January 2017 – The Journey Before You

Packing Part 1

Lots of people asked what and how much Dave and I would pack, likely because it is such a long trip. Before I go into detail on what I brought I have to first say that normally we pack VERY light even for somewhat longer trips. And although Dave generally kept to our super light packing rule, I packed way more than I normally ever would. This was mostly because of the length of our trip, the varying climates, and the variety of activities I knew we would be aiming to do. I’m only going to focus on what I actually packed, though I may occasionally reference something Dave packed, because honestly I don’t know what all he packed- I just know it wasn’t much.

This is a photo of our Lowepro bag. We got this back in 2010 and it has been a great little backpack to carry camera equipment, laptop and other stuff. I used this as my carry on. It has a lot of adjustable compartments inside to customize the fit around your equipment and is very durable. It also has extra snaps outside to reinforce each compartment. AND though we’ve had it for 6 years, we just now found an attached rain cover in a compartment in the bottom! What?! I know, we’re a little slow, HA!, but we can use it now that we know.

I ordered the pictured blue neck pillow specifically for this trip as the total flight time was approximately 20 hours and I needed a good quality supportive pillow for my problematic neck. I liked this pillow because it actually snaps together in front and stays put. It did great on the plane and now it is doubling as my pillow while we camp. It’s cover is a thick super soft velour. I love soft material.

I debated about what camera equipment to bring. Initially I did not want to bother with bringing any of the heavy bulk of large cameras, then I thought, ‘hold up, I’m going to New Zealand and Australia!’ and changed my mind. We have a Canon 50D, but I decided to bring the smaller lighter weight Canon T1i which is simple to use and gets the job done. Also, it is capable of recording videos. The camera is not pictured as I used it to take these photos. I brought two lenses: a 50mm f/1.4 and a 28-135mm zoom lens. The latter is more versatile though heavier, and the first is just incredible for clarity and for low light situations. So far, I’ve only used the zoom lens, however I anticipate we will have ample opportunity to use the other as well.

A lens cleaning kit that my dear friend Christy Day happened to gift me just before the trip which has already been used several times. The kit case is a waterproof case that I’m sure will come in handy in other situations as well since we are doing a lot of water activities.

Howard Leight headphones because they 1. are comfortable 2. Have great sound quality and 3. are great at blocking out noise since made for firearm use. They were great on the plane especially when I did not want to hear the annoying frequently repeated safety warnings.

You can’t see it, but I also packed this awesome HP Envy laptop I’m typing on now. There is a convenient compartment in the Lowepro specifically to hold your laptop. Dave is not happy with my laptop though because it does not have a cd/dvd drive, but I love it. He bought a super lightweight external drive so he could watch hunting movies while we flew.

Let’s see, what else? Oh, extra sd memory cards (which we’ve had some issue with, but more on that in another post), extra batteries (you can’t check lithium batteries or they would have been in checked luggage), ibuprofen, chapstick, passports, tissues, ear plugs, eye cover (I love mine because it has little pockets to block out light beside your nose), wetwipes antibacterial wipes (can’t say enough about these), small bottle of eye drops and allergy pills.

I would also recommend a small container of Vaseline, which I forgot to pack. I read a travel tip a long time ago that putting a little around the edge of your nostrils can help prevent getting sick while flying. I also recommend the airborne pills when flying which help prevent sickness as well. I’ve gotten sick more times than I’d like to admit from flying so I like to be prepared.

How do we decide where to go and what to see?

I think we were asked this several times because we booked the trip so quickly and did very little planning before arriving. Even though we’ve known for years that this is a trip we wanted to take we had not spent much time researching what all there is to see and do. And honestly, we were not too worried about how it would play out. Some of the best trips we’ve been on were when we had a starting and end point in mind with no specific itinerary. Also, I think trips we’ve been on prior to this helped us prepare for going on this longer one.

