2006/06 Australia trip - Introduction |
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June 2006
Dear All,
We had a good flight over from Auckland to Melbourne. Although it doesn’t look that far on a map of the world, it’s about 1500 miles and three hours of flying time. Air New Zealand looked after us well, with a good lunch. The stewardess came down the aisle after lunch with a basket-full of wine asking if anyone wanted to finish it off. Doesn’t happen on Northwest! The in-flight movie was King Kong which looked to be one of those movies best watched without plugging the earphones in.
The duty-free allowance for Australia is quite generous at 2.25 litres of spirits each, so we came in with the bottles clanking. However, Australian customs decided that they wanted to wash our boots and sandals to avoid bringing New Zealand’s soil into Australia. Perhaps after the Lord of the Rings movies they were worried about us bringing Orc dung into Australia?
The main motive of this trip was to see some of the more remote areas of Australia such as the Kimberley and the Pilbara up in the North West. I turned the trip into a loop by including Darwin and Perth and made up a rough itinerary of national parks that looked to be worth visiting. This didn’t take long, as there aren’t many roads to choose from in the remote areas. We would leave from Melbourne, where our camper lives when we’re away, cross the Red Centre through Alice Springs to Darwin, drive across the Kimberley to Broome, south down through the Pilbara and along the Indian Ocean to Perth, and return to Melbourne along the Southern Ocean. Most of the trip was going to be in the Dry season and the Tropics, so those parts were guaranteed to be dry and warm (wrong!), but the two ends of the loop would be in the south and likely to be cold. This would not be Minnesota cold, but 25ºF can be chilly in an unheated camper.
We would also have short winter days for traveling, with only 10 hours of daylight, not that you ever get much more than 13 in the Tropics, even in the summer/Wet, We had twelve weeks in Australia, about the maximum time allowed without sending our passports off for a longer term visa. We’d need a week or so at each end to visit relatives and get ready and clean up, so we had about ten weeks to cover the estimated 10000 miles. We were likely to hurry through the cold areas up to the warmer north, especially as we’d driven the road to Darwin before and been to Alice Springs a couple of times.
Sandie and I would be traveling in our 4wd (Four-wheel drive) Land Cruiser/Troopcarrier, a close relative of the vehicles used for Saharan expeditions, and a favourite workhorse of the Australian outback. It is a diesel, with the feel of a tractor, and almost everything is manually operated for simplicity and reliability. It was converted to a camper for us, and it has a pop-up tent top, a fridge, gas stove, sink, water tank, and a sofa that opens out to a 39 inch wide bed. It was designed for Australia’s torrid summers, so the camper section has no heater or hot water. As always in small campers, traveling and sleeping are simple, and it’s the transitions that are hard work, moving the luggage, chairs, cameras, and computer between the back of the camper and the front seats. It has no toilet but we carry toilet paper and a shovel.
Next.