Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
We knew before we came over here that Australia is a very empty country, but we didn't realise quite how empty it really is until we started on our drive across to Melbourne - it's a journey of over 3000km, so it took us quite a long time! 8 days of driving, and once we left Perth the only towns we actually stayed in were smaller than Guernsey! We didn't actually go to Adelaide this time round as we are going there later on in our trip, but still that gives you some kind of idea of the scale of emptiness here! We finished the house sit on the 13th and after one final night in a hostel in Perth we set off on our road trip across to Melbourne! The first day we drove into the WA outback to the town of Kalgoorlie, the last proper town before we crossed the border into South Australia. It was boiling hot, over 40 degrees, and at one point the car cut out! Luckily we had only run out of petrol, and we had a jerry can full of fuel so we were able to top before we got to the next town only 5 minutes away, but it's not something we wanted a repeat of across the Nullarbor so we have been filling up much more regularly. Once we got to Kalgoorlie we headed straight for the pool at the hostel before chilling out in our air conditioned room. The next day, before we headed away from civilisation, we checked out the main street in the town which had some really old buildings, giving it a bit of a Wild West feeling, as well as visiting the Super Pit open cast gold mine - it was absolutely huge! We then headed down south to Norseman before setting out on our trip across the Nullarbor. We stopped for the night at a roadhouse called Balladonia, where they had a swimming pool and more air con which was really welcome as it was still around 40 degrees. On the third day of our trip we headed further east across the Outback to a roadhouse at Eucla - we still wouldn't cross the border into South Australia until our fourth day of driving! On the way we drove along the '90 Mile Stretch' - the longest straight road in Australia, and we also stopped at Madura Pass for some really great views over the Roe Plain - it went on to over the horizon with not one building in sight, absolutely amazing! After our last night in WA we set off early to cross the border into SA, we stopped off at Border Village to get photos with our feet on both sides of the border before we drove on to the proper Nullarbor - a treeless plain that goes on for miles! We also got the chance to see the cliffs that run along the south coast along the Great Australian Bight - it was a lot cooler though, only around 24 degrees and very cloudy! Our first stop in South Australia was at the town of Ceduna, where we stayed for 2 nights to have a bit of a break fdrom driving. It's a really small town, but we had a walk along the sea front and also caught up with some Neighbours episodes as this was the first motel where we had more than 1 channel to choose from! After Ceduna we headed off further east into the SA countryside to the town of Port Augusta, which is the largest town we have been too since we left Kalgoorlie last week! We got the driving over pretty quickly this day, so we had a bit of a rest at our motel when we arrived - it was very hot again so we cranked up the air conditioning and sat in the dark for a while to cool off. Then we decided to have a look around the town, we walked down the main street for a bit and then went to the Water Tower lookout point near our motel for some great views over the town and surrounding area - there was the Outback to the west of us, the sea to the south of us, the town to east of us, and mountains to the north so the views were awesome! (At least they seemed very nice from the photos Joel took - I chickened out halfway up so just had a look at the view from the second floor, but it was really good anyway!). After Port Augusta we had a long day of driving ahead of us to cross over the border into Victoria, where we stayed in a motel in the little town of Kaniva. The weather wasn't great, it was cloudy all day and once we crossed the border it actually started raining, but we had a quick walk around the town and saw all of the decorated sheep they have in the main street. We were getting a bit tired of driving by this point and were really looking forward to getting to Melbourne! On our last day of driving we set off a bit later in the morning as we couldn't check into our hotel in Melbourne until 2pm. We were driving through the Victorian countryside, and on the drive we went past some mountains which looked really pretty. We also stopped off to see the Giant Koala, which really was huge! It's about 14 metres high! We finally reached Melbourne and, once we had braved the ciy traffic to get to our hotel, we explored the area around our hotel - we are staying in Richmond, an inner city suburb just outside the CBD. It's very busy but very interesting, and full of good places to eat, so we went out for dinner for the first time in ages, before going back to our hotel to relax after all of the driving. It's really great to finally get here!
- comments