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Report No 10

Before starting our last little adventure (the Gunbarrel Track) we wanted to rest and stock up in Wiluna. Unfortunately it wasn't really an inviting place where we could spend an afternoon. After stocking and filling up and inquiring at the local police station we headed on towards east stopping at Carnegie Station for the night. Until 180 km after Carnegie the road was in good condition due to the grader we were following. Overtaking the grader and entering a new shire meant slowing down drastically to 30 km/h or even walking speed. It wasn't even the washouts or rocks that slowed us down, it was the very heavy corrugation where we sometimes had to take one bump at a time!

The following text is a description of ONE DAY IN OUR LIVES:

25. February 2005 Bushcamping on Gunbarrel Track about 200 km west of Warburton

At 3 o'clock in the morning Alex noticed that the fridge was not running properly. He got up to look and soon found and fixed a bad connection. Once again heavy corrugation is leaving its marks. The full moon was still shining brightly in the clear stary night.

At 7:15 Luca woke up and played by himself for half an hour until the day started for all of us. Luca had his bottle of milk. The sun was out and already very strong and so are the thousands of flies outside our car. We soon decided to have breakfast in the car. First we put the beds together to be able to get to the breakfast stuff. We had Greek yoghurt with honey and almonds (Gereon's recipe) and the usual Corn Flakes and Nutrigrain. Luca who was climbing around in the car catching flies refused to eat anything but his Nutrigrain.

After breakfast Natasha washed and tidied up and put the luggage from the front seat back while Alex and Luca filled our drinking water for the day (5 1.5l bottles). Then Alex finished his fridge job and did the every day engine check. We were on our way again by 9 o'clock. The aircon was on right after starting the engine and we were happy to cool down slowly after packing up. Luca always helps us wherever he can, he puts his car and his chair away and is always happy to sit in the car once that is done.

Now we are back on the bumpy track again. We have a long day in the car ahead of us. The road is very corrugated and we and the car get shaken around alot. Our maximum speed for the next 100 km is 30km/h. Half an hour after leaving our bushcamp Luca fell asleep after "singing" to himself. The vibrations made his voice sound very shaky.

Just after 10 o'clock we come across the biggest herd of camels we have ever seen in the shade of the trees. There were approximately 40 animals including younger ones looking at us in amazement and eventually getting up and running away. These days camels from this area, which were once introduced into Ausralia, are exported to Saudi Arabia!

At 10:45 Luca wakes up asking for his water bottle. The road is still very bumpy. Keeping Luca occupied and happy isn't always easy, but we manage quite well (with the help of his "autos", books, pens and other toys). At 12 o'clock we leave the heaviest corrugation we have had behind us and sprint south to the Great Central Rd with 75 km/h. It feels like a real highway. While doing a little repair on a loose screw we see the first car for 2 days, with local Aboriginals in.

At 13:30 we arrive at Warburton Roadhouse. We put some diesel in our tank and decide it's not a nice place to stay for lunch. So we take bread, pickles, some "swiss-like" cheese (not as nice as the real stuff), some twiggy sticks, crackers and beer forward and drive on eating our lunch. The outside temperature must be well over 40° C - too hot to picnic.

The Great Central Rd (still gravel) lets us drive up to 90 km/h. One doesn't have to worry too much about rocks on road, washouts or fallen trees. We are still 500 km west of Yulara (Ayers Rock) with "nothing" in between.

In the afternoon Luca has a short nap (40 min). At 15:30 we have a quick break and Luca and Alex walk on a bit along the road. Natasha takes over the driving and picks them up a few hundred meters on. While driving on we see another 3 small groups of camels. The kangaroos seem to live in a different country :-)

At 17:30 the shadow of our car grows over 30 m. We stop to take a few photos with the nice evening light and arrive at our destination for today, Docker River after 18:00. It's already getting dark.
As we have just crossed the border from Western Australia to the Northern Territory we must also change our watches. We loose 3 hrs. Natasha gets the beds ready in the car and Alex and Luca go to register at the entrance of the campground. We then sit outside a bit, the temperature sinks to a pleasant degree, about 30°. We watch the nearly full moon rising and at 19:30 (still WA time) Alex "showers" himself first with our shower bottle (a 2l bottle with small holes in the lid) and then Luca. Its very refreshing even though the water from our tank is still very warm. It's Alex' turn to put Luca to bed. Luca has his evening milk bottle and by 20:00 he is fast asleep, by 20:30 Alex is also sleeping and as soon as Natasha has finished writing this she will also go to bed.

