Day 67 Purth Mate!

I love my blog, not only do I get to share my life and Ness’s life with our family & friends, but it allows you guys to share your lives with us!

 Take my sister and brother in law for example, they use my blog to solve their personal issues, Brad thinks Heather farts too much, Heather thinks Brad is too hairy!!!! Glad I can help you guys to solve your issues!!!

 Angie, I can remember when I first met Vanessa & she told me the story of you leaving Adrian & Elissa in the car and it rolling down the driveway, I had only met you once before this time, I had also met the kids too...... and thought to myself that if I had 4 kids under 7     I would have made sure that all 4 of them were in the car!!!!! (Just kidding.....)

 Hey Meredith, if you are in a car and there is a seatbelt..... you better bloody well wear it! It does not matter whether you are in the front, back or anywhere! And as for your Mango obsession, all I can say is if it is worth it then pay for it!.... I once paid $4.30 for an avocado!

 To Brad my son..... mate can you PLEASE use a spell check before sending messages, I paid a fortune for your education & surely they taught you to use a spell check (not worried that you can’t spell..... just want people to think that you can!!!)...... PS have a look at the sticker on the back of your bike..... it says USE PREMIUM UNLEADED ONLY!..... Dufus! Hope you did not have to push it too far.

 My brother in law Brad has just spent a heap of time and money renovating his office. I thought he was a perfectionist as most things he does he spends a lot of time and effort to make sure they are done right!..... That was until he sent me photos through of his new office!!!!

 I was impressed with the painting, the floors, the desks & the roof, I zoomed in on his computers (4 screens..... impressive mate) and saw that most of the wiring was neat and tidy, I looked at his pictures on the wall & his signed St George Guernsey, and the pictures that his daughter painted that were hanging on the wall......... So far very impressed!!! But...

Then I noticed his office chair!!!..... the cheapest and nastiest plain boring office chair that looks like it was bought from the $2 shop!.... C’mon mate, if you want to make an impression get yourself a decent chair!.... my sister is right you are such a tight arse!

 Vanessa M.... Happy Birthday, I hear you are in K.L. this week.... behave yourself girl!!!

 Rob P.... How did you cope at work today? Hope your night was good & you behaved? Did you see Tim Cahill’s 2 goals?..... I’m guessing you did!

 Can I also clarify that when I asked you all if your partner farted I was not alluding to Vanessa’s aunt!..... You work it out!!!! No comment!!

 Oh and to my son Brad again.... I know you are catching up on blogs tonight. Here is a request..... Save your resume’ to USB and don’t lose it.... and get 4 spare keys cut for your motorbike...... Or I’ll tell your granny what you have been up to!!!! (love from Dad) Lucky I save everything Brad...will always have a copy on my laptop! Vx

 Speak to you all tomorrow...... love from us... XXX

 P.S. Karen.... sorry for my text messages yesterday, I was just letting you know what Ness was eating, didn’t realise it was late at night your time!

 P.P.S. Brad A.... not sorry for ringing you so late..... makes up for those 1am phone calls when you called me looking for Heather!! (I was in Melbourne.... you were in Brisbane..... how the hell would I know where she was!!!)

Day 66 Perth West Australya!

 Mmmmmm! Last night’s dinner was awesome, Ness had Chicken tortellini that was really just melt in your mouth stuff, I had chicken broulade? What the!!! What is a broulade! It was really just a tarted up chicken breast with fancy sauce. But nice!!!!! James that would be roulade...see what I have to put up!!

 Ok, I want to go personal again here, for you males that read this blog do any of your wives or partners fart? I don’t want to offend anyone here but when I was growing up I can’t ever recall my mum or any of my sisters farting! Oh except my sister Shona who used to have farting competitions with me & my brother & dad! But no other women I knew passed wind..... Until now!..... Say no more! That was until he met a very dear Auntie of mine who will remain nameless...has nothing to do with me!! :)

 Happy birthday to Rob P. Mate even though your wife supports St George & you like soccer we still hope you have a great birthday! Hope you had a great day Peachy. 

 This week when we are working at the secret place that I can’t tell you about, they start the meetings by having a “safety share” where the attendees are invited to share a safety message or story. In today’s session one of the guys said that on the weekend he went to take some DVD’s back to the video shop & left his 7 year old son in the car for a couple of minutes, he put the park brake on and left it in park. The 7 year old let the park brake off and put it into neutral and the car rolled down a driveway and onto the road. Luckily the road was quiet & the car rolled to a stop. So don’t leave your kids in the car unattended!

 Ness and I have decided that safety share is a great idea, when we get back to Melbourne we will do it with Brad & Dan, if we can sit around once a week & maybe share a safety story about something we did or that happened to us, it just raises that little bit of awareness! I think we should all do a Safety Share around the dinner table with our family every now and then, it is really interesting what people share.

 We got mail from home today, David & Sandy have been sending it over to us once a month, it’s great going through the mail even if it is bills! But I got my 4WD magazine so I know what I will be doing tonight!

