I’m already back a few weeks now but I finally got round to doing some number crunching.
In 94 days I traveled 21,351km by car and bought 2,961 litres of diesel. On average we traveled 227km a day, wheres the largest distance we traveled in a day was 615km. We spent $4,259 on fuel and on average a liter cost $1.44. Read more…
This is just a short note that today is the official start of our trip around/through the Australian continent. Margrit and Anton, aka my parents, arrived last week in Sydney. Last week we did a short trip to Nowra to get them familiar with Bruce, and this different way of travelling. The rest of their week they spent climatising, getting to know Simon’s parents and sightseeing.
The next six weeks they will spend in a car with Simon and me driving around the country. At the moment we are just completely stressed out and trying to think of anything we forgot at home. We hope that a few days into the trip we will be all relaxed and enjoying the experience.
We will keep you posted!
Marianne and I have spent the last 6 months preparing for this trip. This has in fact been Marianne’s full time job. We’ve researched every aspect of the journey – what equipment we need, what could go wrong, and how to use it all. We’ve thought of everything from power and water whilst in the desert, to comfort whilst pondering the meaning of life. The breadth of topics we have had to cover has left us awake in bed unable to sleep worrying about whether we’ve covered everything. Once we had the equipment, we tested it thoroughly, often going to extremes.
It’s less than a week away from the start of our trip, and having tested everything thoroughly we decided to take Marianne’s parents on a 1 day offroad trip to show off our efforts.
Can you guess what comes next? Exactly. Demonstration Fail.
Australians have an amazing habit to understate long distances. What we call ‘Just Around the Corner’ is a major expedition for most people in Europe.
We are leaving in a couple of weeks away on our big adventure, and recently posted a map showing our intended route (one way only!). I’ve taken the time to roughly map our journey in Google Maps, and the distance is about 11,000km. What does this figure really mean?
I thought I’d try and put it in perspective by asking the question: Where does 11,000km get you in this world?
In only a few weeks time we will embark on our big trip through Australia. We have no idea what to expect as we have never done anything like that before in our life. We hope we have prepared this trip well enough over the last 6 months that we really get to enjoy it and hopefully will stay out of trouble.
Our itinerary is rather loose as we want the ability to change our route at any point in time. This trip is not about the destination, it is about the journey! We want to be able to discover and experience the land and the people without having to think about time.
The map below gives you an rough idea where we are planning on going.
