Australia Leg 2. Sydney - Cairns

Oceania » Australia
May 2nd 2008

Published: May 2nd 2008

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andrewandkim

Sydney

Picking up our lairy hippie camper

Hey everyone, here is the second instalment of our Australian journey. This one covers our trip up the east coast from Sydney to Cairns in a “hippie” camper van. Prepare to see a lot of photos of us by the sea! By the way if you’re still reading our blogs - thank you. You’ve got the patience of a saint!

We picked up our blue “hippie” camper from Sydney where Dee waved us off. It was reasonably spacious and was a familiar looking Ford Transit which included everything we needed like a fridge, utensils, linen, etc. The colour scheme was quite lary - it definitely put the “camp” into camper! Overall, our first impressions were quite positive despite the lady from the hire company saying that “these old ones tend to break down quite a lot - it’s a pain in the arse!” You couldn’t fault her honesty.

We had a gentle introduction to living out of the van, as Dave’s parents kindly allowed us to use the facilities at their lovely Blue Mountains cottage. We enjoyed the stunning scenery of the 3 Sisters, made our way down the Giants Staircase and had a ride on the worlds steepest

Blue Mountains

Stunning view of the three sisters

railway. Despite the gradual introduction, we already had nagging concerns about the van, there was a smell of diesel and the cheap plastic fuel cap could be pulled off by any passer-by. It must have been the unfamiliar situation but Andrew had a weird paranoid dream of someone dropping a lit match in the fuel tank while we slept! But hey, it didn’t matter because we were "hippie" campers on a budget flying by the seat of our pants!

Confidence in the van didn’t improve the next day when we drove inland to Dubbo in rural NSW. On the way through we heard a scraping noise and noticed that something was hanging from the undercarriage (we later learnt it was the transmission cooler). This meant our first trip to the garage, where we met a mechanic with an unbelievably thick aussie accent who had a habit of talking in the opposite direction from where we were standing which made it difficult to catch much of what he said. Nonetheless gathered that the hippie was an old postal van designed for short city drives rather than long distance east coast journeys! The mechanic fixed the car and gave us the

Blue Mountains

View over the mountains

part which had been hanging from the undercarriage to take away in a cardboard box. On ringing the hire company to find out what they wanted us to do with the part we realised that the transmission cooler wasn’t essential as the bloke on the end of the phone said “what you want to do with that, is find the nearest bin and push it down as deep and as far as you can!” You can’t beat the honesty of Australian customer service. But all this was a minor inconvenience - as hey, we were newly engaged "hippie" campers and off to Dubbo we drove.

We arrived in Dubbo where we managed to find a free camping site at an aboriginal reserve just outside town. It was a beautiful setting by a river and we were stocked with groceries - this is what it should be all about. However, this is where we realised that we may not be natural campers. Andrew was getting frustrated with the lack of space in the van and kept dropping food, cutlery and utensils all over the floor. He also broke the stove by not reading the instructions properly and melted the already

Blue Mountains

Blue Mountains with the three sisters in the background

crap plastic table they’d given us! Whilst Kim had developed a totally ridiculous phobia of insects, arachnids, etc due to the wasp sting incident at the Great Wall of China. Kim wasn’t best pleased when Andrew scraped off his plate near the van because of the potential to encourage additional creatures! But at least we could retreat to our “reasonably sized, fully equipped hippie camper,” or so we thought , except for the stinky damp smelling linen and the fact that Andrew’s sandals were cheesier than a wotsit and yeastier than a jar of Vegemite (which by the way beats Marmite hands down!)!

We made it through the night, and the next day headed to Dubbo Zoo where we got our first glimpse of Australia’s native Kangaroos, Koalas and Dingoes.

We then pushed on towards the coast where we stopped at a campsite in a small town called Denham. Here we met an experienced caravanner who told us in polite terms that our van was rubbish. The gist of his comments were that Ford Transits had a terrible reputation in Oz and weren’t cut out for Australian conditions! Nonetheless he gave us some ideas on where to visit

Molong

Our first trip to the mechanics

and we drove through some pretty nice vineyards and hills in the Hunter Valley.

Our next stop was back to the coast and a place called Nelson Bay at Port Stephens. Since we’d only paid $15 for a campsite at Denham we thought we’d try a campsite at Nelson Bay. Unfortunately they were charging $50+ for a patch of ground (and a shower). Granted it was easter weekend but we thought they were taking the mick and told them to “rack off!” (Only joking).

On our budget this amount of money for a campsite was out of the question, so we spent the next 2 nights parking on the street in a residential area.

Our parking spot was recommended by a helpful local who told us that a good way to camp for free would be to sleep in church car parks like he’d done when driving across America. A good idea, although we weren’t sure it would work for us, as the “Hippie” isn’t exactly inconspicuous!

Maybe we were both being a couple of tarts, but even though it was a quiet residential area we were both paranoid at being moved on by the police

Dubbo

Dusk at the aboriginal reserve - this is what its all about?!

or disturbed a bunch of lary drunkards! Not very hardcore we know! For the next week this turned into a bit of a dilemma, as we would either have to spend time looking for a “sneaky spot” or go to a campsite and go well over budget. This combined with smelly feet, crap van, insect phobia, broken stove and Kim being an awful backseat driver made the first couple of weeks a bit more stressful than it should have been. Despite the stresses (you’re probably thinking what a pair of moaners), the coastal scenery was “rather pleasant” to say the least.

