H: This last month has been much more of a challenge than other trips have been. We have seen 5 hospitals/medical centres for a tick bite, poked eye and the croup, 3 ambulance runs and an air ambulance flight, had a blown tyre, cracked windscreen, stolen keys and driven 6,525km in a month. We have gone from 40°+ heat which is pretty hot to do much in but the evenings are nice, to 30° days with cold nights and strong winds so the days are nicer but the evenings are cold - we didn't find much in between the two extremes. Walking has been difficult to find and we have had to stay on commercial campgrounds far more than we would have liked. Which in turn has been much more expensive than we had hoped. We have camped for 25 nights and camped at 18 different campgrounds.

However we have seen some awesome scenery and aside from the fact that any longer would have made me worry about what possibly could have happened next, we both would have carried on for another month or two. It definitely hasn't put us off another trip as soon as we can afford it but I am not sure we are going to rush back to Australia - the USA is a much much better place to drive through!

H: We have 3 nights left so we drive to Cervantes, the town nearest to the limestone pillars of the pinnacles. We are going to have 3 nights in one place and enjoy the last few days of our trip.

However Ben is not done with the hospital sightseeing. By the time we get to the campsite he isn't sounding good again. We get the tent up and have tea and he sounds like he's been smoking 50 a day. We take his temperature and it's starting to rise. We had been told it gets worse in the evenings so we put him to bed and will take his temperature again in a couple of hours and see how he's doing.

We don't get that long. Half an hour later he wakes and is really distressed. We put him in bed with us but he continues to toss and turn and he sounds like he's really struggling to breathe. His temperature is 38.5° now so we phone the nearest health clinic which is in the next town. It is out of hours but we are put through to a national line who listen to his breathing over the phone and suggest maybe it should be a 000 (999) call. She puts us through to the nurse from the clinic we had tried to call who says to try getting him in the shower room with the taps as hot as we can get so the room fills with steam. So at 10pm we're standing in the smelly mens shower block with Greg on the phone to the nurse and me holding Ben in the steam. It doesn't make any difference so she says to call an ambulance. We're only 20kms away but she is adamant it isn't safe to drive in the dark as kangeroos are a big risk. Instead we get a blue light run with Ben on oxygen while G follows the speeds of the ambulance through the dark night.

We arrive at the centre where as well as the two ambulance drivers, a nurse and a doctor have also had to get out of bed for us. His temperature is now 39°, his pulse racing, he is given more steroids and they are mixing adrenalin in with the oxygen. Apparently most kids just need oxygen to sort themselves out but maybe unsurprisingly given our history of doing things in style, that isn't the case for us. We are told it is Acute Croup and he will have to go to Perth that night. We will go by ambulance if he improves but if not the Flying Doctors will be called out. He doesn't improve so an air lift is arranged. We have been pretty calm up to now but he is starting to seem worse and getting really clammy. The doctor listens to his chest again and says 'he still has a problem but don't worry they're nearly here'. OK so now I am getting worried. At 1am I leave with Ben in the ambulance to the airstrip and G drives back to take the tent down in the dark and start the 200+km drive to Perth - on no sleep and very slowly to avoid any animal collisions. In the ambulance Ben is given his third shot of adrenalin. And in the space of a few kms he goes from looking and sounding like he's on deaths door to wanting to be on his feet and smiling at the nurse.

We get to the airstrip and do a drive up and down the runway to check for kangeroos to make sure it's clear for the plane to land. I hadn't really realised before how dangerous kangeroos can be in the dark. If we hadn't been there to check for them they have to do a pass over the strip at low altitude, and then come back round to land.

It turns out we had been a priority 1 call (very urgent) and the air ambulance had been kitted out with ventilation equipment, stretcher and a huge amount of drugs as they thought they were taking a very sick baby back to Perth. Instead, the eejit I am holding is pretty perky and I feel like a complete fraud. Granted he still sounds terrible but he is nothing like as bad as he was - guess the drugs have started to work.

