on the public transport in Melbourne: as I understand it, the one way of guaranteeing the instant arrival of your bus or tram is to extract a cigarette from its packet, put it between your lips and set it alight. We shall see. I hope this doesn’t cause too many problems from the influx of visitors expected to arrive in a fortnight for the 2006 Commonwealth Games.

On the subject of The Games, keep your eyes peeled for us on the television. Yesterday K bought two tickets for the closing ceremony, which I reckon will be pretty fantastic.

I have just changed this paragraph as I have taken a phone call to say that we have been accepted for our second choice of flat, which is a huge relief. It means that we’re not going to be homeless during the upcoming games. According the letting agent, who tells me that she had a choice of three couples, she had to choose us because the agent who conducted the flat inspection said that were the nicest couple! We are due to sign the lease tomorrow and move in a week on Saturday. We are going to chase the agents on our preferred flat as the facilities there are better and at the same rental cost.

On the subject of successful applications, I’m delighted that two of my good friends have emailed me to say that they’ve got exciting new jobs. One is in West Africa involving pyramids of Fererro Rocher. The other is working in the best industry in the world: booze! K and I wish them both all the very best in their new positions.

This time next week, K, herself, will be settled in at her new office overlooking Albert Park and impressing her colleagues with her charm and knowledge of how water works (work).

I have no news to report on my own quest for gainful employment except to say that my résumé has been delivered to a select few mailboxes in the city. I’m being particularly choosy with the positions that I am applying for while I can afford to be, which is good. Thank you for the kind words which have arrived in my own mailbox. I can only apologise for the lack of email coming from me at the moment, but I’m sure you’ll understand that I’m not ignoring you. I look forward to a day when I can sit in our new flat and email you all wirelessly without feeding golden coins into a machine or being bombarded with the most depressing music at volumes that even an iPodful of heavy metal would struggle to drown out!

Update: It’s All Good! We’ve got our first choice of flat. Even better than all that, we can move in TOMORROW! Very chuffed indeed.

The interval betwixt ‘tick’ and ‘tock’ is horrendously long at the moment. We saw an absolutely perfect flat / unit / apartment / whatever on Saturday lunchtime. We both decided that it was the business, so we abandoned the last scheduled viewing and bolted to the real estate agents to sign our lives away for the next four seasons. We filled out every last detail in their scrutinising application forms and handed them over, pleased that we had arrived at the office prior to the crowd of others at the flat. We were asked for a multitude of types of identification as well as past rental history. Sadly, neither of us is in the habit of carrying birth certificates, utility bills or suchlike with us and so we were told that our time would be better spent at home, gathering the required identity-confirming paraphernalia. In any case, applications would not be considered until Monday morning.

We stopped for a bite to eat at the local Subway, during which the skies darkened and the heavens opened. Thunderclaps rocked the building as we ate our lunch and watched the raindrops bounce up inches above the bitumen road outside. As the rain died down, we dashed for the car and drove back through torrential rain back to the hostel. We spent the afternoon gathering the required information and then spent the evening relaxing.

Yesterday was a peaceful day. The most strenuous thing we did was taking a stroll through the Queen Victoria markets where we picked up a few clothes that were more ‘office’ than ‘backpacker’.

After a restless night’s sleep, we were up bright and early and were at the real estate agent’s office when they opened at 0830. We presented them with our carefully-filled-in forms and copious forms of identification. They thanked us and said that they would be in touch.

From there we walked a few hundred metres to another agents and handed them a pair of similar forms (no ID needed) for our second choice of abode. They said that they understood our urgency (remember that we have but a fortnight left to vacate the YHA) and would get back to us as quickly as possible. We walked along Toorak Road in South Yarra to the tram stop feeling confident that today would be the day that we found our new home.

It is now a little after six on the sunny Victorian clock and we are yet to hear an affirmation from either agent. Fingers continue to tap, but a watched telephone never rings.

I did hear by email though that some words that I have written for TNT Magazine, a free antipodean magazine for travellers, would be published in the very next issue. Perhaps I should consider a change in career…

Phew! It is very warm outside and is likely to remain so for the weekend. This is, after all, what summers are all about. While the readership may be happily ensconced in the coldest season of the year, the writer is adjusting to February falling in between the Summer Solstice and the Vernal Equinox.

