Travelling through 3 States

Believe it or not, but we travelled another 5000km since our last entry!

We went from Albany to Esperance, Norseman, all the way through the Nullarbor Plain, Horsham, Adelaide and now we arrived in Melbourne four days ago! We also crossed two borders in meantime: from West Australia to South Australia, and since we're in Melbourne now, from SA to Victoria.

We've experienced and seen a lot of things, and we're going to spoil you with the highlights!

Let's start with Esperance. It was a short stay for us in the city, so the only thing we did there was the Great Ocean Drive, which was full of the nicest beaches you can possibly imagine! We spend a lot of time just swimming in the huge waves along the coast. We also spent some time to just stroll through the city and look at the stores. (Picture: Berrie in the waves)

After two days we travelled further to Norseman. We actually didn't want to spend much time there, but we read in a brochure that - only 12km out of town - you can dig for gemstones! We took the opportunity to collect numerous of beautiful stones in green, white, and red!

(Picture: Paul and a roadsign)

We then took on the most challenging drive for us so far: The Nullarbor Plain! 2000 km of desert land, sometimes plastered with the occasional bush, tree and - hundreds of dead kangaroos! We actually thought we would see dozens of kangaroos hopping along with car as we drove, but instead we got what the truckdrivers left from doing 100km per hours constantly and not caring about what is in their way. The only living animal that we saw was an Emu crossing the street right in front of us, and groups of eagles sitting alongside of the road. Berrie also spotted a living kangaroo at one point.

(Picture: a cliff along the Nullarbor drive. For a scale idea: search for our car)

We were a bit afraid of driving through the Nullarbor, as people told us it is exhausting and boring, but we really liked it! We slept in two roadhouses during the three days.

(Picture: our sight for 3 days)

At that point we crossed the border to South Australia. The first thing that we experienced there was a fruitfly control! The Nullarbor Plain is the natural border to keep diseases either out of South or Western Australia. It is not allowed to carry any fruit or vegetables with you when you enter these states. The control itself happend in pure Aussie-manner: a quick look in the trunk was enough to ensure that we are not taking flies into state. Our first stop was Ceduna, but only to get a pin that we made it through the Nullarbor and for some foodshopping.

We drove further towards our big goal Adelaide, and on the way we visited Pildappa Rock (see picture).

That wasn't going to be the main attraction, though. After we arrived at the rock, we closed all windows and locked all doors from the car to make sure no one would steal or take anything out of it.

During the two months we had the car now, it happend quite often that we forgot to take the key out of the lock. All those times we were lucky that one door wasn't locked.

This time it happened again, with one little difference: we couldn't get into the car anymore at all. And it was Berries fault... As soon as he closed the door with a confident slap, he realised he did something wrong. And we had lost our spare key earlier already... Berrie ran up the hill, asking some random tourists for help. The two ladies analyzed the situation and then took Berrie to the nearest farm, where he searched for a bit of wire on their iron pile. Back at the rock, where Paul was pushing twigs through the door, we did our best with the wire. And with the help of another tourist (Australian people are extremely helpful!) we opened the car after a stressy hour!

We didn't drive much further after this incident, and after a night at a very windy caravan park we drove to Iron Knob. This town that is built around an Iron Mine went from a population of 4000 to 150 after the closure of the mine. Now you can go up the mine with a guide to see the massive craters, and it was well worth a look. On the same day we passed Port Augusta (where we didn't do anything apart from having lunch), to arrive in Adelaide some hours later. We were confident to find a Caravan Park to spend the night, but that proved not to be that easy... After finding 4 parks completely booked out, we decided to give up our budgetaccomodation for 1 night and stayed in a Backpackers Hostel. It was good to have an actual bed underneath us after so many weeks though!

Our first impression of Adelaide was good, very good. It looked more glamourous than Perth and we had high expectations. During our 5day stay at the nicely and centrally located Levi Park we found out that it isn't TOO nice. There's not too much happening really, and apart from shopping, visiting the small but beautiful zoo, strolling through the good but not spectacular Botanic Gardens, going to Port Adelaide (with the misleading promotion slogan "Port Adelaide. Its Happening") and spending an afternoon in IKEA (a piece of European culture on the other side of the world!) we haven't seen much. (Picture: Central Market in Adelaide)

After our stay in Adelaide we wanted to drive into Victoria, but before we actually went there, we stopped at a hill with a nice view over the city, to find out that smoke was coming out of our car. We were convinced that this was the end, we already made plans for working again and being stuck in Adelaide... Two men who came by and had a look made us feel a lot better about it though. We thought the fan was broken, but it wasnt, and the smoke was just coming from a bit of oil that was outside of the engine. The engine became very hot because of the steep hill and there it was: a dramatic vision. Afterwards we didn't have any problems again, so we suppose the men were right!

(Picture: Us on the Jaws of Death. That is the actual name of this rock)

The next town was Horsham, our base for exploring the absolutely gorgeous Grampians Mountain Range. This nature reserve rises abrubtly from the rather plain and boring Victorian rural grounds, and we enjoyed it so much that we would call it one of our favourite parts of Australian nature seen so far. To mention two of the nicest spots in the Grampians: the MacKenzie Falls and Mt. William (the highest point in the region). The pictures speak for themselves!

We went on to discover yet another fantastic piece of Australian landscape. The Great Ocean Drive, stretching about 200km's west of Melbourne stunned us with their rough beauty. Travel brochures call it one of the most beautiful coastal drives in the world, and we can do nothing but admit this. Another visual impression of Australian nature:

(Picture: the 12 Apostels, along the Great Ocean Road)

And now we are in Melbourne! We hope to let you know everyhting about our Melbourne stay very soon, and we'll spoil you with just one fact for now: we love it just as much as we thought we would. It's everything Adelaide wasn't. We're currently sleeping in a brandnew tent. Our "old" one became very unsturdy and it had cuts here and there. The staff of Kmart were extremely happy to offer us a new one, and we were lucky to find that it was on discount so we actually got some money with it!

You'll hear from us again very soon!

(Pictures: Australian sunsets)

Distance travelled as of 31/01/08: 10458km