Mamma Mia

G'day Mates!

After 7 months of Asian backpacking, we have finally arrived to Austrailia!!! We touched down in Brisbane, Queensland on Sept 1 and were fortunate enough to stay with family (Mike's cousin Debbie & family). Free accomodation, an accessible fridge with endless supplies of beer, wine and cheese (it's amazing how it was always full :-), drinking water from a tap, a shower and toilet just a few steps away from our room; it's no surprise that we ended up staying for a week!!!! All joking aside, it was a blessing for Debbie, Dominic, Meghan and Erin to open their arms, hearts and doors to us; it was a royal welcome to Austrailia. Deb, how you orchastrated the fireworks and fighter jets to fly over your house for us will always be a wonder... okay it was actually the start of the annual River Fire Festival, but it was still special!

Debbie, Mike & I at a great lookout point of Brisbane

So what did we do in Brisbane for 7 days? Well, there was A LOT of sleeping, shopping (Mike had to burn most of his shirts), touring down town, singing at a barbershop chorus practice, attempted hair cuts, and arranging for our overland trip to the outback. Oh, and then there was the visit with the Infectious Disease doctor. No kidding! We had gone to a travel clinic for our post Asia travel check up, when the doctor looked at us quizzically and said "I've never heard of a post check-up in all my years" (and trust me he was old). Leaving his office, we felt like we were slapped in the face (especially with the $106 bill!). Debbie had mentioned to a collegue our experience and it turned out her husband was an Infectious Disease Doctor, so he called us that night and agreed to see us the following day! Talk about a wonderful doctor. He spent 1.5 hours going over our history, giving me a thorough check-up (I was feeling pretty crappy again; not as bad as China, but not great), and then dun dun dun... the inevitable stool sample. Only after you have scooped your own liquidy poo into a container and hand it to your doctor, do you know true humility. Two days later, after the preliminary results were in with no signs of parasites or worms (yeah!!!), I was given the all clear to travel.

While in Vietnam, we had heard of a company called "Wicked Rental" that had camper vans for rent. As the cost for accomodation in Oz is astronomical, we thought it would be ideal to rent a van that we could sleep in for our trip to the Outback. The vans are "groovy baby" to say the least! Each van is hand painted on the sides to hide the accumilation of dents. With our upgrade to the delux van for FREE, not only did we have a "kitchen" in the back, with cooking burner, ice cooler, and utensils; a table in the middle that converts into our bed, all the linens we need and storage room, we suddenly were wooed with Air Conditioning & Power Steering! Such Luxeries!

Our van's artistic mottife is the faces of ABBA. So, prior to leaving Brisbane, we burned a cd of ABBA's greatest hits and now, as an anthem of sorts, we faithfully listen to ABBA every morning as we leave our camp sites. Everyone now:

"Mamma mia, here I go again
My my, how can I resist you?
Mamma mia, does it show again?
My my, just how much I've missed you
Yes, I've been brokenhearted
Blue since the day we parted
Why, why did I ever let you go?
Mamma mia, now I really know,
My my, I could never let you go."

Mamma Mia Indeed. The day Mike & I picked up our new home for the next 35 days

Leaving Brisbane, we thought was going to be easy, but it turned out to be quite the adventure! Just as we were packing up the van, we received an urgent call from Dom, who was in dire need of a part from Brisbane to be "hot shot" to a town 6 hrs away called Roma. With the offer to make a quick buck (although we would have done it for free after everything Dom & Deb had done for us), and a chance to be on the other end of "expediting", we quickly made our way to the airport to pick up the 8" x 8" x 3' long package. Five minutes away from the airport, Mike's claim of "wow it really feels like it's windy, but there's no wind", clued us into the fact that our tire was flat. Once we stopped, realized the tire was completely busted, tried the jack to change the tire and found the jack was broken, we knew we were in for one of those days. Well that's one of the reasons we rented... for roadside assistance. At least they didn't have too far to drive! But in the mean time the back up courier had picked up the package from the airport and had it at their depo. Now we had to get a new jack, a new spare tire, and the package from the opposite end of the city. Yikes! Luckily we had all the tasks done within an hour, the package fit in our van like a glove and we were off..... Hand Delivery indeed!