Melbourne, you shall be delighted to learn is lovely. It seems that there is much to see and do here, although we have been focussed on not seeing and doing everything in our first fortnight. The most significant landmark that I have investigated was Albert Park. I took a walk around the lakeside road while K was meeting with her new employers on Tuesday morning. Albert Park is beautiful despite the roadwork(s) that started this week in preparation for 2 April’s major motor sport spectacular. I hope to take some more photographs over the next few weeks to show the preparation that goes into turning the local beauty spot into one of Formula 1’s best circuits.

Inquisitive readers may be interested to know what we have been doing if we haven’t been sightseeing with cameras strapped to our persons. Our concentration has been mostly on finding somewhere to live. As nice as the YHA is, we cannot stay here forever. Firstly I would go insane at their restrictive and expensive Internet access. More importantly, the said hostel is fully booked from 14 March due to Melbourne hosting yet another major sporting event before the Grand Prix: The Commonwealth Games.

Finding potential places to live is easy. Websites like RealEstate.com.au facilitate finding properties that match our requirements and our budget. The agents, themselves, however seem to be trained in preventing people renting their landlords’ flats and houses. When we were letting out the house in Crawley, we found the market to be biased in favour of the tenants. Over here, we’re finding quite the opposite.

Our first encounter with a real estate agent (no fake agents, here!) was terrible. When we stated our requirements and budget, she told us that they didn’t have many cheap properties on their books! We found something that looked like it matched our requirements and filled out a form to view it. After some huffing and puffing, the lady behind the counter asked me for a AU$50 deposit and put the keys to the flat on the counter. I thanked her and asked for some directions: End of the road… turn left!

K and I walked to the end of the road, turned left and consulted the map. Turning right, then left and walking for about 20 minutes in the sun, we arrived at the building. The entrance to the flat was tucked around a corner, but we found that and inspected the flat. They would have needed to pay us to live in it! We took the tram back to the office, to ensure getting back within the hour and retrieving our deposit!

Thankfully our experiences since then have been better. We missed out on a lovely house in a prime location, which was a real shame. Like a couple of other viewings that we have been to, the agents will open the property for fifteen minutes per week and a crowd of about thirty prospective tenants pour in and rush to fill out an application form if the property is to their requirements. How they pick a successful applicant is a bit of a mystery, but on the occasion in question, they picked someone else.

We figured that we would probably stand a better chance of being chosen to pay rent if we put two incomes on the application form instead of just K’s. As such, the search for my next employer began yesterday. There are plenty of positions on Seek that I’m capable of filling and I have spent some time writing to the relevant companies and recruitment agencies to apply for them. As nice as the idea of being a kept man in one of the World’s most beautiful countries is, after a little under two months I found myself itching to start working on software again. Or maybe it’s just the mosquito bites?

I have mentioned to some of you that I have a great idea for a website that I want to create, but in order to launch that I’m going to need money for hardware, bandwidth and the like. So… hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work I go! Of course if anyone out there knows of any work that would suit me, then I’d be happy to hear from you!

The plan for tomorrow is to take The Beast out for the first time since its arrival in Melbourne and visit a number of potential dwellings. Sunday will be, as the Good Lord intended, a day of rest. Now, though, the weekend has landed so I can leave the applications in the relevant mailboxes and concentrate on drinking cold beer and eating barbecued food.

K deftly negotiated the final kilometres of The Great Ocean Road on Saturday morning. We stopped to look at the waterfall at Carrisbrook and while we were there we got to see some koalas in the wild.

Koalas are fascinating creatures: cute as little teddy bears but with far sharper claws! I’m eternally amazed by the way that they choose the most precarious positions to sleep, at the farthest ends of eucalyptus branches, being intoxicated on the eucalyptus leaves and bark that they have fed on.

Sheoak Falls, some fifteen minutes’ walk from the car park at Angahook Lorne National Park was somewhat of a disappointment as there was no water to be seen. K saw something sizable slither into the undergrowth, so we beat a hasty retreat back to our vehicle.

