It is with great pain that I had to say goodbye to a country and a lifestyle that I was growing to love. Like ‘real’ life it wasn’t always good times, but the experience made me so much richer as a person than I would ever be if I would stayed at home. I’m glad for the months I could have, I’m glad I’ve seen a small portion of Australia that many people will never see.
Like many people before me and many more to come after I’m already gone, I have some great memories left.
- The bananaleaf diner in Singapore
- Eugene doing the haka at the POW
- Amy69Bar in Thailand
- Red light district in Singapore with Johan never having a clue what was going on in that bar
- Kelly, our guardian angel in Brisbane
- Chinchilla Race
- Al from Forrie Hills
- Getting up at 3 o’clock to pick bloody rock melons
- Our Roadmonster
- Cronulla YHA, I only wished I had some more money
- The goonbags in Kyabram
- F1 in Melbourne (and Eliz. St.
- Tasmania… I will visit you again
- Wineglass Bay and all the beautifull brekkies we had
- All the fences we jumped to take that one good picture (despite other tourists yelling at us)
- The Twelve Apostles and all the Great Ocean Road sights
- Getting our Wicked Campervan
- The crash and getting transported to Alice Springs Hospital with the Royal Flying Doctors Service
- The nurses at the Hospital
- …

If people ask me if they should go to Australia I can only say that it is a life-altering experience. If you can, just go… don’t try to look back and don’t try to think it too much through. Do it alone or go with a friend… You always travel Australia alone and at the same time, you’re never alone.

I thank all the people I travelled with. Some are still travelling, others are already gone home. All of them I thank for a great time and for giving me the chance to get to know them. I hope I see you soon…

And to say it with the (slightly altered) words of my guardian angel in Belgium:
“With these words I leave this blog to rest, with all my memories close to me, I just have to close my eyes…”

The road ahead
The road is waiting… Together with old buddy Bastian, newcomer Meg and obviously too much food we headed to Darwin. First stop would be Coober Pedy, the opal capital of the world. The road ahead sounded like a good plan, but it’s really boring. There’s kilometers of road with nothing but roadkill and flies to keep you company. Luckily someone (me) had the good idea to burn some music cd’s so we didn’t had to listen to the sound of wind for hours and hours. And that’s how we still had a good time. There’s something funny about driving through the desert with nothing but Cyndi Lauper, the Eurythmics, Men at Work (and if you don’t know what song… kick yourself… hard), UB 40 (Red red wine… ooh yeah), early Madonna, Van Halen, Moby, Massive Attack and a mix of Studio Brussel’s Switch (thanks for the good time). Screaming ‘JUMP’ on the tunes of Van Halen or ‘GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN’ while standing on top of our Wicked campervan, driving through the desert… Good times and thanks for our good sense to buy a few goonbags and a carton of beer for those extra funny nights… There were nights that we just couldn’t get any sleep at all, there were nights that we went to bed at 8PM (how sad is that?). But on all nights… we had fun!!! And that’s what the road ahead is all about… nothing but yourself, your travelling buddies and the road. The road to Coober Pedy was a bit of sobering up after the Great Ocean Road, but we got there, with good humour.

Coober Pedy and the Breakaways
Coober Pedy is the opal capital of the world and the saddest place I’ve ever seen. The Lonely Planet said this was a inhospitable environment and they weren’t lying. It hasn’t rained in this place like, forever and the streets look so dried out that for a second you get worried about the amount of liquids you got in the campervan. Because it gets so hot during the day and so cold during the nights, a lot of the population lives in dugouts, abandonned mineshafts that are decorated as houses. Coober Pedy almost got some tourism going as they start to build dugouts from scratch. People started to live underground, they even had the first underground church.
Next up, about 25 kilometer from Coober Pedy, you can find the Breakaways. A place where you can find absolutely nothing. There’s nothing there, so a lot of Hollywood blockbusters where filmed here, Star Wars, Pitch Black, Mad Max, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,… the funny thing is trying to take pictures and afterwards try to find some differences, it all looked the same to me, except for the big rock in the middle of it. Oh yeah, and what you don’t see on the picture are a million irritating, getting on my nerves, flies. If you try to breath in some fresh air through your mouth (or your nose for that matter) you’re bound to eat at least 3 flies. They are everywhere and tell you, there is nothing funny about trying to pee and keeping the flies away at the same time…

Next up, the red center, Uluru, the Olgas, Kings Canyon, Alice Springs and then up north to Darwin where (I hope) they have found something against the flies, because it’s only getting worse.

The Great Ocean Road
The Great Ocean Road is about 100 km’s of breathtaking views. The road starts at a place calles Torquay and ends at Warrnambool. The road brings you to all the famous places. Bell’s Beach where we were just 5 days too early for the annual Ripcurl Surfing Championship… that sucked. Lorne with some of the best seafood ever. And ofcourse all the amazing rockformations, the Twelve Apostles, Lord Ard Gorge, The Wreck, London Bridge (or is it Arch now?),… too many to speak of, be sure to watch all the pictures online pretty soon. The Twelve Apostles National Park is by far one of the most well kept, cleanest and most important, free national park I’ve been to up to date. After two days on the road I was proud to go to one of their toilets.

