Road Trip!

For my 5 days off this week I decided to get reacquainted with my bike and explore some of the countryside. I headed to the Perth Hills to do the route from the Tour de Perth bike race. It was only quite a short ride but very hilly! Especially after not riding for quite a while! The scenery is beautiful and the roads are long and wide with hardly any traffic. Perfect for riding. Near the end of the ride I was bombing down a steep hill at close to 60km/h when I was joined by these guys...

Roos crossing!

The bounced right along side me nearly giving me a heart attack! I managed to pull over and get a few snaps of my new riding buddies!

The next day was more bike related fun. I had spent the day at home waiting for our final delivery of furniture, then had to go hand our keys back for our old flat...basically a boring jobs day! So I was really excited about going to "Ladies Night" at the velodrome. I had a really fun 2 hours whizzing round the track learning some new skills and even getting involved in the team pursuit (my team won of course!). Chris came along to watch, feeling very jealous he couldn't take part!

 

After the velodrome we headed home only to find out that some bogan had broken into our new car Sheila and smashed the front window. Fortunately we didn't leave anything in the car so nothing was stolen, but it meant we had to re-think our weekend plans. Really annoying because I'd been really looking forward to this weekend!

So Saturday we got up early and took Sheila to be fixed. $500 later we were ready to go!

Road trip in Sheila!

Naomi driving really slow..... look at the line of traffic behind!!!

We drove up north about 200km stopping off along to way at the different sites. First stop was Lancelin, a town with population of 650 people! This was where we were meant to go sand boarding but we were short of time so instead had a quick coffee and walk on the beach instead.

A bit further up the road was a place called Cerventes. Another small rural town with not much more than a general store and a pub. Fantastic views of the coast and sand dunes though! We stopped off here to go see the stromatolites. These are layers of microorganisms that are trapped between layers of sediment. Doesn't sound very interesting but these things are the oldest living organisms in the world! They are the most ancient form of life of planet Earth and have been living for 3.5 billion years! There are very few places where you can see these things and WA is one of them. A site of real scientific importance. Though in all honesty, not much to look at!

Stromatolites (that circular thing in the water)

Finally we headed to the Pinnacles......

The Pinnacles are in Nambung National Park around 20km from the thriving metropolis of Cervantes, and consist of thousands of limestone pillars up to 4m high jutting out of the sand. Once you arrive at the end of the access road, and have passed a number of Emu warning signs, you are greeted with the Pinnacles drive.

 

The pinnacles drive is a 5km off-road loop around the desert. Half of me wished we had a 4x4 so we didn't ruin Sheila, but the other was pretty glad we didn't have anything wider... it was a bit tight in places!! .....And Naomi was driving.... eeeeek!

 

Naomi and Sheila!!



 

This photo doesn't really do it justice, but it is MASSIVE!!!!

 

 

My favourite Pinnacles!!

 

We played a game of hide and seek.... Can you see Naomi??

 

 

 

After the drive around, we parked up and followed the Emu claw signs to explore on foot. Naomi came up with the stupidest game of aiming straight for the next sign regardless of what was in our way!!! As you can see there were a few obstacles, some pretty big!

 

 

Line of sight from one Emu sign to the next!

 

 

Crap a Camel rock in the way!!!

 

Oh bloody hell these are big boulders!

 

Luckily we survived our adventure across the desert and we wandered back to get a few photos of the sunset... unfortunately it had turned a bit cloudy, so we will save Indian Ocean sunset photo for another time and make the most of clouds for now, as we wont be seeing too many more of these after this month..... or so we keep being told!



 

 

So that was it for the road trip, back on the long and not so winding road back to Perth! Still had time to see a few Emu and my (Chris) first Bouncing Roo after a couple of asleep and permanently asleep ones! The hunt for the Echidna still goes on though.

 

That's all for now folks!

Team Stack!

 

 

 

 

Internet at last.... and no medic talk I promise!