When we arrived we stocked up on the free travel magazines from the airport and car rental place. We knew we were heading north first in NZ so we figured out what we wanted to see there and hit the road. Sometimes we’ll be driving along and see a sign for something and then check that out. And truly God has been so great about crossing our paths with people who have said something to confirm our next move or to give us completely new ideas.

As we were leaving the northern section of NZ above Auckland our plan was to head to Coromandel Peninsula next and check out Hot Water Beach. On the way we stopped to see a giant tree and then again to grab some lunch a bit later on. Both times, without either of us bringing it up, someone at both locations asked if we were going to Coromandel and highly recommended it. That was pretty cool. I wish we could have spent a bit more time exploring that area.

When we went to the South Island we were originally planning to make our way from the NW section down the west side and up the east side to fly out of Christchurch which is what many people do, but when we arrived in Murchison we looked at the weather forecast and it said solid rain for the next 7-10 days on the west side, but clear on the east. We decided to head to the east coast and do the opposite loop. We overheard someone in the hangout room of the hostel say the same thing so we felt good since we were not the only ones. It turned out to be a great idea since I left my nice down North Face jacket in Murchison and we were able to loop back and pick it up from the hostel a couple of weeks later. Also, we hit incredibly gorgeous clear weather by changing our route. Thank you Jesus!

We never planned on going to Kaikoura, but it turned out we had a few days to kill at the end of our time in NZ. Kaikoura is where the 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit just a week after we arrived in New Zealand. That tempted us to want to go there and the roads literally reopened just days before we were to fly out of Christchurch so we spent Christmas there. It was amazing and we’re both glad we went. You can read more about that here.

The second leg of our trip was supposed to be 3.5 months in Australia driving the east coast from Cairns to Melbourne. Well, I met this lady in Hobbiton who was in the middle of doing a round-the-world trip who encouraged me to check out western Australia and said the flights were pretty cheap. Then I met an Austrian girl who poured my wine tastings in Marlborough, NZ who said she had done the same east coast trip we were planning to do in Australia. She talked about how long and boring the driving is and suggested we take some cheap flights to southeast Asia. Then Dave and I encountered a Canadian couple in Abel Tasman who said the same thing. So by the time we arrived in Murchison, NZ we were convinced to totally change our travel plans!

So we booked a one way flight to Perth. Then we booked a one way flight to Bali. Then once we arrived in Cairns and went on our live aboard dive trip we met two couples, one from Ireland and the other from San Diego who strongly recommended Thailand. So then we booked a one way flight from Bali to Thailand. Yeah, I know. Crazy stuff, but we’re excited. We’re not sure where to after that, but looks like most of February will be somewhere other than Australia. It is just so much cheaper to fly there from here than from home and since we have so much time planned here, why not? So stayed tuned! Who knows where we may be next. 🙂

Western Australia, north of Perth

We flew into Perth late Friday January 13th with a full moon. Good thing we’re not superstitious. We walked out of the airport into the cool crisp air and were relieved to be back to camping weather again. In fact, we may have prematurely sent our sleeping bags and under layers back home. We ended up buying a couple of inexpensive blankets for the cool nights which we will give away when it is time to fly to Bali. We’ve enjoyed losing the extra weight of items we shipped home so honestly no regrets there.

We went to pick up our rental car and I was thrilled to see that we got a Toyota Corolla hatchback! I’d seen them allover NZ and in Australia and love them. I wish they were sold in the states. There are lots of different cars in NZ and AU that we don’t have in the states even though the same maker. Anyway, I was glad to get our car back in the order we had it while in NZ. Also, Toyotas and Hondas have the most comfortable seats I’ve experienced in a car. (We drove a Hyundai while in Queensland and there was a metal rod in the seat just below the lumbar that presses into your sacrum. Very painful and extremely poor design; the seats are also C shaped which makes you hunch over. Who in the world designed those in this ergonomical design age?)

