So, finally another travel update in which I am back to traveling through Australia. I arrived back in Australia at the end of July, so I must catch you up on 2 months of travel, which is going to be fun! I’ve been through a lot, so I’ll try not to make it too long-winded, let’s see if that works… Let me just tell you where I am now, namely on the other side of Australia in Broome (Western Australia). We drove about 6,500 kilometers from Brisbane, where I flew back from Indonesia 2 months ago. Plenty kilometers and plenty that I’ve done!
After I returned from Indonesia, we quickly headed towards Western Australia. We had agreed to travel again with Nick and Megan, the couple we traveled a large part of the East Coast with! Since they had gone that way by plane, we had agreed to meet there in early August. Samantha and I wanted to do a whale watching tour in Ballina (East Coast) and we saw so many whales! That was cool. We were already lucky because the day before we saw some whales from the coast, our first whales in Australia! But certainly not our last 😊
Since we are travelling through Australia in a camper, we do not have a postal address. Because of this, I asked a distant relative who emigrated to Australia in the 1970s if they could possibly receive our mail and luckily, they were certainly willing to do that for us! While we were here, we only had contact with Pieter and Wil by telephone so we thought it would be nice to finally meet each other in person before we left the East Coast. We took a small detour to the town where they live, and it was very nice to meet them. We even got tomato soup! 😊 It is very convenient for us that they were willing to receive our mail, and it is therefore very nice to put a face to the voice. Plus, I was also able to speak Dutch again! Very nice to have met such distant relatives 😊
Okay, so on the way to the West. As we drove more south, we noticed that it became a lot colder at night, with a minimum of 4 degrees in the camper. Not very nice to sleep in, of course, so we had to buy winter duvets and warmer clothes. Fortunately we were able to do this in Adelaide, where we made a stopover. We also found out on the day of that the Women’s Football World Cup was being played that evening in Adelaide, so we quickly got tickets for the 8th final, which was Morocco against France. The Moroccan fans handed out all kinds of clothes and fan gear to us, so we ended up dressed in the colors of Morocco to cheer on their team. Unfortunately it was to no avail because France was a lot better and deservedly won. I have to say that I don’t follow women’s football closely, but the match was fun to go to!
During our trip we also passed several quarantine zones where someone checks your refrigerator and confiscates all fruit and vegetables. That was an unpleasant surprise the first time, but luckily we were better prepared for it afterwards and we didn’t have so much with us 😊. We also stopped at a pink lake, which is more commonly found in southern Australia. We weren’t sure if it was a marketing stunt for the movie Barbie, but it turned out to be real 😉. We also stopped at a few beautiful camping spots along the cliffs of the coast and had a great time besides all the driving. We even drove the longest straight road in Australia called “90 Mile Straight” and you can probably guess why it’s called that! By the way, 90 miles is about 145 kilometers.
Once we reached the west coast, it was of course very nice to be reunited with Nick and Megan again, the first evening we updated each other about the past months we were seperated! Western Australia is a lot different from the East Coast, it is a lot quieter, the places are further apart and there is more nature. We often travel a lot of kilometers so are fored to find ways to enjoy ourselves in the car, a 6-8 hour drive to the next village is the rule rather than the exception. Samantha reads a lot and I have picked up Football Manager again, I am about to become champion with FC Utrecht so if Ron Jans needs any tips, he can call. Fortunately, the nice thing about there being a lot of nature is that we can sometimes be amazed even while in the car. We see everything: kangaroos, the most beautiful birds (of prey), reptiles, emus and of course the regular cows, sheep and horses. I sometimes feel like Australia is a Pokémon country, now I just hope I don’t encounter Ekans or Arbok (for the real Pokémon connoisseurs). Australia is apparently also the country with the most wild camels which we are actively looking for but have not seen them yet.
For this side of the coast you actually need a car with 4 wheel drive, also called 4×4 here, to get to beautiful camping spots. We were lucky that Nick and Megan had bought such a car and that the four of us regularly went to such a camping spot. We bought a tent and sleeping bags and parked our camper somewhere to pick it up later. That made the trip along this coast a lot more fun and we were lucky to have such friends! One of the highlights was trying to climb a huge sand dune with their car. It took us about 20 attempts and with 3 people pushing we finally succeeded! In addition, Nick and I both got an Australian haircut, just so you know why I look different in the photos 😉
During our time here, we made nice day trips. For example we went to Rottnest Island, an island without cars and where you can travel around by bike. Also this island is where the Quokkas live, this species of small kangaroos are known as one of the sweetest animals and that is how they look. We did a hike through the Kalbarri National Park which was also very cool, we set our alarms early to start a 4-hour hike between all kinds of rocks and cliffs at sunrise. We also had some bad luck with both cars, but we did not let it discourage us and I have the feeling that nowadays I can add car mechanic to my CV with all the knowledge I have acquired. The Karijini National Park was another highlight because there are several hikes where you walk through water that is up to your chest, we had a beautiful few days there. This park was more inland and was very unique because of the red stones everywhere.
Now back to the whales. Because it was the time of year that the whales migrate up and down both Australian coasts, almost every time we looked out to the sea, we saw whales. We even had one jump completely out of the water when we were less than 100 meters away! That was very cool to see, because you just have to look in the right direction. All those whales inspired us to book a tour in Exmouth where you can swim with them in the sea, these tours are quite popular to do. You go out to sea in a boat and a plane tries to find the whales and determine whether they are whales you can swim with or not. Some mother whales have a baby with them, so they can be very protective, and other whales feel like an acrobat and jump occasionally. And of course you don’t want to get a whale on your head…
Everyone was really looking forward to this day because it is of course a ‘once in a lifetime’ moment to swim with a whale (and survive). However, our pilot had some difficulty finding suitable whales, there were plenty of them passing right next to us but none that were suitable for swimming. However, there were boats from another tour that had found a whale shark and were in the water with it. Since we were waiting anyway, our crew decided we could do that too! We quickly put on our snorkels and got ready to go into the water. In the end we were able to swim with this whale shark 5 times, so close you could practically touch it! That was really cool 😊
A little later our pilot found a suitable whale so we quickly sailed in that direction. We were assigned to the 2nd group and therefore had to wait our turn. We watched the 1st group go from the boat and saw the mother whale swimming towards them. She passed them at first, but then decided to swim back swipe her fin at the group, hitting one of the snorkelers in the face! Apparently she had a young one with her and wanted to mark her territory. Fortunately, everything ended up okay with the man and now he has a great story for the rest of his life, but for us that unfortunately meant that we could no longer swim with that whale. That was a shame of course, but luckily we still had a great day!
Then it was time for the last days before Nick and Megan left. We ended our trip in Exmouth National Park and had a perfectly located campsite near the beach. We were surrounded by beautiful snorkeling spots and saw some turtles, rays, smaller sharks and coral. We were not allowed to make a campfire there, so we ended our last evening by roasting marshmallows on a gas stove, perhaps not the healthiest thing, but they were tasty. It was difficult to say goodbye to friends we spent almost half of our Australia trip with, but unfortunately that’s part of the job. We will see each other again somewhere in the UK or the Netherlands 😊
So now it’s just the two of us again and it’s slowly time to go back to the other side of Australia, as Samantha’s mother and her husband are coming to Brisbane in 3 weeks! We will travel back via the North side so hopefully we can officially say that we have completed the entire tour of Australia. With our visas expiring in December, we also have to start thinking about selling the camper and our next steps. Fortunately, we already have some things in mind, but I will share them another time 😊 For now, lots of love and see you next time!