He's more than a mechanic, he's God - advance, Australia. We buy the camper, clutch in, move on, hardly a puff of smoke.
Perth behind, 'roo bars shined out front, bush-bashing bull dust, bushrangers and blowies. The trip's moved from people to land and all the things between, my newly Redback-booted feet propelling us along.
Dolphins at Bunbury, we arrive, oh, we've always wanted to see a dolphin us lot, get on and ride one. We take a boat and charge at the bobbing fellas - and a whole lot of fellas there are too. We must be trailing chunks of tuna. The captain says of course not, this is an eco trip. A dolphin plays with an octopus, throws it in the air. Cormorants sit on rocks drying wings, painting and poo-ing, this land is full of nature.
Onto Margaret River, vines of wine. Down to the Indian Ocean and surfers with golden hair, biding time, sitting on boards waiting for sets to roll in. We camp up and birds are crowing, screaming like cats. We shared our dinner with a sheep shearer, a funny shape of a man, biggest shoulders I've ever seen, only had the January off before he returned to cutting the wool.
Have you ever heard a blow hole? I have now. Knocked me to my feet, loud grumble from the pit of the sea, spray spouting like Moby Dick. I was in mid-conversation with a carpenter when I threw myself down, he carried on talking looking at me shaking on the rock. Never heard one mate? He said and I shook my head.
This place is friendly, makes you feel sad leaving shops, servos, street corners, the people you meet. Met a digger whose heart had been attacking him, hardly ticked, he'd been put on some drug, sorted his blood pressure right out. He was strapped into his sofa in the back of his ute, touring, staring at his land, his wife driving him on. This isn't going to stop me, and he tapped his heart. I saluted and parted.
Another man in Dick Smith's Electronics, I only went in for a jack, two hours later I left the shop. He was sad I couldn't make it for dinner. Friendly, friendly folk and not in the treacle-dipped American way.
A hitchhiker who bellowed and blew his didgeridoo, the mournful sound filling the van, couldn't get him off the thing in the end, had to ask if maybe he needed air.
On to Pemberton, the land of the mighty and high Tingle and Karri trees. In metre terms they're a long, long way up. In Walpole we walked in the land of the giants, we were up there on ropes with the birds and the spiders spinning webs high in the canopy, we liked it so much we did it twice.
On to the bewitching Nullarbor, bullock and cart used to cross the thing, with Aborigines watching, white man with his cross and prayers. We drive on, fuelled up, waiting to take it on. Willy wagtails, scarlet-breasted parrots our witness and black, black ravens talking with their mouths full, dripping flesh. Giggling galahs sitting behind them on trees. Waiting, everything waiting for carrion. And it's there, 'roos and plumes of emu, sweating goannas fresh as the new day.
Signs saying Be My Guest Take a Rest, Revive and Survive, Drowsy Drivers Die, yellow markers telling you what you might hit. Warnings of the long straight bitumen road and I love it, children manning petrol pumps with one-eyed dogs, burnt out homesteads, dried out rivers, follies on forecourts.
And the names: Balladonia, Cocklebiddy, Mundrabilla, the place of a meteor rock. Eucla, Yalata onto Ceduna, every name a tank of fuel away. The straightest straight in the world somewhere out there between the big clouds, the vast land before cliff tops take you to the Bight, where on June days pilot whales lie, courting.
Etta's take
Salute the big broad trucks, while pretending to drive. Kangaroos jumping then hit by a truck. Crows for markers marking out the dead. Stomachs blown up like balloons.
Sitting hour after hour writing a graph seeing how many Kangaroos we could see, guess how many? 573. I was driving for about an hour while mummy and daddy and Billie read in the back. It was good fun.
Billie's take
We set of to Bunbury thinking of swimming with dolphins. We had missed a tour so we just looked around the museum. Then this bloke there told us there were some dolphins on the beach. We went down but I saw nothing.
We did go on a A$100 boat trip though - should have seen dad's face - and we saw a load.
We picked up a didgeridoo hitchhiker and he blew it for us, an amazing sound, it went on and on. He did talk a lot though.
We start to cross the Nullarbor with all the dead kangaroos. We did a survey to keep me occupied because it was terribly boring. In one hour we saw 573 dead kangaroos, scary hey, and bloody. Then we did a survey on wavers, people who waved to us. In an hour it was 33 wavers and 22 baddies.
Ravens are good for drivers because they mark out the fresh kills which are in the middle of the road. Kangaroos are the same colour as the road and the black ravens really point out the kills, no koalas yet though.
Tracey's take
We leave Perth on Highway One, hug the coast down to Bunbury and the promised dolphins. I'm as thrilled as the girls when they swim close to the boat, they're as friendly as the Australians but not quite as helpful, though I've been told they ward off sharks.
We're all enjoying the outdoor camping, touring life it feels good to be out of the confines of hotel rooms and restaurants. The scenery and wildlife life here is incredible. National Park camping, the girls follow kangaroos from bush to beach.
A vast country and we haven't even sniffed the outback, we won't have time on this trip and that's a shame, right now I could go on forever I don't miss anything about home, don't yearn to be back.
We push on across the Nullarbor Plain, still on Highway One.
