The Kilbot Factory

Wilsons Prom revisited

Continuing in my retrospective collection let’s go back a month when Claire Healy and James Quinton were in town. We went out one Thursday night to sample the delights of Melbourne, starting at the First Floor in Fitzroy and finding ourselves at Honky Tonks early Friday morning, with the DJ playing cheesy dance from his grand piano booth, over-priced drinks and the general air of desperation that is common in these types of clubs (ie: Geisha). An hour at Honky Tonks and we were ready to leave the city, hatching a plan to borrow Claire’s sister’s car for a road trip to Wilsons Promontory, or Wilsons Prom as it is for the locals.

Wilsons Promonotory is located about 230 km south-east from Melbourne, and is billed as the southern most tip of Australian Mainland.

For a virtual road trip to Wilsons Prom click here.

Christmas Report

The Kilbot Fam spent Christmas at my sister’s farm* situated in Morawa, in the heart of the Australian Outback**. This sort of country is best captured in photos***, and if you click on the Full Story link you can take a pictorial journey through life on the farm.

* in fairness to my brother in-law it is really his farm, and in fairness to his kin it is really the Agar family farm.
** if you look at a map of Western Australia is hardly the heart of anything, it is not even that far from Perth on the grand scale of things… but it is out of mobile range and the country store didn’t sell Marlboro Reds Soft Pack, so y’know you pretty much fend for yourself out there.
*** actually, photos don’t capture a scratch of the Australian Outback, how can you fit 360 degrees of flat, burnt ground into a 800px by 600px photo? You can’t, but my brother-in-law did a pretty good job****.
**** It was 42 degrees up there – my blood has become too thick for the mid west – so I sent my brother-in-law out with my dad to take some photos while I sat at the homestead and sipped on pina coladas.

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too easy

I have made it to Melbourne. The trip from Aledaide to Melbourne seemed almost too easy after the long haul across the nullabor, 3 rides over about 12 hours. It was almost deja vu in Keith (friends that have read Killer at Large Vol 1, which is not online yet, may remember that I was stuck in Keith for 15 hours of Country Music last trip across).

If anyone is in Melbourne, just me a shout… I’m staying in Fitzroy with Mel, Jeff and Zoe. If anyone has contact details For Dave ‘Davros’ Leech I would love to hit him up for a beer at uni .

Travel Stories

I’ve decided to put the travel stories on the writing page (and keep this section for general news like it is at the moment)… there is a section in Short Stories that with start to fill up today.

These short stories will be an edited version of the notes I made while on the road… hopefully I will be able to condense these into an article soon.
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update from the Clipsal 500

It was actually hard to get a bed in Adelaide as thousands of revheads have entered the city for the Clipsal 500 (V8 motor car racing). You can tell the motorheads because they invariably are wearing peak caps and their jackets or shirts proudly bear numerous patches; Holden, NGK, Mobil, Pirtek, Dunlop et cetera… oh yeah and they all seem to be New Zealanders.
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glad to be in South Australia

… don’t get me wrong I hate South Australia, and I don’t think it would be a huge loss if Adelaide broke off the mainland and was swallowed by a skool of angry sea bass… but i am really glad to be in Adelaide after spending 6 days trying to get across the nullabor.

i got stuck at Caiguna for 24 hours* and was thinking that hitchhiking in Australia may be dead, but managed to get a lift with a 25 year old uni grad from Melbourne and soon we were rolling into S.A. at 120km/h listening to Frank Zappa and chatting about all things. We slept on the beach in Ceduna for a couple of hours and then went straight on to Adelaide. I probably could have got a lift through to Melbourne, but decided to collect some more stories and may be do some fruit picking so’s i can arrive with some big cash prizes.

i have uploaded some pictures in the gallery but will caption them later… right now i’m going to get some decent sleep.

*my average wait for a ride on this trip has been around 20 hours, in 1999 the average was around 3 hours.

balladonia

hellos everyone… am spending my last $2 on the internet, $2 won’t even get you a billabong icecream out here. in Balladonia, slighty dehydrated – the last lift fed me beers all the way here. am rolling now and hopefully can get across the nullabor in the next 24… after that the hardest bit is done. all the whiles have’n fun anyways.

can’t wait till i get to … umm.. a more civilised local so i can use the net properly and tell some stories.

still in kal…

…still with the shitty net access. So just some more short news with the full story to come.

Spent two full days out on the highway near Coolgardie waiting for a lift, there was an old hitchhiker when I got there and when another arrived I decided to head back into Kal. If nothing else I am starting to work up a good tan.

I think I was spoilt last time I hitched across, that was just before Christmas, just before New Years 2000, everyone was happy and travelling and generally had good thoughts of humanity. The mood isn’t so friendly out there now.

A friend from Kal (Oscar – he gave me a lift from Norseman to Adeliade in 1999) is going to give me a lift down to Kambalda at 1pm today and I’ll try from there. I washed my lucky hitchhiking clothes so I should be rolling across the Nullabor in no time.

Big G’Day to Adam Goat and Stu Badhair… you guys would have loved it in Kal last night, the pub put on Country and Western singer (cowboy hat, mic headset, strumming his guitar while his computer provided the backbeat), the pub was goin’ nuts calling out requests – ‘She’s my ute’ was a favourite.
yeeehaaaaa

in kal, talk longer when i’m in adeliade

hey everyone, i’m in kal at the moment but can’t talk long – the internet rates are kalazy ($10/hour) so i’ll wait till i get to adeliade till i update with stories and fotos from the road (i’ll go to the uni of s.a. and pretend to do some research).

mel, i posted a letter today.. now i’ll race it across to melbourne.