Once we got our car we drove to a beach to cook breakfast. When I saw the beach I was so happy. It was so beautiful, and full of people and their dogs. No stinger nets. Just gorgeous clear water and dry hot weather. We were going to hang out there for a while, but decided to check out the prison in Fremantle before getting sandy. The tour was very interesting and informative, but I was saddened to hear many of the stories such as young children imprisoned and receiving lashings. Also, women were imprisoned back in the day for things such as “idleness” or “drinking too much”. They were thought to have a serious mental disorder for doing those “crimes”. Then there were the disgusting tales of serial killers. There was a clear presence of evil in that place and I was ready to leave when it was over. It was very strange to be touring a prison that was operating in my lifetime. It closed in 1991.

We had heard about and read about some places on the coast north of Perth so we began our journey north after leaving the prison. We decided to find a less crowded beach to go to, but once we did it had become cold and windy. We ate dinner in a park and while we were cooking, kangaroos hopped through the park grazing. They came within 10 or so feet of us! They tend to come out around dawn or dusk.

One of the first places we went was the Nambung National Park with the famous Pinnacle Desert. It was very cool. A big thank you to Rebecca Little for suggesting it.

We continued on up to Port Gregory where there is a pink lake officially known as Hutt Lagoon. It was really PINK! Our nephew Alex told us about this before we came to Australia, but we didn’t know we were actually going to see one. It can range from deep red to pale pink due to beta carotene in the water. There is actually a plant there that harvests the beta carotene to use in supplements.

We stopped at several beach towns which were all quaint with pretty beaches, but not very much to do. We played golf one cool morning in a small town called Dongara. We made our way to a town called Kalbarri which I really liked. There were some beautiful beaches there and we went snorkelling at a couple of them. We had really hoped to visit the Kalbarri National Park which has a huge red rock gorge with a river running through it, but the road to hikes we wanted to go on was closed for the next several months except to tour operators or weekends. It was early in the week and too late to go on a tour that day so we missed out on it.

We saw some amazing sunsets along the way too.

We visited this gorgeous lake of stromatolites which are millions year old bacteria mats. Beautiful. No swimming though which was torture since it was nearly 100 Farenheit that day! But cool to see such beauty.

Saw this pack of emus crossing the road. They tend to travel in groups.

This is a spot where Dave snorkeled in Kalbarri.

These are of the pink lake from the opposite side. As you can see it is huge!

We drove on up to Shark Bay which was very underwhelming especially considering how much hype was built up in the visitor magazine and the very long drive it took to get there. At that point we were at a bit of a crossroads. Our plan was to drive as far north as Coral Bay where you can literally swim out to the coral reef from the beach to snorkel. However, from Shark Bay it was going to be an additional 6-7 hours driving one way to get there for it to possibly not be any more impressive than the towns we’d already seen so we decided to head back towards Perth and explore south of the city. On the drive back we stopped in a couple of the towns we’d passed through before and did some snorkeling.

We were blessed with this amazing sunset in Jurien Bay. We decided to camp near Jurien Bay and while we were cooking our dinner we noticed a man who appeared to be homeless. I wish we had asked him to join us for dinner, but instead we bought him some food from the grocery store. He was very grateful and we planned to invite him to eat breakfast with us, but he was gone in the morning. Lesson learned; don’t miss an opportunity when it presents itself.

All in all I don’t regret the drive north. The beach towns were nice and not commercialized with annoying high rises. The beaches had white sand with clear water. And it was an experience driving on the long redundant straight flat roads of the outback. We saw some beautiful landscapes. And it was definitely worth going to the pinnacle desert in Nambung. I of course cannot leave out the incredible weather; practically no humidity, mostly warm to hot days, and cool nights perfect for camping.