 Hey do any of you have a favourite treat or sweet or desert or something that is really just moreish?..... I have one. Caramel covered popcorn, today I opened a packet and thought I would have just a couple of bits for a snack..... I couldn’t stop! I just kept telling myself “Just one more bit..... just one more bit!” ate the whole packet!!!! He was possessed.

 So tell me what you like that you just can’t say no to!..... Ness what is your’s?  Dark Chocolate of any sort!

 The hire car we have this week is a Mitsubishi Lancer, what a piece of crap this is! I was once seriously thinking of buying a Lancer Evo.... so glad I didn’t after driving this thing!

 In the mail that arrived today was my new Leatherman multi purpose tool that I bought off E Bay. It is a replacement for one that I got for Christmas a couple of years ago. It is so cool, it has a saw, a knife, screwdrivers, can openers, pliers & more. It is just like the one that Bear Grills uses..... Cool huh!

 Phil sent me detailed instructions on how to catch the Goanna that lives up at the Yandi mine Camp, reminded me of my mate when I was a kid, Darren Finch. We went up the lookout in Gunnedah one day and came across a couple of huge Goanna’s. Being 13 years old we thought we could catch them (they were nearly as big as us) so went close to them armed with sticks. Instead of running away they turned and ran towards us! I dropped my stick and ran as fast as I could but my mate headed for a tree, he reached the tree at the same time as the Goanna and the Goanna climbed up him then up into the tree, scratched the back of his legs and his neck really bad, he reckons it bit him on the way up too! From that day on Darren always had these scabby legs, apparently Goannas have lots of bad bacteria on them and if they do scratch or bite you it takes ages to heal..... Was funny for me though! I always was lucky!

 There is another story about Darren & me & a Koala but I will save that for another day!

 Have done no exercise this week so far.... I’m turning into an Oompa Loompa! Can’t wait to get back to the van and my bike! We did plan on walking/rolling along the Swan River everyday but it has rained non stop since we arrived.

 We are going to Hugh’s place for a BBQ on Saturday, he is the guy that wants to do the documentary of us travelling around Australia together. Will let you all know if we have any more ideas. Maybe you can send me some ideas of what you would like to see us do or at least try to do? I’m up for anything, I’ll get on a camel, swim with a shark, bum my way up Uluru..... C’mon give me some suggestions!

 Ok time for dinner...... why is there so much food here? I’m going to have to go to rehab for food addiction!

 Love from us.

Day 65 Perth Beautiful Perth!

Good evening, today was an uneventful day, slept in till 7am, got up, had brekky, watched the news & then slowly got ready to go to work at 10am, perfect day really.

 You know one of the best things about what I do is I get to meet so many different types of people & characters. Today we met a guy who is Muslim, he works in the top secret facility that we spoke about yesterday, he was a really nice guy to chat to and told us the story that when he goes back to Bosnia (I personally did not know they had Muslims in Bosnia?) he gets into a taxi and puts his seatbelt on and the taxi drivers laugh at him. They don’t wear seatbelts in Bosnia.

 The next best thing is that we see some weird people in weird places, I know I should probably not say this but do some people not have mirrors in their houses? How can some people go out in public looking like they do? Shoulda seen what we saw today. Oh now I think James has been hanging out with me in shopping centres for too long now...he is starting to talk like chicks do!!

 Raining here in Perth, lets have a global weather round up, What is it like in Hanoi Rob? How’s the weather in Dubai Mr. & Mrs. Box? Is it still raining in NZ Meredith & Arama? How is the humidity in Singapore Vanessa M? So good to have multi cultural readers for my blog. What about closer to home, what is the weather like in Melbourne, hey mum is it cold in Yarra Glen yet?

 Vanessa is so happy to be in civilisation that she had a pedicure today, I don’t really know what a pedicure is but when I left her she had her feet in a bath of water & the girl had a face mask on? Is this because of the chemicals they use or because Vanessa’s feet smell bad? My feel are beautiful and even more so now and guess what I still have thong marks so it wasn’t just the Pilbara dust and I do have a tan.

 Georgia pointed out that I spelled Soduko wrong & also Bear Grills, have you ever thought that I do it intentionally Georgy..... Just to P you off! The rest of your life you will be picking up on my spelling mistakes! In regards to Suduko and your response Merry Berry, yes I love the clueless crosswords and the cryptics.

 Thanks to Liz & John for the message, good to have you on the trip with us. Having the occasional red wine John....purely to stay sane.

 Last night there was a story on 4 corners about the coal mining industry in NSW, Singleton in particular. A lot of people have breathing difficulties and asthma. Now we obviously work with mining & heavy industry, but I would have to say that I am neither for nor against these types of workplaces, I believe they can work together successfully. But you know the thing that really makes me mad.... is the stupidity of some parents. Did you hear that a couple of the families noticed that their kids health improved when they went on holidays away from Singleton, but then worsened when they came back!....... Der Fred!!! If you love your kids why leave them exposed to the things that are making them sick!.... Some people!!!!