Our internet is connected at last so time for a new blog post!

The past 3 weeks have been pretty busy with starting a new job and moving house. We actually found a new place pretty quickly. We decided early on that we wanted to live in Subiaco and fortunately the perfect place had just gone on the rental market! We snapped it up!

Subiaco is a suburb about 4km west of Perth CBD and about 8km east of the beaches. It is one of the more trendy locations because it has great bars, restaurants and cafes. We live just off the main café strip, so everything is easily within a 5 min walk. Just a bit further away (10min walk) is the beautiful King's Park.

Our new house is awesome! Its a federation style town house. We have a kitchen and large open plan living dining area with a court yard out the back. Upstairs we have 2 bedrooms and a bathroom. We also have a small balcony which has become my new favourite coffee spot!

It a pretty old style house but full of character! Any by full of character I mean it is really old-fashioned and in need of updating! The kitchen and bathroom have probably never been re-decorated since it was built! But it feels like home to us! After 8 years of generic 2 bed apartments that are all same same but different, this place is fab!

One of the coolest features in the house is its spiral staircase. Although this soon lost its appeal when we had to struggle to get all the furniture and a washing machine up it!

The best part though is it huge in-built bike storage solution. Can you believe 5 bikes fit inside this!!

Other than a whole load of furniture shopping and more than I care to count trips to IKEA, we have not really done too much else. Chris ran in the 'City to Surf' race with some new friends. The City to Surf race is a hugely popular running event in Perth. You can race over distances of 12km, half marathon or marathon. Chris did amazingly well to say he didn't train! He completed the 12km race in under 55mins which put him in the top 3%! not bad when over 30,000 people ran!! Unfortunately I had to work so missed out on the fun!

On my days off I travelled down south with some of the other new doctors at work. We went to Margaret River which is a beautiful wine growing region. We did a tour of some of the wineries and sampled lots of he local goodies....and... well I can't really remember much more than that :-D

I'm not too much of a wine drinker but I did find a bottle that was gorgeous! I decided to buy a bottle and was a little shocked to find out that I had just paid $50 for a bottle of wine! I have definitely inherited my Mum's expensive taste!

On the last day of the trip I was quite keen to get home early as I had a few jobs to finish in the new house and I was desperate to ride my bike!! Prior to setting off home we went to the beach for breakfast. Some of the guys then fancied a swim in the sea. Unfortunately he forgot to take the car keys out of his pocket and so they are now somewhere at the bottom of the Indian Ocean! So we spent the rest of the day waiting for a tow-truck to take us back to Perth! It turned out that we had a nice picnic at the beach instead so not a wasted day at all!

 

 

There are worse places to be stranded!

This weekend Chris and I have both sat and sun off together so we have a great weekend lined up! Tonight (Friday) I am going to the Perth velodrome. Tomorrow we are heading up north to visit the Pinnacles national park and go sand boarding. Then on Sunday, more bike riding!! Perthfect!!

Back to reality - beware medic talk!

So this week was my first week at work. After  15 whole days off (in a row!!) it was time to get back to reality.

I was due to start work as an RMO in the emergency department at 'Charlie's.' An RMO is sort of equivalent to an SHO in the UK, which for all non medicos basically means a junior doctor who slightly less useless than an F1 (newly qualified doc). So I went to my induction, picked up my scrubs and sat through the IT training only to find out that my criminal record check had not come through! Without this I can't practice medicine in Australia! So on my first day I was sent home! Not cool!

So not only was I letting my team down by leaving them a doctor short, I earned a reputation as a secret criminal leading the other doctors to speculate about my previous crimes! Perfect first impression...

Anyways, after another 5 days off I finally got my criminal record through and was allowed to start work. I went in for 1 day, then I was straight into my 5 days off! The shifts here are great. We do 5 shifts on then 5 days off. The days are long at 11 hours (reality more like 12-13) but compared to the UK, this feels great! No more 20 day stretches and no more 24 hour shifts! The other great thing is that there are tonnes of doctors and always a consultant or senior reg on! In my last ED job, I was often the only doctor on through the night. I did have access to a registrar sleeping on site but it was made pretty clear that your weren't to wake them unless something on the scale of a nuclear explosion had occurred!