Townsville and Magnetic Island, Australia

Townsville was a great little town to crash in for a few days. The first night we stayed at an awful hostel. I had booked it online for a pretty great deal for 8 nights once I realized that we were not going to be freedom camping while in hot humid Queensland. We quickly found out why it was a good deal and cancelled the rest of our reservation. Then we found this awesome hostel called the Orchid Guest House which felt more like a B&B. Honestly, how could anything with the name Orchid not be delightful? Anyway, we ended up staying there for 3 nights. The owner was the sweetest most helpful lady.

Townsville has two large swimming lagoons and a 2 kilometer beach front stretch called The Strand where you can walk, rest, bbq, play, sunbathe or whatever. One of the pools was used by the Olympic teams to practice back in the 50s and 60s.

One day we took the ferry to Magnetic Island. Dave has been wanting to rent a motorcycle since we started travelling and he got his chance while on the island. We rode all over the island and had the best time. First, we went to Horseshoe Bay where we swam and ate gelato. We swam in the netted in area and found a floating seed of some sort. We made a game of throwing it back and forth and then attempted to play paddle ball using our hands as the paddles. Ha! It actually worked, not near as well as paddles, but hey, it was fun.

Then we hiked the Forts trail where we saw four koala bears!! This was absolutely the highlight for me. First we saw three that were high up on trees. Then we came upon a teeny tiny baby that was just a couple of feet above us. I was enamoured. Supposedly Magnetic Island is known as the Koala capital of Australia. I’ll post the rest of the photos on FB so you can see all their cuteness!

Then we rode out to the West Point which was a bit of a crazy ride, but Dave got to get some of his extreme adventuring out of his system so it was worth it; and fun too, if a bit on the scary side. Last we rode to Geoffrey Bay where we saw several rock wallabies with babies in their pouches! Holy cow, cuteness overload people. I was completely wiped out after our day there. We both were. We got back to our place, ate leftovers and crashed by 9pm!

Australia so far…

I LOVE it. Dave hates it. Hahaha!

I was so excited to get to hot weather and to go swimming that I welcomed the 90+ degree heat and humidity. I felt like my body was thawing out the first few days here.

Where New Zealand felt like more work than vacation, Australia has felt like pure relaxation! Since it is so very hot, Dave is adamant that we will not sleep in a tent at night because he is certain we won’t be able to sleep. I don’t 100% agree with that, but hey, who am I to argue? We have been in A/C every night which means we have slept in a bed every night. No breaking down or setting up our tent home for the last week and a half. Yes, it has been a nice break and I welcome it.

Two days after arriving we went on a 3 day 2 night liveaboard dive boat which catered food and beverages after each dive. We have stayed in hostels the other nights, but they all have swimming pools so it feels more like a nicer hotel. We have had a kitchen to cook in. Some of the rooms we’ve stayed in have even had tvs and one felt more like a quaint B&B. I loved it.

Our well organized efficient car in NZ has become a place we throw our stuff in any random spot here in AU. Initially we thought we might camp and started to organize our car like we had it in NZ, but realized quickly this would not happen. We actually bought a large 5 liter water container and have yet to use it! We would have used that in a couple of days in NZ!

However, as much as I welcome the comfort of staying in a room each night, the extra cost concerned me a bit. Thankfully, gas is half the price here than NZ and food is good bit cheaper. That helps, but may not fully compensate. We think it will be cool enough in Perth to camp at night so we’ll probably be back into our NZ nomad routine when we arrive there- which Dave is soooo looking forward to! 😉

Let’s see, here are some observations on Australia, some good and some definitely very terrible things.

From October to April is what is known here as “stinger season”. This means that there is a very high risk that if you swim in the ocean you could get stung by a box jellyfish and quite literally die within 3-4 minutes. It is apparently the most lethal sea creature. The sting is supposed to be excruciating pain. Or you could get stung by a smaller type which causes paralysis. AND you can’t see them because they are clear. So there are certain beaches which have a netted area where you can swim during that time of year. When we went diving we had to wear stinger suits which is basically a thin layer of lycra. Apparently the stingers are so tiny that they can’t penetrate even thin material. The dive master noted that it is unlikely the jelly fish were out by the reef since they prefer to be closer to shore, but we had to wear them as a safety precaution anyway. No arguments there buddy.