He doesn't need any treatment on the flight and we are transferred to Perth where he is admitted for the night. I then discovered that it is really really diffcult to get an ill baby to sleep, especially on a ward where there are other children trying to sleep. I pace the corridors until he's alseep and he has a whole half hour before his sats monitor goes off which wakes him up. He might be better than he was but he's still really sick and now has has had no sleep and he is very very miserable. I finally manage to get him asleep again and even get a half hour myself but then he coughs again, which hurts and so wakes him up crying again. I am beyond shattered, as is G who gets to the hospital at 6 having stopped for a half hour sleep somewhere on the way.

We are discharged the following morning and spend the next two days with a pretty ill child.

  We have been pretty lucky again, we could have been somewhere much more remote and he could have caught something far worse than Croup. Plus I guess it is all new experiences?! It's the second time in a year we've needed an air ambulance and we reckon about 20 doctors, nurses and ambulance drivers have helped look after him the last 48 hours, half of which have got out of bed for him. I so wish we did something that helped people as much as these people do. We are very lucky he is a Kiwi or it will have been one great big insurance claim!

H: We are now in Kabarri and given how relatively easy the last few days have been it is time for some more drama. Ben wakes up and seems to be having a hard time breathing. He is also very calm and quiet and I can't help but be a wee bit happy that I might just get nice calm hugs.

Once he's up his breathing seems a bit easier so we set off on a walk. This National Park has loads of walks signed, maybe it's because we're getting closer to civilisation? The walk is great and we're ready for an afternoon of doing not much. But Ben has other ideas - he isn't sounding too good so we decide to continue our tour of Western Australian hospitals and take him in to get looked at.

After a few tests he is diagnosed with croup - an acute viral infection which I think is a pretty impressive thing to catch since we've basically not seen anyone for weeks to catch it from. He is loaded up with steroids, antibiotics and oxygen and we leave a wee bit nervy of what the next hospital visit will be for!

H: Another few hours in the car gets us to Shark Bay and Cape Peron. This is one of the very few places where there is camping allowed in the park, and we find a site right on the beach with no-one else around again - perfect.

We then find something else we've noticed on our trip - there's really not much walking about. Infact we had asked in the visitors centre for walks at the Cape and were told there is only one - a 3km return walk along the coast that is not recommended due to the heat dangers. Hmmm it is way cooler here - hardly above 30° and if we crawled it it would probably only take a couple of hours. We brave the walk and it is very pretty and for the first time this trip the temperature was lovely to walk in! The only issue this time is the burning hot sand - that and flip flops = very sore feet!

H: Ahh so this is it. 15 days, 4,500kms, 10 campsites, 2 hospital trips, 1,000,000 flies, 43° heat and we find bliss. We're at Warroora - another huge station that has 50 miles of unspoilt coastline as its added bonus. We are camping on the sand dunes right next to the turqoise Indian Ocean with a reef just a few metres in and there's not another tent in sight. We just need to battle through the gale force winds as we've arrived late and it's getting dark and we're late for tea and getting the tent up is absolutely not a simple job!

Probably unsurprisingly, the bliss didn't last all that long - we had one lovely relaxing day, not doing much other than watch Ben eat a lot of sand and a potter on the beach. But it was far too rough to swim in which really sucked. Then the winds picked up again and we had a very broken night. And the winds stayed up making it impossible/too cold to do much other than stay in the tent. Which we're not keen to do so we battle the winds again to get the tent down and bundled into the car and off we go again.

H: A tiring day in Broome sorting everything out, 4 hours sleep, food stocked up, clothes as clean as they're going to get and we have swapped our chateau for something more like a house and off we set to Millstream-Chichester National Park. A mere 10 hours and 900kms away but knew we were going to have a few days where we were going to spend all day in the car. Plus it sounds amazing so we plan on spending 3 nights there and relaxing - finally.

4 hours in and we pass a road train which chucks a stone up - straight into our windshield. So now we have a pretty big chip right in the drivers view. We rang roadside assist who said no one could help until Monday. Today is Saturday and there's no way we're hanging around for 2 days waiting for a phone call. We don't have any clear tape and are hours away from a town so we put parcel tape both sides in the hope it won't spread to crack the glass.

