Tiffany and Greg Around the World
South Australia, AU
We didn’t plan on spending too much time here, however the Beast had other plans. Upside, we got to see a zombie parade and ride the cross-Australia train. Downside, it’s hard to go wine tasting when your wheels decide it’s time for retirement in mid-trip. And led us to get creative in our transportation options
However even with the limited exploration range and curtailed time frame, SA did surprisingly well. (to be fair, we had the inside scoop)
3 people
1 frigging huge campah
5 days
1786 miles
1 vast barren wasteland that inspired the Mad max movies
Some dinosaurs
And let’s not forget it’s us right? So…a boat. There needs to be a boat.
And this is how all that turned out…
OK so you finally figure out where the heck Uluru/Ayers rock is and you at long last secure some decent wheels to get you there…
…Then you dive for 6 HOURS until you see this
And you’re all –
But you’d be wrong
because once again Australia lied to us
Like we said, Uluru (AKA – Ayer’s Rock) is not IN Alice Springs.
It’s 287 miles away.
Then there’s the whole bit of us then needing to immediately backtrack that whole route in order to make the 1786 mile drive from Uluru to Cairns.
Through, might we remind you, that whole “barren wasteland where nobody lives except freaking feral camels” part of the country.
(gonna say that twice – FERAL. CAMELS.)
And us with a car that went and got itself all kablooied up all the way back in Adelaide.
So there we were, middle of the desert, no car, no transit system that links to Alice to Uluru to Cairns and on a short time table.
It’s moments like these that Greg loves being married to Tiffany.
They have trains that traverse Australia. One of them, called “The Ghan” bisects the country running from Adelaide to Alice Springs to Darwin and when we bought the tickets online they charged us half of what the website said they would…
…kinda wish we knew that BEFORE our car broke down in the middle of the outback but hey, it’s a better story this way…
So after having our car break down in the middle of an Australian zombie outbreak and narrowly escaping with our lives it was time to seek alternate transport.
But at least now we understood why the koalas hang out it the trees. Apparently zombies can’t climb eucalyptus. Come on, have you ever seen a zombie Koala?
[fgallery id=18 w=450 h=385 t=0 title=”zombie koalas”]
Well, after spending a week with them in the wild as they laughed at our misguided attempt to repair our car we can confidently say that neither have we.
Continue reading “Zombie Koalas”
The Beast in sleep mode
We were asked if we thought we got ripped off and lost money on our Aussie car when it broke down and we were forced to scrap it. Some of you may recall that in New Zealand we managed to sell our car for the same price we paid for it (oh, and NOT spend a few hundred on maintenance in the process…) so at first the comparison burned us a little bit. Then we did the math:
Australia has a lot of coastline. It ranges from swampy marshes, to beautiful beaches, to craggy cliffs and everything in between. Victoria, in the southeastern part of the country, has miles of land that meets water. One of the most celebrated of those regions is the Great Ocean Road. We first heard about it in a travel magazine a few years ago, and Tiffany thought it looked gorgeous so we decided to check it out (via wine country of course! We’ll post more about that soon.)
Little did we know that this was…a thing…that one does. Drive the Great Ocean Road that is. It’s a thing…that Australians ask…if you’ve done. So consequently….
(Hey, who are we to say it’s not epic?)
In Australia, they don’t call it a “bull bar.” They call it a “roo bar”
And it seems like every vehicle over here has one.
And we wonder where they got the idea for Mad Max…
The first thing we did on our great Australian overland excursion was to (inadvertently!!) find out why this is so:
[fgallery id=16 w=450 h=385 t=0 title=”The Great Australian Road Trip Continues guest starring Chris”]
Now we’re off to the Tropical North and joining us for our Road Trip is Tiffany’s brother Chris.
Chris came out to work with us in Australia when we got him a job at Charlotte’s Pass Ski Resort. He had a month left before he needed to head back to the US.
So after reclaiming The Beast from hibernation we asked…
Us: “So, chris, now that we’re done snowboarding in New South Wales where ya wanna go?”
Continue reading “The Great Australian Road Trip Continues, guest starring Chris”