The town of Lorne was very busy as we drove through and so we had to stop and have a nosey. The activities on the beach were part of the Rescue 2006 International Surf Lifesaving Competition. We spent a while watching the beach flag races. A British guy won his final that involved lying face-down in the sand and jumping up at the sound of the starter’s whistle and running in the direction his feet were pointing before diving for a stick protruding from the sand. And I thought we had to do some odd things in my lifesaving exams!

Some of the more windy stretches of The Great Ocean Road, the ones with rockfaces to one side and drops down to the crashing waves to the other reminded me of the old A5 route through North Wales. This would be the route that we would take to the ferry terminal at Holyhead for childhood trips to Ireland. It seemed appropriate, then, that toward the end of the Tourist Route we entered the Town of Anglesea!

It wasn’t long before we’d reached the peaceful town of Queenscliff (no ‘e’) in the borough of Queenscliffe (with an ‘e’), where we spent the weekend. It was a nice, quiet, relaxed weekend. I caught up on my reading and did very little else to be honest. It was great way to spend our last weekend on the road.

Two months to the day after we left Birmingham, we have arrived in Melbourne. We’ve settled in nicely at the Oasis YHA, where we’re booked in for two whole weeks. According to the odometer, The Beast has covered 16,302km (let’s call it a round 10,000 miles!) since we picked it up two days before Christmas. It’s nice to park the car up now since in essentially six weeks we have covered the mileage that an average driver in the UK would cover in a year!

Now… where was I? Adelaide? Really? It must have been a week since I last put this laptop to any reasonable use, then! Shocking behaviour! Honestly.

Adelaide, The City of Churches, Camp Statues, Big Scotsman, whatever, was a really lovely place to be. The YHA, as I may have mentioned was absolutely splendid and the city itself was full of interesting things to see and to do, particularly within the Museum of South Australia. We were delighted that our friend S, who you may recall from our adventures in Sydney, happened to be in Adelaide at the same time as us and that he had some time to spare to take us to one of his old haunts (for it was in South Australia that he was brought up) and pass the time watching The World going by (in The World’s exotic cars) and discussing the many fine things that there are to see in this very big country.

While we were at a loose end in Adelaide, we also paid a visit to the Moonlight Cinema to watch a film. Continuing the theme of books that I read as a young(er) boy, we watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which (and Kris would wholeheartedly disagree with me here) was nowhere near as good as the one with Gene Wilder in it (despite the creation of a role especially for Christopher Lee who can do no wrong). That’s about all I have to say about that.

We hit the road on Monday (is it really Friday already?) to investigate some more Big Things in South Australia. The first one that we came across was the Giant Cornish Miner (or Map Kernow [Son of Cornwall in Cornish]) on the outskirts of the town of Kapunda. A short way down the road in the picturesque town of Gurmeracha stands an 18.3m high rocking horse. A Big Rocking Horse big enough to climb. Apparently certificates are available from the café and the toy shop to prove that you climbed it. I made do with a photograph,

From Gurmeracha, we made our way South along some very windy coast roads to the misplaced German Alpine Town of Hahndorf. This place is well worth a visit as it is just like visiting Germany without having to understand their language. The Hahndorf Inn provides some fine German fayre (and even has Bavarian beer served from equally Bavarian taps) and comes highly recommended from Yours Truly. Sadly, we could not stay to witness the arrival of the Queen’s Baton (on its way to Melbourne for the opening of the 2006 Commonwealth Games) as we had a ferry to catch. We did stay long enough to discover a surprise Big Thing in the form of a giant egg.

Our arrival in Cape Jervis was too early for our ferry crossing so we spent a while taking in the views at nearby Rapid Bay before our voyage on the Least Well Organised Car Ferry journey to Kangaroo Island.

Kangaroo Island is famed for its wildlife, but most of the wildlife that we saw on our first night there buzzed menacingly around the common room of the YHA. The following morning, the wildlife seemed to have been splattered across the highways and byways of the island. We were told that there were koalas living in the trees in the South-West of the Island, but they didn’t want to be seen. My suggestion of a Valentine’s Day picnic lunch brought about the rain clouds with even more quickly than they arrive when I coat myself in Factor 30+, but we still took a drive around the scenic roads of Kangaroo Island down to some remarkable rocks called… The Remarkable Rocks. These large standing stones, unlike the ones on the mainland, are not considered sacred by Australia’s Indigenous as Kangaroo Island was not inhabited prior to the European colonisation. This is good news for us tourists as it means that we can climb on the rocks without having to worry about offending the locals.

