Richmond to Darwin!

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October 12th 2014

Published: October 12th 2014

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Phetvard

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Eddie The farmer

Finally another update!

Due to not having any access to the internet and the lack of electricity on our road trip we have not been able to update the blog for a while, but now it's time again! We have now left the little town of Richmond about 3 weeks ago and are currently in Darwin, but I will take you through the details.

So, since last time a lot of things have happened. To begin with we bought a car in Charters Towers just 400 km west of Richmond. It's a little Suzuki Grand Vitara with 4WD which is going to take us around Australia. It has been so nice to have access to our own car while staying in Richmond since there is not a lot of public transport present in the little town. It really gave us a lot more freedom to do things by our selves. So we took her for a few shorter drives to test her out and she's been nothing but good to us!

Life in Richmond has been good for us and after the first six weeks the time started ticking quite fast. Eddie had the opportunity to go out

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Sorting Out Cattle

with Clay and Ty (his two colleges) and help mustering cattle (Clay and Ty would probably not consider my efforts very contributing to the actual mustering but at least I watched them do it).

Muster cattle is something I (Eddie) never have tried before and it was a really cool experience. We left around five-ish to go out on the flat dessert-like terrain around the town where Clay keeps his cattle. With the help of quads and motorbikes Clay and Ty rounded up the cattle and pushed them towards the yards to ear-mark them. They had two big bulls in the mob of cattle two which was really scary and I felt that I just wanted to keep my distance with my quad. Ty and Clay on the other hand don't seem to mind the heavy beasts and just drives up beside them to push them in the right direction. It was a really authentic and cool experience for me and we had heaps of fun! To round up cattle on quads and motorbikes feels so far from everything I've ever seen and done back home in Europe, it felt like being in an a Hollywood movie about southern

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USA =) You have got to check out the pictures and movie guys, they're awesome! It was all done in the sunset to, it was beautiful!

A couple of weeks or so later Ty and Clay also took Eddie pig hunting (hunting for wild boar). It's done quite differently in Australia if you compare it to back home. Here the land is so flat so you don't have to sneak through the woods until you find the pigs and put your dogs on them. Here they just drive around in their four wheel drives on the dry dessert lands and go to the waterholes because that's where the pigs are most likely to be. So we did that together with beer (and Bundabergs) in hand to find some pigs. It didn't take long until we found one and we had a good day of hunting with 4 pigs in total. It was a cool experience for me (Eddie) to go hunting in the outback with two cowboys (yup that's what you are guys, hehe). The three of us had an awesome time together and I'm very happy to have experienced it!

The rest of the time in Richmond

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we where hanging out a lot with Ty and his girlfriend Sam when she came back from her trip to Europe. We had a few wet nights at the pub with pool and silly dancing (the refers to you Clay) and BBQs and much more which was really nice!

One of our last but one of the most coolest experiences was to meet a kangaroo Joey (baby kangaroo) that a girl called Asia that Sunny worked with in the restaurant had taken car of. I know that all of our Aussies laugh at us about this but I think my fellow European friends will understand how exciting it must be to meet a kangaroo joey! He was the cutest little thing we've ever seen and so soft! He had a little pouch that Asia made for him where he spent most of his time and he was just adorable, that was so cool! I wish we could adopt him!

We became very good friends with Minakshi (the chef that Sunny worked with) an her husband Saniil (sorry for the spelling) at the end of our stay. Regrettably we didn't get to know each other earlier so we didn't

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Mustering Cattle in the sunset

have too much time to spend together but we're very happy we got to know you guys!

We stayed in Richmond until the 19th of September when it was time for us to leave to go on our road trip! We where happy to leave but it was also quite sad to leave everyone behind. I hope you're all fine back in Richmond, we miss you!

In the evening on the 19th we arrived in Townsville together. For two city persons like us it was quite a relief to be back in civilization again. At first it was weird to have so much people around us but we soon adapted to it again and enjoyed the big supermarkets, shopping and restaurants of Townsville. We spent our first night eating at a restaurant close to the sea, and having a beer on the beach afterwards. It was nice but we quickly had to adapt to the backpacker's life again when we drove out of the city to one of the rest areas there to spend the night sleeping in our car. After spending the first night in our car we decided that we needed to go buy some basic

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Mustering Cattle in the sunset

camping gear so that we could cook food and sleep better in our car etc. So after having breakfast in beautiful Townsville we went outside town to do some serious shopping. We got a mattress to sleep on in the car, pillows and other things so that our second night would be more enjoyable. After that we went back into town to enjoy the evening by the sea together and when it was time to go to the rest area to sleep, we had a really good night thanks to gearing up a little, phew...

We have both been in Townsville before but we never realized how beautiful the town is. It's just by the sea with a high orange cliff with a huge rock face in the middle of the town, it is gorgeous! We even hit the good season for swimming so we had time to take a few swims in the sea as well which was sooo nice!

