Australia Update 2: Time flies. And more flies.

#140. How's our big trip 'Down Under' going? This is where you find out. Again.

Welcome to The Silent Why - usually a podcast with a mission to open-up honest conversations around grief and explore whether hope can be found in 101 different types of permanent loss. But right now, things are a little different!

Take a listen to the previous episode to get a better idea what this one is going to be all about. 

We (Chris & Claire, your hosts) are on an adventure halfway around the world, spending some time in Singapore and Australia. In this episode, we update you on our trip up the coast of Western Australia.

This episode includes what's surprised, shocked and delighted us about the Aussie people, what wildlife we've seen (and held! 😉), what it's like to visit some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, and... flies!!

Plus, you know we love to share the deep stuff too, so we also chat about how our expectations of this holiday have had to change, how being childless has affected us while away, and thoughts about the podcast in general and who it's really for.

Check out our Facebook and Instagram to see the cool kangaroo video we chat about. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Heat, Laundry And Who We Are
• 1:45 Why Flies And Wind Rule The Day
• 5:55 Homes Built For Heat And Mosquito Battles
• 10:36 Suburban Wildlife And Redbacks
• 14:55 Language Quirks, Swearing And Alcohol Culture
• 19:06 The Long Northern Drive And Roadside Oddities
• 24:15 Remote Beaches, Beauty And Real Risks
• 29:20 Sharks, Rays, Dolphins And Pelicans
• 33:50 Wombats, Koalas And Hands‑On Conservation
• 39:05 Stargazing Under A Bortle One Sky
• 44:20 Living With Friends, Introvert–Extrovert Tension
• 49:40 Childlessness, Daily Grief And Meaning
• 56:00 Heading Home, Seasons And Christmas
• 1:01:20 Thanks, Support And How To Reach Us

Transcript

Claire: 0:02

Hello and welcome back to The Silent Why from Australia.

Chris: 0:06

Down under.

Claire: 0:07

Down under. We are indeed. And we are coming to you from a day that is 37 degrees. And it's December. First day of December. Super weird.

Chris: 0:19

Really weird. Really weird to be hanging washing out on the 1st of December and getting it in dry an hour later is bonkers.

Claire: 0:27

Yeah, you've just literally pulled some t-shirts and they're bone dry. It's just, yeah, it's amazing. What a blessing Australia is for washing.

Chris: 0:36

Who are we?

Claire: 0:38

Who are we?

Chris: 0:39

Oh, yeah, sorry. Let's move things on at pace.

Claire: 0:42

Oh, right.

Chris: 0:42

Who are we?

Claire: 0:43

Who are we? Oh yes, we haven't said who we are. Sorry. Yeah, we're Chris and Claire. We are the hosts of The Silent Why Podcast. Normally we're talking about grief and hope, and well, how can you find hope in 101 different types of grief? But at the moment, we're in Australia on a slightly longer break. So we're just sending you some updates on how things are going. And so far, we've done this will be the second. This is update two from Australia. And we've been here, it'll be six weeks this week that we've been in Australia.

Chris: 1:13

So Wow, and we're entering the final week of our time in Australia as well.

Claire: 1:17

We are sad times. Yeah. So we thought we'd start by talking a bit about Australia, because last time in the last episode, we had been in Australia for a little while, but we'd also been in Singapore, so we focused on Singapore and what that was like. And now we've spent much longer in Australia and seen a lot more of the West side of it. So yeah, what do you think of Australia? What have you noticed? What's surprised you? What do you think?

Chris: 1:40

Flies. I think some of this is going to repeat on what we said in the last update, well, our first update, uh, because some of it has repeated what we've got. Well, we've seen more flies. We've seen more flies. I've felt more flies in my mouth, in my eyes, in my ears. Uh I think you read somewhere, didn't you, that it's been a pretty bad year.

Claire: 2:00

Yeah, it's the worst year for 40 years for flies. Something to do with they had like some wet seasons, I think, before we arrived, which creates great conditions for fly larvae, and so there's loads of them. Apparently it's not as bad as it used to be in like the 70s, but it's it's a pretty bad season for them.

Chris: 2:15

I hope our hosts don't listen to this because I think to a degree it says just being British, and I think if you lived here you'd just get used to it, or you'd have to get used to it because it's just a thing. But yeah, the level we filmed a video, didn't we? I I recorded a video when I was standing outside the car at one point, we're in the middle of nowhere in baking heat, and uh yeah, just turned the camera onto selfie mode, pressed video and record, and just filmed the flies sort of gathering around my face.

Claire: 2:45

Oh, it's the face, that's the worst thing. They land on like your nose and your lips and your eyes and in your ears, and yeah.

Chris: 2:52

We mentioned, didn't we, in the last episode that Tracy had bought us, because they were on a reduced thing from her workplace, some fly nets that go over your hat and then cover over your head and like a veil and you tighten them under your neck, which which I said I thought it was a joke. I thought she was just like, oh ho ho, you guys talking about flies. But we genuinely used them on the North Trip, and it was brilliant. They were great. I mean, you look ridiculous. You can't you can't take any nice photos of yourselves at these beauty spots because you're just covered in this black veil, like a beekeeper in shorts and the table.

Claire: 3:23

And you have to wear a hat with it, you can't just stick it on your head. You've got a whole hat, sunglasses, net. In fact, one of the places I got out of the car and I held up the fly net. I think I was talking to you and I said, Do you think we'll need this? And the guy behind me, who was just getting out of his Ute, was oh just getting back in his Ute, I think, had been where we were about to go, was like, Yes, you're gonna need that. And we saw a few people with it on and I was so glad I took it because they were everywhere. So it's been good.

Chris: 3:46

So flies, that's been definitely a headline as well as wind. I don't think I was expecting external. Oh, yeah, yeah. Thank you for qualifying. Mostly it's not the giant wind. Uh at times it's lovely. In fact, where we're staying now is a place called Scarborough. We're about a half an hour drive north of Fremantle, which you may have heard of. And there's something in Fremantle that's called the Fremantle Doctor, which is what they call the wind. I think it's probably the sea breeze, which is quite often really a welcome thing because it just helps the air feel a bit fresher, a little bit cooler. It's amazing how much difference that wind makes, actually, because when it does disappear, then it does get really hot really quickly. But there have been times where quite a few times where I've experienced a lot of wind to the point that if I was being really miserable, I'd say it can spoil an experience. You can get to the most beautiful beach in the world. But when you've just got literally gusts of very strong wind, gale force wind, you know, even yesterday no, not the day before yesterday, we drove down and looked at City Beach and Floriat Beach here on the west coast. And there were people braving the sand, wasn't there? A few people, because the beach is never busy in this place. A few people that had put up wind shelters that were just being absolutely pummeled by the wind, almost to the point like a tent bl being blown over. So yeah, I'd say at times it can feel like the wind can spoil an experience. Um we've experienced a lot of wind, external wind.

Claire: 5:08

And when you get to a lovely beach, we know from going to lovely beaches in like Spain and places where there's less wind, probably. When you've got beautiful, clear water and there's no wind, you can see everything as you're walking around in the water, it's lovely. When there's a wind, it just brings all those ripples and waves, and you can't see stuff as well. So we've sort of seen some amazing wildlife in the water, but it's like, oh, if only the wind would die down, we could see it a little bit better. I was gonna say the only good thing about the wind is that it kind of minimizes the flies, but I don't think it did, did it? I think we still had flies.

Chris: 5:38

It just hit you harder.

Claire: 5:39

Yeah. They're looking for cover.

Chris: 5:42

They're blown into your face.

Claire: 5:44

Yeah.

Chris: 5:45

One one throw into my mouth. I think I was filling up with fuel filling station. I had one got my nose. And uh just blown into my mouth.

Claire: 5:54

Thank goodness they don't bite. If they were bitey flies that were landing on you, I mean that would be pretty horrendous. But um yeah.

Chris: 6:02

Well, part two of the fly thing is that there is bitey flies as well. Not as in like horse flies, but they are mosquitoes that uh and I'm quite obsessive about mosquitoes, it might tap into any sort of tendencies I have on the spectrum of flyy things that uh you know I'm taking lots of precautions around the places that we live. I love actually that a lot of the properties have did we mention the last update about like the fly screen?

Claire: 6:27

Mesh doors.

Chris: 6:27

So it's very rare to be somewhere that doesn't have on doorways or windows uh a second doorway or window panel that's just mesh. Yeah. So you can have your doors open, your windows open with mesh. Uh that's brilliant. Love that. Um, but still, you know, if you open a door, I think, like the place we're staying now, you open the front door, it creates a bit of a vacuum. If there's any uh anything flying around outside that door in the shade, that gets sucked into the house. So then as I see the door open, I see just something waft over my head, I'm like, oh no. Then begins the adventure.

Claire: 6:58

I say oh no, because I know you're distracted for the next three hours trying to find it.

Chris: 7:02

Exactly. Or if I don't find it, which happens often, I then have to wait, set a trap in the evening. It's not really a trap, it's just my attention, and then try and find this thing again. Because well, we have been bitten many times.

Claire: 7:13

We have had quite a few bites. I do seem to like our skin more than the locals by the sounds of it.

Chris: 7:18

We made the mistake of you cutting my hair outside. I took my t-shirt off, and it was fine. I thought it was like morning, wasn't it? Late morning. Yeah. But then the next day you were like, What are all these bites on your back? But they weren't itchy things, but they were just little bikes bumps all over my back.

Claire: 7:38

No, like the mesh doors, these houses are like now we're sat in the lounge of an Airbnb that we're staying in, and it's like I said in the last time, they're all like one-story buildings mostly around here, so it's like a sort of a bungalow setup, as we would call it. And I haven't got the air con on because of the noise for recordings. I thought I'd turn that off. But these houses are built for this like environment. So it's 37 degrees outside. If we step outside the door, like Chris said this morning, step outside because the air is hot, and it is, it's thick, really hot air. But I I feel like so comfortable. Like this is such a nice temperature indoors, and we haven't even got the air con on. So I'm just I'm loving that, and I I do want to highlight again for those people who live in hot countries, that this is not what we have in the UK. So when we hear, you know, we might peak at 35, 36 occasionally in the UK, quite rare, but we can get it for a couple of days. But we don't have any air con. Our houses are not built like this, so they heat up really quickly, and it's so uncomfortable. It's humid, it's horrible. Whereas everywhere here, it's just built for outdoor life and hot weather, and it's just a joy to be in, to be honest, compared to our country when it gets hot. So I am enjoying that. I don't worry, if they said it was gonna be 56 tomorrow, I'd be like, oh, that's bad. But you just stay inside an ear con. Like it's not a big deal. I know that they have a lot of fires and there's a lot of environmental stuff that is, you know, does really struggle with the heat and stuff, but day-to-day living out here in the heat, it's lovely to be in a country that is just equipped for it. Whereas I feel like our country, we're not equipped for the cold and we're not equipped for the heat, and it just feels uncomfortable 50% of the time. But yeah, I am liking how these houses are built, you know, they've got the mesh to stop the bugs getting in, they're nice and cool inside.