We did get to see some wildlife shortly after our in-car packed lunch, down at Admiral’s Arch… Lots and lots of New Zealand Fur Seals, happily playing around in the Australian drizzle. I have never seen quite so many wild seals in my life and spent ages photographing them as they frolicked.

Surprisingly, it’s not so much Kangaroos for which the Island is famed, but Little Penguins (like the ones that we saw on the more appropriately titled Penguin Island earlier in our adventures). The penguins tend only to come ashore when the light of day has faded as it’s far cooler on land then. We took a tour (two minutes’ walk from the YHA) shortly after dusk and saw lots of the little blue penguins wandering around in the dark. They are immeasurably cute!

Back on the mainland we went in search of more Big Things. Murray Bridge was our first port-of-call, only to find that The Big Clock is no longer in existence. Instead the Australian town requirement for superlatives (every town must have The Biggest/Smallest/Oldest/First something-or-other in the World/Country/State/Town) is satisfied by having The Smallest Cathedral in Australia, which is no bigger than a village church.

The Big Lobster in Kingston S.E. is the most colossal crustacean that we have ever seen. Possibly even bigger than Murray Bridge’s Cathedral. There are all manner of Lobster-related souvenirs on offer at the adjacent gift shop/café, but we somehow manage to resist temptation and made our way instead to the town of Robe.

Robe was beautiful, but my memories of it have been seriously marred by the large bite marks that I have courtesy of the mosquitoes that decided to invade our cabin in the middle of the night, resulting in possibly the worst night’s sleep that I have had in a long time. I’d like to go back one day (with a mosquito net) and sound some more time walking around the coast and seeing the giant obelisk and old gaol.

Moving away from Robe (and its flying contingent) we headed down the coast. We made our first stop at the volcanic town of Mount Gambier, which has some terrific lakes in the huge craters at the top of the town. The water in the Blue Lake is the bluest and most beautiful water that I have ever seen. Further along the coast, we parked the car (all running well) to see the Petrified Forest. This is an awesome site and well worth the detour from the main road. It’s also worth walking along to the blowholes there, if only to watch the wonderful waves beating against the batter coastline. It’s a breathtaking sight.

Onwards, further still, we ended up in the endearing town of Part Fairy. The YHA there is an old stately home and our room was in the old coach-house. I’d happily spend another night there sometime. Time is now running short, alas, and we must press on down to Melbourne (we’re in Victoria now, in case you haven’t been following the map, please adjust your watches).

Today we hit The Great Ocean Road. This is probably the part of the journey that I have been looking forward to the most. Being a keen driver a long, windy tourist trail with lots of things to see along the way sounds ideal. Our first stop along the way was the Bay of Islands. The car park there was full of tour buses and camper vans, just like being at Uluru again. Somehow though the views of the mini islands off the coastline made up for this and it was easy to forget about the dozens of tourists also looking at the kind of scenery Slartibartfast himself would have been proud to have designed and just stand back and admire.

Scenic stop-offs seemed to be little more than a kilometre apart and, thankfully, not all of them were so crowded. Progress was slow and steady and the SD Card in my camera was filling up rapidly as we stopped at one beauty spot after another. The coastal views (London Bridge, The Arch, The Twelve Apostles, Gilbert’s Steps, etc…) were all beautiful. The biggest surprise of the day was the rainforest walk: I’ve never been in a rainforest before!

And now, after what has probably been my longest blog entry ever, I must wrap things up and leave my reader in peace. We are now in an ultra-modern YHA in Apollo Bay, which, shockingly doesn’t have an on-site launderette never mind wireless Internet access… sheesh! I expect that next time I blog we shall have reached our final destination… Melbourne!

The YHA at Alice Springs comes highly recommended. Not only does it have super-quiet air-conditioning that keeps the bedrooms nice and cold all day (and night) long, it has a lovely swimming pool in the garden that is just right for a mid-afternoon dip to cool off when the fluid in the thermometer has passed the fifty degree line marking the end of its calibration!

