A week driving across Australia

Australia is an Island. It is a country. It has a single currency; and a single language is spoken across nearly all of the land - so it is not unlike most countries in those respects. But Australia is also a continent all on its own. It's vastness is incomparable in my admittedly limited experience, but I can now make some sense of the dimensions in terms I understand. Driving from one side to the other offers a unique and unparalleled view of what it means for a country to be 3500km from one side to the other.

We started in Fremantle; a beautiful town just south of Perth on the West coast. The Great Eastern Highway runs from this town across to our first stop, the twin town of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, 560km away. This was the first instance where I wanted to travel to a town hundreds of miles away without having a great desire to stop off at the other towns along the way. I'm sure these places we were to travel past had a reason for being there once, but nowadays most of them exist purely to serve the motorists trying to get somewhere else; supplying the inexperienced and unprepared with food, water, and petrol.

We stopped just outside 'Kal' for the night at a town called Coolgardie. This is where gold was first found by a pair of Irishmen who happened to camp nearby and within 2 days had collected over 200 nuggets of gold which were just lying in the dust. Now though, the original town is a network of dirt roads with small wooden signs to mark the places that buildings once stood, and what remains is a couple of shops to service the visitors, and a campsite we stayed in. Camping here was comfortable, both for us on an airbed in the back of the car and for the two other English guys we were traveling with in their tents outside. Power sockets and lights were conveniently close to our pitch, as was the bbq and 'kitchen' – a sink and draining board around the back of the toilet block. This sort of campsite was at the top end of the scale in terms of location and facilities – more often than not, we would simply pull up beside the road at a rest area and make our camp behind some trees!

The next day we entered Kalgoorlie-Boulder early on, and checked into our hostel – a converted 'tin-shack' brothel from the original gold rush days of the 1850's. Prostitution is illegal across Australia – but exception is made in towns such as this where the predominantly male population are so isolated from the more inhabited parts of the country – and several brothels still operate in the area, run exclusively by Madames, including an original tin-roof shack from the gold rush era in the same road we were staying in. It was a particularly classy area. Advertisements written in chalk outside one of the bordellos, the Red House, included the phrase "Nothing in the world is more expensive than a woman who is free for the weekend." And for the miners that don't frequent these places, or who are just having a night away from their favorite girls, there are many 'skimpy' bars where they can get a cold beer served by an even colder young lady!

Other than prostitution, Kalgoorlie's main industry is gold mining, which it does on a monumental scale. The 'Super Pit' is already 3.5km wide, 5km long, and almost 1km deep – and is set to get a lot deeper with the massive trucks, each with a digger the size of a small house at the front, capable of carrying 270 tonnes of material on each run. We were able to explore one of the old mineshafts which descended hundreds of levels, and see how the mining used to be conducted – with impossibly noisy 'screamer' fans and hammer drills that sounded like machine gun fire. We watched the smelting process, visited graves of old prospectors, and were even able to pan for gold, the profit of which now sits safely in my wallet and must increase my net worth by many hundredths of a penny!

After stopping off at the most remote pub we had yet come across: an apparently recently refurbished collection of graffiti-covered corrugated iron and wooden planks 40km from another building, we traveled 200km south to join the Eyre Highway which would take us the next 700km to the state border, our next destination, and beyond. We drove 192km down this highway to a small refelling town Belladonia where we set up camp for the night. This town was so remote that all commodities, even water, had to be brought in by truck – massive 88-wheel road trains known as big jiggers – and everything here was consequently hugely overpriced. Imagine the mark-up on everyday items in service stations on a UK motorway. Then imagine that the owners of that service station knew that you had been traveling for 3 hours and not past another building or sign of civilisation, and that the next place to get your petrol is almost a day's drive further down the road. This is not the sort of place you want to pull into with an empty tank, or a dry mouth! We pulled into a rest area, and made camp in the red dirt next to the vast expanse of bushland, and after trying to piece together the scattered bones of a sun-bleached kangaroo skeleton, settled down for a good nights rest. There were still a lot of miles to travel before we reached a real city again.

Just after Belladonia we reached the longest piece of straight road in Australia: the 90-mile Straight; 146.6km without a single deviation. Time to set the cruise control and take a nap! By now, the bush out of the window had begun to change from forests of trees to sparse brush with only the occasional tree – often just a lightning-burnt skeleton – intruding into the horizon. The red dirt that typifies Australia was everywhere, and when we camped up overnight the wind would whip it up into tornado-like willy-willies that covered everything. One guy we spoke to on the journey told us that he still has red dust staining a shirt he was wearing when he did the journey four years ago!

At the West Australia / South Australia border, Eula, we came across a signpost which gave us an idea of exactly how far we had traveled. It kindly informed us that since we left the vicinity of Perth we had traveled 1435km; but we still had 2522km to travel before we got to Sydney.

