The dust has settled after a nightmareish time really. In the immediate aftermath of the crash Helen and Rich stayed behind to help us out, and drove us to the nearest police station the next day so a big shout to them. Also a big thanks to the 4 people (2 of whom I didn't get their names...) who stopped by the side of the road and helped us salvage everything we could. Without them passing by (and the South African couple who picked Jen up and took her back to the campsite) a bad night could have been a whole lot worse.

In some of the emails we have got people keep asking 'did you hit the 'roo'...the answer, quite simply, is no. Having said that we are now buying as much kangaroo meat as possible - it tastes a little like a cross between beef and pork btw.

We also get asked 'what about insurance'? Well the 3,000 (UKP) we are paying is only the excess...being backpackers, and needing a cheap campervan rental to get a reasonable excess (say 200 UKP) you have to pay at least 50% on top of the rental price - sometimes up to 100%. Having already taken the insurance out once and not the other time we decided against it this time for purely financial reasons and I guess we were the unlucky ones.

The most difficult thing now is trying to motivate ourselves to do other things as we obviously cannot afford the diving, or, indeed, the long trip up the coast (once bitten and all that...). It's really easy to think of all the ifs...

if we'd picked up the first van at 10am we wouldn't have been driving at dusk
if we'd gone straight to the campsite and not out to the Pinnacles we'd also have been fine
if we'd hired a more expensive and newer van (this one had done over 420,000 km's) it would have had anti-lock brakes and we wouldn't have veared of the road
if we'd taken out more expensive/lower excess insurance...

but then there's the other ifs...

if we'd rolled on the road not the soft sand which took the impact of the roll what would/could have happened?
if we'd hit the 'roo (we had no 'roo bars on the front and the engine was under us not in front...) what would/could have happened?
if there was a car coming the other way what would/could have happened?

So on one hand we're really annoyed about losing the chance to go north, losing a load of cash and possibly losing the opportunity to do certain things on the trip. On the other hand we could both be on the way home in a casket by now, a point vividly illustrated to us on the front page of the yesterday's 'Western Australian' newspaper. The headline 'No Chance' above a picture of a car that crashed into a bridge killing a young couple instantly.

As an friend of ours says 'if my auntie had a moustache she's be my uncle...' and I guess that's what we have to do - it's in the past, it's happened and now let's move on.

In an effort to do so we went to Cash Converters (!) yesterday and bought the cheapest TV we could find. We figured that doing so would mean we wouldn't get bored in the evenings (even though Aussie TV is basically UK TV with strange accents and bad acting), and hey, they'll even buy it back off us for half the price we paid (we paid 130 dollars - about 50 quid for colour TV and aerial) should Qantas not allow us to take it to New Zealand with us. So we're kind of thinking of it as a TV rental cost of about a pound a day - a bargain in every sense of the word. Incidentally the sales assistant looked at me as if I'd escaped from the local asylum when I asked if I needed to buy a licence. 'What for?...A telly? You're kidding mate?'

As I've already said we've changed our plans and aren't going up north any more. After some wrangling with NQ rentals they have given us a new van (they didn't have any of the ones marked 'scabby backpackers vans' and thus tried to charge 20 quid a day 'upgrade fee' for the only van they had available, before I pointed out in their terms and conditions that it says 'if we need to upgrade you we will pay for it' or words to that effect.)

So here we are in the delightful coastal town of Fremantle. It's all 'art deco' buildings (ish) and fancy coffee shops. We had a quick look round yesterday and have come back today (with packed lunch and bottle of squash) to see it when it's a little less crowded. The plan from here is to go out to Rottnest Island tomorrow, and then head south towards Margaret River, through to Albany, doing a tree-top walk or two en route (Walpole) and then back to Perth via Wave Rock and York. We will probably stay in lay-bys every other night but as campsites are pretty cheap (8-10 quid a night) and they have hot showers that may be our biggest outlay. We still have enough money to get to, and do New Zealand fairly effectively we think. At the moment we are trying to sort a little additional funding (donations welcome ;) (!)) which will enable us to do the South America touras planned.

One other thing is that because we are watching our money diary entries will almost certainly become more sporadic (certainly whilst we are camping anyway as few sites have internet access) and we may take a couple of days to respond to emails. If anyone needs to contact us urgently my Aus mobile number is available on the message system for my UK number (!). You can text us on that.