As we continued our journey up the east coast we no longer referred to our vehicle as the van, instead calling it the “utterly useless piece of s*it!” This was brought on by two more mechanical problems which meant we had to spend a frustrating amount of time trying to get hold of people in breakdown assistance department of our hire company. We took the van to a Ford Dealer and we commented to the mechanic that it had probably had its day, his reply of “these were finished before they started” said it all!

Enough was

Nelson Bay

Pelican at Solder point

enough as we drove through Brisbane we thought we’d pop into the hire company HQ to see what they had to say. Sensing our pain, they decided to give us a free upgrade to a Hippie Camper “Deluxe.” From this point on, our travels up the east coast were more relaxed and we also decided to fork out for campsites to avoid sneaking about until dusk looking for places to pull in for free under cover of darkness (to those people who have travelled around Australia in camper vans we must sound like a right pair of Jessies!).

Staying in campsites was good though, because there is a real “Hi-De-Hi” atmosphere (everyone is so civil) and we met loads of old school Aussie caravanners known collectively as “the grey nomads.” Some people had been driving around Oz for years after selling their houses and investing in motor homes. You should see the size of some of these beasts! We were told people would pay up to GBP100,000 for the best models! Lunatics! Although Kim got very excited when she saw some of the facilities inside! By the way you’re all free to call us Granny & Gramps when we

Nelson Bay

Solder point

get home.

On our way up to Cairns we visited loads of towns, too many to describe individually but we’ll list them more for us to remember than anything else. In chronological order they were Leura, Katoomba, Molong, Dubbo, Denham, Nelson Bay, Anna Bay, Forster, Port Macquarie, South West Rocks, Coffs Harbour, Byron Bay, Gold Coast, Brisbane, Noosa, Rainbow Beach, Hervey Bay, 1770, Yeppoon, Emu Park, Sebina, Airlie Beach, Bowen, Townsville, Charters Towers, Greenvale, Undara Lava Tubes, Atherton, Cooktown, Port Douglas, Cairns, Cape Tribulation and finally back to Cairns (still with us?!).

A common feature of all the coastal towns on this list is that they all have beautiful sea views, invariably with the backdrop of green, forested hills and clean, white, sandy beaches. Most of them offered activities like boat trips, fishing and snorkeling.

Highlights of the trip included the sunset at 1770 (the worlds only numerically named town!).

We also went on a day trip to Fraser Island (the worlds largest sand island). The island is very beautiful and has an amazing freshwater lake. Apparently the sand is 98% silica which makes it the worlds best exfoliant. It even cleaned Andrew’s sandals which smelt

South West Rocks

Andrew enjoying a bevvie in the sunshine

marginally less cheesy after we’d left the island. We also saw our first wild dingo who was cheeky enough to pinch someone’s shoe, the main surprise was that it didn’t take Andrew’s sandal given the nutritional benefit of all the fungus, yeast and mold growing on it! On the east coast of the island is an amazing beach called 75 Mile Beach (it is actually that long). The sea is gorgeous and it would have been good to go for a swim. Unfortunately our guide told us it wasn’t recommended due to the presence of sharks 20 ft back from the shoreline, dangerous rips and marine stingers such as the killer irukandji and box jellyfish. Heading north from here the constant threat of jellyfish meant it was unsafe to swim in the ocean, like one bloke we met put it “its like God’s taunting us, he’s created a paradise but you can’t touch it!”

Obviously you can’t visit Australia without snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef. Our first attempt was on a boat trip around the Whitsunday Islands and it didn’t go well. Our masks didn’t fit and the snorkels were rubbish. We spent most of the hour spluttering

South West Rocks

Deserted sandy beach

at the surface, with snot pouring down our faces as we’d taken so much salt water up our nostrils. Instead of admiring the beautiful coral and marine life all Kim could hear was Andrew shouting “this is f***ing s**t!”

Luckily our second experience of snorkeling on a boat from Cairns was brilliant and we were fortunate enough to see a Reef Shark, Turtles, Parrotfish and a Wrasse. The colours were amazing and Andrew even got close enough to scratch a turtles back.

Another highlight was the trip inland from Townsville to Undara. It was good to see some remote Aussie bush and we'd often have the road to ourselves. The only hazard was trying to avoid the massive road trains (55 metres long) using the highway - they apparantely take 2-3 kilometres to get to target speed so you have to get out of the way pretty quick.

At Undara we had a face to face encounter with some wild grey roos which was a pretty cool experience - we got to within 10 feet. We've been really lucky with animals in Australia as we've managed to see lots of native species. Unfortunately driving along you notice

Coffs Harbour

Treating ourselves to some rainbow ice after realising we would need to head to ford dealer to sort out our thrid van problem

the amount of roadkill, we were even told that eagles gorge themselves so much on this they have trouble taking off!

All in all, you could say that our Oz campervan experience had its ups and downs but there were definately more ups! As one Fraser Island guide said Australia.... 'its not a hard place to be' with its lovely sandy beaches and great weather. The campervan experience couldn't have been too bad as we are still engaged and still love each other 'heaps'. We've booked van number 4 to do it all over again in New Zealand.

We are now in New Zealand and are heading to Santiago, Chile on Monday the 5th May. We hope that everyone at home is well and wish the expectant mothers and fathers all the best as time draws nearer.

Take care, keep in touch
Lots of love
Kim and Andrew

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