It was (again) a very nice day driving through a beautiful and very remote part of this country! It's a day we picked randomly to give you an idea of our life on the road. Every day is different though - we don't always drive the whole day, we usually have longer lunch breaks, ... but we must always just take things as they come!

From Docker Station we went through to Yulara where we stopped for a swim, lunch and a shower before driving on at 4 pm. The long days only sitting in the car are not much fun for Luca. So we decided to drive at night while Luca is asleep. It turned out that we drove through the whole night non-stop and arrived in Adelaide, 1400 km later, the next afternoon at 2 pm. The few relaxing days in Adelaide were much appreciated by all of us!

Heading back to Melbourne we visited Andrew and Kathie in Ballarat (we met them earlier in our trip in the Grampians) and spent a lovely weekend there. They took us to a local parade and to Sovereign Hill, a "replica" of an old gold mining town.

Back in Melbourne our first priority was to sell our car. Unfortunately we didn't succeed and had to leave the car with Oli. This time in Melbourne the weather was really kind to us. It was sad to leave Oli, Irma, Gereon and the kids knowing that we won't see them for a while.

Our 6 months in Australia were by far not enough to see and do everything. But it was enough for us to do most things we wanted to do. We enjoyed having our 4-wheel-drive to visit and travel through remote areas. With our Landcruiser we did 34 000 km and while on the road we lived in it. We usually cooked for ourselves and enjoyed taking a cold beer out of our fridge in the great summer heat. We seldom stayed at an official campground, but often bush-camped wild or went to a basic campground in a nationalpark. We were self-sufficient with our bushcamper, the shower bottle and the spade :-)
The flies and mosquitos were sometimes very disturbing. Travelling through Australia we met some very nice people and we are looking forward to seeing some of them again in Switzerland or wherever.

NEW ZEALAND

The flight to Auckland, New Zealand went smoothly and so did the transfer to the backpackers in town. After asking around for rental vehicles, we decided to buy a new home for the next few weeks. We bought ourselves an old Toyota Hiace van with lots of kilometers, and we hope it doesn't die on us. It has kind of a bed and lots of cupboard space. Only pink would be a worse colour than our pale blue. However if we get rid of it in the end, we hope to have spent less than with renting. Time will tell ;-)

We left Auckland on 17.3. and visited friends of Natasha's parents before heading down to the South Island. On the way we went to the Coromandel Peninsula. Driving on the narrow and windy roads is definitely slower and more tiring, but we crossed some very nice rainforests with huge fern trees.

In the mean time we know that as Australia has its flies, New Zealand has sandflies and mosquitos all over - what an itchy pity!

From Wellington, where we quickly visited the Te Papa museum, we caught the ferry to Picton on the South Island. Our first night on the South Island we had troubles finding a spot for the night and were wandering around in the Marlborough sounds until we eventually found a campground in the dark.

Via Nelson we went to Kaiteriteri, where we eventually would have had a possibility to rent a sailing boat for two days to explore the Abel Tasman NP. Everything seemed good and we were all excited until we saw the boat! It was old, stinky and "uncosy", so we decided to give it a miss :-( At the campground there we were invited for a beer and chat by our neighbours. Especially Luca enjoyed the other kids and their toys. He obviously got very attached to this really old little "bike", and made a big fuss when it was time to say bye. He ended up getting the bike as a present from the people and from now on we have to carry the beloved bike with us (it definitely won't make it to Switzerland).

Our next bigger stop was in Westport after a very scenic drive in nice weather. There we visited a seal colony and got the "warrant of fitness" done for our car. Instead of a quick check whether all lights work, they did a very thourough check for one hour. A few things had to be done, but luckily nothing major.

Travelling down along the west coast we visited the Pancake Rocks in Punakaiki. A nice walk through rain forest brought us to various view points. We didn't only see the rocks but also dolphins. This is also where the good weather left us.

By Lake Ianthe we had a dreadful night because the rain made all the mosquitos in the area come together underneath our car. From there approximately 100 of those beasts found their way into our car!! Until 3 o'clock in the morning we could kill about 70 of them, before giving up and falling asleep, bzzzzz scratch.