Chris: 9:24

It's just they do have air conditioning if you need it. They do, yeah. Most of them do. Or ceiling fans. Or fans. Fans are great.

Claire: 9:31

We should have more fans in the UK.

Chris: 9:33

Of the podcast.

Claire: 9:35

That'd be nice. No, just general, on the ceiling.

Chris: 9:40

Yeah, okay. Um and I don't think in seven weeks, I don't think I've worn a pair of trousers. I have to clarify that. Long trousers. I've worn shorts. But I don't think I've worn my legs covered, which for me is really unusual. I'm I like wearing shorts, but I'm very well most often in trousers, even on hot days.

Claire: 10:00

I cannot say the same.

Chris: 10:01

So yeah.

Claire: 10:02

I think 50% of my time here in the local area we've been in, I've been shuffling around indoors in very nice big baggy jeans that are just comfortable, so I can't say the same thing. But um we did bring coats with us, thin coats, in case we needed them, and we haven't touched them once. Maximum we've had is a hoodie on when it's been a bit cold. But yeah, it's been it's been nice actually, temperature wise. I think we've we've done well. It's not been we've had some windy and some cloudy and some grey days, but when you're looking at like 20 degrees alongside that, it doesn't feel as bad as it does back in the back.

Chris: 10:34

Not at all. And when you've got a long period of time away, as we've had. Yeah, you don't worry about the weather. The occasional day of grey and clarity doesn't matter so much. When you've got a a week away. Yeah, like in Britain, if people escape from work for a week away and they just get three or four days of bad weather, it has a massive impact on that week, doesn't it?

Claire: 10:49

That's true.

Chris: 10:50

Uh wildlife would be the other thing that'd probably stand out. Yeah. It's just been the wildlife, but not just the wildlife, the wildlife where you don't expect it. I think where you expect the wildlife, and I think back to previous trips that we've done over the decades where we've had the joy of looking at places like California, some of the national parks around there, Nevada, Utah, uh, Canada as well. The wildlife you see is truly in the wild, and you get away in the middle of mountains, parks, whatever it may be, and if you spot a giant elk or a tarantula, it's like wow, and it's not too hard to spot. Not too hard to spot. Bears and things like that. Bears. Yeah, if you know where you're going or you do a boat trip, that sort of thing. The wildlife for me that we've enjoyed the most, I think, is being around like suburbia. Housing developments, like garden birds that we've absolutely loved, the birds that you get flying over, and nothing like our garden birds in the UK. These are colourful. They're mixtures of galars and corallas.

Claire: 11:51

28.

Chris: 11:52

28, yeah, the American ringneck, Australian ringnecks, rather. So garden birds are wonderful. And then even things like kangaroos, we've seen most kangaroos around tanks, haven't we?

Claire: 12:02

Yeah.

Chris: 12:03

Uh and then it surprises me when we go away away. So we'll talk a bit about the trip that we did north, up the west coast, into northwest Australia. That you're in the middle of nowhere, and you've got all these road signs for pictures of echidnas and kangaroos. Uh don't see anything, do you? Occasionally goats.

Claire: 12:21

We saw goats, very unexpectedly, we saw goats. No one has ever mentioned goats at all, and we pulled into a roadhouse and there were goats everywhere. I'm like, what are these? Oh, they're just wild. Okay, well, no one mentioned those. Didn't even see any signs for them.

Chris: 12:33

No, no, they don't even get their own signs out here. But all the things that do get signs you don't generally see.

Claire: 12:39

We didn't think there were signs, but on the way back I remember there's a sign for cows, loads of signs for cows, even though they seem to be behind fences. And then there was what I thought was a calf next to it, because you drive past them, you don't really look at it in detail, but then I realised it was actually a cow and a goat. So there is the occasional goat sign, it just looks like it's a calf on the cow sign. I'm with you. But we didn't see any of them on the way up, and I certainly wasn't expecting to see these goats with the massive horns as well, like quite impressive goats.

Chris: 13:03

Yeah, yeah, impressive goats. So that surprised me that where I expected to see more wildlife, you see nothing.

Claire: 13:10

Well we saw quite we saw quite a lot of dead kangaroos on the side of the roads.

Chris: 13:15

We did, but that was only in one particular area, because you had commented before that that we'd done thousands of kilometres and not even seen roadkill. Whereas even in Britain, I mean think the the trip that we did south down to the Margaret River area, all that woodland, all that area, didn't see anything on the all that driving, we didn't see anything on the roads.

Claire: 13:33

We saw one field of kangaroos in it. But that's about it, yeah. There's nothing else.

Chris: 13:37

And then going up north, I was thinking you've you might see some birds, but not that much bird life.

Claire: 13:43

Occasional bird of prey, but quite rare.

Chris: 13:45

Hundreds of kilometres you do in a journey and see very little wildlife. So that surprised me. And I think as well, the wildlife that we do have around is that I've also uh I've moved, I've transferred my indoor obsessiveness about things like mosquitoes into outdoor checking of chairs and things, or even under toilet seats.

Claire: 14:04

Oh yes. So for weeks when we were in Mandra, Chris has been trying to find some sort of spider in the garden that might be deadly. Or the redback. Or anything. Oh okay, so specifically the redback.

Chris: 14:16

Yeah, it's quite they're quite common.

Claire: 14:17

It's quite a venomous.

Chris: 14:19

Well it can be fatal to the vulnerable, you know, to a child, to a vulnerable older person.

Claire: 14:24

So you've been searching for ages, you never found one. But then we moved into this Airbnb.

Chris: 14:30

First day.

Claire: 14:32

Day one. You're brushing down the chairs.

Chris: 14:35

I noticed quite a few webs underneath the chairs on this little patio area that I'm looking at that's behind you at the moment. And uh I was brushing them down and out plopped a spider onto the floor, and I was like, hello! Hello, you've got a redback. Uh and then I sent the owner a picture of it. Not to say you've got deadly spiders in the place we've just rented, but just to check that this is is this a redback? More out of excitement. And she said, Yeah, it is, it's beautiful. Not like uh, I think some pictures of redbacks you see are really jet black, like the female redbacks I think can be jet black with quite a vivid red streak on the abdomen. This was slightly more mottled brown and black, not huge, um, but yeah, they can they can pack a dose of toxic venom. If if you were to, I don't know, sit on one uh and it have exposed skin, I guess like on the leg.

Claire: 15:27

Everything's sort of quite a small spider-wise. I've seen a few spiders, haven't we? I was thinking yesterday, like, what is it like if you're over on the other coast and you've got huntsmen's running around, which are not dangerous in any way, but just massive. I was thinking like to walk into a bathroom or any room and just on the wall there's like a massive spider. Yeah, and I've seen people say they're not gonna hurt you, but they can give you quite a shock. I was like, oh my word, that would just, yeah, that'd be quite frightening. So I'm very glad we're not in an area where I've got to watch out for anything massive.

Chris: 15:54

Particularly now we're of a certain age where getting through the night without at least one visit to the toilet is a thing.

Claire: 16:00

I think that's more about being in a country where you're constantly drinking lots of water.

Chris: 16:04

I have become very conscious about putting flip-flops on as I walk across our Airbnb accommodation to the toilet just in case I might stand on something. Oh, scorpions.

Claire: 16:14

I just walk barefoot.

Chris: 16:15

The place we're staying in Mandra again, Dave and Tracy's place, they've they've had scorpions inside. They're not scorpions aren't particularly dangerous. I think if they were to sting you with their tail, it'd be like a bee sting. But still, I don't want to stand on one in the middle of the night while I'm desperate for the loo. Uh so yeah, they're probably some of my main takeaways.

Claire: 16:34

For me, I think uh yeah, a lot of what you said obviously, but just interesting to see the people. So I'm always fascinated by the difference in people and cultures, and like I said, the outdoor life. We keep commenting a lot on how this whole country is built to be outdoors. They've got loads of play areas that have all got shade over them, they've got places you can sit, they've all got shade over them. Everything is built because they know it's hot and they're just aware of that, and that's really interesting. So I've really been interested in stuff like that. So that's been one thing I've been noting, but also just yeah, the people. So swearing is a bigger thing out here than I've noticed in the UK. Uh, I can't believe the amount of people I'm speaking to, just even like yesterday in one of the market store things, we were chatting to this guy about the history of something, and just like the just dropping the f bomb every four or five words every now and then. I'm like, I'm just not used to this. Um I know that obviously there's a lot of people that swear in England, but if you're in shops and chatting to people that you don't know, that's really not something that happens very often. I wouldn't speak to someone in a shop usually and and people would be swearing. Um, and just people you chat to, people we've come across hosts, you know, people that we've met of friends of other people, it's just natural, it's just in their language a lot more. And I didn't realise that was a thing, so that's really interesting. Um and then of on language, just the amount of words that are different to what we have. In the last episode, I mentioned that ports were suitcases and that the jug was the kettle. We had to replace a light bulb in our Airbnb, and the host asked me if it was a good time to pick up the light globe. I had no idea what she was talking about, so that's obviously another thing.

Chris: 18:15

And things like thongs. I can't remember if we mentioned that one in the last episode, but thongs for flip-flops.

Claire: 18:20

Yeah, nevertheless.

Chris: 18:20

It takes a bit of getting used to.

Claire: 18:22

Um thongs are a very different thing for us in the UK. It's actually a completely different word for us. So that's weird.

Chris: 18:27

And a lot of shortening of words. They they love to shorten the word. I remember somebody saying a couple of weeks back that Australians can be very lazy people. I wonder if that slips into the language that they, you know, why say sandwich when you can say Sanger?

Claire: 18:40

Sanger. Yeah, that was a new one. Avo.

Chris: 18:43

Yeah, avocado, that's too long. Sanger.

