Australie met m'n Blondie!

From Christchurch to Melbourne. The 3th part of my trip.

It seems ages ago. But I had such an amazing time with Floor in Australia. There was just no time to write my blog. And after Australia so many things happened. So many people crossed my path. So I will try to go back in time, sitting in a bus (made for very small people, so imagine how comfortable I am) leaving Dumai (Sumatra, Indonesia) behind me to go to Medan, the capital of North-Sumatra and 4th largest city of Indonesia. We will just be passing thru, on our way to Bukit Lawang where we will do a hike to hopefully see ourang oetans. I can’t wait! In Kuala Lumpur I bought a mini laptop, so I will be able to write whenever I’m traveling from one place to another. So there I go!

Australia!

After meeting my mother’s sister and her family in the broken city Christchurch, I took a plane to Melbourne, to meet my cousin Gerrick and his wife Emma. They just got married, a beautiful wedding I attended a month before. I had to wait for a few hours because they were visiting Emma’s parents in the countryside. But I was lucky because Melbourne's yearly International Comedy Festival was going on. So when I arrived on Federation Square I bought my 7-Eleven’s travelers cappuccino (1 dollar, not super good, but drinkable) and sat down to watch a few shows that were pretty good!

The first week in Australia I spend with Gerrick and Emma. Very relaxed days  that started with a perfect coffee in the morning, made by the aeropress! Great invention.

Looking for a location for Gerrick’s new café, dinners with friends like the teppanyaki dinner with our own teppanyaki chef!

A meeting with Celeste and Natra, a couple that I met years ago in Barcelona.

Wandering around the city. Drinking chai tea.

    

    

Walking Dutch.

I had a great time with Gerrick and Emma!!

And then… it was time to go to the Southern Cross station to jump into Floor’s arms! I almost missed her because I was buying my crappy 1 dollar cappuccino but there she was, mijn lieve Blondie! After a few months of traveling it’s very nice to be reunited with friends :)
We spend a few days more with E&G, visited a second hand market on a parking lot in the middle of nowhere, went to a hilarious comedy show from Sammy J and Randy, ate sushi and visited a strange Maori festival in some far away neighborhood.

I got a new haircut from Naomi, a friend of Emma and Gerrick. I love it!

And then our roadtrip started with our beloved Slurpie! A Wicked van painted in pink and purple colors that used more petrol than we would have like to but at least she didn’t have a text on her like: ‘I’m not a gynecologist but I’ll have a look’. The text we drove around with was: ‘Politicians and nappies have one thing in common: they’re both full of shit’. Acceptable…

Slurpie would bring us safely from Melbourne to Melbourne by the Great Ocean Road and National park the Grampians. The GOR is really beautiful! Although i was a bit spoiled after the incredibly beautiful and dramatic west coast of New Zealand. I expected the GOR to be even better. It wasn’t, but we did really enjoy it a lot!

Driving along the coast with the windows open and the ridiculous music for the looooong road (a playlist made by the one and only Buurman, thanks so much!) coming from the speakers. We got a list of free campings, so for the first night we drove up a rocky hill with our 2 wheel drive, not sure of her strength yet. We made it after 15 minutes but we arrived at a totally deserted super simple camping site in the middle of nowhere and weren’t sure if this was the best place for our first night in the van.

But ater seeing our first exotic bird, the kookaburra (Floor couldn't be happier), we decided to stay.

After 30 minutes a police car arrived and asked us what we were doing there and what our plans were. After our explanation he said: ‘I guess you girls will be alright’. Not very promising, but we were about the drink our second plastic glass of wine so again we decided to stay. After the second glass we decided it was time to cook but discovered the gas tank to be empty. The doubtful answer of the policeman and not being able to cook was enough for us to decide that the first night would be on a normal camping next to the sea. So that’s what we did. We found a place and after impossible cooking on a kind of bbq that didn’t serve for the food we bought in the supermarket we went to the beach and watched a beautiful sky filled with stars and slept like baby’s. The next morning Floor woke me up with coffee and eggs ‘on bed’.

From here we moved on to Cape Otway where we saw wild koala’s for the first time! So many! Besides from 1 or 2 ‘active’ ones (read: climbing very very relaxed from one branch to another), koalas seem to be the laziest animals on earth. They don’t even wake up to shit.

This one, leaning against the little branch, we found the next day in the same position. I think he never even moved…

We continued on the GOR with beautiful views like the 12 apostles.

 A less known but just as beautiful view.

 We arrived at national park the Grampians where we saw beautiful sunsets and we did beautiful hikes.

AND we saw (and almost hit) kangaroos!

From the Grampians we returned to Melbourne and had to say goodbye to Slurpie. After saving Slurpie from our total chaos, we took the bus to the airport where we found a poster that must have been made for me. 

