The Journey to New South Wales

This is it – the final leg of this long journey! We leave sunny Adelaide  to head to the East coast and head North to Sydney. Incidentally, within this one drive (and within Stephen’s first week of being in Australia) we pass through four states – Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria and finally New South Wales!

Many landscapes, even with roads, look like paintings.

We drive through the Barossa Valley - home of one of the world's great wine regions.

Another night in the remote beauty of Australian countryside.

We see emus, a snake, many dead kangaroos and a wombat, galahs, eagles, ravens, a mouse, cows, goats, sheep, horses and lizards...

We drive alongside and over the Murray River, which at 2995 kilometres is Australia's longest river.

So many amusing signs!

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28th Stop: Adelaide, South Australia

Temperature – 35 degrees C

We arrive in Adelaide in the early evening, and are both looking forward to seeing our favourite bassist Lisa Flea, in her new designer home. Adelaide is a city of about 1.2 million people, situated on the south coast of Australia. It is the only state capital not to have been settled by convicts, which is one possible explanation for the relatively (and we do mean relatively!) refined sound of the Adelaide Australian accent. When we arrive, the sun is hot and the air is still, so after acquainting ourselves with Lisa’s house, we head to the beach for a relaxing evening.

What a strange feeling it was to see Lisa in the southern hemisphere!

Lisa takes us on a tour of local sights. This is Lisa's old school.

Henley Beach is the place for locals, so that's where we go! It's a Tuesday night but Adelaideans still head here after work to cool off in the ocean.

Chloe and Lisa are distracted by their gelati. The woman in the background is distracted by... Her son's behind

Lisa and Chloe dip their toes in the Southern Ocean. It's not that cold, considering Antarctica is on the other side.

Another fantastic sunset. The beach is west-facing and the sky is pristine.

Thank you Lisa! We leave Adelaide with a goodie-bag of local delights, including beer brewed in the Adelaide CBD and chocolate made just as close. We ate the Mint Slice biscuits already...

The Journey to South Australia

If you know us, then you probably know that although we have managed to get from London to Australia without flying so far, we are on the ‘wrong’ side of Australia! In Perth we aim to get a train across the country, which would take 3 nights, but to our dismay the next one is sold out! We want to visit Adelaide before getting to Sydney so we take a chance on a car relocation. We luckily find a company that has a campervan located in Perth who actually needs it to be located in Sydney – within 6 days! We grab our bags, leave the horrible hostel that we didn’t manage to sleep at in Perth and for just a dollar a day we pick up the keys to our ‘new home’ ‘ for the next 6 days. The journey to Sydney is from the West coast to the East – around a mindblowing 4,100 kilometres in total. First however, we head to Adelaide in South Australia – some 2,700 kilometres away…

Our campervan is a retrofitted Toyota - complete with cooker, bed, water tanks, power sockets, kitchen sink, dining area and a 'shower' (a hose pipe!).

The landscape is instanly mesmerising - forests, deserts, rivers, lakes, mountains and cliffs - all in layers of constantly-changing colour.

Sudden dust storms brew in the fields alongside. We cross our fingers and hope for a journey without bushfires or flooding.

We stop for lunch in Cunderdin (aka 'Cundy') - a town 160 kilometres East of Perth with a population of less than 700 people. Why here?... Because it is where we meet one of our friends who we met in Bangkok - Jayne!

Jayne kindly picks us a bunch of grapes from her garden for our long journey!

One of the many beautiful salt lakes we pass by.

We cross the famous Nullabor Plain, which has Australia's longest stretch of straight road - 146.6 kilometres! If you know your Latin then you may have recognised 'Nullabor' as 'No Tree', which didn't turn out to be strictly true, but a fascinating place all the same.

We stop to see a section of The Great Australian Bight - an open bay generally thought of as being towards the Southern Ocean, but also classified as being on the South Eastern part of the Indian Ocean.

We spend the night before reaching Adelaide in a campsite near Ceduna - which turns out to be one of the best places in the world to see stars!

Many towns along the way have rather obscure claims to fame. We are halfway along our coast-to-coast drive as we pass Kimba - a town known for having a large model of a native cockatoo known as a 'galah'. We can confirm that the original bird is exceptionally more beautiful.

27th Stop: Perth, Western Australia

Temperature – 32 degrees C

Perth is where our ship arrives. With a population of 1.7 million it is Western Australia’s largest city – and its capital. We a shocked by the price of things, not helped by the astonishing exchange rate – as we arrived we find that the Australian dollar is worth more than the US dollar, and the massive resource base in the 2.5 square kilometres of Western Australia is one of the main reasons why. We spend just a day and a night in Perth, and are happy to leave when we do! It is not really our kind of place…

We have arrived in Australia, we think...?!

We have definitely arrived in Australia.

Given their piles of cash and not much else to do, people seem to spend their day shopping in the pedestrianised outdoor malls. These are rarely to be seen in South East Asia, but here it is significantly less humid.

There are a couple of interesting smaller streets with big surprises.

Modern architecture, fairly nice urban planning and free bus services puts Perth in the top ten of The Economist's most liveable cities in the world. However, to us it seemed like a big country-town which brought with it a slightly narrow mentality... Enough said!

The Journey to Australia

Once we had made it to Bali without flying, the key journey would be this long boat journey to get us to the land of Australia. With the help of Chloé’s mum we find a cruise boat that leaves Bali on a five day direct sailing to Perth, in Western Australia! After travelling ‘around the world in 80 days’ the boat was an absolute luxury!

We say a sad goodbye to our travel companion Severine, who kindly escorts us to the port of Benoa where we meet our boat, the Athena.

Our first action - to find the food! We needn't have rushed however - food is served an obscene EIGHT times a day.

The boat has a pool, a sundeck, cinema, theatre, casino...

Views are breathtaking for the whole five days. we could barely choose just one photo.

Sun rises at 5.30am, completely unobstructed by anything on the neverending horizon line.

Australia awaits Stephen for the first time...

... whereas it is a first return journey home for kangaroo!