The looong drive north

After Adelaide the sort of official starting point of the outback was Port Augusta. After spending the winter in Victoria, we were really looking forward to the nice weather again. With in a couple of days the temperature was up in the 20's and it felt so good to go through our backpacks and throw away all of our winter clothes.

We started the drive excitedly talking about the journey ahead and praying we wouldn't hit any animals after already seeing so much road kill. I'd been telling Sean about how it was the time of year to see emus with their young when about 5 minutes later four fully grown emus ran straight out in front of the car! We couldn't believe it. They couldn't have looked any less fazed being 4 foot from a car bonnet, they just continued running across the road and into the bush. Luckily Sean was quick of the ball and managed to break in time. A scary start to the first day and with our hearts in our mouths we continued the drive.

Our first stop was at a town called Pimba a nice little roadhouse with a bar and a petrol station. The plan was to stay at as many free campsites as we could which meant getting used to having no available drinking water, public showers, drop toilets and in some cases no toilets at all :(

Although the drive felt like it was never going to end, there were a lot of different sights to stop off at and see along the way, which made the journey more interesting.

Giant termite mound

Salt lake

As we weren't prepared with music and with no radio stations to listen to, many strange conversations and stupid games were played. One of the conversations being how do you explain the definition of never and ever, who could whistle better, who could do the mexican 'ariba' best and Sean also graced us with his rendition of 99 bottles of beer which in case you arent familiar went as follows... 99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer, you take one down you pass it around, 98 bottles of beer on the wall. All the way down to zero, and yes he finished it.

Lets just say the times out of the car were better than in.

Enjoying pizza at Australias 4th best pizza restaurant.

Coober Pedy was our next stop. As a town it wasn't anything special, in fact it looked extremely run down, but as we spoke to one of the locals who ran the caravan site it became quite interesting. It turned out that it is the largest opal gem stone mining area in the world and there are so many that you can literally walk around and find them at the side of the street. The guy was even telling us to look on the ground in front of the opal shops to get the small ones that the owners throw away and take them to a city to sell. It also turned out that 70% of the town live underground to escape from the summer heat... Weird.

Next stop was Erldunda roadhouse. We stayed here for a night before turning off the main highway to go see Kings canyon and Uluru. It is surprisingly a good few hours between them so impossible to do in one day.

We spent the day at Kings canyon doing one of the walks which was a lot tougher than expected. Running up a load of steps at the beginning had us sweating for the rest of it. Bearing in mind the temperatures were now in the 30's. The walk was great though and lead out to some great views.

We then rushed to Uluru so see the famous sunset. Comparing the pictures you can see how it glows.

The next day we did the 10km walk around the base of the rock. We were excited to see some of the indigenous rock art as we knew that around Australia there are drawings that go back tens of thousands of years.

Our excitement was quickly over however as we read on the plaque beside it say that a local old aboriginal man remembered drawing on them as a young boy in 1930s. Not quite as old as we thought.

Whilst here we also visited Kata Tjuta - another huge rock formation.

Once we got back on the main road we continued heading north, stopping at Alice Springs, Katherine's Gorge and Devils Marbles. Everything was going great until we woke up after camping next to the marbles to find the car was stalling. We decided to drive to Tennant Creek, the next town but none of the garages could see us for a week. We gave our friend Stuart (our guardian angel from Brisbane) a quick call and before long we were up and running. We decided to take it easy with the car so did a short drive to Daly Waters and then to Mataranka where we spent the day in some amazing natural thermal pools. We had heard there were often small crocodiles in the river here so decided to try spot some, unfortunately we didn't see any but just as the sun was setting we did see thousands of bats suddenly awaken and start flooding the sky. It sounds silly but it really was an incredible sight, especially as we'd seen them all sleeping up in the trees through the day.

Fly defence mechanism

Finally we were in Darwin. We just spent the day exploring, doing the obligatory walk around the city, before heading back out. Personally I didn't think much of it, but Sean quite liked it (most likely because there was barely anything here to class it as an actual city).

Next stop, Litchfield National Park. We'd heard lots of nice things about this place and it didn't fail us. There were so many nice waterfalls and lagoons to swim in which now that the temperature often reaches high 30's was a really nice break from the heat. One thing I forgot to say was how many Crocodiles there are in the Northern Territory and everywhere there are signs warning of the dangers of swimming in public waterways so we were a bit wary at first but luckily the pools are all in the 'crocodile management area' meaning any that are seen are removed.

