Taking a bit of a step back, I want to talk about our last day in Broome. We were down to just the four of us, Sally, Vilma, Evan and myself. It was such a nice day I thought it was such a shame I left it out of the previous blog. We woke up & drove onto the beach. We did some exploring and found a skeleton of a turtle with half of its shell still intact on the shore. The tide in Darwin is impressive, one of the lifeguards on the beach was telling us that the tide changes vertically about 4 meters. There is a huge difference between low and high tide. After driving around for little bit we parked the car, got the chairs out and chilled! We ate breakfast, laughed, took a couple dips in the Indian Ocean, cranked up the music and relaxed to the full. After so much driving and crazy adventures it was nice to just soak up the life. :) That night at the airport though we all discovered we should have used a little more sunscreen as we were all a little burnt.

After leaving Broome and saying goodbye to Sally and Evan, Vilma & I slept the remaining few hours of the night on the airport floor. We started the day by getting a hire car and cleaning up a bit and getting a bunch of stuff in order. Once that was accomplished we headed to the lovely Fremantle. We enjoyed strolling through the streets & good solid beer at the Little Creatures Brewery. Afterwards we went on a hunt for a meat pie. We found one at the cafe in the park. At the cafe we started talking to the owner, who I found out was a former Engineer. We swapped stories & talked about the area. After this we headed out in the car towards our next destination. We were exhausted & it was pouring down rain by this point, so we decided by necessity it was time to stop and take a 5 min nap. Well that 5 min nap turned into a 3 hour nap in a random parking lot. Oh, but it was good. After running a few errands around town I had to say goodbye to my good friend Vilma. From there I quickly found a place to sleep & crashed out for many hours of sleep.

I have a few issues with visas that are causing a bit of a headache. I was starting to sort them out when I realized that my passport, which I was supposed to receive that day or the day before was sent to Brisbane instead of Perth, where I was. At this point, I left in a day and a half. I do not stress easy, but this with the fact that I still do not have visas for 2 countries & I do not know where I am going to get them from was starting to get me worried. Thankfully after a number of phone calls and visits to different Post Offices I was able to work out a plan to get the passport here to Perth. Thanks to Helen, my old flatmate, by the end of the day my passport was on its way to Perth, without much time to spare. In addition to the stresses of visas and passports. So I spent the morning doing what I could and than headed down to Margarete River. With all of the drama around the visas and passports it was hard to completely get into the site seeing mood. Thankfully by the time I got to the top end of the Margarette River the plan on how to get the Passport to me was sorted and underway.

After the morning of stress I found driving down Caves Road, along the coast an extremely calming experience. I drove along listening to music from Finland that Vilma gave me and the landscape just gave me a nice calming happiness. It just seemed like everything had to be right in the world. If you can imagine the scene... Driving along a nice curving road with very little traffic. The huge bright blue sky was spotted with small little white clouds. The road was lined with spectacular, large, tall trees alternating with large open paddocks with lush green grass and sheep and cattle. The entire landscape was littered with while lilies. It was a significantly greener experience than the red and brown dirt we saw through the Outback.

I stopped in at a number of places along the way, but finished the daylight hours by watching the sun set on the southwest corner of Australia over the Indian Ocean. The colors were fantastic! The lush green grass and bush crashed into the edge of the small beach where the waves rolled in. The sky and water were full of dark rick blues, greens, reds and grays. It almost seemed like I was looking at a painting, and not reality. It reminded me of the stunning colors in Uluru (Ayers Rock) at the center of Australia. In Uluru we did not see the dark rich colors I saw this night, but we did see the most intense and vibrant blues, greens, and reds from the sky, trees, bush and the rock itself. There is no way our photographs our descriptions could give it justice. So, there I sat watching the sunset & soaking in the dark blues, greens, reds and grays of this bay and reminiscing of the vibrant colors seen at Uluru.

Once again I started the morning with me doing heaps of research, sending off emails, making phone calls and organizing my next legs of the trip. If only I get these last two visas worked out, I think the rest will just fall into place. I am sure it will work out in the end, just have to go through a lot of work to get there. After doing all that I could, I headed north back up to Perth. I knew my passport should be arriving soon and I wanted to make sure I was there soon after it came in, that way if any more dramas occurred I might have some time to find a solution.

On my rush to get up to Perth my car ran out of Petrol. In my defense the car has no fuel light, it does not have a standard gauge. It has a digital gauge that made it look like it still had an eighth of a tank. I was debating pulling off at the next service station to be on the same side, but the car died before I had a chance. After talking to the hire company, I found out that if they helped me they would charge me over $100. So I had to sort it myself, no worries I knew what to do. However I soon found out the nearest petrol station was about 8kms up the highway. So I asked what's a girl to do in this situation but throw her thumb out? So that is what I did. I hitched a ride up to the next petrol station and a kind gentleman, Marcus pulled over and took me up to get petrol at the BP about 8kms up the road, than he went even the extra mile and took me back to my car. After ensuring my car started up and I was all good he rushed off to his appointment he was now late for. So I would like to say for the record there are some good Samaritans in Perth. :)

After this additional drama I finally made it to Perth & had to go to a couple Post offices before I finally tracked down my passport. I was so happy to have it in my hand! To celebrate I went back down to Fremantle and did some beer tasting at the Little Creatures Brewery. All I can say is 'WOWA' that was some good beer. Mmmmmm... straight from the brewery :) I spent the rest of the afternoon sorting things out and took a bit of time out to walk through the botanical gardens. My flight leaves in a few hours, so I am going upload some photos for you all onto Facebook of my trip thus far and than maybe get some shut eye & get onto the plane.