28th – 29th November

Starting off with TIPs for getting around Australia:

1. Australia is a big country and I didn’t have a clue how to get around when I first decided to go, so booked many internal flights between cities. For me this worked out ok – I booked them as an addition to my main rtw ticket route back in December 2017 and they worked out very cheap.
2. There is also the option to use coaches such as Greyhound, where you can either buy a specific journey, route or a pass for so many weeks (there are other less well known options such as Premier – check out what routes they do).
3. I’d also heard of many people buying a cheap car when they arrive into Australia and selling it when they leave, I thought my trip was a little too short for this option, plus the thought of it was daunting to me and I thought it would be too complicated. However, if you’re planning to travel in Oz for 3 months + this is a great option and actually a lot easier than you’d think, especially if there’s two or more of you.
4. When I arrived and chatted to people, I found most people travelled around via road trips, a fun way to get from A-B with plenty of stops on the way that anyone who flys, or even buses, would miss. If you have time and flexibility this is great, but a lot of the time even with specific dates you can find someone to road trip with on major routes (mainly between cities or tourist spots), either as a passenger or sharing a car rental. **THERE ARE PLENTY OF CAR SHARING FACEBOOK SITES!!** This is you’re best bet for finding fellow traveller on the road. I joined ‘Ride Share / Car Pool Australia‘, ‘Travel Mates – Australia‘ and ‘Australia Backpackers‘ and there’s plenty more!
5. And lastly, there are the relocation websites. Many tourists on holiday will choose to hire a car, driving from point A to point B and flying out from there. Some companies will advertise these cars on relocation sites to get the car back to point A from as little as $1 per day to to you the traveller! These deals are amazing, but flexibility is a must when looking into this option. The relocations are always set routes and set dates, however, you can sometimes extend the dates for per/day fee. Campers are often options here, saving you on accommodation costs too! Some relocations cost a fee, most require you to pay fuel and some require an international drivers license – check out the deets before booking. And be quick, they go quick! (As Tom and I unfortunately found out). We tried sites such as ‘transfercar.com.au’, ‘imoova.com’ and ‘coseats.com’.

Road Trip Day 1

It’s always going to be a bit of pot luck who you end up with on a road trip arranged between strangers. The mix seemed to work ok on the way to to Melbourne, but not so much on the next road trip up to Adelaide……. but that’s for another blog post. So Wednesday morning I was picked up by Joesph and Masha, an Aussie from Perth and a beautiful girl from Iran. Mark came out with me with the big brother stance on, eyeing Joseph up and down – a look of ‘you better look after her’ painted across his face 😂 It was so nice to be looked out for again! We set off and quickly stopped for coffee before getting on the open road.

Canberra

We’d discussed what route we all wanted to do, at first we were looking at stopping in Canberra that afternoon and heading to mount Kosciuszko (the highest peak in Australia) the following day, ending up in Melbourne on the Friday. So off we went to Canberra, we chatted and played a couple of games on the way down. When we arrived in Canberra we did the National Museum of Australia and parliament houses. There isn’t much in Canberra, the capital state was created to house the parliament buildings back in 1908 when after the country of Australia became an independent nation in 1901 and there was a disagreement about whether Melbourne or Sydney should be the country’s capital. It was interesting to read a bit more about the aborigines and when they first encountered Europeans, as well as the flora and fauna in Australia- I found this the most fascinating part of my visit, how different the animals and native peoples culture of due to the isolation that existed from the rest of the world for tens of thousands of years! Of course I know all about Australian wildlife and have seen all species in zoos, but seeing it in the country was absolutely amazing! I loved it and loved learning about it!

We sat in the parliament buildings for a little bit whilst politicians debated on a issues such as renewable power. After this we went to the supermarket to grab food to cook at our made up camp site in the evening. Joseph is very experienced in finding non official camp sites, no facilities but they’re free! We found one inside a National Park off the beaten track. He had pretty much everything we needed in his car from a tent and sleeping mate, to a cooker, kitchen set and camping chairs. Oh and he’s bought a cheap bottle of vodka for the evening, which he consumed most of. Masha & I shared the tent and after a very late tea and a bit of star gazing, we got a reasonably early night.

Road Trip Day 2

Hoping to get up and going in the morning, as you usually do when camping on road trips, Masha and I got breakfast and started packing everything away. Still no Joseph, who had slept in the car on a mattress he keeps in the back. We decided to wake him up, but it still took a long time for him to stir and then have breakfast, coffee and get the stuff packed back on the car. By this time we had decided there was no way we’d were going to get all the way down to Kosciusko National Park, (which was quite far off route) hike along the top of Mount Kosciusko and get to a camp site, so instead we set off on the looooong journey down to Melbs!

We stopped a couple of times, the main stop was Albury, close to the New South Wales & Victoria boarder. We went to a pub and had a pint each. We then drove to the state border to stand a foot in each state 🙌before continuing on to Melbourne. Masha had been doing a lot of couch surfing on her holiday and had a guy to coach surf with that night – she kindly asked if I could stay too, which the guy kindly agreed to. We reached the city quite late, said bye and thank you to Joseph and met our host, it turns out he’s a big UK football fan so I fit in straight away (not that I know a thing about football 🙈). We settled on his double sofa bed for the night. Interesting few days with lots of new people!