We arrived in Brisbane, which is not even worth mentioning. We picked up our new wicked van, a little bit cooler than Slurpie, with silver and green on one side and pink on the other side. She would go through her carlife as Floozy Loozy.  We weren’t sure where to go, but we got the tip to go the sunshine coast so that’s what we did and they could have better named it the deception coast (that actually excist) because for us it was a big disappointment. Very touristy and not really special beaches… So what to do?

Luckily we send a few CS requests in Brisbane and we got a response from Christelle to go to Mullumbimby, close to Byron Bay. So we decided to drive 5 hours south again. And that was the best decision ever because we had a GREAT time at the Arts Factory in Byron Bay, a very nice hostel where they organize a lot of things like workshops, open mic’s, bands, etc. And we stayed for a few days with Christelle and her son William in their beautiful home.

If I could ever live in a house like this….

After more or less a week it was time to move on again. The next stop would be Frasier Island, considered to be the biggest sand island in the world. You can only go there in a four wheel drive and that’s what we did for 3 days.

We were with a group of 32 people and a guide, Kevin. The song that suited the cruisy beach rides best was a song from Kings of Convenience feat. Royksopp, I don’t know what I can save you from.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ6DtETOUGE

This became our theme song for the rest of the roadtrip (besides from Mr. Boombastic of course and Ace of Base). We saw beautiful places like the champagne pools.

Eli Creek, a stream that takes you meters while lying on your back watching the beautiful surroundings. Lake Wabby, a small, freshwater, green colored lake, that is dissapearing because the sand is slowly moving into the lake.

2 night sleeping in tents on super thin mats, watching the stars on the beach while dingo’s bite your hair, losing a game from a Swiss twin presenting ourselves as the adopted Japanese twin sisters.

In the first conversation with Kevin, the guide, we found out that we’re both fans of Mary Poppins. He appeared to be from Maryborough, the birthplace of Pamela Lyndon Travers, creator of Mary Poppins. They actually put a statue of Mary Poppins in the center of this town. So after Frasier Island Kevin had to take us there!

 

In MaryBorough we had the biggest part of our trip ahead of us. 1800 km with nothing we could stop for due to lack of time. 3 days of driving non-stop, sleeping in free campsites on the side of the road. Because of the floods the road between Frasier Island and Cairns, called the Bruce Highway, was dramatically damaged and there were a lot of roadworks. We were lucky that we could even drive this road!

A good initiative from the Queensland government is the Driver Reviver houses where oldies voluntarily hand out free (but disgusting) coffee, milk, lemonade and cookies! They even created a card game that will help you stay awake in case the dramatic signs on the side of the road (shown about every km!) aren't enough.

3 days and our first meeting with the ugly Cassowary later we arrived in Cairns what isn’t really worth visiting besides from the Lagoon, a free salty water swimming pool in the centre of the city. This is when we realized that the regional Australian governments really does a lot to make traveling and living easy and nice. They have so many free facilities in cities and on the road.

From Cairns we would go for 2 days and 1 night on a boat to discover the Great Barrier Reef snorkeling.

And WOW that was amazing! We were the happiest persons on earth when we saw a turtle on the first snorkel session, not really big but beautiful! Swimming around, going to the surface to enjoy the sun, Floor could even touch her shield because she swam so close underneath her.

And I was even happier when I found another turtle the next day.

She was very big with moss growing on her back. She was relaxing, nibbling on the reef for a few minutes and then started to swim. We followed her for 45 minutes  untill she returned to the place where we found her. We had the feeling she was showing us the reef (thinking this is probably human arrogance; the sounds of joy I made under water were not very human though). The reef is beautifully colored and so are the hundreds of fish swimming around you.

After the reef we had a few days left to explore Cape Tribulation, north of Cairns. Cape Trib seemed like a strangely deserted part of the East coast of Australia. It had a vibe like it was supposed to be very lifely, but it was more or less empty with sometimes big tourist busses full of teenagers passing thru. Not knowing where to go we felt a bit lost and spend the first night in a camping that was a bit strange. The next day we moved to another camping with a family vibe, nice people, campfires at night and super good pizzas made by Italians who arrived a few days before. Lucky us!

In Cape Trib we saw Estuarine crocodiles, one of the biggest and most dangerous species in the world. And that was pretty impressive. 

You can't go near the water anywhere in the north-east of Australia, because of the crocodiles, but luckily there are two natural swimming holes. It's just that after seeing a 5 meter long crocodile, you swim a little less at ease.

Besides from the crocodile we saw more Cassowary's, even with baby’s.

You are supposed to drive slowly because they can cross the road very sudden, like we experienced with the kangaroos. The sign used to warn you is this one.

The last morning together we drank coffee from our favorite orange seventies pan that we found in an op-shop. We threw everything out of Floozy Doozy to create order in our chaos.

And then I brought Floor to the airport in Cairns. It was hard to say goodbye after 4 GREAT weeks together...

I had 2 days left in Australia to prepare myself for Asia. I was happy to meet Paulina again, a girl that we met on Frasier Island.

It was time for part 4 of my trip. Waking up early early in the morning and going west, to Bangkok!