Since stinger season is such a big deal, most major coastal cities have built very large saltwater swimming pools near the sea so it’s the next best thing to swimming in the ocean. Me personally, give me some sunshine and some water to get in and I’m happy. Dave hates that we can’t get in the ocean, but we’ll be able to once we get out of Queensland.

We are in the beautiful tropical state of Queensland and crocodiles are very prevalent here. Dave will not fish any of the rivers (thank you God) whereas in NZ I probably saw every river in the country because he fished every one of them he could get to! We went on a nature treetop walk thing and watched a video on croc migration and that pretty much sealed the deal that we would not be getting near any rivers here. We haven’t seen one yet, but we’re perfectly okay with that. They also have warnings out for Mosquitoes (or “mozzies”) which spread Dengue Fever— great. I have lots of bites, but no fever yet, thank God.

Some things they say here that are different:

They say: We say:

It’s alright You’re welcome or no problem

Lagoon swimming pool

Eskie Cooler

AirCon A/C

I think if you were to flip USA over so that Texas and Florida were pointing north and then moved it to the southern hemisphere it would be Australia. And likewise if you did the same to the UK, it would be New Zealand. The United States and UK of the southern hemisphere. NZ seemed to have a strong British influence to me, and AU seems very much like the states. And Queensland feels very much like hot humid southern Florida, except they get cyclones here instead of hurricanes, and crocs instead of gators- nearly 100,000 of them. Yikes!

Update:

We attempted to camp last night. That lasted approximately 30 minutes before we broke camp and drove back to the Orchid Guest House for the night. Too muggy. We are headed to Perth in two days!

Daintree Rainforest, Queensland AU

It was so exciting hiking through the Daintree Rainforest. We started by going to the Daintree Village, but there did not seem to be much to see there so then we caught the ferry across the crocodile infested river. We went to Daintree Discovery Center and did a treetop walk through. They provided an audio tour handset which was very informative. I love those things.

We learned about what foods aboriginals ate to survive in the rainforest. Then at the end we ordered a sample platter of those items. It was delicious and very cool. I’m sure the foods were very different, but it was neat to taste some of the items. Then one of the ladies there told us about some free walks so we drove on and did two more.

We had our eyes peeled looking for cassowaries or any other rainforest creature, and we were hiking very quietly. On the last hike I didn’t even bring my camera because we had kind of given up on the idea that we would see a cassowary. I said to Dave “We’ll probably see one since we left the camera in the car.” And a few minutes later there one was! I stayed there and Dave ran back to the car to get the camera.

Male cassowary. Large bill on top of head.

They are endangered and we overheard a tour guide say there are maybe only 1000 left and that it’s uncommon to spot one. He said they are growing in numbers since the rainforest became a UNESCO world heritage site and are more protected.

This is a female Cassowary, which are larger than the males. It has a small bill on its head.

A large group of tourists arrived, but the bird wasn’t scared off. We got several photos and then we we got back to the car, there was another one crossing the road! We saw both a male and a female. It was awesome and we felt like our day was made. We celebrated by getting some delicious chocolate hazelnut ice cream at Floravilla before leaving.

Dave posing with the most dangerous bird. They are supposedly very aggressive and territorial.

I wish I could say the remainder of the day was as awesome, but we spent the next 5-6 hours driving in torrential rainfall to get to our next destination. The important thing is we arrived safely. Overall, a great day.

What a day in our nomadic life looks like in NZ

What a typical day looks like for us

This nomad life of camping has been more like a job than either of us expected. It sounds nice to think ‘oh we’re going on a 5 month vacation’ except that it is not really a relaxation vacation when you camp most of the time to keep expenses low. I definitely don’t mean to sound ungrateful or like I’m complaining, just telling the reality of it. We are very grateful for this experience.