Our nights at the Great Ocean Road
It sounds incredibly romantic sleeping at the Great Ocean Road. We didn’t have enough money so we drove on the first carpark we encountered when it got dark, put the tent up and hoping that nobody would kick us out, or run us over. And let me tell you that sleeping with three guys in a small tent, without something against a hard and cold floor, just a sleeping bag, nobody took a shower during the roadtrip and personal hygiene wasn’t really something we took great care after… is that enough romance for everyone? The sights were great and breakfasts were amazing, but my back still hurts like hell when I think of the nights…

Nights never to forget…

The Grampians
We where a bit disappointed that the Great Ocean Road ended and we still had to drive like 400 km’s to Adelaide. We still had the car for 3 days so we decided to go up north to the Grampians National Park. A huge area where the tourist maps are divided in a Northern and a Southern area. We put the tent up, didn’t pay a fee (hey, if it saves some money, we can eat again…), and enjoyed nature all around us. On the Northern map there was a hike of about 12.2 km’s that was described as ‘hard’ and more specifically for ‘energetic walkers’. woohoo… after Tasmania, what’s the worst that could happen right? Euhm… actually having to climb to the top of Mount Stapylton… The last few meters we had to climb our way to the top… dangerous stuff… but amazing view over the Grampians in the South and the plains in the North while we were eating some sandwiches and having fun on what at that time felt like the top of the world.

I wouldn’t want to miss anything of this… We spent the last few days with less and less money and we still feel richer than we used to…

“Ain’t seen nothin’ ’til you’re down and you’re rotten, oh yeah.
You ain’t got nothing until you hit rock bottom. Oh yeah.”
(Dandy Warhols)

On the road
anybody who wants to visit Tasmania should be aware that without a car, you’re nowhere. Though Tazzie has a public transportation system, it’s not really suited for tourists who want to see it all. So we spend the first day looking for a campervan big enough for the three of us. After a long search in Hobart (it’s still high season here), we found one for the price of $750. We wanted to start as soon as possible for our roadtrip from Hobart (in the south) to Launceston (in the north) so we took it on the spot. We made a rough sketch of our route and we were on our way to discover Tasmania, the holiday isle.

The parks
Tasmania has some astonishing national parks that will never stop to amaze you. From the very first day it was clear that we wanted to do as much national parks as we could do. We would do four of them.

Freycinet National Park with the amazing Wineglass Bay. If there’s one beach you should EVER see in Tasmania, it’s this one. Crystal clear water, soft white sand and totally secluded from the world. You need a hard half hour hike to get to it and than you have a beach to call your own. We had breakfast on the rocks next to the Bay and it was a breakfast I’ll hardly ever forget. We took a swim and you can still see the bottom 5 meters below you, even I could and I wasn’t even carrying my glasses.

Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park
Everybody will know the lovely Tasmanian Devil, one of Tazzie’s most famous creatures. Don’t be fooled by the pretty puppy routine. This little devil has enough power in his jaws to crush through almost anything. If a pitbul bites you, it has a power of 800 kg, this one has 2800 kg, a saltwater crocodile has 3000 kg… to give you some perspective. But lucky for us humans, he’s as dumb as Paris Hilton, as nearsighted as Stevie Wonder and has the survival instincts of a worm. We’ve seen a few in action at the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park and they were funny to watch. Shame they are getting extinct, only 50,000 remain, last year more than 50,000 died.
Than there are the possums, the wombats, the pandemons (very small ‘roo’s), wallabies (a little bit bigger) and ofcourse… kangaroos. They all seem to run on the major roads at night and don’t seem to care that they get run over by cars. I’ve seen more roadkill on the roads of Tasmania than in Apocalypse Now. Even if you honk and bright lights are shining, they just stand there… looking stupid. Most of the creatures are a bit shy, but food is the magic word… one lucky possum even got our left over potato salad from Woolies.

Port Arthur Ghost Tour
Most people know that Australia was a convict colony for England. What most people don’t know is that convicts who still couldn’t behave themselves were sent to Tasmania. To Port Arthur, a little town on a Tasmanian peninsula. The only access to the main island was guarded by bloodthirsty dogs and rumours were spread that the waters around the peninsula were shark infested. After more than a century Port Arthus has become a huge Tasmanian touristis attraction, especially the night Ghost Tour were a guide shows you the historic buildings and tells you ghost stories about the place. Though I still don’t believe in ghosts, our guide was right when he said we’ll remember this tour for a long time.

Our breakfasts
People back home now that I don’t usually eat a big breakfast, but out here, you’re almost obliged to have one. And almost every day we had an amazing breakfast. The second day we woke up at the Remarkable Cave and had a brekkie on Maigoon Lookout. We kicked every tourist from the lookout, put a table up and pulled out some chairs. Another gorgeous brekkie was at Wineglass Bay where we stood up at 5AM to watch the sunrise, went for the very physical hike to Wineglass Bay, loaded with food in our backpacks. But it was all worth it, except the fact that the sunrise wouldn’t really cooperate, it hid itself behind the mountain, the bastard. So there we were, at Wineglass Bay at 6AM, having breakfast on the rocks next to the crystal clear water.
Ofcourse we had some less amazing breakfasts… like the one in some shitty residential street in Launceston, or the one in the freezing cold at Lake Pedder. But even those had something about them…