Australia, the land of Vegemite, boomerangs and the final destination on our overland trip. We had planned to drive through Pakistan, India, China and into Southeast Asia, and then on to Oz. However, due to visa issues and a fire under our car we diverted to the UAE and from there shipped our Land Rover to Malaysia. After three months in Asia driving around Thailand, Laos and Malaysia it was time to pack the car into another container, wave it goodbye and send it off to Fremantle, which is on the west coast of Australia near the city of Perth.
We arrived in Perth ahead of the car and as soon as we landed and checked into our hostel it became apparent that Australia was going to cost us a lot of money.
Due to the weakness of the British pound and the strength of the Aussie dollar we were going to be lucky to stay within the $100 a day budget we had set ourselves- even our ‘cheap’ hostel was around $90 a night, something a poor English Land Rover owner can ill afford to pay for the three weeks that we were waiting for the car. So we checked out after a day or two and waited for the car to arrive in the comfort of a room we rented off a Singaporean student who was looking to make a little extra cash by letting a bedroom in her flat.
The car arrived about two weeks later and after a long and agonizing wait to see if it would be let in the by the country’s rather strict quarantine inspection chaps, we went along to the dock to pick her up. Unfortunately she looked in a sad and sorry state, as in order to get the car into the container in Bangkok the shipper had to let the front tires down to reduce the car’s height and scrape it under the roof of the container. The front tires were totally flat and had to be pumped up before we could go anywhere but luckily the battery wasn’t flat and we managed to pump them up with our onboard air compressor and get the car started without too much fuss. And that was it, within a matter of minutes we were driving our car on the other side of the world, heading out of Perth for a trip around the entire coast line, ending up back at Perth in six months time.
Well that was the plan, but that plan had changed within a week. The reason? because Australia is big, very big, much bigger than either of us had thought, in fact it’s massive. The distances between petrol stations, let alone villages or towns can be hundreds of kilometers and we were simply not prepared for the long drives, largely bacause anything more than four hours in a Land Rover leads to semi-permanent deafness and heat exhaustion. We put in our first destination and our GPS informed us that it would take seven hours to get there! Umm maybe we would have to have a little re-think… To drive all the way round Australia would mean driving pretty much every day, which would also mean we would miss experiencing Australia and would only see it from the window of a car, something we did not want. Not to mention the cost of the fuel, which alarmingly was around the $1.50 mark a litre, so a new plan was quickly drawn up, and like all good plans it was drawn up on the back of napkin at a motorway service station just south of Perth. We would drive south from Perth, along the south coast to the east coast, then up the east coast to the most northern point on the continent, Cape York. From there we would head back south to Brisbane and ship the car home, back to the UK in August so I could start work again.
So with the new plan agreed upon we set off on a 12,000 mile road trip along beaches, up mountains, through rainforests, over deserts and dodged traffic in big cities. Australia sure does have a lot to offer the overlander; so many different landscapes to explore. It has taken around four months to drive form Perth to Cape York and of course I can’t do all we have seen and visited justice in this article but the following is a whistle stop recap of our travels around this mighty continent.
Perth has the reputation of the most isolated city in the world and after driving only 50kms from the centre we could well believe that. It just ends, there’s nothing, just a few road houses, the occasional farm and a random kangaroo or two. However, we enjoyed this feeling of isolation and after the madness of SE Asia it was a bit of a relief. The beaches in this part of the world are simply stunning, all along the entire south coast they were empty, mile upon mile of awesome sand, totally deserted. Not very many people live down here as the vast majority of the population live on the east coast, so all this lovely coast is totally undeveloped and a haven for those seeking a get away from it all. We loved it.
