1997 Summary

Australia is a great place to go on holiday. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, as I did last time I went. The only problem was that 6 weeks really wasn't long enough.

Western Australia was hard work. Apart from Perth, it seemed that trying to do anything was difficult. The infrequency of the Greyhound bus and the fact that Ansett wouldn't let me fly from any of the airports that I wanted to, made getting around a lot harder than on the east coast. Despite heavy advertising, I don't think WA is really geared up for tourists. On the east coast, backpackers' hostels meet every bus. I was speaking to another traveller, who was going to Geraldton. When he had phoned up a hostel, they said they didn't meet the bus because it arrived at about 2am in the morning. This may not sound unreasonable until you bear in mind that there are only 2 buses a day into Geraldton, one from the north and one from the south. So half of all their potential customers are on the bus they don't meet.

There were a lot of Australian holiday makers in WA. Most of them were in 4WDs, packed with stuff, often towing either a caravan or a boat. They're obviously fairly self-sufficient, so don't require the sort of facilities that a foreign traveller would, which might be why facilities are so poor. Until they get better, I can't see the tourist trade greatly improving there. It's a marked difference from the east coast and the centre, where the organisation seems so much better.

Trying to go diving in WA was also very frustrating. There's a huge coastline with lots of wrecks and coral reefs that are hardly visited. Organising something is so difficult, that you really would need to have it all planned before you got there. I think you'd need to go in a group so that you could book boats directly. There must be a great opportunity for someone to operate safari style diving up the west coast. In 17 days, you could dive all the best spots between Perth and Exmouth, if it was all arranged properly. I'm sure there's money to be made there.

However, apart from one experience, I did enjoy the diving I did there, and there was plenty to see and do. With only 2 weeks on the east coast, and having been there before, I tended not to do many of the more popular excursions. Still there's always next time.

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