Claire: 18:46

And they have this way of like speaking that I don't know, to me, sounds a little this is gonna sound really insulting to the Australians. It sounds a bit like you'd speak to kids. So they like shorten things so they have like crisps, like we would have crisps and chips. Crisps are like a bag of crisps that you pull out potato things, and then chips are potato chips like fries, and they're separate, very different things. They have chips, which means both. So I said to them, Well, how would you differentiate if you said you want a sandwich with chips? How would you differentiate between the bag of crisps and the hot chips? And they're like, they just looked at me blankly, like, well, we don't know if we need to. So they have these, but then they don't just call them chips, they call them chippies. Chippies, which is what I would have thought you'd say with you know, with a child, like when you're learning language and you make it. But then we've found there's loads of them. So like I saw something on TV today and they were referring to a guy in a flannel shirt and she called it a flanny. There's Tasmania nearby, which they call Tazzy.

Chris: 19:46

Like Aussi.

Claire: 19:47

Yeah, and then we realised like Australia, they're called Aussies. Then there was like there's Dunny, which people know about, which is quite a common one for toilet. I don't know if that shortens anything.

Chris: 19:56

Rashy for the rash vest. Yeah. That we've learnt about. There's that very famous one. Barbie.

Claire: 20:02

Barbie.

Chris: 20:03

Even we use that, but again, I'm gonna I'm gonna add it to this list of Australian E words.

Claire: 20:07

I think if you use it, you always use it with an Australian accent in England, because it's like chuck another shrimp on the Barbie.

Chris: 20:11

While you're drinking a tinny.

Claire: 20:12

Yeah, I didn't know that one. That was in front of me. And then they chuck a Yui.

Chris: 20:17

Chuck a Yui. Go back.

Claire: 20:19

They stick E, and I've heard I can't even remember them, but I've heard a few more in conversation with people where it's like, it just seems really odd. It's like another language of just taking something and adding E on the end and I think certainly certainly chippies.

Chris: 20:33

Chippies. You see that written on a like a chalkboard from a cafe.

Claire: 20:37

Yeah, so that's something that has surprised me and fascinated me, just how different English languages. We know, you know, we we're we're quite close to America, aren't we? So we know a lot of like American spelling is very different for ours. We know a lot of the American language because it's in all our sitcoms and TVs, but we don't see so much of Australia on our TVs and stuff, not for like the general slang and we used to, back in the nineties.

Chris: 20:59

So yeah, when neighbors and home and away on TV were a much bigger deal, and uh I was growing up, that was probably my m your stage generation. That was massive in the early nineties.

Claire: 21:09

But now I don't hear much about I mean I listen to some podcasts that are done by Australians and stuff. But the other thing was alcohol. Alcohol over here seems to be a it feels like going back a bit in the UK. So we've had a long history with alcohol, I think, in the UK that's bad. So a lot of alcohol is drunk in Europe or on the continent stuff, but it tends to be wine, they have it with a lot of meals, they have it from a very young age, and they don't tend to do the whole binge thing like we do. It tends it's part of their culture, they appreciate it, but they don't overdo it. I mean, just generalising there will be people who do overdo it, but on the whole, it's a big deal. You're offered wine a lot if you go to France or something. And in England, we've had more of this binge drinking culture, which has got us a very bad rep in many other countries because of our staggering Hindus that go away and just overdo it and then embarrass our country. But I think we're coming out of that a little bit, and I'm hearing now that the the teens and those that are coming through in the next generation are actually turning a bit more away from alcohol, it's actually becoming okay just to not drink, and we have got a lot of options in our country now for non-alcoholic beers and wines and gins, all kinds of stuff. Um, so I think we've sort of turned changing the tide a little bit on that. But over here, I feel like it's still like it was for us a while back. So I was really surprised to see adverts trying to convince people not to drink during pregnancy. That doesn't feel like something I've seen in the UK for a very long time.

Chris: 22:38

That feels like it's very, very well known.

Claire: 22:42

And if you choose to do it, then that's a very personal choice, but you're well aware of the risks and everything. I feel like even if you've never been pregnant, that's something that's very well known. But over here it does seem to be a bit more advertising towards trying not to get people to drink at certain points, I guess, driving when you're pregnant. Pushing that message stuff, yeah, really pushing it, which is interesting. I just thought about it, but I hadn't seen it much. And then they've got those um like the the alcohol places where you So the alcohol isn't sold in supermarkets here, which is really interesting to us, because in our country you buy alcohol at the supermarket pretty much any time it's open. Over here, you there are there isn't any alcohol in supermarkets, but there's always an alcohol place sort of attached to the supermarket, so you go into a separate area to pay and buy for it, buy it. But then they've also got these drive-throughs where you just drive in and load the back of your car with alcohol and then drive out again, which you'd never see in the UK. So that's again quite a different kind of approach to alcohol. You'd have thought that because they don't sell it in the supermarkets, maybe they'd drink less of it. But I don't know, just different.

Chris: 23:47

It's very different. I wonder whether, because you've mentioned the coarse language, let's be very posh about this, and the alcohol. I wonder whether there's like a big cultural collective middle finger to the past. Because we learnt yesterday in a tour of Fremantle Prison.

Claire: 24:05

Oh yes, I know what you're gonna say.

Chris: 24:06

Which closed down in 1991 as a prison, and there's still it's still a really interesting tourist attraction. Uh that in the female wing, which was much smaller than the male wing.

Claire: 24:16

Like 50 to 80 females. Well, I think there's a lot like eight up to 1800 men, so massive difference.

Chris: 24:21

And those naughty women could be locked up for obscene language and drunken behaviour.

Claire: 24:27

Being drunk. I mean, there were a lot of other things on their list as well, but they were as small as it could get for being locked up. Yeah, so maybe there's been a rebellion.

Chris: 24:34

Big rebellion.

Claire: 24:35

Like, no, we're not having this.

Chris: 24:37

We're free.

Claire: 24:37

We're free to drink as much and swear as much as we want to now. And we shall. Yeah, we shall. It's really interesting how natural it is here and how how different it can I think where we are, it it always feels a little bit confrontational when someone swears. I think. There's always a little bit of a alright, okay. Like, what are you getting worked up about? Like it feels like it's the next level of people, and that's not the case here at all. It's just part of the language. So, yeah, really interesting to experience that and just see how how different it is. Anyway, yeah, that's Australia. You mentioned we went on a north trip. So last time we did our episode, we just done on a south trip for five days. We went down to um Margaret River area, and then when we got back from that, we had about three days back in Mandra, and then we went on a north trip, which took us from Mandra right up to Exmouth, which was the top point we went to.

Chris: 25:28

Exmouth, as they call it here.

Claire: 25:29

Oh, Exmouth, sorry. Not like the Devonshire. I know there's so many places in England that are over here. Um, and then and that was we did a total of 3,400 kilometres going up and back, and it took us 10 days. So, yeah, what do you think of the more northwest side of Western Australia?

Chris: 25:47

It's weird even talking about going doing a north trip, because it's all within Western Australia, which we've learned is the biggest state in Australia. And when you see it on a map, it's huge, Western Australia, but there's just vast amounts of nothingness. And so we did a north trip up the coast to X-Ma. I mean, that was just the drive, I guess the driving was interesting, was memorable because we covered so many kilometres of nothingness. It's such a slow, slow pace.

Claire: 26:13

Yeah, it really doesn't feel like it should. The road actually, when we if you fly ever fly from Singapore to Perth, you'll see the west coast of Australia and you'll see all the beautiful kind of edging and the beaches and the coast, and you'll see red sort of land, and then you'll see one road. And I remember pointing it out to you and saying, I wonder if that's the road we're gonna be on when we go north, and I'm pretty sure it was because it follows the coast, kind of, and it's just one long single carriageway road where the maximum speeds it's about 100. 110 kilometres an hour.

Chris: 26:48

So what's that in uh 70 miles an hour?

Claire: 26:51

So that I mean that is the maximum in the UK that we could do, but on a road that long and straight, even that feels very slow.

Chris: 26:57

Yeah, I mean it might be less than 70, it might be 60 something. Let me look it up while we're talking. Yes, it's single carriage way, you said, but it's they're quite large roads. Oh, yeah. So it's not like you're you're passing vehicles at speed that feel very close to you. Yeah, they're still pretty wide.

Claire: 27:11

It's wide, and obviously both sides of you, you've got miles and miles and miles and miles of nothing. Yeah. Or maybe the sea. So that it feels very wide and very easy driving. I mean, it's a bit like when you do some of the open roads in America, just very big, open, very easy, just straight line driving.

Chris: 27:28

Yeah. Uh 110 kilometres is sixty eight miles.

Claire: 27:33

That's probably why it feels a little slow then.

Chris: 27:35

110 kilometres per hour is 68 miles per hour. So it does feel slow, and I'd sticking to those speed limits as well. Uh is quite a thing that you're quite serious about road safety. But we've been on three, we've been on four lane motorways around Perth, and they drop down to 80 kilometres an hour, kilometres per hour.

Claire: 27:55

Yeah, it might even be less. I think I've seen some 70.

Chris: 27:58

70, which is 43 miles per hour that we used to 80 is 50. That feels really weird. You're doing 50 miles per hour, and it just feels so slow, you've got so many miles to cover. There's very little to see. I'm quite surprised at how boring I found the land landscape. I know Dave would say to us, there's always something to see. Uh, and that's true, there's always shrubs. Grass trees.

Claire: 28:21

We learn a lot about the trees and the bushes because they change. And and the interesting thing is because they have a lot of fires here, a lot of what you're looking at is just charred but growing back. So it's black stem trees with green on top, or you can see the grass growing back. So it's sort of interesting from that perspective. But I mean, when you've done an hour, two hours, three hours, four hours of it, it becomes a little monotonous.

Chris: 28:42

We did a I was driving for a stretch up to a town called Carnarvon, and I remember thinking, gosh, these roads are straight. I'm gonna start counting on the what'd you call it, tripometer, milometer, the length of this straight. And I did it, and I got up to 24 kilometres. So 24 kilometres, which thought it was ridiculous. That's like 16 miles of straight road. And then there was a bend. A tiny bend. Two slight bends. I thought, oh, okay, I'm gonna stop that. So I'll start again and then start again and beat that record just and got like 25 kilometers. The previous one was like 24.7, and I was like, wow, that's ridiculous. And then there was again a bend or two small bends, and then did another stretch thinking I'm gonna start counting again. And you know when you look into the distance that you can just see like horizon with nothing on it above the road that you're heading into. So you know this is going to be a straight road, and then you get over that horizon and just see the same again, just straight road, nothing on the horizon above the road, no trees or anything, so you know it's gonna be straight. And then that third one, it was thirty five kilometres. So, in total, what's that thirty five, twenty five, twenty? That's like seventy, eighty kilometres. With a couple of bends in. Yeah, it's great. And straight road driving. I mean, thank goodness for cruise control. But it was pretty dull. And so the roads were yeah slow and long.