The day after it was time to go to Ayr (a little town just south of Townsville) to do our Scuba review (a course you have to do if you have a Diver's certificate but haven't dived

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Two big bulls that I wanted to keep away from

for more than a year to refresh your knowledge) to be able to dive on the SS Yongala (A world renowned dive site where you dive on a ship wreck) the day after! We came to Ayr about 2 o' clock and did the Scuba Review and went to bed excited about the next day. We left early in the morning with a boat out to the SS Yongala. Unfortunately the seas where very choppy and rough so Eddie got very sea sick. We did the first dive together but Eddie skipped the second dive because of his sea sickness. The wreck was nice to dive but because of the rough seas the visibility wasn't the best but we saw a huge turtle and a 3 meter long bull shark that swam just 2 meters away from us. That was supercool!! and a little scary since they can be fairly aggressive.... =)

The same afternoon we started driving towards Cairns and ended up about 10 km's outside of town to sleep at a resting area. At the resting area Sunny was on her way to the girls toilet and saw a huge spider and got really scared. She asked

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Mustering Cattle in the sunset

Eddie if it was safe to stay here and he convinced her that it was nothing to worry about because spiders can't climb cars, well at least it calmed her down, nature would soon prove him wrong.

The day after we drove into town and then we stopped at an intersection and all of a sudden Eddie said, "Sunny I'm sorry... but look at the wind screen in front of you..." and on the wind screen there was a huge spider crawling around, pretty ironic considering the previous night's dramas. We decided to wash the car in case the spider was still there (yes, Sunny was freaking out a little) and to get rid of all the sand. Eddie grabbed the high pressure washing hose and started rinsing the car and all of a sudden the spider started crawling of from the roof, apparently it held on in 110 km/h the little bugger. We finally got it off and Sunny started to calm down but her trust in Eddie is probably forever shattered 😉

We came into the city and decided to make pancakes by the lagoon for breakfast, it was really yummie! A little later Per and

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Tyrone pushing the bulls in the right direction

Sofia (our two friends from Sweden that we will travel together with) called and we went to their hostel and checked in for a night. It was very nice to meet them and we had a nice night together and we were pretty happy to sleep in a bed for a night again =)

The day after We went diving on the Great Barrier Reef together, it was so awesome! we've both been diving on the reef before but it didn't disappoint this time either. We saw reef sharks, Turtles, huge coral formations and loads of fish, and the life on the boat was very nice to and we made some friends. We did 11 dives in total and came back to Cairns three days later.

We met up with Per and Sofia and started shopping to prepare for our road trip together. We left two days later and started our road trip to Darwin. It's funny how you a little naively think that @it's not that far to Darwin"... well 4000 kms later we beg to differ =) The first few days we cruised around in the Atherton Table Lands which was sooo beautiful! What a landscape,

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Mustering Cattle in the sunset

it's crazy! Lush green fields everywhere and lots of big fruit farms, excellent! WE stopped in a little town called Tarzil where we were lucky enough to find a lake where you could see Platypus. We saw heaps of them, they were so cute! They really are funny animals with a beak and a beavers body and the only mammal in the world to lay eggs and to have a venomous spine. These animals are really hard to stumble upon so we can consider ourselves really lucky, check out the pics!

After Tarzil there was time for about 2500 kms of nothing and we drove for almost three days in the heat, staying at campgrounds and rest areas to sleep. We stayed at pretty cool place called Banka Banka were they had a campground with very nice staff and a little poddie calf who walked the grounds begging for sweet things from tourists, she was very cute!

After about 6 days we reached Katherine which is the first larger city we had seen for almost a week, it was nice to find civilization again and to walk into a big supermarket where they have a bigger selection of

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Job's done!

foods. In Katherine we took the opportunity to visit Katherine Gorge for the sunset which was amazing, it's a very beautiful place!

The day after we started our three day trip to Kakadu National Park. Kakadu is very nice and our favorite place was Ubirr and the sunset there. We saw heaps of aboriginal rock art and other beautiful places and we had a very good time there. Unfortunately we came during the end of the dry season so there was not a lot of water in rivers and such but it must be even more spectacular if you visit during the right season!

After we went to Darwin where we have now spent one week together. We've been to the Crocosaurus cove to see 5,5 meter salt water crocodiles and swimming in the lagoon and much more. And it was really nice to just relax a little after the intense driving here. We tried to get to Darwin as soon as possible to be able to go down the west coast before the rains. We are now about to embark on our road trip between Darwin and Perth which will last us for 4-6 weeks, this time

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Tyrone's Poddie calf

we'll take our time and enjoy the roads together with some new found friends that will go with us, it will be awesome!

We'll get back to you in a month or so...

See you all soon!

Hugs Eddie and Sunny!

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