Back to Australia! 🙂

After landing in Melbourne on the 18th of April 2013 I spent the first two weeks staying in the city and visiting my relatives in the area waiting for an answer for a job I applied to.
After two weeks went to see the guys from the farm I’ve worked on last year and stayed with them for another week or so, still waiting for a reply.
When I finally got it, it wasn’t happy news at all as they didn’t need me. So in a quick decision I called up a friend I met last year who was road tripping from Sydney to Perth to give me a lift over to WA where I wanted to go eventually.
A couple days later I found myself on the road again. In for a 4000km journey which should take about two weeks.

At first we went to the Grampians which we explored after spending the night on a free campsite at a lake. And what’s camping without a camp fire and some Stockbrot (which apparently nobody knows who’s not from Germany…). So we collected some wood, got a nice fire going and I made some dough for the bread which turned out pretty good.
The next morning we left to see the Balconies and the “Grand Canyon”. Unfortunately most of the tracks and places were closed down due to flood damages.


Stockbrot dough


Stockbrot


Dinner


Warning sign not to go on there…

So we did x)

Now it was another 500 k’s to Adelaide where we got on Friday after spending the afternoon in Hahndorf. An old village founded by Germans when the area was first settled. And apparently the only one left of its kind.

In fact it was looking quite similar to an old German town. But the most interesting part was that they had “German” trees along the road which actually changed color and started losing their leaves. Something I haven’t really seen in Australia before. Also, it made the place smell like Germany. Which probably sounds weird…. Anyway, let’s go on.

Back to Adelaide. It hasn’t really changed since last year when I stayed there before my outback trip. It’s still small and quiet. Something I hadn’t really realized last time is that even supermarkets close at 5pm and don’t open until 9am. On the weekend anyway. So I felt even more like being in a little town rather than in a city.
In Adelaide we stayed at Sunny’s Backpacker which we left the next morning straight away after finding bed bugs in our room. We actually wanted to head off towards Perth that day.
However, the Canadian guy who was travelling with us decided to leave us and actually fly back home. So we decided to stay another day (at Annie’s Backpacker this time) and find someone else to travel with us and also share the fuel costs. After all it was still another 3000 k’s to our destination with fuel prices going up to $2/l in the Nullarbor Plain. Unfortunately though we couldn’t find anyone. Instead there were many others offering the same lift as we did. In the end we decided to at least find another group to travel together so we’d be doing the trip with two cars which is always better on a long way like crossing the Nullarbor. (1200km between towns, just a handful of road houses along the way and a whole lot of plain nothingness)

On Sunday morning we left Adelaide and met up with the other group in Port Augusta. They were four people travelling in a four wheel drive. Two from France, one from Holland and one from Germany. The following days we spent driving behind each other and at night we went to rest stops, had a camp fire going every time and my amazing Stockbrot to go with it. Regardless of being in the Nullarbor Plain (deriving from the Latin words nullus and arbor. Which means no trees. Yet there were still quite a few around.)

Anyway, even though it got quite cold at night we still had good fun and with the great camp fires we had it wasn’t too bad either.


„wow, look guys – it’s a sign!“


„No way! Let’s take a picture with it!“ – because we ain’t got no signs like that back home 😉

When we stopped at the Nullarbor road house we met a truckie who told us about a cave called Weebubbie we should totally check out (in which one could go swimming as well). After explaining where it was and how to get there he told us he owned an apartment in a resort on the beach two hours south of Perth and even offered us to stay there for a few days for free. All we would have to pay was the cleaning fee of $150 (so $25 per person). But more about that later.

So, after crossing the Southern Australia / Western Australia border at Border Town (real creative name for a place on the border…) and being checked by quarantine for fruit vegetables the next day we arrived at Eucla (nope, no town, just a road house) which is where we had to turn off the highway to get to Weebubbie. However, since it was a 20km (or so) dirt road we had to take there was no way we could have driven there in the 2WD so we all squeezed in the 4WD.

Despite not being too sure whether we actually were on the right track we eventually got to a huge hole in the ground. And the following sign:

Obviously we went in anyway. Haha Even though I have to admit it was a little scary standing on the edge of that hole. But once we were down at the bottom it was all right so we went inside the cave. Needless to say that it was pitch black. Duh.
And all of the sudden we were standing at the water which one could hardly see as there was no reflection at all and the water was just crystal clear. Since it had been quite a while we were on the road without showers we didn’t hesitate long to jump into the refreshing water which turned out to be salt water.


Cave entrance (ladder in the bottom right corner)


Ladder to the actual cave


We got to the water! 🙂

The following day was basically nothing but driving so we’d get to Norseman and leave the Nullarbor Plain behind us. However, crossing the Nullarbor isn’t complete without going dead straight for 146 km on the longest straight road in Australia. (Not that you’d have any choice of not taking that road as there is no other)


Yep, fuel gets very expensive out here

In Esperance we could finally stock up our food supplies and went to see Pink Lake. A lake which is supposed to be colored, guess what, pink! If you type that into Google picture search you’ll find that it actually is pink and looks pretty cool… So we were really looking forward to seeing that! However, as we found out it hasn’t been pink for quite a while and obviously wasn’t when we got there. But we went on and checked out the Great Ocean Drive and stopped at Twilight Beach (despite its name there were no vampires) for lunch and a swim. And let me tell you, that beach is marvelous. Snow white sand, crystal clear (and a bit chilly) water and a pretty cool rock island. But see for yourself:

After that wonderful and sunny day we weren’t as lucky when we decided to go back to Europe and stop at Denmark on the way where wanted to go to Greens Pool, Mad Fish Bay etc… okay, okay; we obviously didn’t go to Europe. However, we went to Denmark which is near Albany though. Only 600 odd k’s from Esperance. As it was pouring down rain we decided to call it a day and find a camp for the night.

Next stop was Pemberton. Well, not Pemberton itself but the nearby National Park featuring the Gloucester Tree. A 61m high karri tree. A 61m high tree you can actually climb up. Using only the provided metal pegs that had been put around the tree in a spiral. But no safety net or anything the like. And with a warning sigh at the foot of the tree we just had to climb it. Of course.


The view from up there

I’m pretty sure we deserved some free wine and chocolate after that exhausting climb. So we went on to Margaret River to do some wine tasting and went to see the Canal Rocks. Surprise, surprise: it’s rocks that were formed into a natural canal by the sea over the time. No way you’d have guess that, huh?

Anyhow, in the afternoon we drove up to Busselton to check in at a 5 star holiday resort. Yep, that’s right; us broke backpackers stayed at a 5 star luxury resort with a 3 bedroom apartment costing over $400 a night. Now, if you recall that truckie I told you about, he offered us to stay at that place for a few days and all we had to pay was the $150 cleaning fee. So we got a 3 bed room apartment, our own kitchen, access to an outdoor and heated indoor swimming pool and a gym. But I think what everyone was most happy about was that we got to sleep in a real bed again and that it wasn’t freezing cold at night.

Two very relaxed days later we made our mere 200km way up to Perth where we got 14 awesome days with lots of fun, over 4000km and a lot of petrol money after leaving Timboon.