Claire: 30:05

And the worst thing about that is it's sort of interesting at the beginning, like, oh, you know, this is Australia out back, and then three, four days in, it's like, oh, this is Australia out back again. And then the worst thing is you know that you've got to come back the same frickin' road because there's no other road. So you go north one way and you're like, oh my word, that like 10 hours or whatever it was in total, we've got to do that again to get back south. So, yeah, I don't want to be down in Australia, but this is why there's things along the way that have become actual tourist attractions on Google. This shows you how how monotonous the roads can be. One of them, so there's loads of termite mounds in one area, which are really interesting, like probably six, seven, eight, ten feet tall termite mounds. And we stopped by the road for one of them to have our photos taken with it. But somebody has painted one of those as like a minion. Bright yellow with the red and the trousers and everything. That is a stopping point on the way, it's actually on the map. And another one is a tree that loads of people have thrown shoes into.

Chris: 31:03

The shoey tree.

Claire: 31:04

The shoey tree, and that is also a stopping point. You could make anything a Google stopping point on that road because there's just nothing else to do with the road.

Chris: 31:10

Generally you can't stop stuff.

Claire: 31:12

No, you can't.

Chris: 31:13

You might find the roadhouse.

Claire: 31:14

Even those, when you get to the roadhouse, you have no idea what you're going to be getting into. So it could be a long drop toilet with no water or gel. It could be uh I mean there's always flies. It could be like a kind of a cafe type situation.

Chris: 31:28

With goats outside.

Claire: 31:29

Goats outside. And that can be a bit they're alright, but they could be a bit ropey. Um, it's so hot because you're in the middle of nowhere and you're going north, it just gets hotter, so it's so intense in the heat. If you want to stop at a picnic table, you might find one with a shade over it at a roadhouse, but again, it's probably covered in flies, and you're better off in the car with the aircom running, to be honest. It's just yeah, I mean it's really interesting. I'm so pleased we did it. Fascinating to see. But yeah, there's a lot of driving. But the good thing at the end of it were the beaches. We were heading up there partly for the coast. Well, there's not much else to see in land, I don't think. Um, and they did not disappoint. The beach some of the beaches up there have been ranked in the top sort of ten at some point and then top 50 in the world. So absolutely stunning beaches, and in classic Australia style, there's no people on them. They're just we're just fascinated by the amount of beaches we've been to where there's just like if it was a beach in England, it would be heaving because it's so beautiful and the weather is so lovely. But these are just empty. So we saw um oh we saw so many. We went to Coral Bay, yeah. Turquoise beach, Turquoise Bay. Turquoise Bay. Uh Shell Beach.

Chris: 32:42

Shell Beach.

Claire: 32:43

Monkey Meyer.

Chris: 32:44

Yeah.

Claire: 32:45

Um and then the Sharp Bay area, all these amazing beaches with loads of amazing sea life as well. Absolutely stunning white sand, beautiful colour sea. Um, really empty, very remote though. You can pull into these beaches, and you again you don't know if there's going to be anywhere to sit or any shade. There might be a toilet, there might not be, might not be any people there. It's a sort of um yeah, it's an interesting experience because for us in Europe, if you go to an amazing beach, chances are there's a lovely hotel nearby, there's toilets, there's changing rooms, there's a bar, there's a cafe, you've got all this behind it because there's a lot of people there, and it's a very different experience. So to be on a beach like that and just be looking around thinking, how is there like six people on this beach? It's just mad. But then it is so remote and hard to get to, it kind of makes sense.

Chris: 33:30

Generally, I think on the wider theme of what we've seen in Western Australia, beaches are functional. So elsewhere that we've found in Europe where the sun's not as intense, where the UV's not as extreme, where the wildlife is not as dangerous, and there's just stuff around you to get you everywhere. So where it's where it's less of that in England or in mainland Europe, you could spend the day at the beach. You could just pack up your stuff, go to the beach and spend the day there, and lie out in the sun, maybe take a shade, swim, sunbathe, read, swim, sunbathe. That sort of you can't do that here. The sun is very strong, sort of fiercely strong. So it's like, yeah, cover up if you're on the beach, factor 50, if you've got skin exposed, rashies, long sleeves, if you're going in the water, hats, cover up. So yeah, the beaches here, if it's not the weather that's going to get you, if it's not the flies that gets you when you're on the land, when you get into the water, it's not just riptides, it's not just sharks. There's things like Irikanji.

Claire: 34:29

Well, that's that's the other thing with these, yeah, these beaches up north, they have irakange, which are tiny one centimetre. It's relatively dangerous.

Chris: 34:36

Literally you're talking if you get stung by an irakange, it's you need to be flown. Because again, where we went, it's very remote. A lot of the medical help will be by plane, so there's this whole flying doctor services.

Claire: 34:47

Which clap about it's a jellyfish.

Chris: 34:49

Oh, yeah, jellyfish, irakange. Look 'em up online. And uh really dangerous, but there's also stonefish which you might stand on, which are incredibly toxic.

Claire: 35:00

And they don't necessarily kill you, but the pain can be so bad it can give you a heart attack that does kill you. So that's fun.

Chris: 35:06

So there's warnings about those things. There's like it's like you can't go you can't relax at the beach. Yeah. For those of us that don't live a beach culture, we go to the beach to relax. And here it feels like you you don't go to the beach to relax, you go to do something.

Claire: 35:22

Or get in the sea and hope you don't get anything coming out.

Chris: 35:24

And then go home. Or get get changed at the beach, swim, get changed, and then go home. Well, it's a different culture fish.

Claire: 35:30

It's a different culture because like 80% of Australians or whatever live near the coast, the beach is just always there, the sun is always there. It's a pretty much a given. Every year you will get nice weather and a beach. So it's not something you go for a day trip, probably, because it's always there. Whereas for us, you get one nice day of weather and it's like, ah quick, this is our only chance to go to the beach and enjoy it. So it is a big deal. Um, and again, it's just that kind of everyone lives near a beach. It's a weird thing to think about, but that is pretty much, unless you're living right in the centre of Australia, which is pretty hardcore, everyone else is is near a coast. So it's it's weird and fascinating that you're you're just moving round the coast to see all these places that have been been built up, and yeah, you've you've got to be careful with these northern beaches because they're miles from any help. So if you do get stung by something that you need help with. We did learn the Shark Bay shuffle, which is a thing you're supposed to do on beaches where there's a chance of stonefish being around, and you just don't basically lift your feet, you kind of shuffle in the sand, and then you're more likely to kick it in the face than you are to stand on it and get stung by it. But but I mean it I don't think it's not none of this has stopped us doing anything, but you just have it in the back of your mind.

Chris: 36:38

Yeah, it does just play on your mind. Yeah, particularly if you're not familiar with it. Yeah. It's just like, okay, am I gonna be okay here?

Claire: 36:45

And we do seem to be the most overdressed people in any of the sea.

Chris: 36:49

Yeah, you know, we're not we're not sexy British swimmers with our tanned bodies, you know, wearing fully burning.

Claire: 37:00

And they're all in this swimwear. And we were told, like, you know, get your rashi, and I've got like this pair of swimming shorts that you wear. I mean, they're short, they're not like really long or anything, but you know, long sleeves, hats. Hats. I almost wanted to take the umbrella in the sea and you wouldn't let me because it was so hot.

Chris: 37:14

It was a step too far.

Claire: 37:15

I was my sk I could feel my skin burning. I mean, I have quite sensitive skin, so that's a little bit I do need to be a bit more careful, but I am surprised at the amount of people that are just sunbathing. I was trying to tell um somebody out here about what it's like in in Europe, in like Spain and stuff. I was saying to her, you could probably put factor 20, 25 on, 30 maybe, all day and be out in the sun sunbathing in a bikini or whatever, all day and not burn. It's just not anywhere near as intense as it is here. It's a very different, you need that factor, but you can comfortably sit in it all day. You couldn't do that here, it would be way too intense.

Chris: 37:54

And me, uh the opposite end of the scale to you, I tan quite easily. I don't generally have problems with burning. Not here, but I uh you know I quite like being in the sun. But here I've been using factor 50. Even five, six weeks into this trip where I've had a lot of sun exposure, so I am tanned, and just sitting here the day before yesterday, I sat outside reading in the sun sh it was the morning or was it towards the middle of the day? Was it strong? It wasn't the hottest day. No, but I noticed later that day that I had red lines where I rolled my shirt sleeves up towards my shoulders, and I thought, you know, even I'm getting red potential, sort of heading towards burning in just half an hour on pretty tan skin with sun cream on.

Claire: 38:37

And interestingly, they might be out here, but as a tourist that's just come out, watched a bit of TV, walked around the malls and stuff, I haven't seen anything talking about skin cancer. Whereas in our country, I feel like it's quite a big message.

Chris: 38:49

Just it's because they're putting all the money into alcohol when you're pregnant. There's no one at a time public health messaging funding.

Claire: 38:56

So I don't know. I mean, I heard someone say they've got very high rates of skin cancer. It wouldn't surprise me because you're living under such UV all the time. But um, yeah, it's yeah, it's just really interesting because it's just so different from home. So yeah, anyway, we've come off our north trip onto skin cancer somehow.

Chris: 39:11

Beautiful, beautiful beaches. It's made me realise many times how what you see, and this taps into a much wider thing, doesn't it, around social media. What you see in a 2D image on your phone or in a magazine about where you're heading tells part of the story, doesn't it? What you what you see might be one thing, but what you're feeling might be completely different.

Claire: 39:31

It never gives you a full. I think in the last episode we mentioned about how you can have this beautiful photo of a beautiful beach, but you're getting covered in flies while you're taking it.

Chris: 39:39

Exactly. You just don't know what's going on. There's a photographer that's covered in flies and terrified of that will make you feel better for the places you can't go to.