The poolside is good for sunbathing, if you’re into that kind of thing; reading (which Mrs J can do anywhere, even in the pool) or for updating your online journal. I have opted for the latter, following a text message from a friend insisting that I ‘get that next blog up’. Sadly, you’ll have to wait to read this entry (just like the four previous ones) until I find a way of getting them from my laptop (or my camera) onto a computer with Internet connectivity. It seems using your laptop or USB device in Alice Springs is not an option. I should really get a dial-up account over here or a cable so that I can use the GPRS modem in my mobile.

All that aside, we’re having a great time here in Alice Springs. We managed to get a replacement for my deceased Sony Cybershot. For those that are interested, the camera that met my criteria (compact digital camera with an optical viewfinder that would take non-proprietary batteries) and that was on sale in the aptly-named Alice Springs Camera Shop was the Pentax Optio S50. It’s a bit bigger than my old digital camera (perhaps I should eBay that, given past experience), but it fits nicely in my pocket and, so that’s okay. In the hands of a decent photographer it would probably capture far better digital images, but that’s by-the-by.

To make the most of our time in The Town Formerly Known As Stuart, we visited a few of the local museums yesterday. Firstly, the Telegraph Repeater Station, around which the current town was formed then The Ghan Heritage Museum and the National Museum of Transport. The last two are right next to each other but demand separate entry fees and offer no discount for visiting them both. The Telegraph Repeater Station was very interesting, with lots of informative signage and a helpful leaflet for self-guided tours. The Ghan Heritage Museum (home to The Ghan Preservation Society, which reminds me of a song from a film) was a bit of a disappointment, to be honest. There were a number of exhibits around the museum they just seemed to be random artefacts with no rhyme nor reason for their being there. Likewise, the National Museum of Transport was just a collection of old trucks and many vintage cars which were lacking in tender loving care. It was a crying shame to see Ford Model Ts, a vintage Rolls Royce and (back to The Italian Job) an Austin Cooper S looking so uncared for. On the upside, I got to play with my new toy and took a 4-shot panorama of the Ghan carriages.

We treated ourselves to a meal out at Keller’s restaurant in town. The Big Yin once ate their and described their menu that claims both Swiss and Indian influences as "Bloody Un-usual". He was right, the menu is a break from the norm, but it’s a refreshing change. The restaurant is well-staffed and the quality of the food is very good. We certainly felt that we got value for money and would recommend it. It seems that BYO isn’t such a big thing here in Northern Territory, but that’s okay because the wine lists are pretty reasonable, too!

Today we headed North along the Stuart Highway, crossing The Tropic of Capricorn, passing hundreds of termite mounds and arriving at The Devil’s Marbles. Like so many rock formations in Australia, The Devil’s Marbles are a Sacred Aboriginal site. They are phenomenal, though. Pictures will follow once we get a decent connection. I’d recommend that you look at K’s, though, as I was playing with the exposure settings on the camera and so I ruined a fair few of my shots. We live and learn, eh? 800km may seem like a long way to go to take photographs of big rocks, but it didn’t seem that far (even though we left the iPod in the YHA). Having left bright and early this morning, we were back in the hostel before four o’clock, which leaves us plenty of time to relax on the anniversary of us submitting our visa application by Royal Mail.

Although they were only a little further than half-way up the country, The Devil’s Marbles mark the furthest North that we’re going to venture on this trip. Tomorrow we start the journey South towards Melbourne. We’ve got plenty more (big) things to see before we get to our final destination, but it now feels as if we’re on the last leg of our journey which is a little bit sad because I’ve come to quite enjoy life on the road. That said, recently we have found ourselves starting sentences with phrases such as "When we’ve got our own place…" and "When we’re earning…", so perhaps it is right that this time is drawing ever-closer.

I wonder how long it will be before reality strikes that this trip is not just an extended holiday…

Of all the places in the World for my camera to finally give up the ghost, The Red Centre of Australia would have to be about the worst: home to some of the most amazing landscapes that I shall ever see and absolutely no way of getting a replacement. I was not a happy camper on Thursday evening!