We finally make it to Snake Creek Campground in the Chichester part of the park which is really beautiful. There is a sign up saying it is closed. Noooo! It's well gone tea time and we are knackered. Next campground is signed another 56kms down a dirt track, in the Millstream end of the park. With no choice we set off. Should only take an hour and then we can have tea there. 20kms from the next campsite and the car jolts and we see bits of tyre shredding off in the wing mirror. ARGAHRGHAGRHAGRHAGRHGH! The sun is just setting too so after a little while letting our bad luck sink in, we set up dinner in the desert for Ben while G rolls about under the car trying to change the wheel. There's basically a zero chance of anyone passing us at this time of night. This is of course when I see the first snake of the trip which freaks me out just a little bit, especially as it is dark and we are in the middle of the outback and G is on the floor trying to fix a tyre.

The next blow is instead of being a beautiful open peaceful campsite, it is squashed next to a lake and is jam packed full of tents metres away from each other. Not that we can see all that much, it is pitch black but some kind people tell us our only option is to take the camp host pitch. Which we do. Tent up and Ben in bed late again, we can't face tea - it's 9pm, way past our new bedtime, so it's a bowl of cereals and then bed.

And even then things aren't ok - it's bloody freezing! We've come a fair way south but I wasn't expecting it to change so suddenly. We shiver our way through the night in grumps. Next morning we don't give the campsite a chance at all- we pack up and are off again. Unfortunately we can't go back to see the Chichester part because it's all dirt track and we now don't have a spare tyre so can't risk it. And I know we would be unlucky to have another one go but at this rate it would happen to us! We drive gingerly on the remaining dirt road out of the park and spend another 6 hours driving to a station (huge huge farm) in the middle of nowhere with not much of a clue where we're heading next, apart from we need to get a new tyre.

H: Deja Vu - we start the road again. We have a full tank, haven't done any detours to find extra fuel and enjoy the drive again. Another night at the campsite isn't such a bad thing. We spend the next few days driving through pretty remote outback, camping at cool campgrounds and doing walks through gorges and to swimming holes. The walk at Manning Gorge started with a swim through a creek to the track the other side. Apparently there are crocodiles in the lake but only "freshies", not "salties" and the local Aborigines are happy to swim in there so we follow their lead. The crossing is not such an easy feat with Ben, a wound we don't want to get wet and his rucksack but we make it through. By the time we came back a kind man had found a rubber ring and floated Ben and I back across in it, leaving G to struggle with the bag :)

The next morning I top off our list of calamities by trying to poke Ben's eye out with his camping cot pole. His eye is all bloodshot and we spend the next half hour covering his good eye to see if he can still see out of his broken one. We think he can but given he can't tell us if his vision is blurred we head to the nearest hospital. Fortunately we were driving out today anyway. 6 hours later we're at Broome hospital. With a baby now with a bloodshot eye who is also missing a chunk of skin from his chest. He also has a scrape on his chin where he has gone face first into the dirt. I am genuinely a wee bit concerned that they will call social services. 2 hours later, a lot of wriggling and a bit more screaming as we try and hold him still so they can look in his eye he is given the all clear. We reward him with a rice cake. Which he promptly chokes on - the nurse races round ready to help out when he coughs it up. He has never choked before and I guess we were in the best place for him to do it but still. Feeling very wiped, and wondering if there is a padded room we can go in to stop anything else happening we find the nearest campsite we can. Ringed by two main roads. Great.

We are travelling and aren't stuck at work so we're trying to not feel too sorry for ourselves but we seem to be swinging from one disaster to the next at the moment! We are probably covering a longer distance than we have time for but that aside things keep happening to stop us from getting to camp early and sitting down for a while. We've had the axe murderer, a spill in the fridge that meant everything had to be emptied and cleaned, the tick, the poked out eye, a stop for 2 hours to help a couple of girls who were having car troubles and then tonight an extremely grumpy Ben. Which we, or at least I, deserve for trying to take his eye out.