Claire: 39:55

But one thing that we did uh get a lovely array of up there was wildlife again, and we saw we saw a shark. We were sat by a beach watching the sunset, and about I don't know, 15 feet into the water, quite shallow, we saw a fin and um a tail fin just kind of moving around in the water. It can't have been more than about three, four feet maybe quite a smallish little shark, but we definitely saw that moving around. So we did see a shark.

Chris: 40:23

Well, we saw that from that eagle bluff from a big distance, we saw them swimming around, yeah. That was a very high elevated point looking down into a bay. There was no beach area.

Claire: 40:33

That was that was stunning, yeah.

Chris: 40:34

We saw the we saw the outlines of a number of sharks. They were I think there they're known for. I think they've got lemon sharks and nervous sharks. I've never heard of them, but those two varieties.

Claire: 40:43

We we went to Monkey Meyer, um, which is famous, it's just one resort, really, an RAC kind of resort that you can stay at. We didn't stay at the resort, we went in, and um it's famous for its dolphin feeding. Um so um it's like you go like really early in the morning, like 7:30, and they do two or three dolphin feedings before midday, and you can stand in the water ankle deep, and the dolphins come in really shallow up to the woman that's feeding them. That was really cool. So we saw dolphins there, and then we went on a boat trip from Monkey Maya, and we saw um Dugons. Well, we saw the back of a Dugon. She surprised she described it as looking for a brown sausage that was moving around in the water. I think that's the equivalent of what I saw. I didn't really see much more than the back of a big brown sausage. Uh Ospreys, the dolphins, obviously, more dolphins, turtles. Uh we saw rays swimming around in the sea at Coral Bay. That was quite cool. Uh we saw pelicans and we went to a pelican feeding that happens every morning at Cal Barry National Park. There's a place there on the edge. They've been feeding them there every day for like I think 50 years or something.

Chris: 41:50

Started with a fisherman, didn't it?

Claire: 41:51

Yeah, something like that. 8 45 in the morning. Went there and we had loads of those turn up, so that was really cool. We've seen bin chickens everywhere. The Ibis, they're brilliant. I still really like them. They pop up wherever we went. Um, some emus um kind of plodding around in Denham near our accommodation. And we went to an aquarium, which where we saw loads of things up close, which was really cool, um, just outside Denham, which was like things like the lionfish, which is fascinating, sea snakes, sharks, stonefish. We actually got to see what a stonefish looked like. Ugly. Um so that was really cool. So we had loads of wildlife, and then we had one of our most amazing wildlife experiences, I think, was um one night mid-trip, we were in Cowbarry, and there was a brewery that Chris wanted to go and see, of course, because if there's a brewery nearby, we try and go and see it for Chris. And um we went to have a drink there, and Chris had a you called them a paddle, so like five little beers that you can try and stuff. So he'd had a good good amount of beer, and um as we came out and were walking back, it was dark, and there was like these street lights, and under the street lights were sort of three or four kangaroos in a little field, and we had seen the kangaroos on the way in in a field just nearby. Uh, and we stopped to take a picture of it, but then two of them just literally sort of went past us on the pavement and made this amazing it was just like really quiet, and they made this amazing sound of just like as they jumped past us on the sand. It was really cool. If anyone wants to see the video, message me on Instagram and I'll send it to you because it's really sweet. Um, and that was a real highlight, I think.

Chris: 43:26

Just like you said, it'd been a really long walking around suburbia and a lot of driving, and there's a kangaroo, and we'd found this really lovely outdoor lifestyle brewery that some great beers got bitten on the way to it by a mosquito on my hand that had started itching instantly. Uh, and then uh yeah, as we were leaving there, I was probably a little bit giggly because I'd had some strong beers, which I was really ready for. And then to see those little kangaroos bouncing, bouncing in the sand. But very sweet.

Claire: 43:57

I just I still can't get over the anatomy of a kangaroo and how it moves, how it uses the tail and the massive feet and well I didn't realise there were so many animals out here that have pouches. It's a lot. How many things have we seen? We went we went to a zoo and um well a wildlife park really, and yeah, we just kept looking at oh it's another one, it's another one, it's another one, it's got a pouch. Yeah. Loads of them.

Chris: 44:18

Kangaroos, quakers, koalas, Tasmanian devils. All all have pouches, all rare young. And you mention Cavisham, Wildlife Park, that we went to a couple of days back. Uh not not wildlife, clearly it's all captive some mostly captive stuff, but uh brilliant in terms of hands-on, up-close experiences with some of the Australiana that we've loved seeing.

Claire: 44:42

Yeah, I got a bit frustrated that there's a whole bunch of stuff that we want to see in Australia, ideally in the wild, that we have not managed to see, and we're trying to and we're we're recognising now it's not gonna happen. So one of them was the echidna, which I think is almost nocturnal, so very difficult to see.

Chris: 44:56

Nodes of road sign pictures of echidna.

Claire: 44:59

Didn't see any. Nothing. For those who have no idea what that is, it's a spiky looking big hedgehog with a very long, thin nose. Also the frog mouth, tawny frogmouth, which is an bird, looks a bit like an owl, it's not an owl. I saw one of these at a wildlife park in England and was obsessed with the idea of seeing one in the wild here because they are actually native to here. It's the one of the best looking birds. I just think it's so funny. It if you imagine a bird that's sort of short and squat and blends in with the background of like brown trees and stumps, it looks like half a branch, but it it's got this look on its face, like it just is just so above the world, but also judging you and also like completely fed up with life.

Chris: 45:42

It's just got this a big wide downturn mouth.

Claire: 45:46

Big downturn mouth. It's just brilliant. We saw a bird display, and they'd got an amazing cookaburra at the front on a stand. They had an owl with its big black eyes, and they had a barn owl, and at the back, just on its own, on a ladder, slightly hidden, they'd put the frog mouth, and it was just sat there like I am not impressed.

Chris: 46:05

Like it said to the zookeeper, what were they called? The one put me at the back.

Claire: 46:09

Yeah.

Chris: 46:10

If I go anywhere, put me at the back.

Claire: 46:11

Don't put me near the front. It was just on its own, it's brilliant. I just I just love them. Yeah, but incredibly difficult to see in the wild. They are so well camouflaged. So we saw one of those at Cabisham, so that was exciting and fun to see that. Um, and the other thing that we saw that I didn't have on my list to see because they're not around here in the wild at all, and I hadn't really thought about them much, were wombats. But we were very taken by the wombats.

Chris: 46:36

They were just You were more taken than I couldn't really see the point of them rather than just looking like giant bundles of fat. Furry fat.

Claire: 46:45

It's just the coolest looking So like for an extra ten dollars we didn't do this, but you could pay to sit next to a zookeeper that was holding one. But she held it like it she held it round the middle with its arms hanging like oh front its front arms hanging over her arm sort of thing and its head, and then there's just big bottom that just hangs down. It's the weirdest photo. You mostly got kind of bottom in the photo to be honest, but it there was just something about these creatures that were just I don't know, just funny again. I love how they kind of bumble around and yeah, I mean they look like you said this would be a great thing for like me to cuddle in bed instead of my hot water bottle. It would be the perfect cuddle buddy if you want something warm if you've got a tummy ache and you just want to hold something that's soft and big and firm. No long limbs, no big nose, it's just all so yeah, I was very, very enamoured by the wombats. Yeah, and they just look so friendly.

Chris: 47:43

What is the point of them? I don't know. What do they do in the wild?

Claire: 47:46

What's the point of any animal? But yeah, they're very fun. And then we had something very special that we did at Caversham. I had mixed feelings about this, so I know that when you come to Australia, one of the things that a lot of people want to do and do is hold a koala. And before I came out, I started looking into that a little bit. Koalas aren't native to the western side of Australia, so you'd never see them in the wild here. I wasn't even sure if we'd see any, but we did get told they had them at Cavisham Wildlife Park, and they've got them quite a few zoos and things. Um, but when I was researching it, there was a lot of negative press around the whole holding a koala thing, and people were saying, European, you know, they go over and they do it, they shouldn't do it, it's bad, it's like it's bad for the koalas, it's bad for this, blah blah. And I was like, oh no, I don't want to contribute to something that's really bad, blah blah blah. Anyway, I got here, and um and we went to Cabersham, and for an extra $35, about 18 pounds, you could hold a koala. And uh I must admit, all my research went out the window, and uh I was just like I really want to do this, and we had to get there at 9am to get a ticket because they only allow so many people to do it and it sells out really quickly. We were we were already we got there at quarter past nine and we were 26 and 27, 27 and 28 on the list to hold, so we were already part way through the list of um of people and you couldn't do it like Chris couldn't watch if I went to do it. They do it like separately, so Chris ended up paying to do it as well, which I really wanted him to do anyway, because I knew he'd love hot. Who doesn't want to hold a koala? Um but what I love about Cavisham is that they have there's a massive wall and photo of all their koalas and a whole area you can look at them, and they have was it 78? 78 koalas. So they have this thing free of charge, part of your ticket. You can go and stand next to a koala that's on a branch eating something, and they'll take a photo of you, and then the next person comes in and does it, and they do that uh every day, and that's free of charge with your ticket. So we did that, but we also wanted to do the whole let's hold one. But because they've got so many koalas, they're swapping them out like a lot, really regularly. We saw them swapped out several times just in about 10 minutes. Um so because they've got so many, they haven't got like one koala, where some places might have one or two koalas, and then those poor koalas are having to be held every day like constantly. They only do this for like 45 minutes um twice a day, and they use maybe four or five koalas and they swap them out for that. So the koalas are not actually being held that often because there's so many of them, so it's a nice setup. So I'd recommend if you're in Western Australia and you want to do that. This feels like a place that's really doing it wisely and looking after them. Um, but we did do that, and that was very cool. And they don't smell, I was told they smell awful and it's like really smelling. I didn't smell a thing, and this koala like literally breathed in my mouth at one point because it was sniffing me to find out who I was. Um, but yeah, and it just clings onto you. It's like uh imagine a child that just clings onto you, it immediately clings. It's just the coolest, like a big teddy bear.

Chris: 50:48

Well, we had growing up. Do you remember what if you went to the zoo as a child? They often sold those sort of pencil holders, and you'd like pinch the shoulder blades of whatever animal and its arms would clamp. Yeah. And then you could clamp them onto a pen or a pencil or something else. Uh that's the sort of thing where I think you'd probably have koalas that you could just pinch the shoulder. It was like that, wasn't it? It was like having a a life living version of one of those that it just clamps onto you. Yeah, it was so sweet, it was really nice. Um, and then you sort of hold it like I guess you see people holding chimpanzees on the telly or even babies, I guess, where you just kind of sits on your hips. It was oh it was so lovely. And then to get some really happy photos of us was very memorable.