The rest of the journey to Adelaide, where we were to leave our driving companions to join a coach trip the rest of the way to Sydney, was a pleasant but largely uneventful drive as we watched the gradual change of scenery from desert, to bush land, to trees, and back to civilisation at Port Augusta. We stopped at several scenic points of interest to marvel at the vistas of beaches, cliffs, waves, and wildlife. The road we traveled was mostly in a straight line, or a very gradual curve, occasionally we would see signs that warned that it was also an emergency airstrip for the Flying Doctor service which can get to anywhere in Australia within two hours – an amazing feat considering it was taking us five days to cross it by car.

At several points on the journey we could see smoke on the horizon indicating a bush fire in the distance, and we later learnt that lightning from a storm had started several fires that had been burning across the Nullabor Plain for days. One such fire was still going when we passed it three days after the storm. At first it looked like the flames on the horizon were going to remain far away as we drove parallel to them; but after a few kilometers we were getting close to the fire and could smell the smoke as it blew towards the car. At its closest, the trees at the side of the road were in flames just feet away from us – so it was with windows closed and foot down that we went past the worst of it!

Once we had crossed the Nullabor, we reached Port Augusta. The first proper town (with a population over 50) that we had come across for days. The trees, buildings, and people must have been a welcome sight for anyone that had spent serious time out in the desert and bushland that we had just come from – but the town held little charm after the romance and solitude of the desert – so it was a final trip through the back-roads that we took from there to get to Adelaide about 2-3 hours away.

And so we parked up in Adelaide: the capital of South Australia; Got out of the dirtiest car I had ever been in, that had been my home for the last two weeks, and collapsed into a real bed for the first time in a week. My head was still swimming with a thousand different views of the country, but I had the satisfaction of knowing I had done something most Australians never do; crossed one of the harshest deserts in the world – and I finally understood what being a big country actually meant.

Check out the pics below:

A week Hitch-hiking through the South West

So with our chores in Albany complete, we set about planning the next leg of our journey. We knew we wanted to be back in the Blue Mountains for Christmas – so that gave us five weeks to travel back across East; through Western Australia, Southern Australia, Victoria, and New South Wales. A journey that would probably be between 2000 km and 3500 km depending on our route.

So we set off back East in a way that typified all of our excursions so far. By heading West.

We had friends from Albany that were going to be travelling towards the eastern states, and we thought it would make sense to have a bit of an adventure and join them for part of our trip. The only problem was they were already several hundred kilometres away in the Margaret River – and Albany, being even less of a transport hub than the Isle of White is, did not give us any way of getting there.

So it was time to hit the highway, and try a bit of hitching!

Australia has attached a particularly negative stigma to hitch-hikers; partly because of the 1992 Backpacker Murders (which are still going through the Australian courts) but also because of the continued trouble that is being caused by some of the hitchers and the people that pick them up. In the last week for example, two stories regarding hitchers made the news: One where a hitcher pulled a knife on the guy who picked him up, and one where a young girl who was hitching was thrown from the moving car by the three guys that had picked her up. In the two months we have travelled so far we hadn't seen a single person thumbing a lift. So we knew persuading people to pick us up wouldn't be simple.

We got a lift to the highway with some friends from Albany Backpackers, and sat by the side of the road to wait. Main roads in Australia are not the same as you see in Europe. A car came along every few minutes. When it was a busy stretch. So we amused ourselves in between these periods with games, like noughts-and-crosses in the dirt; and by pretending the passing cars were listening to our pleas as they approached and curses as the zoomed straight past!

But after about half an hour we were picked up by a spiritualist called Sue, originally from Wales, who had seen us when she was driving in the opposite direction on the highway and had been told by her 18-year-old son that on her return trip she should help us out. And it seemed she was more than happy to! Everyone we were picked up by turned out to have travelled around and hitched in their past, so they knew what it could be like. We got a few stories about Sue's life – how she left her stressful career in the city to go and live on a farm in the middle of nowhere, received a few tips on hitching, and were dropped off about 100km down the road at a small town called Denmark.

For quite a while I stood by the road with my thumb pointed at the sky. Denmark was a little busier than the highway we had originally used, so cars came by about every 30 seconds. It had been half an hour, and it was now midday so I was getting hot. I took a break and went and sat on some swings out the back of the church we had been stood outside. And the second I had started swinging (it was good fun!) Sian managed to get us a lift! This turned out to set the president for the journey as apart from our very last lift, Sian managed to get every other one! We were picked up by an octogenarian called Ian who lived in a little community (15 families in 150 acres) in an area called William's Bay. He told us a bit about his travels (he'd just spend 5 months in Europe) and dropped us down the road from his place – telling us that if we didn't manage to get a lift then we should come and stay with him for the night. Everyone we met on this journey was really nice!