Today we got to see our first wild crocodiles. We decided to do a river cruise where they entice the crocs to jump out of the water with food. We had literally been on the boat 2 minutes before we saw the first of many, and they weren't just the small fresh water crocodiles but rather the big 'saltys' as they call them.

It was crazy how many there were just in the small bit of the river that we saw.

We are slowly making our way towards the East coast and are looking forward to seeing the Great Barrier Reef very soon.

:)

New Zealand - South Island

It's been quite awhile since our last post (mainly due to the signal and lack of it) so I'm going to split it in two, starting with New Zealand..

Our plan for the South Island began by arriving in Picton early and then going to watch the boxing between Mcgreggor and Mayweather. We didn't think it would be too hard to find but after checking in all of the local sports bars and pubs we soon realised this wasn't going to be the case. Luckily Sean found somewhere to stream it online, as it's fair to say he was more than a bit annoyed at the prospect of missing it.

The drive down the coast was gorgeous and there was always somewhere around each bend that we wanted to stop at and photograph.

We began to head in land and eventually the mountains started appearing around us. It's hard to put into words how amazing the views really were but it's definitely one of the most beautiful places we've seen so far. Being able to just stop for fish and chips with a view like this to look out on made us feel very lucky.

The famous Fox and Franz Joseph glaciers are 2 of the main attractions in the area. We knew that the best way to see them would be from the air so we excitedly booked a helicopter ride for that afternoon. Unfortunately about 20 minutes before we were about to fly the helicopter guys informed us that it was going to have to be delayed because of low cloud but that it should clear up pretty quickly. So off we went for an hour, had lunch, then returned excited and ready to fly... but no. Once again it had to be delayed. This time they weren't as hopeful and with the weather forecast not good for the next few days we gave in. We were quite disappointed but decided to see it that we'd just saved ourselves $400 and instead we did a quick walk up the side of the mountains to see the glaciers from the bottom.

We continued heading south towards Queenstown stopping off at various sites along the way.

Quite randomly we came across a puzzle museum. Sean was completely in his element and it took a good couple of hours before I managed to drag him away.

The drive down to Queenstown took about 3 days in total but finally we arrived. So many people had told us how Queenstown was their favourite place and we could easily see why as there was plenty to do, lots of nice restaurants and quirky streets and shops. Unfortunately we didn't have much time to actually explore the town, but just the drive there had been worth it in itself. Whilst here we needed to book a coach to take us from the campervan drop off, up to the north island where we were flying out from. It wasn't until we were driving away and made some phone calls that we found that we could actually change our flights for less than the price of the coach, which made everything so much simpler for us.

From here we made our way up to Christchurch, taking in every last bit of New Zealand that we could before returning back to Australia. It had been an amazing 2 weeks and fair to say that it's definitely one of our top countries to visit.

Coming back to Australia surprisingly felt quite strange. Because of work, it felt like ages ago since we had been travelling around. When we picked up the car from the airport and had no base to get back to, we were suddenly asking ourselves, right where too now?

We decided as we hadn't actually spent much time in Melbourne that we would spend an afternoon there and check it out. Sean in particular really doesn't enjoy cities and it's quite hard to get the feel of one without spending at least a good few days there but we had a good walk around, visited a gallery and saw a couple of sights. It was nice.

The following day we headed for the coast to begin the great ocean road. Unfortunately the weather was probably the worst it could have been for this but we didn't let it ruin it for us. We just had to be quick. There was a lot of waiting in the car, then dashing out to get some photos, then racing back before we got too wet.

At the end of the great ocean road we got to Warrnambool. Since being in Australia we always wanted to see the whales as they migrated north past the coast but always seemed to be in the wrong place or it was the wrong time. We actually thought we had missed it again with working on the farm and then going to New Zealand but it turned out we were just in time and at the perfect spot for it. We had met a nice French couple who had seen the whales the previous day and told us where to go and low and behold the next day there they were. The sea was quite rough and it was quite a cold day so they didn't seem to be coming out of the water much but it was still incredible to see. Getting good photos was very hard though.

From here we travelled north up to Adelaide. We were desperate to reach the warm weather but day by day we were slowly getting warmer. This would be the last big city before the outback so we decided to get the car serviced. Luckily nothing major needed doing and we were all set for the big drive up the middle of the country.

:)