Travel update #11 – Sydney!

A new travel update from Australia! We are currently in Newcastle (not England 😉), which is about 3 hours above Sydney. In the previous travel update we were still in Melbourne, so we drove quite a few kilometers; about 1,200 in total (or 745 miles for the Americans). Since then, we’ve experienced plenty so enjoy reading! 😊

Maybe good to tell some basic things first, I think I didn’t quite do that in my last update. We travel in a campervan and that is of course different from going from hostel to hostel. We basically have everything a house has (even a shower) but of course it’s a completely different life. Fortunately, the campervan itself is quite spacious, so we have plenty room to move. We bought an electric stove, airfryer and kettle, so we can basically prepare everything. We also have more than enough fridge / freezer space. There are 4 solar panels on the roof and they provide us with electricity. With an app we can see how much power our battery has, and we sometimes have to be smart by parking in the sun.

We have an app (WikiCamps) where we can find free water points and fill our water tank with it. We also have a filter in the tap so that we can basically fill with any water. Lately we’ve been asking gas stations if we can fill our water tank there and so far it’s always been good 😊. Of course it depends on how much we use it, but if we don’t shower, I think we could last about a week with a full water tank. Of course we do shower, but nowadays we do this at a gym because we have a subscription with a large gym chain that is located throughout the country! A good reason to exercise and shower 😉

We can find free camping spots on the same app, which of course also saves costs. In the big cities there are often no camping spots and we usually just park along the road or the beach. Basically this is illegal but okay; living on the edge eh 😉

In addition, a small detail; in Australia they drive on the left, but strangely enough you get used to that very quickly. In the beginning I thought that could be quite dangerous, but it turned out to be not so bad afterwards. The steering wheel in our campervan is therefore also on the right side. I think that makes a difference because everything is opposite and it’s easier to get used to than if the steering wheel were on the left. We have an automatic, so we don’t have to switch gears 😊

Anyway, after Melbourne we were on our way to Sydney! Unfortunately, we found out that not every kilometer is easy to drive. We wanted to go to Sydney to celebrate New Year’s Eve with the beautiful fireworks and decided to arrive on December 30th. We slept in a national park on the night of December 29, about halfway between Melbourne and Sydney. The camping spot was quite difficult to reach because we had to drive 20 minutes through the national park (without asphalt), but luckily our campervan managed to brave the road. We were quite anxious how that would go on the way back, because it would rain in the night and if it got muddy then our campervan could get stuck … In the end our worries turned out to be unnecessary because we didn’t get stuck.

Unfortunately, after about 15 minutes we got a flat tire… Because we were still in the national park, no tow truck could come, and we thought we had no spare tire. In the end we were very lucky, because we did have a spare tire and a passer-by also came to help us change this tire. He had seen us and came back 10 minutes later with all the necessary tools. And not even a few minutes later we were ready to go again! By the way, we waited 2.5 hours for this saving grace, but that could have been much longer!

So we finally arrived in Sydney on the 30th and I was happy about that. On the 31st, Rafael Nadal was playing in the United Cup in preparation for the Australian Open, and if I get the chance to see such a legend live at work, I can’t resist it! 😊

I wasn’t the only one who came for Nadal because he got a lot of respect and was cheered on all the time by the whole stadium! Unfortunately that didn’t help because he lost 1-2 (6-4, 3-6, 4-6) to Cameron Norrie but I really enjoyed it. The way Nadal plays some balls is just not normal.

New Years Eve in Sydney was very beautiful. The firework shows that we normally see on TV, we now saw in real life! There was a big fireworks show at 9 am and of course at 12 midnight, and also some fireworks in between. For the rest, I did not see anyone set off fireworks as I was used to from the Netherlands, and I actually liked it better this way!

Sydney is a beautiful city! The harbor with the well-known opera house was very beautiful, and there were also nice bars and restaurants in the city itself. We stayed in Bondi, which is on the waterfront and about 20 minutes by bus from Sydney. Bondi is known for the beach which I now understand. We enjoyed 2 full days there and also went to a swimming pool against the sea!

After the beautiful days with lots of sun it rained on and off for about 3 days and then we discovered that our roof was leaking, that was not very nice haha. Fortunately it was still fine to handle, but it was annoying of course. So on the day that the weather was dry, we drove to the hardware store, climbed onto the roof and repaired the leak. Well, that remains to be seen because it hasn’t rained since then so we hope for the best 😉.

Well, that’s been quite a bit of info, so I’m going to close it off! The campervan got a new set of tires today so we will continue our way north again and you will read more about that next time! Thanks again for reading and see you next 😊