The job here is much more demanding so I feel I earn my 5 days off! ED in Australia is not just a case of triaging patients then passing them on to the appropriate speciality, we actually diagnose and treat patients ourselves. The A in our ABCDE assessment no longer stands for "call the anaesthetist" but rather "get a scope and secure the airway yourself!" Awesome!! In the UK there are specialists for everything. If you need to plaster a broken bone you call the plaster technicians, if you need an arterial or central line you call the anaesthetists. Here in Australia you are expected to do everything yourself. As a result I can now do a variety of nerve blocks, do all my own plastering and have even drilled an eye. Yes with an actual drill!! I am 100% sure that I was much more nervous than the patient!

The other thing I have noticed about ED in Australia is that there are so many crazies! I think I can recall 3 occasions over the past 2 years where I have had to call security and chemically sedate a patient who had gone crazy (elderly demented patients excluded). Here in ED a "code black" is a daily occurrence, usually several times a day. A code black is called when a crazy comes into the department. Security is called and a doctor is required to do a "chemical take-down." This is where we insert an IV line and give drugs until the patient calms down/falls asleep. Sounds easy but the patient usually has to be held down by about 6 security guards! I think the reason there are so many crazies in Perth is the huge crystal meth problem. This is not a common drug in the UK because it is difficult to make without being noticed (and UK is very crowded compared to Oz). Also, with such a large coast line, drugs are much easier to smuggle into Perth. Seeing these people has been a real eye-opener! The reality of crystal meth to Breaking Bad's Hollywood-isation!

Of course the Aussi doctors say the reason they have so many crazies is the crazy amount of sunshine! But don't worry, we are safe for now as so far we have only seen rain!

So overall I'm loving my new job!

And now onto Chris's new job......something about concrete.....roads.....snake handling....trips to the Pilbara....lots of cups of coffee.....I think I better let him tell you about that! Keep your eyes peeled for his riveting, completely not boring walkthough of his new place of work! (Puns intended....sorry!)

Life is not a beach!

So when I was researching Perth's climate I remember reading about the 300 days and 3200 hours of sunshine per year. I also noted the average temperature of 30* C and the Mediterranean climate. What I failed to take into account is that Perth has a similar annual rainfall to Manchester and that ALL 745mm of rain will fall within a few days!

Not ones to be put off by rain (we are British after all!) we decided to book on a surf course at Scarborough beach. However we happened to catch the news which was reporting a freak water spout that had caused a mini tornado on the coast. Surfing was quickly put on hold and our attentions turned to scouting out the local coffee shops!

With the rain continue to do its best to make us feel like we were back in Preston, we decided to get some more jobs out of the way. Firstly and most importantly we headed to Nespresso to pick out our new coffee machine. Once caffeined-up we set out to find a new place to live. Not really knowing where to start, we picked some random suburbs and began exploring. Within a few hours and several trips home to change, almost every item of clothing we owned was wet through! So now we are stuck inside wearing our PJs at 6pm! Reminds me of our camping trips as kids!

I wanted to head to the lively suburb of Subiaco to try out one of the restaurants for tea tonight, however we settled for take-away pizza and a bar of chocolate. Australia is pretty laid back, but I think even the Aussies draw the line at dining out in PJs!

So with not much else to report at present, why not have a look round our flat. We rent the upstairs of a large house in a rather posh area called Shenton Park. The owners live downstairs but are on holiday for 4 weeks so we are also allowed to use the garden. We are here for another 5 weeks, then need to find somewhere more permanent.

Living Room

Kitchen - complete with new Nespresso :-)

Bedroom (Cockroach Den - see below)

 

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Paddington!!!