We also have to find a day to finish some work for the NOTDEC orphanage so we are going to take a day in Broome tomorrow. Get some laundry done to see if we can get our clothes back from red dirt to a normal colour, and see if we can swap our chateau into something a bit more subtle. We are then going to be sensible and not do too many more detours in the wrong direction. And see if at least for a couple of nights this week we can make it to camp before nightfall with no more trips to the hospital? Otherwise we are going to be quivering wrecks by the time we get to Perth.

H: We have decided to do the Gibb River Road. It's a 700km 4WD route cutting through the outback from Kununarra to Derby. We both had visions of there being 45° sandy banks for the whole route with not a soul in sight but we were reassured otherwise. As fun as that might have been we have zilch mechanical experience and Ben to think about. We spend the day doing a quick fuel, food and water top up in Kununurra, eager to get going as we are starting to run ourselves short of time. We still have a long way to go to get to Perth so haven't got too many days we can waste.

We set off and the route is easy - a road of corrogated red dirt but nothing too bad. We had filled up in Kununarra but had done a wee bit of driving around the town and we're not too sure how many kms our car will do off the open road so we do a 16km detour off the road to El Questro to top up on fuel. Our plan hit its first snag - the fuel pump is broken. It has been since the Friday before (it's now Sunday) but the lady thinks maybe someone will come and fix it tomorrow. We'd have to pay a park and camping fee if we camped there - a total of $88. That would be a couple of days budget gone in 1 night which would not be ideal. It would also make the next days driving even longer and we can't really afford to lose a day waiting. So we decide to carry on to the next campsite and see if we can buy some fuel from someone there. If not we will have to get back to El Questro the next day and hope the pump is fixed. We are lucky we meet someone enroute who has some spare diesel which we buy off him. Worry over - we now have a full tank and haven't lost any time. The drive is beautiful and the Pentecost river crossing is fun but there's not that much water left. The campsite is lovely, there is even grasss instead of dirt (so we don't care if Ben crawls off his tarp onto the grass) and the sky is full of stars - this should be a great few days. Maybe we can put axe murderers and fuel issues behind us?

Nope - today's issue isn't dodgy campers or car issues. Today's issue is a bug. We find it on Ben's shoulder just after breakfast. It won't brush off so we think it's a tick but we're not sure. We ask a guy working at the campground and he isn't sure either. He asks us how many days we are away from medical help. As does someone else camping there. We get worried, get in the car and drive 150kms back to Kununurra where we spend the next 4 hours at the hospital. Once the doctors there confirmed it was a tick we thought they would tweezer it off. But then they came out with an anaesthetic plaster which we thought was overkill for a tweezer job. Next we notice they have printed off some information about ticks. Then they ask if I have any tweezers in the car. Now I am getting a bit worried. I appreciate we're in the middle of the outback but I would have thought that they would have seen and therefore know how to treat plenty of ticks, and also have tweezers?

By the time I got back with my tweezers they had decided that actually they just needed to cut it out and all the skin it was attached to. They gave Ben a local anaesthetic injection, swaddled him to hold him still and just butchered it out. And he screamed and screamed :( A sleep and an hour later and he is fine. Better than us at least, I thought we had left hospitals behind at least for this year. We have lost the day we were trying to save but at least we haven't taken any chances. Maybe we shouldn't have let him play on the grass after all...

H: The heat is intense - we are hitting 40° each day and it doesn't seem to drop below 30°at night. Having crossed from Northern Territory to Western Australia we changed timezones by 90 minutes. But given we're at the Eastern edge of a very wide state, the sun is up by 4.30 and sets by 6. Which in turn means that Ben wakes about 4.30... However it seems that most of the other campers are up at this time anyway, and everyone seems to be in bed by 8.30 so I guess it's not just us that have shifted our day.

