Borneo Mar-Apr '05 Orangutans & Jungle camp

Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary

We left Poring for the Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary, to see semi-wild orangutans. This is actually a rehabilitation centre for orphaned, and injured orangutans, and is set in one of the last existing pieces of natural jungle habitat. The Borneo orangutan's habitat has been cleared at an alarming rate to make way for Palm plantations, as Palm oil is the regions biggest export - so you will see Palm trees everywhere - but don't be mistaken - they are NOT part of the national environment in Borneo.

We stayed at a backpackers place, Sepilok Jungle Resort. The place was set in nice gardens and had a great communal restaurant, bar area, even if the bathrooms were pretty gross and the rooms very basic.

There were two times each day that they feed the orangutans and you can watch from the viewing area. We went first thing the next morning and saw lots of "men of the jungle" up close. Their antics are so human-like, it's obvious they are our ancestors. Check out the photo of the one which had just picked his nose, and yes, you guessed it, in the next shot you see him eating it!! Just like a kid would do. There were also some cheeky macaque monkeys coming for the free bananas too.

The grounds around the Sepilok Jungle Resort had lots of beautiful flowers. Everything grew well as there was a lot of rain and sunshine. It was really humid when we were there in early April.

Kinabatagan River Jungle Camp

We'd made friends with some English travellers at the Sepilok Jungle Resort and they talked us into going to Uncle Tan's Jungle Camp on the Kinabatagan River. It's a remote area that's only accessible by boat (1 hr trip up river) and you stay in a primitive jungle camp right in the jungle. Although we were keen to get to the Sipidan Is for our diving adventures, this sounded too good to pass up. While most people go for 2 nights, we decided to just do the 1 night in the jungle so as to give us enough time for our diving. We hated being on a tight schedule and wished we were carefree travellers as our English buddies were. Ahhh, they were the good old days....

We nearly didn't get to our jungle camp as it was pouring rain all the night before and all day the day were departing. In the afternoon, it looked like easing, so we donned our raincoats and boarded our little boats up the Kinabatagan River to our next home away from home.

After unpacking at the camp (yep it was primitive) and claiming a smelly mattress and dirty mosquito net for yourself, we had dinner and donned our rubber boots and set out by torchlight for our night time river safari. We were on the hunt for the proboscis monkey - that funny looking thing with the unfortunately super large nose, and only found in Borneo. And sadly like most wildlife, rapidly decreasing in numbers. We saw a few of them by spotlight. Our guide pointed out lots of creatures (noticing their shining eyes in the dark) including an owl and other nocturnal things that'd we'd have never noticed.

After breakfast, we jumped back in the boats the next morning for another trip up the river to spot wildlife. Here's some pics of the proboscis monkey and other monkeys and birds we saw.

After the Jungle Camp we headed off to the Sipadan Is - refer to that post (note it's out of date order, but check for the title).

Borneo Mar-April 05 Mt Kinabalu

Mt Kinabalu, Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia

After settling into Perth, we were craving another adventure holiday, so we took off to Sabah, one of the Malaysian areas on the island of Borneo, for 2 weeks. Our first activity was to hike to the top of Mt Kinabalu, 4095mt. It's no where near as high as Mt Kilimanjaro in Africa, but this meant we could do it in 1.5 days. It was still a nice little challenge - especially the down part - whoa, our quads were sore for 3 days after! In fact as we continued our journey around Sabah, we could pick the others who'd recently hiked Kinabalu as they too were also hobbling around like they were 100 years old.

We stayed the night before the hike in the Kinabalu National Park which we pre-booked thru Sutera Sanctuary Lodges. As it was Easter when we were going to be hiking, accommodation was pretty tightly booked. Bookings in advance are required for most times of the year as over 40,000 people hike the Mt each year.

The National Park is beautiful in itself - lots of hiking trails, lush, tropical vegetation, streams etc. And of course the gorgeous Mt looming in the distance.

We shared our guide (compulsory for the hike) with a honeymooning couple from Melbourne, and 9:00 am the next day, we started out on the way up to Laban Rata where we would spend our next night (well half of it) on the mountain.

Going up!

We arrived at Laban Rata at about 2pm that afternoon - pretty good time and our legs were feeling good. We were only carrying daypacks, so had fairly light loads. Got some nice sunset photos from the main lodge, had dinner and a beer and chatted to other hikers from all over the world. We went to bed early (8:30 pm) as we had a 1 am wake up time and 2am departure for the top.

Sunset and an early morning departure to the summit.

Sean and I arrived at the summit (4095 mts) just before sunrise (about 6 am), so we sheltered from the wind until the sun rose. While waiting we saw this awesome storm happening below us - with lightening, dark clouds and rain. And to the east was the rising sun and to the west was the fading moon. We felt like God sitting on top of his beautiful world, above the clouds and watching everything going on as a new day dawned. That was was my most memorable, awe-inspiring moment of the hike.