The road from west to east crosses a vast area of nothingness known as the Nullabor plain. There is very little water here so not a lot grows and there is even less wildlife and vegetation than south of Perth, but due to some crazy weather at the beginning of the year the Nullabor has seen a lot of rain and this has resulted in the vast plains turning green, not at all like the dry, arid desert we were expecting. It takes a good four days to cross the Nullabor, stopping only to sleep in the campsites at petrol stations and to top up fuel. It is also home to Australia’s longest stretch of straight road, and at 146.6 kms it seems to go on forever. I have never been so desperate to see a corner in my life! Out of the Nullabor and we took a couple of weeks to make it to Adelaide and back to proper civilization, stopping off to look at one of the many highlights of this trip, the Flinders Ranges. It was here that we learnt just how friendly the Aussies are. We were contacted by a lovely couple through our blog, who invited us to come and stay for a couple of days on their vineyard. After camping for three weeks it was a welcome change and great to sleep on a proper bed again. In fact, all the way around Australia we have had generous offers to stay with people, people we have never met before. It’s strange to us coming from London, where no one seems to smile or say hello, but people throughout the rest of the world are frequently incredibly friendly.
After a couple days in Adelaide spent resting and trying to trap a mouse that had been hitching a lift and eating our food we pushed on towards Melbourne, Melbourne and the cold. We realized that we would be driving around Australia in winter but we didn’t realize jut how cold it would be; it got down to three degrees one night! It didn’t stop us from enjoying the scenery in the southeast of Oz, which again is amazing. The Great Ocean Road runs along the coast towards Melbourne and is a great tourist draw due to the picturesque rock formations just off the coast.
We spent a couple of wintry wet nights in Melbourne and then headed ever onward towards the capital, Canberra. This is a purpose built city in the middle of nowhere purely for the purpose of government. It’s well laid out and although many of the buildings are offices or government related it had some awesome museums and very interesting guided tours around the new and old parliament houses.
Sydney came and went very quickly, luckily we had friends there which was great, as it meant another free place to stay for a couple of nights and some great home cooked meals. Sydney to Brisbane was a bit of blur due to the cold weather, so it was a case of drive, camp, drive until the weather got warmer! In Brisbane it finally did and after once again staying with some friends we headed northward at a more sedate pace. Fraser Island, just north of Brisbane is the largest sand island in the world and a 4×4 mecca. You have to catch a ferry across to the island, where there are no surfaced roads and you’re able drive on the beach and on the forest tracks as much as your heart desires. We spent a good couple of days doing some proper off roading, and after the lessons we learnt in the deserts just outside Dubai we managed to avoid getting stuck, a rather major achievement and one that I’m quite proud of. We camped on the beach and were awoken each morning by the sound of the waves and breakfast was taken at the water’s edge. Not a bad way to start the day.
From Fraser Island we hugged the coast and finally entered the tropics. The need for jeans and long sleeve tops was finally banished and the shorts and t-shirts dusted off and put on. This was reef country and we stopped off at some of the sea side towns along the coast to sunbathe and do some snorkeling on the Great Barrie Reef. It took about a month of pottering before we finally entered the Cape York peninsular, and you know that you have as the tarmac finishes! Nothing but mile upon mile of dusty, corrugated road awaits you. I can’t stress how bad some of the sections of this road are, from water crossings that are around a meter deep on a good day to corrugations that make the car shake and rattle for miles on end. After a very long but enjoyable week we reached the tip of Cape York and the road finished. It had taken its toll on the car (there is currently a lot of gaffer tape and cable ties holding bits of the car together and the list of bits that broke or shook loose is very nearly in double figures) but as we walked to the furthest point you could before getting wet or requiring a visa for Papa New Guinea we wished we had more time and more money to keep our travels going. Any step back towards the car would be a step closer to going home and the world of work, Saturdays in Ikea, and bumper to bumper traffic on the ring road around London. It’s going to a bit of a shock to the system after a whole year of traveling……. but first we have to get back to Brisbane to get the car ready to ship home, and I’m sure we can find time to have a few adventures in the three weeks it’s going to take us to get there! .You can find out more at www.trektooz.com.