Thankfully I am not the only one with a camera, so when we went to visit Kata Tjuta/The Olgas on Friday morning we were able to get some great shots of the tremendous natural domes. We completed our walk through The Valley of the Winds by lunchtime, just after the clouds had cleared and the Sun had begun to bake the Red Earth below.

We spent the afternoon exploring the Uluru-Kata Tjuta Cultural Centre and learning about the Aboriginal people who live in the area. We also took a drive around the base of Uluru/Ayers Rock. It became clear to me that the reason all photographs of Uluru/Ayers Rock seem to be from the same side is that some parts of the rock are considered so sacred to the Aboriginal people that they ask for them not to be photographed. We had agreed before our trip that we were not going to climb the rock out of respect for the traditional owners. It turned out that the climb was closed for the entire time that we were there anyway, due to the weather conditions, so it was good to see nobody on the rock. I learned that Kata Tjuta/The Olgas is considered more sacred to the Aboriginals than Uluru/Ayers Rock, so much so that they tell you very little about it. From one of the viewpoints I could see two more large rock formations in the protected Aboriginal land; I imagine that these are probably even more sacred to their custodians. I hope that they can keep them tourist-free.

Never having been on a camel before, I didn’t know what to expect from a Sunset Camel Tour. The cameleers who arrange the tours were very good at putting their customers at ease and soon after our arrival at the camel farm, K and I were on our camel for the evening: Bendy (short for Bendigo). Bendy is the tallest camel in the chain and was half-way along the chain giving us great views of not only the wondrous scenery around us but the rest of the camels and their riders.

We set off across the red sandy desert with our fly-nets installed (our walk around Kata Tjuta taught us that the flies in the area love fly-repellent and will make a beeline (fly line?) for the lugholes of anyone who’d ever worn it) and took in the spectacular views as the sun set to the west of Kata Tjuta. The Olgas and Uluru/Ayers Rock looked magnificent, as did the skies around us as the day drew to a close.

We were somewhat surprised when after the tour had ended we were offered smoked camel as a snack with a glass of wine! Still, having eaten barbecued crocodile, emu and kangaroo the previous evening, we were game and the camel was very tasty indeed.

Yesterday we got up very early (so early that it couldn’t yet be called bright and early), collected our things from the dormitory and headed for Uluru/Ayers Rock to watch the sunrise. Sadly, the clouds had descended overnight and this meant that the sunrise wasn’t the magnificent spectacle that we had hoped for. It also turned out to be a lot damper than we’d hoped for.

The early morning drive back along the Lasseter Highway turned out to be very perilous. We found ourselves having to stop for herds of wild camels, wild cows and wild, wild horses! There was even a flock of galahs sitting in the road at one point. We reached Kings Canyon having collected only flying insects on the front of The Beast. The sun was not yet at its hottest, so we took the short walk along the creek to take in the impressive views of the red, rugged landscape.

The afternoon was to be spent on the highway collecting yet more bug splat on the windscreen. By tea-time we had reached our destination: Alice Springs, which is where we shall be spending the next couple of days. It’s great to be in a YHA again, I’m really enjoying the hostelling experience. The people you meet are both interesting and interested and the standard of accommodation is really very good. In most cases the hostels we have stayed at have been nicer, friendlier places than the hotels and only cost a fraction of the price. It’s also nice to be away from the hordes of tourists. The area around Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park was full of white tour buses and white campervans, which made me feel like part of a herd when driving our white Ford Laser. It’s a good feeling to be travellers, just doing our own thing.

The car, you’ll be delighted to learn, is doing very well indeed. It has been driven a serious distance along Australia’s highways since I last updated this log.

We set off bright and early from Burra yesterday morning and four fuel stops later, we’d made it to our intended destination of Coober Pedy without incident. Well, there was one minor incident when I was trying to take some snaps of the beautiful scenery on the road into Port Augusta (or as I’ve heard it called, ‘Porta Gutter’) where my camera refused to play ball and just stored pictures of random horizontal lines. This is the second time that the camera has threatened to die on me, so perhaps it really is time to replace it. Or at least when I’m earning again!