Going up the ropes. dawn breaking on the summit. ahhh we made it to the top. Above the clouds.

What goes up must come down.

It took us 6 hrs to get back down to the same gate that we left the National Park from. There were 1000s of steps, all unevenly spaced, so we definitely loved having our hiking sticks. Neither of us could remember this many steps on the way up! My quads were burning, but at least after this mountain I kept all my toe nails!

After we collected our luggage (which we'd left at the Park headquarters) we hopped a bus to the Poring hotsprings about an hour and bit away. They were disappointing - we thought we'd be soaking our aching muscles in these natural hot springs, but instead it was these dirty old tiled baths with taps that you had to turn on for the water and wait for them to fill up (and many of them didn't work). Being the Easter holiday, all the locals were there soaking in their underwear - eeeewww!

Nov-Dec 2004 Perth

November 2004

We spent this month, getting to know Maddy, walking her along the river (we had to teach her to walk on a leash first), and introducing her to our family and friends. We're still having so much fun with her and can't imagine how we lived without her. Yep, we've turned into those "strange dog people", who treat their dogs like children etc.

Here's looking at ya! Maddy & Sean

Christmas 2004 was the first Christmas all my immediate family (mum, dad, brother and sister were together in 10 years! And even better was that our then 91 year old Gran joined us. She came to our house in a wheel chair taxi and had a great time playing Dirty Santa with everyone. My aunt Colleen, Uncle Vinko and Melissa and Rich also celebrated Christmas with us at our home. It was nice to host it at our place.

Sean and Maddy again. Maddy Christmas day

Group pic: Claudia (w/Maddy), Dad, Ray, me and Gran

Between Christmas and NY we went camping with friends down at the Blackwood River. Our first camping trip since Calif and it was nice to be back among nature.

Camping gang.

Jan 2, 2005 - Southbound Festival, Busselton

Kaz, Mick, Guy, Shiney and Sean. MGF on stage

Aug - Oct 2004

The Avon Descent is a 134 km paddling (and dinghy) event on the Avon and Swan Rivers.

It starts early on the Avon River in Northam (about 1 hr drive from Perth) on the Saturday and ends in the Swan River in Bassendean, Perth the next afternoon (for paddlers anyway). We were support crew for paddling buds and legends in their own kayaks, Adrian and Guy (see the pic).

This involved scrambling down river banks with energy-laden goodies such as rice cream pudding, bananas, Powerbars, trail mix and chocolates. We met them roughly every 2-3 hrs each day of the event. We all camped in Toodyay on the Saturday night. The paddlers had an early, booze free night, but the support crew didn't and were a bit slow off the mark the following day.

Kaz and Lou support crew getting ready - sort of. Guy in action

Made it!

Guy at the finishing line. Yes Adrian lived, but was timed out by just 2 mins at the last pull out - bummer!

My cousin Penny also completed the race, just 2 mins ahead of Guy - go girl!

A miner 49er - Sean starts work with Rio Tinto in corporate finance.

Sean started his new job (and career) with Rio Tinto, the world's largest mining company. He works in a corporate finance/contracts role. He goes up to site (usually near Mt Newman) a few times a year. Here's some pics from his 1st trip there.

Disco Fever!

Our living room transformed into the dancing saloon

We had a housewarming party in September - even though we still didn't have any of our furniture or things from the US yet. As we had a house full of fabulous 70's inspired (or the real thing) 2nd hand stuff, we figured go with what you've got - so we had a 70's themed party and saved a bundle on not having to decorate the house!

Kaz with appertisers Philip, Clack & Carol . Mel & Adrian. Far out, it's Richo and Kylie! (Clockwise from top left)


Kristy & Matt Lisa & Shiney Guy & Lou Ash with Lilli and Sean (Clockwise from top left)

On the long weekend at the end of Sept, Kaz, Sean and I did a 2 night, 3 day backpacking trip on the Bibbulmun Track. This track runs for over 900kms from the hills of Perth all the way to Albany in the south of Western Australia. We covered about 65 kms over the 3 days and met some very nice people in the huts that we stayed in. I hope to eventually do the entire track - but that will take a while.

Accommodation on the track Kaz and Lou trekkin' Kaz in the kitchen (Clockwise from top left)

Welcome to our lives, Maddy! Our beloved Boston Terrier

Ever since falling in love with this dog in California, we've known it's the pet we wanted as soon as we had a home with a backyard (the condo in Calif was just not enough space to keep a dog in). My search for a Boston in Australia took 10 mths and loads of emails to breeders all over the country. Finally our prayers were answered and we adopted Missy (as she was then named) from a breeder in Perth. We renamed her Madison with Maddy for short. She was already one year old. We didn't mind that she was 2nd hand! We are still madly in love with her - and take her almost everywhere we go. You'll see a lot more of her as the years roll on in this blog.

Love at 1st sight - at her old home 1st day at her new home