It’s been almost three months since my last entry and I have travelled over 7,000 km since then via one 2004 Holden Commodore station wagon. We named her Connie. Despite the various ups and downs willingly living out a car brings, Melissa, Micheal and I made it to Melbourne, just like we had planned. It wasn’t always easy. The Northern Territory was oppressively hot, and the east coast brought us almost entirely rain. Living out of a car was a learning curve. But now, I’ve blinked and it’s back to needing a job, paying for over-priced hostels and showering daily.
We started off on a Friday, mid afternoon from Darwin. It was onwards to Kakadu National Park, the largest national park in Australia. Kakadu is waterfalls, crocodiles and Aboriginal cave paintings. To get around, a 4×4 is recommended. Connie was not a 4×4 but we made do. Most of the time she did okay, despite almost overheating on a “2WD accessible road”. We had Kakadu almost entirely to ourselves it seemed. We were driving out of the NT pretty close to wet season which meant the crowds were nothing compared to the dry season highs. It spoiled us.
After Kakadu it was on to Edith Falls, where small fish nipped at you if you stood still for too long. It didn’t ruin anything though. Waterholes are what the NT was good for. Finding croc-free swimming was a God send and any break from the heat was appreciated. Leaving Edith Falls would bring us to Katherine. Where we needed to settle any issues, stock up on everything for the journey down the to center of the country. At this point, we didn’t know what Connie had in store for us.
The story deserves it’s own post. But let’s just say; Katherine brought us one hell of a breakdown, a whole day in a Woolworth’s parking lot and a new fuel pump. Because of what happened, we decided Connie couldn’t make it down to the bottom of the NT then back up to Cairns and also down the East coast, like we had planned. So, we cut out Uluru and some other things on our list and headed towards Port Douglas. A beach town just north of Cairns and the top of the East Coast of Australia.
Driving the Outback is barren. We passed absolutely nothing for hundreds of kilometers. When we finally would hit a town, someone would say something along the lines of, “ people actually live here? What do they do…”. Seriously, there’s nothing. We slept in gravel pits and showered out of a bucket. We did make it to Daly Waters, an infamous little pub in the middle of nowhere, with the oldest liquor license in the Territory. It was here I found out what a hangover in the NT sun was like ( not great…) . For the sake of my dignity, I won’t post the details on the internet. Crossing into Queensland passed a stretch of unbelievable bushfires that probably lasted 10 miles. We also saw the largest (we would later find out was a Wedge-tailed) Eagle devouring roadkill and a mutilated cow carcass we still have questions about.
Then, we made it to Port Douglas for our first East Coast experience. It felt like the real civilization we’d been missing for months. Our days in Port Douglas were filled with the Daintree rainforest, and Cape Tribulation. ( Did you know Australia is the only place in the world with tropical rainforests that doesn’t have monkeys?)
From Port Douglas, we’d head to Cairns, where we booked the rest of trip we had planned. This included; two nights on Magnetic Island, Two nights on a sail boat in the Whitsundays, and three days on Fraser Island. After price haggling with a tour company, we booked almost everything our selves for cheaper.
Magnetic Island brought us koala bears. Wild, koala bears. Which I thought would be too elusive of an animal to see on my Australian adventure. I was wrong. Melissa, Mike and I saw at least 5 koala bears hanging out on Magnetic Island, even a baby one. We also fed rock wallabies from our hands. We rented a bang up, topless, blue 4×4 and smashed through the unpaved roads in Magnetic Island. Mike did donuts in the sand. While staying at Base X hostel, the only hostel on the island, we played bingo and did not win a damn thing. I did however convince the manager to give me cheese after the kitchen had closed. Which felt like a win to me.
We left our blue little convertible hoopdie to get Connie back and drove to Arlie Beach, the kickoff point for our Whitsunday’s sailing trip. We were to board Condor, a ship that has one every important race in the world- twice. Condor would be the vessel for an incredible group of people over the following two days, and a fucking crazy sailing trip. The weather was what made this trip. It was grey skies and storm clouds almost all the way. Once we got on board we were told to grab the yellow raincoats from down below and hold on. The Captain reminded us, this weather is what this ship was made for. We all thought, “ oh cool sailing!” We did not expect Condor to eventually become vertical with two sails up. The meaning of ‘hold on’ took a whole new meaning. When we reached our destination for the night, we saw a baby dolphin and his mother. We opened up the liquor on board and sat around talking about how crazy the sailing had just been. Later we learned, none of the other sailboats around us braved the storm and put up their sails. At one point, we broke the bow line. Condor was still the fastest boat in the water.
The weather on the Whitsunday’s would be about the same for the duration of our trip. It didn’t stop us from enjoying the incredible white sand that Whitehaven Beach provided and it certainly didn’t stop us from enjoying the company of the people on board. Condor may have given Mike, Melissa and I a hell of a head cold but it was one of my personal favorite parts of the road trip. I also spotted a shark snorkeling, so all in all, Whitsunday’s was fantastic.
From Whitsunday’s we headed to Fraser Island. Which can be summed up basically with: sand roads, wild dingos and SURPRISE- more car trouble. This time it was trouble from our rental 4×4 and not from our baby, Connie. It’s another car trouble story for the history books. Another one that needs it’s own post and still makes me wonder how we even got ourselves out of it. Aside from the car trouble and being surrounded by wild dingo’s, Fraser Island was peaceful and almost untouched. Despite the car trouble, we were happy we chose not to join a tour group, opting to drive our own car. Mike once again enjoyed the off roading aspect of the 4×4 only vehicle island. Melissa and I both even got behind the wheel, once.
After we’d emotionally recuperated after our Fraser Island experience, we were off to Noosa where we were meeting Melissa Irish-Australian Family. We left our tents in the car and were treated like royalty once we arrived. “ Absolutely lovely” doesn’t exactly cover how great Melissa’s family is but that’s what we’ll go with. Mike and I really weren’t surprised. They even threw me a big Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings. It made me homesick, but I was happy to spend Thanksgiving with a big family rather than by a camp stove. We were also treated with tickets to the Australia Zoo. Which is the zoo Steve Irwin and his family own. It will probably be the best zoo I ever visit. We pat kangaroos and koalas, got ridiculously close to lemurs, and got to go to the animal hospital to see how they take care of all the animals. It was honestly fantastic and I highly recommend a visit if you’re in the Noosa/ Brisbane Area.
After four days eating and drinking all we could manage with Mel’s family, we had to sell Connie and we were running out of time. Melissa was scheduled to fly home for Christmas and everyone wanted to be in Melbourne. Our registration had one more week left before it expired. Everyone was strapped for cash at this point. The trouble was that we’d bought Connie in the NT, where everything is more expensive. We thought, incorrectly, that we’d be able to sell her for more than we paid, considering the massive amount of money we’d put into the car. We waited anxiously for someone, anyone to answer our advert and take Connie off our hands before we needed to extend the registration. We weeded out a few scams before someone, in the 9th hour, decided to take Connie off our hands. It was a pitiful price we sold her for but it needed to be done. By the end of November we’d traveled over 7,000 km in Connie and finished our East Coast tour exactly how we had planned it. We mastered eating out of an esky, setting up camp in the dark and living out of a car. The road trip wasn’t always planned but it was always interesting. As I’m sitting in a Melbourne cafe right now, it’s crazy to think of the route we completed to get here. Beep beep !