After a quick breakfast in the car we went on south to the glaciers. We first stopped at the Franz Joseph Glacier, where we did a walk. After being to Alaska and Canada we didn't get too excited anymore. It was still a nice walk in the rain though ;-) In the forest of the Fox Glacier view road we cooked lunch. Luckily we put up our awning as it started pouring. Not only we had lunch, so did the sandflies and mozzies.

On the way down south to Haast Alex went to take a photo at a viewpoint and getting back into the car he nearly poked his eye out with an old aerial sticking out sideways from our car. He was very lucky it went in 2 cm next to the side of the eye.

The wet night with the mozzies also got our mattress soaked on one end. As the weather hadn't improved at all we decided to stay in a motel the following night. A good decision.

The Easter bunny found us near Queenstown. Luca was very happy and excited about the eggs.

After checking the weather forecast we decided to give the fiordlands (Milford Sound) a miss and head to the better weather on the east coast. The very scenic drive with different landscapes (and better weather) let us enjoy it alot.

After a pleasant day in Dunedin and around the Otago Peninsula we headed up north along the coast. Our next stop was at Moraeki Boulders. These are round rocks in the waves, nothing special, but still special! There an Austrian tourist sprained his ankle and just as walked past he lost consciousness. Soon he was back to normal except for his foot. Alex helped him limp back to the car park. Weeks after Luca still remembers "daddy man aua".

Instead of heading further up north along the coast we chose an inland route "via Mt Cook". Unfortunately the weather and the forecasts didn't make the detour of 150 km to go to (and not to see) Mt Cook worth while. Instead we went back to the coast to Christchurch. On the beautiful Banks Peninsula we visited Akaroa, a French settlement. Passing through Christchurch again we spent the afternoon in the Botanical Gardens, Luca feeding ducks and enjoying the big playground. We have realised that here in New Zealand we are spending more and more time at playgrounds and we feel sorry for Luca not having "buddies" but being the only stranger on the playground. A good thing we are coming back soon.

At the nice Hanmer springs we met a NZ family of 3 who are travelling for 3 months and want to write a book about it. Don't worry we aren't planning on writing a book (although this report is getting really long :-)

Kaikoura, our next stop, is the mecca of the whale-watchers. Unfortunately they don't let children under 6 onto their boats. So it turned out that only Natasha paid a fortune to go and see a sperm whale and hundreds of dolphins. Alex spent the afternoon with Luca and visited a seal colony. We all had a good time.

On we went to Blenheim to do some wine tasting. The area is well-known for its sauvignon blancs (pronounced here blonk), but they also have other wines, olive oils and schnapps. After lunch, tastings and a playground session (with sandflies) we caught the ferry back to the north island, Wellington.

We arrived in the evening at 9 o'clock. We ended up sleeping somewhere next to the road in a suburb of Wellington. The next morning we went straight to the botanical garden. A pond with ducks and a playground filled Luca with lots of joy. As we wanted to visit the house of Parlament we had to drag Luca away from there. As a sweet revenge he filled his nappies in the beginning of our interesting (and smelly) one hour tour ;-)

Leaving Wellington we came across some nice forest parks where we eventually could do some lovely walks in good weather.

Of Hastings we only remember the Mc Donalds where we had a monster meal and where we spent the afternoon at the Mc Donalds playground. Luca loved it and we once again had to drag him away after 2 hrs.

The next night we spent at Lake Tutira, the most beautiful campground we had so far in NZ. We were right on a lake full of ducks and black swans (and hardly any sandflies). Luca loved feeding and chasing the ducks and was taught some respect of the black swans.

In the meantime Luca has a heavy demand regarding us reading books to him. He just can't get enough! This and the playground issue makes the travelling less flexible (for us).

The coastal drive around the East Cape was very beautiful and quiet. Finding an ok spot to overnight is often difficult in this country as everything is fenced off or often has a sign "no camping". So in particular on the east cape we struggled until dark to find an acceptable spot for the night. We stayed there even though there was a sign 'no camping'. - It was lovely!

In Rotorua the weather has been more or less kind to us. So we spent 5 days in and around it to let some time pass.

There will be one last report once we are back home in Switzerland. In May, we are planning on having a 'back home party'. More details will follow.

12th of April 2005, Rotorua