Dear Beast Crew

G’day from down under! Well the past few months have seen us become famous again, Adriano has moved across the continent, the north Queensland coast taking a battering from Cyclone Glenda and the British censors come under fire for the banning of the Australian “Where the bloody hell are you?” advert.

We are proud to launch our Beastly Adventure shop to the rest of the world so that our avid followers in America, Australia, China, Singapore and Russia can all buy a little piece of our adventure and give money to our charities at the same time.   To buy from our shop just follow this link BEASTLY SHOP WORLDWIDE and BEASTLY SHOP EUROPE or go to the charity section of our webpage.  If you have any ideas for designe that you would like to buy then please contact us.

We are on the hunt for sponsorship for the next leg of our trip so if you know of anyone who would like some great coverage and would be mentioned in magazines across the world, please point them in our direction!

February – April 2006

Adriano’s life has been changed dramatically with a move of over 4000 km from one side of Australia to the other.  He left Sydney on the east coast, for Geraldton on the west coast at the beginning of March, a mere 450 km north of Perth.  He is working there under his amazing linguistics guise and writing down the Aboriginal languages of the region before they are lost into the sands of time.  He has to publish several books on the language in the next few months.

Alexis and Greg furthered their Beastly quest within the media by having a photo shoot with Australia’s Overlander magazine who are covering our trip in May’s issue.  Our story “Beast in the Far East” will feature in the May issue of Land Rover Monthly. Alexis and Greg also presented to over 200 people at the Pajero club of Melbourne about their round the world trip.

Alexis was sent to the wonderful Hunter Valley to do some contamination work and ended up spending two weeks enjoying the scenery of the surrounding area with kangaroos bouncing across the arid grasslands.  She spent a day travelling around the area and visited the interesting Burning Mountain National Park.  The Burning Mountain is a mere smouldering pile of ash spewing sulphur.  The amazing thing is that it has been burning for over 5,500 years, possibly started by a strike of lightning.

Alexis organised the Australian Drink Club’s outing to the Yarra Valley Grape Grazing.  We courageously journeyed to the Yarra Valley wine region, 50km northeast of Melbourne, for a day of drinking Victoria’s finest booze.  We endured the hard task of trying the produces of several different vineyards before heading back to Melbourne to stare blankly into the distance and vomit!

During one of our many journeys around Victoria, we stopped off at a museum that pays tribute to one of Australia’s most endangered species, the Gippsland Giant Worm.  The worm is on the world endangered list as it only occupies an area of 50 hectares in the southeast part of Victoria.  Very little is known about it as it is so rare. The worm is enormous, reaching up to 4m in length and is the diameter of a wine bottle cork. Apparently it gurgles as it moves through its burrow which can cover an area of over 25m.

Alexis and Greg went on Deal or No Deal, the new world wide quiz show, with the intent of winning $200,000 but after getting on the stage they were pipped at the post  by another contestant.  The rules are slightly different to the one in the UK, answering questions and you only having one chance to win.  They managed to walk away with another tv show under their belt, but unfortunately no money in the pocket!

The Commonwealth Games has gripped Australia and especially Melbourne where the city has been hosting the games.  There have been a variety of events going on in addition to the sports events.  There were live cook offs, free open air music events, arts events, even a true Aussie beach was constructed in the centre of town.  The sporting events hadn’t quite finish as the Grand Prix screamed into Albert Park, a 5 minute walk from Alexis and Greg’s flat.  The earsplitting Grand Prix had some dramatic crashes and engine explosions with the usual Ferrari supporters and barely clad women – a great day out!

Greg has been busy writing his memoirs of our world trip, spending every waking hour outside of street cafés and bars typing away.  He is now searching for a publisher…. Anyone got any great publishing contacts?  As Greg hasn’t been sponsored whilst here in Australia, he has been forced to leave the country and flee to the tropical island of Fiji to renew his visa!  God, he leads a hard life!

We will be back on the road soon so you will all be subjected to more emails as we leave the antipodeans to travel around south america.  Hasta luego!

Notes on Australia