 Ok, going to have dinner..... served by someone else..... we are so spoilt this week!

 James & VW

 P.S. Happy Birthday Mrs Rowley.... hope you had a fab day!!

Day 64 Bear Grills Night

Monday night, civilization, full TV reception, SBS..... Guess what is on tonight? Yep, Bear Grills night!!!! Can’t wait.....

 Ok our day today..... we went to a top secret company facility, one of the biggest (if not THE biggest!) mining companies in Australia. We had to do an induction that included us agreeing that we would not take photos of the site & would not disclose any information obtained!..... Felt like we were entering a prison!

 We entered the main room and were confronted with huge screens containing information on the company’s production targets, actual production, Product location & all sorts of other sensitive stuff (technical term there!) And we mean huge screens....I reckon they were about 25 meters long and about 5 metres high and there was 2 of them on a massive black walls.  One for tracking the trains and for the  mines

It was awesome! Do you know that all the dump trucks are fitted with GPS and can be tracked from this room even though it is 1500km away from the mine site, and the controllers can tell the trucks where to go via direct radio contact from this room! This room was also full 100’s of desks with about 4 computer screens per person with direct video footage of and to the trucks.  Amazing!!  Felt like I was on Mission Impossible set.

All the trains have GPS locators too, and there is a simulated picture of the rail network with the location of all the trains!..... Talk about big brother!!!!

Hey we have been in the bush too long! I didn’t cope too well with traffic today, the last month or so we have been lucky to see one or two cars each hour that we were in the car. Today I had to drive on a dual lane road and there were cars only meters away from me! Man it was scary.... give me the country roads anytime!!!! We have a Mitsubishi Lancer as a hire car...bit different to Dolly.  James even managed to take a gutter out in the Lancer as we went around a corner....I so couldn’t stop laughing.

Ness had a Hot Chocolate today, from Macca’s..... $4.50, I didn’t have one as someone sent me an email telling me how much exercise you have to do to work off one hot chocolate! Not fair!!!!

Ok so once we left NASA we decided to go shopping, ended up at Belmont Fair, parked the car and headed into the shops. Man it was heaven, they had a K Mart, Coles, Woolworths. Ness went to the post office, and I just sat in the shopping centre and watched people go past, it was so cool.... amazing how you can get used to things and then miss them when they are not there!

Vanessa had to buy some new earrings, on mine sites you are not allowed to wear “Dangly” earrings, so she needed some studs. Typical Ness and instead of buying one or two pairs she decided to buy 10..... Yes Ten!!!! Pairs of studs!!!! It was actually 12 pairs...all different colour studs and plain silver ball studs. Important to have choice!!

We also tried to buy some tea towels for my mum..... She collects them. There are 140 specialty shops in the shopping centre and none of them sell Perth tea towels! Don’t worry mum.... we will find some for you.

On the way home we drove into the city & past the Swan River, this weekend they have the Red Bull Air Race here, so we will get a chance to see some of the planes on Saturday before we head back to Newman.

Back to the hotel room to make a few phone calls, catch up on some work (Ness.... Not me!) and do a few things..... then it was time for dinner, made it to the restaurant just at the end of happy hour! So nice to have a beer in a glass served by a barman rather than a stubby shoved across a bench by a person that does the bar at night & cleans your room during the day (not that there is anything wrong with a stubby shoved across a bench!)

The menu has sooooooo many choices! And you don’t have to queue up behind 4 smelly blokes to fill up your plate!

Tonight we had Wontons with chilli sauce for entree & then Ness had baby squid sesame crumbed with honey vegetables!...... I thought I was going for the safe option and ordered Duck & mushroom Risotto. I was so disappointed when it came out, it was rice with a few mushrooms, a bit of meat (not sure it was Duck) & it had jam in it! Why do people mix sweet & savoury food! It just is not right!!!! James that was Plum Sauce and was written on the menu. 

Ness has discovered Soduko, do any of you do Soduko? Crosswords have always been my thing...but quite enjoying the number change.

Ok better go, have to get changed into my Bear Grills outfit & sharpen my pocket knife ready to watch Bear tonight. Help me!!

Speak to you all tomorrow.

Love from us...... If you don’t hear from us come looking at the shops! We will be the ones just sitting in the mall looking at the shops and the people!!!!!

 James & Ness

Day 63 Fly to Perth

Dear Bloggies, due to Ness and I returning to civilisation...(and not the Newman kind), there will be no blog tonight.

But I will say I meant no harm to Sandra Bullock as I too think she is gorgeous, all I was saying was that her performance in the film(and yes it was a great film and I did cry) was no different to any of the other movies she has been in.

Good night from us, we will send pictures of our apartment tomorrow.

 P.S. We just had dinner in a real restaurant....with table service and divine food!!!  I had Barramundi....Yummmm!!

 James & Ness