After short pause I would like to continue where the last post ends. Our next goal after Tasmania was ride across another piece of Australia and visit west coast and because we had pretty good deal for car from Melbourne to Perth so we flew from Hobart to Melbourne. There we picked up car which was our companion for eight days and approximately 4,700 kilometers. It was brand new six berth Mercedes with all campervan luxury (TV, kitchen, fridge, shower, …). You can see it on the picture below.
It’s good car but not perfect, just four gear transmission and badly made seats for people inside but with everything you can expect from car like this. It’s true that fuel consumption was bad but we have thought about it before we decided to car like this. After all paperworks and some shopping for food we headed north from Melbourne to the Great Ocean Road which goes north around coast and there is stunning scenery and great stone formations for example Twelve Apostles (there is less of them now but it’s still great). Anyway thanks to roads which zigzags around coast and many magnificent places we did just small piece of our great plans but we saw a lot and there was great sunrise.
Next day we didn’t have many stops because we tried to hurry and we arrived just before sunset to Adelaide. We didn’t have much time and for this instance we just drive through because we wanted to sleep at Port Augusta. I think that Adelaide is beautiful city with great atmosphere and soul of Australia traditions because there is not much of modern skyscrapers and it still keeps it’s soul. From Port Augusta we hurried to Esperance from where we want to slow down and enjoy everything, it took us two day to get there and on the way we passed through the longest Australia straight road (146.6 km or 90 miles), few petrol stations and great Nullarbor Plain where they have also the longest golf course in the world. At each gas station or village they had one hole where you can play but you’ll need your car to move between holes. 🙂
Except road and the bush we saw on the way many road trains whose you can meet probably just here in Australia, other campervans and few cars. Away it was great experience, this scenery around, blue skies with nice clouds and great distance around. Also navigation is really useful there, it subtracted kilometres to next turn which was like 1,268 kilometres. If you love driving and believe that even road could be destination than it’s right place to go. After four days in rush we arrived to Esperance where we slow down and start enjoying this trip. We visited astonishing Lucky Bay with beautiful beach with kangaroos on it and some nice rocks. It’s true that than until Alabany it’s not that interesting but then we have been in Margaret River region with its great wineries, caves and other wonderful places. At all cities around cost was nice and relaxing atmosphere and we have stops close to Denmark in the Toffee factory where we had a bit of their production for taste and then in the Valley of the Giants with stunning walk in the tree tops.
My personal favorite is Buselton where is the longest jetty on the southern hemisphere (it’s long nearly two kilometres) and which is even better close to or after sunset because of it’s atmosphere. At the end of jetty is underwater observatory where you can have a peek to underwater life and appreciate beauty hidden under water and on piles of the jetty. And the whole city looks like ideal place for holidays. In the morning we headed north where we wanted to visit at least one cave but we weren’t lucky enough because in the Jewel Cave they haven’t had morning tour and we didn’t have time to wit for next so we continued to Mammoth Cave which is self-guided with audio-guide. It has that name because of bone fragments of extincted ancestor of Australian fauna but it also have amazing stalactite decoration.
Also we have some swim and wine taste and eight days run out and we were standing at Perth. At our short time there was nice but the center of the city was like big building site with fences and cranes everywhere. I heard also some Czech there because it’s also popular destination for studying English in Australia and because here was end of our trip I’ll continue with next adventures in the another post.
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| 06 – Big Trip 3.11 |