We had hoped to get to Kununurra via Keep River National Park but a poor decision not to fill up on fuel at Timber Creek meant we didn't have enough fuel to do the side trip. Instead we carried on to Kununurra and found ourselves yet again trying to find a campsite in the dark. We took the first one we could find and had our palace set up before we noticed the guitar and flute sounds coming from the tents surrounding ours. Think we're on a hippy camp...

H: We drove on to Nitmiluk National Park, 300kms away from all bad people. Already majorly over budget somehow, we weren't too happy to find the only campsite available was a commercial one - expensive and busy. However a night around people wouldn't be such a bad thing after the quiet scary night last night. Plus there's luxuries like showers and a washing machine. And there's plenty of Wallabies bouncing about.



We arrived and got our castle up by mid afternoon so finally some time to relax. We even did something we have never done before - we went in the campsite pool. Normally they are places we avoid - would much rather find a quite beach or river to swim in. But it's boiling and we'll make ourselves go through the ordeal for Ben...



Then we did something even more unheard of - we decided to stay a second night! The national park is beautiful - far far more stunning the Kakadu, no flies and much more walking to do - this is how travelling should be - life is good again.

H: With Gs work finished we picked up our hire car - a big VW Amarok that came complete with tent, gas stoves, duvet and fridge. This is definitely glamping for us. We set off for Kakadu National Park, a bit later than planned.



We knew that travelling with Ben was going to mean a slightly different trip - mostly that we couldn't do too many crazy days of driving. Where we would grab a snack and keep on going, we promised ourselves we wouldn't make Ben too late for his food. So we started off well by trying to get further than we should have done on day 1, finally giving up as the sun started to fall. We arrived in near dark with a car piled full of our stuff and food shopping we had lobbed in on the way, and way late for tea for Ben. The next issue was that we were now having to put up the tent in the dark. Which we have done a hundred times before but this is a new tent. And it just kept unfolding and unfolding until it took up about 3 campsites worth of room. I think I have rented apartments smaller than this. Our saving grace? A beautiful big full moon.



We made it to Kakadu the following day and are enjoying using Ben as the excuse for using the a/c in the car. Normally we make ourselves sweat it out to try and stick to budget.



We found a campsite - $10 a night with no facilities apart from a pit loo. Perfect. Apart from the behemoth tent we've got to put up. Oh and the million flies that want to come say hello. It's extremely hot so jigging about trying to swat them away isn't a great option. But nor is going inside the even hotter tent to escape them.



Walks seem harder to come by than we expect and the park is pretty but definitely not stunning. The most exciting thing we did was a hours 4x4 drive to the start of a walk, full of sand and complete with a river crossing - 60cm deep crocodile infested water. What are you meant to do if you get stuck in the middle?





We never ever manage to have calm trips. I don't know why - bad luck or our own making? Either way after a very busy few months we are both completely shattered, in need of a holiday and tonight was our first chance to relax. We were back at our tent in time to cook in near daylight, a guy came to chat from the next tent, and we thought we could sit and relax for the evening.



We thought wrong. Greg realised the car keys were missing. Now he was certain he put them on the table when we got back but they're definitely not there. We have stupidly not split the 2 sets off the 1 keyring, even though we have been meaning to do it for the last few days so the whole lot are missing. Fortunatley the car is open so we have access to food and water. So at 9pm we being the search for the car keys. 2 hours later, having lost all hope of a relaxing evening and an early night, we have emptied the jeep and every single bag and box. We have even checked the fridge and G has searched through the camp bin piece by piece - not his finest hour I don't think.



Now we are starting to worry - did the guy from the next door tent really come over to chat, or has he taken the keys? If so is he going to ring someone to come steal it in the night? We have had our car emptied as we slept next to it in Snowdonia so definitely paranoid about that. So we empty everything from the car into the tent so if the car goes we at least have food, water and all our belongings. We did padlock the steering wheel to the door handle so that if someone did try they wouldnt be able to drive it, but then got scared that the baddies would get cross and come find us so took it off. We phoned the rental company's Roadside Assist who couldnt do anything overnight, they didn't keep spare keys and we would have to be towed back to a dealership at Darwin at our expense. Shit.