Claire: 51:32

Yeah, really nice. It was a nice memory, it was something really enjoyable, and I really believe you know, animals are there to be enjoyed so long as they're being looked after and well treated. And I do think I know a lot of people get quite down on zoos, I think it depends what country you come from, because some zoos are bad. Um, but we come from a country where we've got a lot of good zoos that are doing a lot of conservation work, a lot of help to keep creatures alive, stop them getting extinct, trying to breed things that aren't breeding. Um, you know, I think without zoos we'd have lost a lot more species, so I'm very pro anything that's trying to do it. Education as well.

Chris: 52:12

Uh it's so good for young and old to be able to experience them and to go away really inspired by what you've seen. I think is incredible.

Claire: 52:20

Definitely. And you know if an animal's being treated badly on the whole, you know, we've been to some bad zoos. If you see the animals pacing constantly or they're not relaxing or they're not breeding, that's always a bad sign. But I think in places where they're they're breeding that rapidly and they're happy, you know, animals don't do that if they're in an environment that doesn't seem safe. So yeah, really good. Really enjoyed that, and we got to see loads of stuff on our list that we didn't think we'd see, which is good. And one of the cool things they've got there is you can just go in and feed the kangaroos. They've got loads of kangaroos, and you just get a handful of food, and then you just feed them, and all these kangaroos come up to you and take the food. So that was cool because in the wild, kangaroos can be pretty scary looking.

Chris: 52:56

I would say that was particularly the case because we were there early, so that was like the first thing we did. So I'm guessing the kangaroos at that point were like, oh great, someone's got their hand in the nut barrel.

Claire: 53:06

Because we passed in the afternoon and the kangaroos were always like, you know how they lie sideways in a really cool kind of photo pose? They were all just lying like that, and people were going up to them with food and they had no interest at all. So I think, yeah, we did that. Uh doing that earlier was a really good, good call because we got to actually feed them. And there was one type of kangaroo there that had a really pointy face.

Chris: 53:25

It was a wallaby.

Claire: 53:27

No, was it a wallaby?

Chris: 53:28

Yeah, yeah.

Claire: 53:28

Well, I think it jumped up on my leg.

Chris: 53:30

Yes, yeah, it was a type of wallaby. I can't remember what type it was.

Claire: 53:33

Very pointy looking, more like a big rat type face. Well, initially I was like, what the frick is this? I didn't know what it was.

Chris: 53:40

So we had a really enjoyable day there.

Claire: 53:42

Um that was uh down where we are now. That wasn't on the north trip, that was more local to where we are at the moment, so that's just down the road, not far from Perth, which is good. One other thing we did do while we were up north that was really good was the stargazing. That was something we had on our list quite early on. We've always wanted to see stars in a place big night sky. Yeah, where there's not much light, and that's quite hard to do in England. Yeah, we booked a stargazing experience which was up in Exmouth.

Chris: 54:11

It was Exmouth, it was a particular park that we had to drive into and pay to go into this national park.

Claire: 54:17

Something like million-up Discovery Centre, something like that. Lovely husband and wife and daughter team that are running these from England, actually. From England, yeah. Uh that have been out here quite a long time now, but run it. Uh certain times of year we were towards the end of the ones they were running before they go down south for two months, because it can get up to 50 degrees in Exmouth in the summer, so that doesn't sound very pleasant. But um, yeah, it was amazing. Lots of lots of stars. It's actually rate rated bortle one, which is new language to me. Um, but that's sort of how they rank how dark the how dark it is there for you to see the stars, and bortle one I think is the top rating of like the the most darkest places on Earth.

Chris: 54:59

You're just making me think of the good place on Netflix.

Claire: 55:01

Why?

Chris: 55:02

Bortals Oh bortals But anyway, it was a very dark sky. And but the thing that surprised me about it this might be well known to me, I'd I'd never thought about it, there was no moon. No moon. And I said to him, I said, can I ask a simple question? I said, Where's the moon? And he went, Oh, that's the other side of the horizon. It's down it's night time.

Claire: 55:21

It's below the horizon.

Chris: 55:22

He said, That's no, it's like the other side of the earth.

Claire: 55:24

Oh, was it?

Chris: 55:25

Yeah. He said that's in a different place now, so you won't see it during the night.

Claire: 55:28

Oh. Yeah, and there were no nights with the moon for weeks. He said it would be back early December, and it is back now. It was actually back late November, I think.

Chris: 55:35

But quite a few times we've commented on seeing the moon during the day, which I just thought was about the sun strength. No, it's just the time of year where the moon's up during the day and you can see it because the sun's so strong. So I I don't know why I've just had this understanding that you see the moon wherever you are every night. The moon is there unless it's blocked by cloud.

Claire: 55:55

I know it wasn't there every night, because I can't always find it in our house, but I didn't I've never known quite how it works. He did say you get a very different experience stargazing when the moon's there. For starters, the moon is amazing to look at through telescopes, but secondly, because it creates so much light, you can't see a lot more of the stars. So I think I was quite glad in some ways the moon wasn't there, although I would love to have seen it through his telescope. They had like these big telescopes, and we had one per group of people. So Chris and I had one. The couple that we were with had their own one, and there was another group of three that had their own telescope. And we saw Saturn with the rings around it, very, very small, but we saw that, and also everything is upside down here. So Orion, which we see quite clearly from England, probably because it's the only one we can identify. Orion's upside down, and the moon is upside down, so I'm quite keen. It's currently like becoming full, but it's like moved from like a quarter to half, and we're not there yet. But when it gets full, I want us to get a photo of it because you've taken some lovely photos of the moon in England, and it will be upside down here. So I want to get a photo here to compare. Um upside down. And for those that listen, you'll know that I am a big fan of the moon and did a blog that you can listen to or read called uh My Friend the Moon. Um because yeah, I just think the moon's a lovely kind of character for those of us who find life a bit tricky sometimes. He's just yeah, he's pretty cool. So I'm hoping to get a photo of him when it's uh yeah, when it's full of so I can see him upside down.

Chris: 57:22

Yeah, uh it's a really dark sky helped by having no moon and just m millions of stars, billions of stars.

Claire: 57:29

It's actually as impressive with the naked eye as it was for the telescope, I think, wasn't it?

Chris: 57:33

Yeah, I could have done without a telescope, just pointing out what I'm looking at with the the eye, because the telescope for me, being a bit sort of glass half empty, I could just see more twinkly things through the telescope. And I take my eye away from the telescope and I can see lots of twinkly things. So it's not like you suddenly see a planet really close filling the lens, you just see lots more dots. So, yeah, I'd have been just as happy having someone pointing out what we're looking at. But I think the one thing that did amaze me, and again, because when we do see a night sky in England, even if it's clear day, you'll quite often have thin cloud that might drift in. So I did say, look, what's this cloudiness that I can see up in the sky? Is that cloud that's just coming in from the sea? And he said, No, that's celestial cloud. So that's like, oh okay, so that genuinely is. It's a really clear there's no cloud cloud, but you could just see like the milkiness of the Milky Way. So he pointed that out. You could see this sort of white cloudiness that's he said that's celestial cloud.

Claire: 58:29

And it was really interesting how they did it because so when you arrive, it's pitch black and you have to sort of find your way to the it's in a car park that you're doing it really. But he was saying that white light, so anything from phones or cameras or anything affects your night vision for like up to 20 to 30 minutes. It takes you well, it takes you 20 to 30 minutes to reset to get your night vision, which is a different kind of vision, but it takes time for us, we don't get it instantly. So when you look at a white light, you have to wait for it to kind of reset. So there's no white light on anything they're doing, they don't recommend you look at phones, cameras, or anything like that, but they have got red lights everywhere. So he had a red light torch, there were red lights on the telescopes, and red light doesn't affect affect your night vision. So if you want to go out and about and not affect your night vision, then you need a red torch, not a white torch. I think this is really good advice for anyone who gets up in the night and doesn't want to keep blinding themselves with a white light. Just get yourself a little red light to to put on. But also he had um he had this really cool laser that you actually have to have a licence, I think he said to have, and it was bright green and it could shoot for up to three kilometres, but he just like turned it on and just could like point at and highlight stars. So he'd just point at a star and draw a circle around it, be like, this star here is this, this bit over here is this, this whole area here is this. And I was just I was as taken with the laser.

Chris: 59:46

It was pretty cool.

Claire: 59:46

It's really cool.

Chris: 59:47

It's like a massive lightsaber. Yeah. Really long, thin lightsaber.

Claire: 59:50

And his daughter had to kind of tell him if she spotted a plane coming because he had to be careful. That's why you have to have a license for it. You can um you can affect like Planes and stuff. So he said you have to be really careful because if he shoots it at any of the military stuff that's coming in, sometimes um there's a fear that they'll shoot back.

Chris: 1:00:09

Their own lasers.

Claire: 1:00:10

Um so yeah, that was really cool. That was good.

Chris: 1:00:19

Well worth doing. Uh that was really, really good to do. Anyway, we must move on. This is a long update. Yes. Do you want to talk about us? Us, how are we? How are we? How is Claire? How is Chris? Because I'm particularly conscious that we've spent now well, not right now, because we're we're now living on our own, have been here for three or four nights, but before that we lived with Dave and Tracy for four and a half weeks. And so for you as an introvert, coming from someone who is used to every day being you on your own in the house until I get home from work, uh yeah, how are you doing with that?

Claire: 1:00:49

In some ways better than I I would have thought if someone had told me that was going to be the situation. Um but in other ways, uh definitely notice if I'm suddenly in silence somewhere or at a quieter point, there's something in me that's like 'cause yeah, there's just it's just intense, isn't it? It's intense.

Chris: 1:01:10

Like an unclenching.

Claire: 1:01:11

Anyway, yeah. But as an introvert, when you're just not used to being with people every day for long portions of the day, um, yeah, it can be hard and you don't want to be like you don't want it to make you like ratty or kind of off because of it, but it can very easily get to that stage because you just need a bit more space on your own and stuff. So yeah, I think on the whole it's it's been okay, but as soon as we got here and stayed in our Airbnb, the two of us, like I can just I relish in just the the silence of just being one other person around and yeah, uh that's it. And yeah, so it's it's been um it's been a mix, I think. It has been intense. We've never we've never spent that much time with anyone else ever, pretty much in our marriage.

