By Erik Skye

December 31, 2010:

I spent the night in Geraldton again. I think I like the place even more now. I had dinner at a hotel bar/restaurant, which was broken into many different rooms and furnishings where you could go and “cubby-hole” away to do different things (i.e. outdoor patio, pool table area, TV nooks, reading areas, bar, open seating, live band, etc…). It was quiet and peaceful (no live band yet) even though there were many people (of all ages). On the TV was a cricket match. I broke from my reading to watch for a while. At first I was like “interesting”. Then, after watching a few rounds of the thrower running wildly at the batsman and the subsequent flurry of activity surrounding catching and throwing the ball around after it was hit (for no apparent conclusion or reason), I thought ‘this looks ridiculous’. Aussies were watching the match intently in different rooms. I went back to reading my book.

While I love the sound of the crows, I find the sound of the cockatoos to be very annoying.

They don’t understand me when I order water. Slowing down and annunciating “water” clearly only seems to make it worse. They look at me like a kangaroo in the headlights. I have to resort to sign language (not really, but close). I think it’s because they say ‘wata’ and I put emphasis on the ‘r’.

I drove through a really neat place called New Norcia. In 1846, a group of Spanish monks came here and started a mission to convert Aborigines to Christianity. It’s a tiny little anclave in the middle of the wheat belt an hour NE of Perth. They make olive oil, cater to tourists, and keep the buildings functioning (such as the Monastery Chapel, bakery, hotel and restaurant, etc…) This gets a ‘highly recommend’ rating from me.

They call it “drink driving”; we call it “drunk driving”. It’s New Year’s Eve, and behind me at a stop light the woman driving was sipping from a bottle…

Every little town has an IGA store. There was one of those in my home town as a kid in NW Washington State.

I'm in Perth tonight. Tomorrow we head to Darwin and the Australian tropics.

Happy New Year everyone!