Coober Pedy is claimed to be the Opal Capital of Australia, nay The World. However, I was unable to find any experts who could tell me why they changed the name to Starburst. We shall return on the way to Adelaide to see if anyone has come up with a satisfactory answer.

As well as opals, Coober Pedy is home to The Big Winch. We visited The Big thing just before sunset. Photographs will be uploaded to the Australian Big Things group on Flickr, when Internet access does not cost AU$2.50 for six minutes. Without the benefit of a thermometer to back up the statement, you will have to take my word for it when I say that yesterday evening was the hottest, windiest and most arid evening that I have ever experienced.

Our motel room was lovely and cool, though. It was built out of mud. I shall let the reader look up the Mud Hut Hotel in Coober Pedy as an exercise (I’m on holiday, you cannot expect me to do all of the work!).

Thankfully the power-cut that affected Coober Pedy did not interrupt our alarm clock and had been resolved by the time we wanted petrol before hitting the road for the day. The early start paid off as we’d covered most of the distance to South Australia’s border with Northern Territory (no Daylight Savings here, watches back an hour) by lunchtime and so the journey was pretty cool. In fact the temperature needle on the dashboard display hardly made it over half-way all day. This is good news!

After a few minutes the amazing redness of the landscape, the green-ness of the small birds, the quickness of the lizards and the hugeness of the birds of prey circling overhead begins to seem normal. So normal that I find it important to mention them, yet hard to write about them. Odd, really!

K drove the last section of the day along the Lasseter Highway. According to the distance markers at the side of the road we were just over 140km from Uluru when the vast rock presented itself on the horizon. The skies had clouded over and rain wasn’t far away as we got our first views of Ayers Rock across the plains. It looked purple and gigantic, even from that distance.

We are now at the Ayers Rock Resort at Yulara where the monolith in the skyline is not the only oversized entity. You should see the prices. Having a monopoly on everything for kilometres around they can and do charge what they like here. Still… it’s pretty much a once-in-a-lifetime experience, so mustn’t grumble, eh?

We eventually left Mildura with an apparently fully-functioning car shortly after noon. The staff at the motel were all very good and understanding, which was very nice indeed.

Our first stop of the day was at Berri to investigate The Big Orange that we’d read so much about in our new book. Imagine, dear reader, the disappointment when we arrived to discover a huge ‘Closed’ sign and a padlock on the gate.

Shortly after the first stop was a town called Barmera (in South Australia, don’t forget to put those watches back half-an-hour!) where we were to fill up and change drivers. We filled up, returned to the car and were absolutely aghast to see green coolant leaking all over the forecourt. I popped the bonnet to see coolant leaking out of the pipe that had been the cause of our delay this morning and felt absolutely furious. There was nothing I could do about it, we were 200km away from the garage by now. We moved the car away from the petrol pumps (not that the service station was particularly busy) and a kind passer-by stopped to help. He recommended a local mechanic, who appeared in a few minutes and identified the problem as the housing to the replaced thermostat: there was no way that the pipe could form a seal with this aged piece of metal, as was proved when the jubilee clip was tightened and the radiator was topped up with rainwater… it came straight out at the thermostat housing! We limped the poor old Ford Laser back to his workshop and the mechanic set off on a 20km journey to get a replacement housing and a new pipe. He said we’d be on the road within an hour. We used the time to investigate Barmera. Unfortunately it was far too hot in the sun to walk around the beautiful lake so we stopped into a pub for a couple of colas and a few games of pool. We considered booking into the local YHA but decided that we’d await the outcome of the mechanic’s work. He was delayed in traffic. There are not many passing places on the section of the Sturt Highway as we had discovered earlier in the day. Once he was back, though, he had the whole unit reassembled in no time and adjusted the timing, so everything was running like clockwork. It was annoying to have to pay for the same job to be done twice in one day, but c’est la vie, I suppose.

On the road again! We drove through Morgan to Burra (listening to Deep Purple on the iPod: what great music to drive to), where we have stopped in the hotel for the night. The hotel is cheap and cheerful (and the bar was closed when we went to investigate about half-past-nine), but the food here is wonderful. We recommend it heartily!