We wake up sometime between 7-8am. Stuff our sleeping bags into stuffsacks, deflate and roll up our thermarests, and take everything out of the tent and put it in Dave’s backpack in the back seat of the car. Then we break down the tent. This process takes about 20-30 minutes.

Then we either cook where we camped or drive to find a picnic table preferably with a nice view. We usually cook eggs and some type of breakfast meat. And we’ll have coffee and juice. Then we wash dishes. It’s amazing how little water you need to actually wash, but it takes way more to rinse. This process takes about 30-45 minutes. Then we find somewhere to throw our trash away.

Either before or after breakfast we often look for somewhere to shower, but sometimes we’ll do this in the evening instead. Sometimes we’ll skip a day if we weren’t very active. This can be an hour ordeal of looking up a place, driving to it, the actual showering, and refilling our water bottles.

Next we start driving to whatever destination we have planned to explore that day. A few times we have had an excursion planned, but mostly we go on long hikes or walk through cute towns. New Zealand has a lot of natural beauty and interesting landscapes due to the history of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes as well as having been mostly under the sea for a long time so there is a lot to see. We usually only spend 1-2 days in any given area, unless we really like it or there is more to see and do. Deciding what to do, where to go, what to see and what we are willing to pay is a daily practice. Often the passenger is looking through travel books to figure out the next destination and trying to make sure we are not missing something important.

As we go along we make sure things are getting charged such as camera batteries, phone, laptop, etc. We decided to buy an inverter early on since we are on the road and camp more than we are near outlets. Often we stop to take pictures just off the side of the road.

We stop at some point and eat something for lunch. Initially we were eating way more than we were burning in calories and were cooking a hot lunch every time. After a couple of weeks of this we realized it was unnecessary as well as consumed precious time and fuel, and that we just were not that hungry nor did we need to eat that much. Just like breakfast, lunch can take anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes. Now we may either eat a sandwich or skip lunch altogether and eat an early dinner around 5pm.

Our “kitchen” is in the back of our little hatchback car. We keep about 15 liters of water at a time with several bottles in the front to just drink. Most is in our ‘kitchen’ to use for cooking and dishwashing. We are always on the lookout for places to fill these back up. Thankfully NZ has plenty of delicious water. We have a cooler on the right and a box on the left with tall items in it. Random items are in between the two. It’s still kind of a mess, but it works.

Everyday we have to make sure the cooler is drained and we have to purchase ice about every other day. We also have to grocery shop every two to three days since we don’t have that much space. The cooler (which they call a ‘chilly bin’ hahaha) has been quite the ordeal at times as water has leaked into some of our food on more than one occasion. We have yet to find a brand of ziplock bags here that do not leak.

Around 6pm we start to look for a place to freedom camp if we haven’t found something on the Campermate app that’s close by with good reviews. We usually find something pretty easily and this is actually an enjoyable part of the trip, however we have camped at some places where the weather ended up being horrible a few times. It doesn’t get dark until close to 10pm so there is plenty of time in the evening to find a place and get set up.

Setting up at night involves pitching and staking the tent, blowing up our thermarests, unstuffing our sleeping bags, grabbing headlamps, and sleep wear. We brush our teeth and I wash my face. Again this takes about 30-45 minutes. Often Dave and I will take turns catching up on our blog. We usually go to sleep around 10pm.

Also, at some point during our day we do Bible study together. Originally we were doing this individually, but decided we needed to refocus our faith as a couple. And it has been a huge blessing.

Every approximate 8 days, or sooner if there is bad weather, we will stay somewhere to get all of our laundry washed and reorganize our car. Even though it has been a lot of work, it has saved us a lot of money to camp and has been totally worth it.

Note: Things have been MUCH different since arriving to Australia, but more on that in a future post.