Dear all,

Well – let’s just eat the words from my last email! Our time in travelling the outback of Western Australia ended on Monday with a serious accident in our campervan. We were happily driving along (after seeing dolphins swim by our feet in Shark bay) when Paul swerved to avoid an animal (we don’t think it was a kangaroo?). We ended up rolling the van a couple of times, then landing in a ditch by the roadside facing the opposite way! It was over in seconds, our mood changed from ecstatically happy to total shock, depression and despondence! The van was completely wrecked – windscreens broken, tyres burst, the top of the van was crushed in – it was a miracle that we survived without any serious injuries! We climbed out, our adrenaline running high – the sun was beating down and my first thought was had we got enough water to survive (they tell you to carry 20 litres per person to last up to 4 days) until someone came along to rescue us! Thankfully, an Australian couple came by quite soon after (you can go for hours without seeing another vehicle) and stopped, taking me and the kids back to the nearest village to alert the police!

I never wanted to see another campervan again, so we ended up cutting our Australian travel short. We were 1200kms from Perth – it would have taken several days and gruelling bus journeys to get back to Perth, so in the end we ended up flying from a remote outback airport in a 20 seater plane. That was nearly as hair-raising as the crash itself. The flight was approx. 2 hours and you felt every bump. It’s the first time I’ve needed to reach for the sick bag! We were so relieved to reach the ground, I felt like bursting into tears!

Anyway – we decided to cut our time in Australia short and fly onto New Zealand in the hope that a new country will help us get our confidence back to travel! We’re off to a real ‘Aussie baaarbe’ tonight with some Australian/NZ friends we met in Bali, then we’ll fly to New Zealand tomorrow.

I guess we can’t expect to go travelling round the globe without some disaster – hopefully this’ll be the first and last!

Anyway hope you’re all ok.

Love and best wishes

Jill, Paul, Leala and Benxxxx