1 Month, 5 States, 40 degree weather, and over 7,000 kms...That was our Australia trip

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Hello all!

PICTURES

Sorry for the massive delay in posts but there really isn't much internet to speak of when you are in the outback. Well from our last post we have course come to Australia and been here for some time. We landed in Sydney to begin our journey. We walked everywhere is this massive city and saw most of it. The botanical gardens were huge, amazing, and at night the sky was filled with massive bats that made their home there. After a short walk through the gardens we were greated with an impressive view of the Sydney opera house and the harbour bridge (a symbol of the entire country). Even seeing it during an overcast day, was still impressive. But what really amazed us was seeing it at night. The lights reflecting in and around it will forever be burned into our minds. We made our way to king's cross where the carmarket was supposed to be. We had the idea in NZ because we saw so many people travelling around in vans and realized it was the only way to travel. We searched through the entire car market which took a whole day and was an experience in itself. We eventually settled on a van that three canadians guys travelled in for a month...sounds familiar. The day we bought it, we wasted no time and left the city. We drove all the way to Blue Mountain National park and got a taste of what this country was really about. The scenery was amazing and reminded us of our times in NZ. We spent the first night of many sleeping in the van and started driving again right after breakfast.

Driving, driving, driving.

We stopped at several places of interest along the way including all the scenic lookouts and a place called the Jenolan caves. An impressive natural wonder of the likes which we have never seen thus far. We continued on and made it to the capital...sydney you say? No it's Canberra! A nice city with a really nice parliment building. During this time of course we were spiffing up the van. More on that later. We made our way for Melbourne which is supposed to be the nicest city in the world to live. This small city dwarfs Toronto at 3.5 million but what they did with it was nice. Parks and trees everywhere surrounded beautiful modern and classic architecture. Blair would love this city. We met up with Ashley's sister Allison who also just happened to be here and spent the day travelling around with her. She was lucky enough to be the first person from home to see us...and smell us. We couldnt really live in the city for much longer so we headed for the great ocean road. This road is in the book "1000 places to see before you die" and was worth the detour.

Driving, driving, driving.

We made our way to Adelaide which was our last big city before the outback. We visited the zoo which provided some great laughs in the monkey pens. We filled up on cheap gas and 60 L of water and made our way to the outback. BOOM our tyre explodes (not a miss print, thats how they spell tire here). We (thank god) had a full sized spare and limped into Port Augusta to buy new one. With our newly purchased guitar, new white van with communist stars painted on it we started driving through the outback. The outback, we were not ready. Flies, only hot water to drink and worst sun we have ever seen.

Driving, driving, driving.

We passed the Opal capital of the world (Coober Pedy) on our way to Uluru. Ayers rock to most but not us. It is just a massive red rock in the heart (and is the heart to the aboriginals) of Australia. We would have stayed longer had the flies not drove us insane. We made a meal at the base but were so overcome with the flies, we didnt even eat it. We also saw the Olgas (many faces) which are in the same park and are of similar make up geologically. We headed to Kings canyon the next day which was quite nice but nothing really compared to what we have seen in NZ. Sorry I am biased. To save time and to be extreme, we of course took a shortcut. This dirt and sand road saved us about 2.5 hours but could have cost us our lives. Lots of fun. We drove to Alice Springs for some much needed KFC. All we craved was meat and cold fluids to drink.

Driving, driving, driving.

We drove back through the outback headed directly for the ocean. We just wanted a decent shower, that's it! We finished painting the van and to top it all off we painted Che on her.

That's right ladies and gentlemen, Che Guevara. One of the greatest bad-asses of all time. We are now in Cairns and are going to try our hardest to sell it here. We have made some personal modifications so she's got it where it counts. We hope to at least sell it for what we got it for. If not it was still the cheapest way to see everything that we have seen. We will then head back to sydney for our flight from Auckland to get home.


We survived the outback, gained an appreciation for showers/cold water/ and the comforts of home in general.
See you all when we get home on the 12th!
Mike

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