Break down #1. Still inside Brisbane!

"Hand Delivery" in action

The one thing we were warned repeatedly about driving in the outback was the "roos". Yeah, yeah I replied. We're from Canada. We have to watch out for deer all the time. We know to look for their eyes on the side of the road at dusk. Well, holy crap had I ever underestimated the roo invasion! In our attempt to meet our rendezvous at Roma, we had to drive after dark and I have never seen more animals on the sides of the road in all my life. There were kangaroos everywhere! And they were staring at the road, ready to pounce across the highway right into our grill. But it wasn't only the live roos that were surprising, it was the number of carcasses on the side of the road. Talk about marsupalocide! I swear there were dead roos every km! Wicked Rental's motto regarding roadkill is the following: Don't swerve when you see an animal, you will roll 4 times. Don't be a Dickhead.

The solution: stick behind a truck and let them either a) scare the roos or b) hit the roos instead. And let me tell you about the trucks. They're not even called trucks, but "Road Trains", because quite literally, they haul many containers on them, exceeding lengths of 55m and boasting 64 wheels! You are advised to only pass these monsters when you can see 1 km ahead of you.

And then there is driving on the "wrong" side of the road. And that's not the only thing, the van is backwards! The driver sits on the right hand side, the windshield wiper is where the signal indicator should be and the stickshift is on the left. Talk about a comedy of errors! Let's just say I never knew that my left and right turns were associated with having to cross lanes of traffic. In one town, Mike told me to turn left to hit the highway again, and I proceeded to get into the right hand lane. Mike yells "LEFT, LEFT"... I yelled back " I am turning LEFT"... then realized I was in fact turning right and had to swerve into the left lane at the last minute. Then there's the "gas is on the driver's side"... man I can never figure out what side is the "Driver's Side"... even when I'm driving! Slowly its all coming together though.

So far, we have been on the road for 6 days and have just arrived in Alice Springs, Northern Territory Province. We have accumilated over 3000 km on our van and have seen gas prices reaching $1.79 AUS$. The scenery has been spectacular - very barren, yet not the desert that I expected. At one point, the surroundings were so flat that Mike and I were able to see 360 degrees of the horizon and when it set, it was breathtaking. The earth is red with sparse vegetation of greens, yellows, purples & pinks resulting in a rainbow of imagery. We have seen roos, emus, birds of prey, ferrel cats and procupines. Thankfully we haven't seen snakes or spiders.

View from our van (for the last 3000 km!)

The other thing on the road.

Our only sight seeing stop on our way to "The Alice". This is the Devil's Marbles in the middle of the outback. Many rocks that are set precariously on the earth. Like I said, Mike likes to throw boulders, but this one wouldn't budge!

Camping life is great! We are up every morning by 9am because of the heat wave that hits our van. Then its make the bed, have breakie (usually cereal) and then I take the morning shift of driving *Insert ABBA CD here*. We pull over at a rest stop to make sandwiches for lunch while trying to avoid the masses of flies that attack every orifice available to them. Then Mike takes over with the afternoon drive. I look up the next free rest stop for the night and set our aims to hit it before sunset (6pm). Once we find our evening accomodation, we turn on the propane burner and start cooking dinner. After eating our meal (no not Kraft dinner - we have made some really great meals including of course Tacos), we boil water, do dishes, and make the bed. The evening ends with a star gazing bonanza as the outback has a brilliantly clear night sky. I even saw my first shooting star!!! Then we crawl into bed by 10pm and fall into a deep sleep riddled with dreams. Every one and a while we splurge for a camp ground that costs $$$ so that we can shower (yeah baby!).

Mmm, Special K in the morning, my favourite!

One of our many overnight stops. Mike in his glory... a campfire, the wilderness and a sunset

Only 29 more days of camper living! Next stop: this "big rock" in the middle of nowhere. Sounds fun, eh? And you were worried that Oz would be boring!!!

Luv ya!

Kendra & Mike