From this place, I saw my first Australian eagle! I think it was a wedge-tail, but I'm not too sure. It was circling a field next to us, and once or twice I saw it go down for the kill! There were also a couple of kangaroos in the field, though they didn't stick around for long. They were the closest wild kangaroos we had seen so far... but the day wasn't over yet! From this point, we were picked up by a guy towing a battered old ute – he'd been at a burn-out party that weekend. He introduced himself as Wombat and with his wild head of hair and ripped AC/DC shirt, we knew this character was going to entertain us for a little while!

He dropped us off at Bow Bridge, near Walpole, and here we waited for our next lift. It was getting on for evening time now, on a Sunday, so the traffic was non-existent. At times it would be ten or fifteen minutes between cars, and none were stopping. After about an hour, new got asked if we wanted to go to Peaceful Bay – but this wasn't towards the town we wanted to get to for the night so we declined. Another hour went by, and we again were asked if we wanted to go to Peaceful Bay. We'd had enough standing around by now, it was getting dark, and rather than sleep out in the open we thought we'd see if Peaceful Bay would provide us with anywhere to stay.

We got into the car with a retired couple who had been living in the Bay for the last 12 years, in a house that he, Owen, and his son had built 35 years previous. Anne and Owen turned out to be the loveliest couple you could hope to meet. They bickered away to themselves most of the journey, correcting each other as they tried to point out local history and interesting stories, and they took us to a caravan park they finally agreed would be the best place for us to stay. Peaceful Bay has a permanent population of 65, with a few roads of holiday-homes, a B&B, caravan park, and a small hotel. And it lived up to its name. After Anne and Owen had seen us into our caravan they insisted on giving us directions to their house and telling us to meet them for morning tea! So we thanked them, said goodbye, and went exploring.

We followed a little path through the bush land, enjoying the wildflowers and the tranquillity, and as we were leaving the national park and returning to our caravan park we saw the first kangaroo of the evening. Maybe 30 feet away and very aware of us, he allowed us only a few moments to take photos before he hopped up the road. So we kept walking up to the sea. The cove we came across was beautiful and completely devoid of people. Our own beach! And so we walked along the headland over the sand dunes enjoying the last of the days heat and light. And then we saw the rest of the kangaroos! Half-a-dozen were feeding on the beach as we reached the crest of a dune, only a few feet away. They bolted pretty quickly and I took great pleasure in having the opportunity to skip after them! At one point I was scanning the middle-distance looking for signs of them and two or three times looked across the horizon before realising that there were two 5-foot creatures just fifteen feet away, staring straight at me!

After a very refreshing sleep we went to meet up with Anne and Owen again. We breakfasted on biscuits and freshly made tea, and had a lovely morning listening to stories and telling our own. This couple couldn't have been nicer or more helpful! They even insisted on making up some lunch for us, before taking us back to the road to Walpole.

The flies were out in force that morning. Within seconds we were both covered with what must have been more than 50, and they swarmed over our bags making them look like particularly bountiful choc-chip cookies. It was with great relief that we were picked up by Erika after about twenty minutes. She was leaving Peaceful Bay, having dropped her sister there for a week of Spring Break. She took us all the way from there to Bunbury – about 400 kilometres. And from there, we took a bus the last bit of the way to the Margaret River.

Margaret River is famous mainly for the wine and gourmet food which attract the tourists and Australians alike. But we didn't see much of that. After a couple of days of enjoying the countryside and the beaches myself and Sian were off again. We decided we'd try to hitch to Fremantle to be there for her birthday.

So we were waiting by the road with our thumbs erect once more!

The first person to pick us up was a trucker! Our first lift in a truck, and it was a little intimidating. It's the truckers hat spend 6 days of the week away from any other living person that most of the horror stories mention. But John turned out to be a great guy! With stories of life on the road, and life out on his boat, and his time travelling with underprivileged Aboriginal children. He told us about Bunbury and told us he'd love to show us around if we called him one day. He even called later that day to see if we'd managed to get to Fremantle! A typical friendly Australian!

After a couple of hundred kilometres we left John (he'd driven further than he needed to in order to drop us off in a better place to pick up lifts) and I adopted my position hidden behind a tree, leaving Sian by the road to reel in the drivers. We must have had about 6 people stop in the first 20 minutes, but none were going far. So it was with some relief that Henry pulled up in his BMW V8 and offered to drive us early all the way. Henry had travelled a lot, so it was good to talk to him about that, and I didn't even mind when he started talking about his car, because it was to say how fast it was... and within an hour we'd down about 160 km and it was time to get out again.

Our last lift of the day was my one successful attempt to get picked up! An elderly guy with a big white beard and long hair driving a very comfortable but old van pulled into the lay-by behind me, rolled up to where Sian was sitting before quickly reversing back to me. He didn't pick up women as a rule because they were 'the dangerous ones!' But he loaded our gear into his van and whistled, clicked, and popped his way to Fremantle.

We'd hitched a thousand kilometres in a few days, and it was time to kick back and have a party, in one of the most eclectic, interesting, foody and boozy towns I'd come across. Needless to say, it was a great weekend – filled with beer, food, drum circles, digeridoos, and lots and lots of sun!