Chris: 1:01:56

No, we were talking about that a couple of weeks back, weren't we? That this since we got married, this has been the longest time we've lived with others in a sort of shared living space.

Claire: 1:02:06

I mean we did live with your parents when we first got married for a while, but beyond that, yeah, there's been no other That was 20 years ago.

Chris: 1:02:12

Yeah. Uh longer than that. Uh and then for me the other side of things, and Yula felt the same but in a different way. And for me, I'm an extrovert, so I'm quite opposite to you, and I d my batteries can be recharged by being around groups, being around activity and busyness. So that that for me was a lot easier. But what I do find hard, and Yula found hard for different reasons, is uh working that out in a marriage. So, how do I care for you when I know you need and long for solitude and quiet and just the two of us? That's quite hard to manage in the same way that you're pushing yourself beyond comfort levels in order to be sociable, to be in that group setting, no doubt, for the sake of your husband, so your husband can enjoy extrovert activity.

Claire: 1:02:59

Yeah, but also you not getting to the point of feeling like you need to fix it and sort it if you can't, and then getting frustrated with the situation because that doesn't help anybody. Yeah. So it's a sort of a yeah, it's a both way thing. How have you felt? Because even extroverts need their own time. It's not like an extrovert can be with somebody all day, every day and be fine.

Chris: 1:03:19

Yeah, and that side of things I've not wrestled with too much. I think what what has been a challenge for us and is taking more conversation, perhaps, than we were expecting. No, I don't know, we always expect to we always like going deep. We've talked about that many times, how we go on holiday and we go deep into stuff. We didn't have that opportunity, I think, so we're we're continually having to change and manage expectations of what this trip is. I'm sure you'll have your own thoughts on that. I think for me, even this time, having lived with Dave and Tracy for four and a half weeks and then moving into this Airbnb for ten nights. I think on the one hand, I suddenly thought, okay, let's go wild. This is our time, let's go out, let's explore. Um, really fortunate to have Dave and Tracy's Ute, so we've got their car, so we can go out. So I sort of come thinking, okay, let's go and just be very selfish in what we're gonna do in our own time, our own thoughts. We'll eat when we want, we'll see what we want, we'll visit where we want, let's go. Whereas your side of things would be more like, let's stop. We've got that time now to be still, to be quiet. Uh, and I found that's probably been the hardest thing for me to try and recognise, and that sent me into considering even to the point of considering childlessness, of when things are not quite as you would want them to be, when there are difficult things to difficult bits of work to do, the lack of distractions that we have has is quite hard for me. Um and I think that's one of the biggest things that childlessness does, that it removes distractions from your adult life. Uh as I compare our lives with friends' lives, that no matter how they're doing or feeling, no matter how well or unwell they are, they have to get on with stuff for the sake of the kids, whether that's school or entertainment, whether that's activity, eating, all of that sort of stuff can be quite dominated by the distraction of the children. Uh not having that means that suddenly, yeah, when we come away as a two for ten days on our own, suddenly it's okay, we're on our own. And there's nothing to distract me from unwanted feeling. So I've been doing a lot of thinking and wandering around, just processing my own emotions. Uh, and yeah, I mean you've probably got stuff you could talk into about expectations and managing those.

Claire: 1:05:52

Yeah, I think like we said before, it's it's been a trip that's had to keep changing, and um we've had to sort of think about what do you want to do, what do you want to see, do we fit this in? Sometimes at the expense of maybe just chilling out and spending time here and um yeah, it's been a constant back and forth, I think, with compromise, because there's been four people involved, so also it's trying to work out what everybody would like to do all the time. You can't be selfish about things, which like you said, when you get this time just the two of us, we could then be be a bit more selfish perhaps and just decide to do something without having to factor in other people's needs. Um but yeah, I do th and I do think like the first day we had when I was just like, I just need some time to be, just to not be constantly doing stuff and be busy. I do think that probably sent you into a bit of a funk. But not because we'd stopped, just because you had to confront some stuff that you were facing and feeling and going through. And I think your default might be to distract yourself and to do stuff and to be busy. I think at the end of the day you feel good, it's like I've done something, tick, that's gone well, I've achieved something. Whereas I don't know whether when you don't have that, you do have to sit and think about things, and I don't think we always want to do that. Um there's some stuff I could sit and think about that I probably don't want to sit and think about, but probably should. Um but I think when I allow space, I just find myself thinking more about you know life and what we're doing and what the future might look like, what am I happy with, what am I not happy with, what could I change, how could I change it? I think it's all good stuff that is easier to do here than it is once we get back home. So I'm quite keen to create space for that and just allow that to happen. But um yeah, I mean I think the childless thing is something that's just always gonna be it's always gonna be there. No or not many experiences are not tainted by it in in some way, shape or form. I think whether it's watching kids enjoy animals or even when we were holding the koala, I remember thinking to myself, oh this feels really special. Like I'm I love that this thing is just holding on to me and wants to be here right now, and it's so small and minute, but I just thought if this was a child, like most people would take that for granted. Most parents who've got a toddler that wants to hold on to them are seeing it as probably a bit of a pain, annoying. Why can't you walk? Like, you're too hot, you're too big for this. There's come a point where it's just a pain, but there would have been early times when that child held on to them for the first time when it would have been a really special moment. So I just think of things like that, and I just think, oh yeah, I've never had anything really. I mean I've held friends' children's before, but that's not the same because they want their mum most of the time. Um I've never had that, I've never had something that wants to be with me, or you know, we learn all this stuff about animals, and it's so interesting and exciting, and there's no one to pass that on to. There's nobody there that I can say I can share that keenness with and educate them about that and help them, you know, be respectful of nature. I see so many parents that just seem to just encourage kids to just do whatever, like you know, push to the front of the cube, make sure you get seen, make sure you get this, or you bang on that glass to see if it'll come to you, you know, all this kind of stuff. I'd love to have taught kids about nature in general and animals and how to do that respectfully. Um even how you like when we went to the pelican feeding, we got there 15-20 minutes early, and there were benches, and we got a real nice bench, so we got a really good view of the pelican feeding, and the volunteer arrive and she's talking to us about the pelicans and she's building up to the feeding, and then like 10 minutes into it, this woman just lets her two kids just like push right in front of me up against the barrier. So I'm sat down, so this child's my head height, so it's completely blocked my view, blocked any photos I want to take, and then when it came to the feeding, they were just crying out like me, me, me, I want to do it, I want to do it, and then they did two lots of they had two lots of fish to feed, and even stuff like that. I'm just like everyone would say to me, Well, that's the priority, isn't it? It's a child. The child should get to see the animal feeding up close, and there's part of me that just feels really bitter about that because I kind of want to be like, No, I got here early for this, move aside. Like child, get get lost. They weren't even polite, there was nothing, and they were talking, they arrived and they just started talking the whole time in a different language, so I couldn't hear what she was saying, and everything in me was just getting more and more annoyed. I just thought, if I had my own kids, this wouldn't be happening because my own kids would be stood there. I wouldn't mind that. I'd want to help them see it and share the experience. I'd tell them to shut up because other people are trying to listen. I wouldn't tell them to shout for the food two two or three times. I'd say let the other kids have some, you know, you there's so much stuff you sit there and you just think, I want to I want to be teaching somebody about kindness and about waiting and about the fact that life is not all about you and politeness and manners. Yeah. All the stuff I just would like to have passed on or taught in some way, shape, or form to create a lovely adult human just won't ever happen. And so even things like that, it just is constantly there's something there that is like t pressing on a button of something you can't do or you're not part of, or that you have to step back from because it's more important for you know, all that kind of stuff. So I'm I'm still processing what does that look like for the rest of my life? How do you hold that tension of either feeling sad or frustrated about a situation but not wanting to be that way?

Chris: 1:11:19

Yeah, so do you think that's do you think there'll ever be an endpoint to that, or is that just a that's uh ongoing processing and I don't think there'll be an endpoint to that sort of sadness, but it did clarify for me, like with the podcast.

Claire: 1:11:31

I often think about the podcast and I think, oh, you know, I want people to learn about grief, want them to know what it feels like, and educate grief, but actually our main listener the the hope was it wasn't really people learning about grief. We'd love that to happen, but let's face it, not many people want to learn about grief, they're not going through it. Why would they? The main I think audience for our podcast are those people who just carry grief all the time, like there's a little bit of it that will always be there, and I don't mean like you know, your healthy grieving where maybe you lose a parent and it's sad and you grieve it for a few years and it will be there with you, but it doesn't affect your day-to-day life. You know, it's just it's one of those things that happens and it happens to everybody, which will be some people's experience of grief. But it's about the people who something happens, and it could still be a parent, but it's probably more likely to be something traumatic that happened, or it happened early, or they lost a child, or they lost a loved one to suicide, or they lost a grandchild, or something happened that should never have really happened in the order of things how you'd like them to be, and that is a grief that affects them every day, and it won't ever fully leave them to a degree because I think that's our audience, people who've been through something, and that could also be obviously not a bereavement, could be loss of a career or an identity, it could be loss of health, all the stuff we deal with, but it affects you every day.

Chris: 1:12:50

Um learning to live in that tension, yeah. Learning to live with it. If you have to have one at a time, you can live holding a bit of both the joy as well as the sorrow.

Claire: 1:13:00

Because it has affected you and it has shaped you and it has changed your identity that much. And I think people on the outside looking in who haven't experienced that, they've just experienced griefs that have been sort of more normal and natural in the way of life, probably don't fully understand what that feels like. I've lost grandparents and I loved my grandparents. And there's times when I miss them and I look back and I think of memories and stuff, and it's a little sad. But it was in the order of things, it doesn't affect me day to day. It might occasionally crop up, and you think, oh, I miss my someone else talking about it. I would say that's a more normal grief. It's there, it doesn't affect me a lot. Childlessness is something that will always affect me a lot. No matter how I deal with it, I'm learning how to deal with it. If I'm learning to be okay with it and hold it and find joy in it, I'm still learning how to do that all the time. So I think it just clarifies for me again who our listeners are and who who's most likely to stick with a podcast like this. And it's those people. And so how can we help those? So I'm sort of starting thinking about that as well going forwards. What does it look like? How do we serve them? It sounds healthy. Yeah, it's good. That's what that's what time and space allows. It allows me to reflect on stuff like that. But you don't do that when you're in the treadmill of life just going along.

