Since the last post which was actually written nearly four weeks ago but not published until today we spent our time in the van fluctuating between inland rainforest/waterfalls/incredible mountainscapes and beach stays with glorious sunrises and time in the water.
This has meant we have come accross many different animals be it on foot or in the van including a fleeting glimpse of a wild cassowary which led to a hasty three point turn and me very nearly getting the van stuck on a greasy bank in my haste

A moody sky looking over Govetts leap in the Blue mountains

Our view of the solar eclipse from byron bay beach

A kangaroo and her almost too big joey at one of our campsites

A wallaby checking us out

An evening spent at Mon Repos beach watching the Loggerheads come and lay their eggs

A fortunate encounter with a duck billed platypus in the wild

Me jumping into a slightly cold mountain watering hole called the wheel of fire

A metre long lace monitor on one of the many bush walks we did

Two shots of Estuarine crocs that we were lucky enough to see on a boat trip along the Daintree river up in the tropical north

And finally the cassowary that nearly left us stuck

 

 

The last few days have found us at Cheryl and Marks house enjoying there incredible hospitality

I'll try and post again before we leave Oz if i can, due to go and stay out on the Great barrier reef for a couple of days tmw and then fly to NZ on thursday

Hope you're all well, speak to you soon

IT TOOK US 3 DAYS TO GET TO AUSTRALIA! And I have just realised that Andy has tricked me into camping!

Something very odd is going on with the weather, unprecedented rainfall in South Africa, as soon as we leave the sun comes out. We arrive in Sydney and I am starting to feel responsible for the hail storm and tornado that greeted us, are we ever going to see some sun?

As those of you that follow me on facebook will know, I spent some of the run up to this trip trying to convince Andy that we would have plenty of time to go from Sydney to Melbourne then up to Cairns. He argued that it would be a lot of extra miles and time to try to get to Melbourne, I argued and won, so off we set. It turns out he was right, Australia is bloody massive! After a day of heading towards Melbourne it became apparent that we would have time to do the above mentioned trip but we wouldn't be able to stop anywhere and we would have to come home after Christmas because we had spent all our money on fuel.

After a spectacular (although freezing) night in a forest in the mountains (campsite called Bummeroo, childish laughter particularly when we saw a worried looking kangaroo) a very expensive night in a caravan park (we saw a wombat, it took us far too long to try and figure out what it was, had to text Dan who accurately described it as a small bear or a very large hamster!) We finally figured out how to do this camper vanning thing and finally the sun came out. We spent the night at a fantastic beach last night and a secluded bay tonight. It is tricky getting your head around having very limited electricity, maybe once every 4 or 5 nights and needing to constantly fill our tiny tank with water. We completely underestimated how expensive daily living and fuel would be and to be honest we are completely outside our budget without any activities. Here's hoping Asia is dirt cheap otherwise you could be seeing us sooner than expected!

To everyone that has sent messages to me on facebook, I will write back as soon as I have electricity and wifi at the same time!

Miss you all

Lou feeling the cold at camp in the mountains

Sunset at bummaroo camp

Sunrise at our first beach stay, Shelley beach

Not sure these photos need a title

First of all we would like to apologise to those of you still checking this blog in the vain hope that we might have put something on it! Wifi in South Africa was pretty much non existent and it seems the only way to get free wifi in Australia is in Macdonalds, and you all know how I feel about that. I have taken to walking through the drive in, posting brief facebook entries!

South Africa was absolutely fantastic, we met some really lovely people who are completely dedicated to animal conservation, particularly to the extremely endangered wild dogs that we were monitoring twice a day, we would start the first monitoring session at 4am and finish at around 10am, the middle of the day is for data entry and relaxing but it was obvious from the start that Cole, our monitor, could do with some help around the camp he inherited a couple of months ago and Andy was the man to do it, we were meant to move to a new reserve after 2 weeks but decided to stay for the whole month. During that time Andy, with help from me, Danny, Jon, Carmen, Lisa and Cole managed to put in a new drainage system, install a rain collecting system, laid a patio, build a massive cupboard and generally sorted the camp! Needless to say we have had an email inviting us back at a reduced rate.

One thing I wasn't expecting was the weather, it pretty much rained torrentially and we saw some pretty spectacular lightning storms, usually from the back of the open land cruiser whilst trying to use telemetry (a big metal ariel, or lightning attractor). As you can see from some of the photo's this led to some interesting bin bag fashion, anything to keep your knickers dry! Because of the rain and because we were generally off road, we managed to get stuck in mud on numerous occasions, 2 particularly stick in my mind. The first was with Kevin our relief monitor, we got caught in a downpour and a piece of road that had been passable on our way out became so boggy we got very stuck, in fact we were up to mid thigh digging and pushing, it took us about 2 hours to get free, only to be held up on the way home by a bull elephant who was reluctant to get out of the way! The second time was just me and Cole and after a fairly foolish decision on both our parts we tried to get past a tricky looking piece of road because we saw the eyeshine of what we thought were the dogs, they were in fact Hyaena and we ended up having to dig the truck out by hand because we couldn't shift the clay with a spade, this experience was added to as we knew that we had a fresh kill on either side of us. We did eventually get free and we have added the photo of us when we finally got back to camp.

The best thing, without a doubt were the animals, because it was so important that we found the dogs each day, because of the huge snaring problem Mkuze reserve has, we travelled on the non tourist routes which meant that we had much closer interactions with the animals. The dogs were beautiful and we could learn a lot about the way they treat one another, watching them wake up and greet each other was amazing, they always feed babies and sick members of the pack first and the whole pack look after the puppies. My god they stunk though. We were mock charged by elephant and rhino, we saw black and white rhino and went on a suspected rhino poaching exercise with the anti poaching unit, lovely men with scary machetes and machine guns. We saw Cape buffalo, 2 leopard, jennet, zebra, baboons and vervet monkeys, 4 cheetah at a kill, water and rock monitor lizards, green mamba, african rock python and the absolute best of all were the giraffe. The birds we saw were too numerous to mention but the vultures were fantastic.

It was very sad to leave South Africa and particularly Wildlife Act, if you have a look on their website, Andy's amazing carved pumpkin features, as well as a pretty cringe photo of us with tools. I would recommend this experience to anyone who is prepared to work hard in quite extreme conditions, but will gain a very unique experience of front line conservation.

Simonstown and Cape of good hope

Hey everyone sorry this first post has taken a little while, wi-fi and spare time are difficult to sort out in South Africa. We are currently sat in Richards Bay airport waiting for our pick-up to take us to the game reserve where we will spend the next month. We had a great time down at the cape in a lovely hotel from which we explored. We saw lots of wildlife including the whale and the penguin whose photos i have included. The one of us together is at the very bottom of the continent looking out over Cape Point. Hope you're all well i will post when i next get the chance. Cheerio

oops, more from my brothers wedding

My brothers wedding

Lou's birthday @ Longleat

Some shots of the rhesus monkeys

One of the longleat lionesses and her cub

oops forgot the group shot from bowling

Biddulph Grange

The house reflected in the koi pond

 Treelined path leading down to the house

 Toad in the oriental gardens

 Snowdrops in the woods

Birthday bowling

My attempts at action shots at the bowling