We hardly slept a wink. G was trying to remember where he put them and I was worried the baddies were going to come get us. At least it meant we were awake to hear that the car was still safe.



After a couple of hours sleep each daylight came. We got up to begin the search of the campground floor in daylight, hoping we somehow had missed them last night. No luck, so we resigned ourselves to phoning Roadside Assist, who said they would send a truck out to tow us back but it could take hours.



I know we were only a few days in but at this point I think both of us were ready to call it quits. The tow was going to cost a fortune, the flies were everywhere, there were no walks to do and Darwin had been shit. And now we were contending theiving campers too. If the rest of the trip was going to be like this we weren't up for it.



Instead of being happy that our car hadn't been stollen I was now worried that the guy had taken them so we couldn't drive away and we were still going to get got by baddies. It is a pretty remote and quiet campsite but fortunately there was another tent on the site too so safety in numbers eh?



In the meantime G saw a big crow on the picnic table and started to wonder if maybe a bird had taken them. He planted a padlock key on the table with silver foil to tempt them back so he could follow them to their nest, get our keys back and off we could go. So he went to ask the guy and the other campers to keep their eyes open incase a bird had dropped them.



Half an hour later the axe murderer guy found them - under a tree near his tent. Much much relief to start with but then wondering minds - what are the chances of a bird picking up such a huge bunch of keys? And if it did, what are the chances of dropping it by the baddie's tent?



We told the guy completely different plans to our real ones, packed down our mansion of a tent in record time and got out of that campsite real real quick.

H: It's been far too long - we've not been on a trip for 18 months and we were getting very itchy feet.

We had been back in NZ for a month after the UK summer and were struggling to find somewhere to rent. We had been saving for a month away and had some holiday spare for G so we decided just to go. We booked flights on Friday night to leave the following Wednesday. We always pack up for a trip in a rush so might as well start as we mean to go on.

In the few days before we flew we managed to find and sign for a house, and dug everything we needed out of storage.

We were all set with at least a couple of hours to spare - no packing in the car or ringing insurance companies on the way to the airport this time :)

The cheapest flight was via Auckland and Brisbane - a total of 22 hours door to door. With a bit of work left to do, G sat down to do a few hours at Auckland airport. I casually asked what time we had to be at the gate so G checked the tickets. Oops we were boarding 10 minutes ago. We raced down to the gate to find pretty much everyone had boarded. We joined the queue of stragellers and were pulled to one side and told there was a problem. We hadn't got Australian visas. Oops again. We thought Kiwi residents didn't need them but it was only Kiwi Citizens that didn't. Fortunately for us the guy at Christchurch check-in shouldn't have let us board. But now that we were part way on our journey they rang for emergency visas for us. But it was still touch and go - they would only delay the plane a little while and the baggage handlers were asked to locate our bags ready to pull off if we weren't OK'd in time. 5 staff were around ready for the OK to get us through and print the final passes and manifesto. We got lucky - our visas were issued and we got on the plane.

It's not our first visa issue - we had to race around town booking return bus tickets to get our Indonesian visa before closing time with a one way bus ticket already booked for the next day. We traced our own visa form at a remote crossing from Vietnam to Laos and we missed the entry stamp from Belize to Guatemala - resulting in the threat of jail and bribery of customs officials when we tried to leave. Must try harder...


Definitely not keen on Darwin. It's very hot and humid so feels like we are in Asia but there's nothing exciting to see. Well to be fair we didn't make a massive effort but we definitely won't be rushing back. Its biggest failure is the view from the Esplanade is completely covered by trees - so instead you get a view of the road and hotels. Its biggest success is they have a Cold Rock ice cream place :)

G tried to make our time there more exciting by going off in search of the youth hostel he stayed in when he was here 12 years ago. He remembers there was a tree outside of it and very little else. And with the bit of help from a friend - thinks he might have found it but I am not completely convinced...