Chris: 1:14:13

No. But that does bring out the the side in me that's sort of just come on, get on with it. Yeah, put your socks up. It's alright, time to um time to you know chin up, all that sort of stuff.

Claire: 1:14:26

Yeah, I don't have that.

Chris: 1:14:27

No, you don't have that.

Claire: 1:14:28

Well I have that voice, I know it's out there, and I hear it from other people, but I no longer bow to the pressure of that anymore because I've tried that and it doesn't work.

Chris: 1:14:37

I don't know where that's come from. Is it nature? Is it nurture?

Claire: 1:14:40

It's Britain. We're a nation of get on with it. Pull your socks up.

Chris: 1:14:44

Since the war.

Claire: 1:14:45

Yeah, pretty much.

Chris: 1:14:46

Keep calm and carry on.

Claire: 1:14:47

And there is a degree of that that I do think is is good. I'm not gonna let this I'm not gonna let this, you know, sink me, you know, I and we need that. We do need a level of yes, this is bad, it'll be me with me for every day, it's shaped who I am, I'm not gonna be the same person, I'm not who I thought I'd be, it's changed expectations, blah blah blah. But I'm gonna find a way to work with that and move forward, and I'm determined to have hope and joy and love and all the good things in my life. So I do think you need a bit of that. That's not a bad thing, but it's not good if it dismisses all the pain and the hurt and makes out that you should just move on and forget that. That's not good. You need to deal with it before you can do that. And so you there is a degree of it immediately.

Chris: 1:15:30

So working rather than wallowing.

Claire: 1:15:32

Yeah. I did a whole, I can't what it was called, I did a whole blog on it where I was just sort of oh, is grief if is grief selfish? That was it. Because it's all about us, isn't it? And our sadness. It's not really even about the person we lost, it's about how we feel. So is it a selfish thing? And I think in that I looked at it and like, yeah, it can be if we let it. There's a degree where it can become all about us and we let it sink us, and it can all be bad, but on the whole, it isn't, for however many reasons. I just went into that as a topic. So I think, yeah, there's a danger there that it could get like that. Anyway, this has gone on way longer than we thought.

Chris: 1:16:04

Yeah, well, anything more to say on that before we move on to what's coming up?

Claire: 1:16:08

No, I don't think so.

Chris: 1:16:09

Great. Well, the biggest thing about what's coming up, two things. One is we've got just one week left before we return to the UK.

Claire: 1:16:18

Yeah.

Chris: 1:16:22

Uh and then as I head back to work, uh, after this massive long nine weeks away from that routine. So that's a big thing, and then Christmas.

Claire: 1:16:31

Christmas. It's so weird that Christmas is kicking on.

Chris: 1:16:34

Just not right that it's 37 degrees outside and there's Christmas songs on the radio.

Claire: 1:16:39

It's odd.

Chris: 1:16:40

It's very odd. And we're planning a trip into Perth to look at the Christmas illuminations and there's Christmas decorations being put up, and you see Christmas trees in homes, and I'm in shorts, and it's hot and sweaty.

Claire: 1:16:54

I need to convince Chris to have a mince pie. Now it's December, I'm allowed to, so I'm saying we have your first mince pie on the beach in the heat and make it a memorable experience.

Chris: 1:17:03

Well, it's Monday the first of December. If we were if this was a normal year in Brockworth, you'd have probably this last weekend bought a Christmas tree. Oh yeah, definitely. And it would be up by now. Definitely.

Claire: 1:17:14

First as soon as I can get it up within December.

Chris: 1:17:17

I know from what we hear from all our friends and family in the UK it's been cold, it's been very wet, it's been beautiful cold mornings, but there's been lots of horrible wet days as well. So it's probably feeling a bit more December-y. Yeah. Uh but it's gonna it's gonna hit us hard to get back when we do, heading towards the middle of December, and I know when we get off the plane at Heathrow Airport, and you feel that sort of as the doors open, you step into the tunnel, and there's just that, oh my word.

Claire: 1:17:48

I think it's really interesting because you said to me, like, whenever we go on holiday, no matter how long it's been, and three weeks has been our maximum holiday, I've never wanted to come home. I'm never ready to come home. And so I was really interested with this amount of time, would I be ready to come home? Because this is a long time, it's like seven weeks away or whatever. And I'm not ready to go home. I I'm I'm totally happy, I could keep doing this forever. But on the other side of the coin, I am missing things from home that I never thought I would say. Like the cold a little bit. I I have worked out that I could not live in a hot country that's hot all year round. I have no interest in that. I miss the varying temperatures, even though I don't want I sound like I just want like the perfect country, but um I wouldn't want this all the time. And and Australia doesn't have this all the time, but Singapore does, and other places we've been to, and I've decided that I wouldn't want that. I do like the cold. I do miss wearing a jumper, I miss wearing socks and jeans, I miss lighting candles and having hot bars. I mean I have been having baths anyway, but even in this temperature I think would be a bit too much for me. There's a lot of things about home, and now we're going home, and I get the best of all that, which is Christmas, with the lights and putting that up in the tree, and I am quite looking forward I'm looking forward to going back and experiencing all that and the cold and my like hats and scarves and gloves. I kind of miss that stuff, which I never thought I would say, but at the same time, I'm I could easily not go home. I'm not like ready to go home, but the fact we're going into Christmas, I'm quite pleased about. If we were going back into January, I think I'd have found that a bit more kind of like because January, February is a bit of a it's a bit of a nothing month waiting for spring in my opinion. You kind of know it's coming, but it can still be really cold and wet and um but yeah I think going back and going straight into Christmas I think is a really nice thing. If I've got to go back from a holiday, then that's a good thing to do. That's a good time to go. Yeah. Okay. And I think feeling the cold is gonna be quite good. This is when you're gonna do all your processing, and I'll be just running around.

Chris: 1:19:44

So distracted by 20 lights.

Claire: 1:19:48

No, not at all.

Chris: 1:19:49

Yeah, I appreciate that.

Claire: 1:19:50

Anyway, we will discuss it. And our next episode will be the chatty Christmas catch-up that we always do, which will explore how we are, where we are with life, how do we feel about Christmas, and I think in this time, this episode, it's gonna be about that transition. What has that been like running from hot to cold and then straight into Christmas and settling back into our house? And we've had people staying in our house while we were away. So that's gonna be like weird because we haven't really had that before. So we're gonna get back to our house, which it will be lovely because it hasn't been shut up for nine weeks, cold and soulless. It will be like lived in, which will be great, but at the same time, we've got to then very quickly get all the Christmas stuff out and sort that out. So, yeah, we'll see what that all that ends up being like.

Chris: 1:20:32

Uh, and we'll have had two more nights in Singapore before then as well. Yeah, we've got two more nights in the sweaty hits. A little bit more of Western Australia to see, two more nights in Singapore, then back on the flight. Wondering who we'll sit next to this time. This time. In our row of three seats.

Claire: 1:20:49

Already thinking about our next guest, whoever you are, looking forward to meeting you. We had hoping it's not the guy that you sat next to when we flew from Singapore to Perth. He wasn't having a conversation, was he? He was a very grumpy German gentleman who oh, grumpy German gentleman who uh Well I think that's a bit harsh.

Chris: 1:21:05

I don't think he was that grumpy.

Claire: 1:21:07

Uh he had a bit of a grumpy face. And he kept trying to sleep, which is just annoying when he's the one trapping you in for the toy.

Chris: 1:21:12

We're too polite for long time for you to say. We're not good at it. Sorry, sorry, excuse me excuse me, sorry, can you really and that's after you've held you've held on for as long as you possibly can. Can't get out, can't get out. Anyway.

Claire: 1:21:27

Yeah, thank you for listening if you've joined us and you're still here this far. Yeah, we will be back soon. Uh normally I would give you all the social medias to go and look at. Do please follow us because it is really helpful and encouraging, but at the moment I haven't done much on there. So um yeah, there's not much to say at the moment, but I will be back into that once we get back.

Chris: 1:21:45

One one of the things actually I was thinking a bit earlier today, in fact, was about how much this experience is making me appreciate more the generosity that we have of friends and family that we know and the friends that we don't know so well as well. And that includes even on this podcast, you know, the generosity of those that support you through buymeacoffee.com. Yeah. That's really, really appreciated. It encourages us, yeah, particularly you, it helps finance the podcast.

Claire: 1:22:10

Yeah, huge thank you to everybody who supports it in any way. It can be financially, but it can be just sharing it with a friend. I've got a friend that likes to just tell even her therapist about our podcast, stuff like that. It's amazing. It can really get to the right people, and that's the key thing. And liking stuff on social media, it's so encouraging to get a few likes. It's so hard out there to get likes on anything, so yeah, anything like that. We're on most social media. So if you're on there, find us. And um also Herman, we've brought Herman with us on this trip. So I've posted a few videos and photos of him enjoying some of the beaches and the road trips. So you can check him out at the Herman Company on Instagram. He's only on Instagram, but um, there's some of that stuff going on there as well. So, yeah, thank you if you've liked, shared, followed, supported, donated, whatever. It's um very gratefully received.

Chris: 1:22:58

Thesilentwhy.com is the website where you can find all that sort of detail, plus read up on us, our story, past episodes.

Claire: 1:23:06

Yeah, we've got detailed episode three is all about us talking about childlessness in detail, what we went through and where we got to. So if you're new to us and want to hear about that, check out episode three and all my blogs are on the website as well, which explore different areas of grief and stuff. And I've got lots more thoughts on new ones of those as well, which is exciting for the new year. And yeah.

Chris: 1:23:24

And if you've got anything you want us to talk about re-Christmas, if you've got any memories, childhood or adulthood, if you've got any thoughts, any themes that you think would be really nice for us to talk about questions regarding Christmas, we can ask you. Then let us know. Email italantwightgmail.com or contact through social media. It'd be great to have some topics for discussion.

Claire: 1:23:44

Yeah, and a goodbye from currently today the hottest place in Australia.

Chris: 1:23:48

It is, yeah. We saw the map on the TV news this morning and the West Coast, Perth and and upwards was the hottest location in Australia.

Claire: 1:23:57

Yeah, there we go.

Chris: 1:23:58

Alright, see you soon.

Claire: 1:23:59

Yeah. Bye.