The cooling system in the car now appears watertight and we are confident of making it up to Alice Springs without any further problems. We are booked into The Mud Hut Motel in Coober Pedy for tomorrow night, which means an early start in the morning to catch up on the kilometres we should have covered today. We’re both looking forward to seeing this motel, though, particularly as we saw one of their 4x4s at a number of service stations (sorry Aussies, ‘Servos’) along the Nullarbor. From there, we’re off to see the biggest thing yet…

It is not often that I write for this blog while I am sitting outside, but this morning is one such occasion. The sun is reflecting off the motel’s swimming pool, the bright blue sky is dotted with little fluffy clouds, K’s dozing in bed (this motel has great black-out curtains) and I’m sitting a table in my shorts and t-shirt tapping merrily on my laptop.

Having verified the water levels in The Beast and set off bright and early, the journey from Hay to Mildura was an easy one. Driving across the Hay Plain was a lot easier on this stretch as the outside temperature seemed to be about ten degrees lower than it was on the other side of Hay the previous day. We made three stops along the way: one for fuel and a pilot change, another to get a snap of the Big Wine Cask at the Stanley Winery and another on the short journey from the Winery to Mildura as we spotted a Big Pharaoh at the side of the road.

I read in one of our guidebooks that Mildura is a Victorian town and was therefore disappointed to see that the locals were not entering into the spirit of things and strolling the streets in period attire. Perhaps it’s just because the schools re-opened their doors after the long summer break? In actual fact, being in Victoria means that we have now been to four of the six Australia States (just Tasmania and Queensland to go). All things being well, we should also have been to both Australian territories, too. I think that’s pretty good for a couple of Brits who’ve only been in the country since Christmastime!

We booked into The Commodore Motel around lunchtime and dropped the car off at a local garage. The modification that the NMRA man made to the thermostat on Sunday evening was not intended to be a panacea, but more a quick-fix. When I pick up the car this morning, it should have at least a new thermostat and a new radiator cap and we should be good to head north with a car that is capable of cooling both its engine and its passengers. We’ve heard that the temperature in the centre of the country is reaching fifty degrees at the moment, so we’re going to want a car that cools.

Commodore fans will be disappointed to learn that I’m yet to spot a PET or a Vic-20 anywhere. Not even a once ubiquitous Commodore 64 is to be seen on the premises. A Holden Commodore has just pulled up into the car park, if that helps?

For my computer fix, we went to a coffee shop for lunch where they had lots of PCs all hooked up to the wondrous Internet. This enabled me to upload the previous three blog entries for your delight and delectation.

We spent some time yesterday afternoon wandering alongside the Murray River, admiring the paddle-steamers. And swatting flies. On the way back towards the motel, we found some gas-powered barbecues in the local park. Bingo! Whilst I shall always prefer a charcoal grill, I love the idea that local councils, Lions Clubs and Rotary Clubs provide permanent barbecues in parks and so on for the public to use. we have seen many of these on our travels, but this was our first opportunity to put one to good use. As such, yesterday evening, armed with a full coolbag, cooking utensils and a bottle of wine from The Barossa Valley, we set off for the park.

The park was surprisingly busy (it had been empty that afternoon), but one of the three barbecues was still available, so we threw some prawns and some other seafood on the barbecue and we were good to go! Eating dinner at a table in a park is something that I think I could get quite used to.

As the evening drew in, we packed our stuff and headed back to the motel for a couple of episodes of 24. It is getting even better as the series goes on.

*Update*

I turned up at the garage this morning to pick up the car. The bonnet was up, but there was nobody visibly working on it. The guy in the office told me that they were just putting the radiator and the thermostat back together and that it would be ready within the hour. Since we had to be out of the motel room in a little over an hour, I thought it prudent to mention this to the receptionist at the motel, expecting it to take a little over an hour to get the car back and loaded up. We spent the next hour at the local shopping arcade and the phone rang ten minutes after we were due to check-out. The car’s not ready. They found a leaky pipe after fitting the thermostat and so are now replacing that. We’ve asked to stay in the motel room for another hour, which the staff were fine with, thankfully. As each minute ticks by, though, I’m thinking that we’ll be spending another night in Mildura. Not that Mildura isn’t a very nice place, but we have plans, you know?