Hall

Bike..... Er sorry Second Bedroom

 

So that's all for now.

From a very soggy team stack!

1 Week On

So 1 week in Oz done!

So last time I wrote we had decided to take a few days off  the masses of paperwork to do some touristy stuff. First on the list was a visit to Kings Park. This time we headed to the south east corner which contained the botanical gardens. At the entrance to the park is a large war memorial which provides a great lookout point with views across the river and Perth skyline. Not a bad place to start!

 

Next we wandered round the botanicals, which had been divided up into plants from the different regions of Australia. There was also an elevated walkway so you could view the gardens from within the canopy. My favourite spot was the Giant Boab. This is a tree 14m high and 2.5m wide. It was a gift to the park from the Gija people, an indigenous group for the Kimberley region of WA. The tree was transported 3200km on the back of a lorry before being replanted in Kings Park. Pretty cool!

Later on we planned on going for a bike ride into the Perth Hills. Unfortunately Chris's bike did not survive the 14000km journey from Preston. The tip of the brake level snapped off, an annoyingly expensive and difficult fix! Rather than waste the day, we hired a bike and set off in search of some hills! We did a nice gentle 60km into the Kalamunda national park. Not quite in training mode yet... So we enjoyed a sneaky coffee and cookie stop! We then cycled back to Perth along the river the sun was out and so were all the tourists! We stopped off at the old port for an ice-cream (definitely not in training mode yet!) and this is where we has our first deadly encounter....jellyfish! I wondered why no one was paddling?!

 

 

Ice cream was later followed by our first Aussie BBQ and second deadly encounter under the bin... a great western killer snake... or maybe just a harmless large worm!

 

 

 

Touchdown in Perth

So we have now been in Perth for 5 days. The flight from Singapore was just 5 hours and we both slept the whole way so it passed quite fast. We got through customs pretty quickly... and fortunately they didn't confiscate my Percy Pigs! We picked up hire car from a nice lady who told us she was soon to be visiting the UK...specifically to see where Heart Beat is filmed (Heart Beat seems to have only just made it to WA!).

We moved into our holiday rent, then went into jobs mode. The next 2 days were spend doing paperwork...a thrilling start to our new life in Oz! In 48 hours, between us, we managed to sign our rental contract, apply for medicare, finalise medical registration, attend an interview (and get offered a job), obtain a tax number, set up an Australian bank account and purchase new phones!

Things seemed to be going swimmingly...for Chris! I on the other hand encountered a few problems. First of all the bank accounts that we set up back in the UK had managed to completely mess up my details. My account was set up in the wrong name, had the wrong date of birth and a wrong account number. On top of that they had forgotten to order me any bank cards so there was no way to access the money I had transferred in advance! Not a good start! Next we went to buy phones. After my UK iphone passed away 3 months ago, I had held out to get a brand new top of the range smart phone once I arrived in Oz. I had my heart set on the beautiful HTC One. Unfortunately I was refused a contract due to no credit history within Australia! The only way I could get my shiny new phone would be to purchase it outright...at $800!! So instead we opted for the slightly cheaper nokia lumia. Chris chose the sleek looking white phone, and not wanting us to get the same, I asked for another colour... they only other colour available was bright yellow! So yes, I now have a bright yellow banana phone!! No only that, but it took 4 (yes 4!!) trips back to the shop before they realised they had sold us the wrong sim cards!! Aussies!!

Anyway, after 2 days of work, we decided to treat ourselves to some exploring. We set off to Fremantle, a  quirky port town south of the river. We drank coffee, wandered though the markets and most importantly put our feet in the Indian Ocean for the first time! The waves were a little stronger than I had anticipated and I came very close to losing my flip flops and walking home bare foot!

Freemantle

Freemantle Round House (the old gaol)

The Indian Ocean

We then set of driving up the coast, checking out the suburbs. We passed through the medics ghetto (Cottesloe), through City Beach and finally to Scarborough. A slightly different view to the one we usually see in Scarborough!

Cottesloe

Scarborough Front

Later on we went to explore Kings Park, a 5km x 2km park just south of Perth CBD. The South East aspect is made up of manicured lawns and a large botanical garden. The rest is natural bush restoration. We decided to explore the natural bushlands. After walking for almost 2 hours we realised 2 things..1. We were lost and 2. The sun was about to go down. I did not like the thought of walking through bushlands in the dark in only my flipflops!! At a noticeably quicker pace, we set off to find civilization. Fortunately we managed to pop back out of the bush at the same point we entered! Just a few short kms (on paved roads!!) back home! We stopped of for a sneaky schooner on the way... I felt we had earned it!

Kings Park - beautiful...in the day light!

More adventures soon!

The Stackers xxx

Le Grand Depart

TDU Stats

Hours travelling...   36
Kilometres covered...   10942.81
Kilometres to go...   3898
Remaining UK money...   63p
Number of times Naomi fell asleep during Singapore tour...   27
Number of sleep related injuries... 1 (hitting my head on the tour bus railings)
Singapore slings supped...   2
$ spent on Singapore slings...   65!! Plus tip!!
Days emergency cadburys lasted...   1 (Thankyou Crowthers!)
Temp in Singapore... 34degree C
Days before Chris got sunburnt... 1


So we are now at Singapore airport which has instantly become our favourite airport for 2 reasons. Number 1, free wifi! And number 2, the snooze lounge!! In fact the airport has so much more... Free cinema, butterfly garden, free sight seeing tours and the list goes on. But really what more can you ask for than snoozing and surfing!
We are currently sat having coffee waiting for our final flight to Perth. Here is an overview of our journey so far..

Manchester airport

Arrived at 5.30am and amazingly checked in all our luggage(2 cases, 2 bikes and 1 rucksack) all under our baggage allowance... With a little bit of help from the friendly check-in lady!

Proceeded to play the change game for the first time ever in UK. The game basically involves trying to use up all foreign change. The person who buys the most interesting thing or manages to spend every last penny wins. At 6am we were too tired to fully commit to the game and settled for buying as much as we could from cafe Nero.


Then a quick 2 hour flight to Munich followed by a looooooong 12 hour hop to Singapore.

Singapore City

Chris had the fantastic idea to stop over in Singapore to break up the journey. A good idea in theory but in reality we had 18 hours between flights to see as much as we could all the while desperately fighting heavy eyelids!

We decided to do the hop on- hop off bus tour. I'm not sure how many loops of the city we did before I finally woke up! At least Chris got a good view of the city, I got a good view of the insides of my eyelids!

We hopped off at the Botanical gradens and after another quick power nap we decided to get a bite to eat before setting off to explore the gardens. Now I love botanical gardens and Singapore did not let us down! We spent 3.5 hours looking at all the different plants and wildlife and planning my new career as a great western australian explorer/scientist! My favourite spot - giant Lilly pads! Chris's favourite.. A wild croc! Check out the pics below!!

After walking for 3.5 hours in 34 degree heat and my feet having swollen to the size of marrows, we set off to Raffles Hotel Long Bar for a Singapore Sling... As did pretty much every other tourist in Singapore!

Singapore Airport

So back to the airport for our final 5 hour flight to Perth. Feeling much more refreshed after taking full advantage of the snooze lounge. Currently sat in a coffee shop called The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. I chose this cafe  because of some funny memories from my last trip to Malaysia/Singapore. Raman and I had decided to travel 10 hours in a sweaty bus from Sabah in Malaysia to Brunei so we could check another country off our list. So after 10 hours on a bus travelling over very bumpy road ( made 100 x worse due to a severely sunburnt back!) with no less than 6 immigration check points, we finally arrived in Brunei only to find that literally the only thing to do was sit in The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf cafe! I lost count of how many drinks we had during our short 2 day stay!

So that's all for now!


Team Stack xxx