G'day! It's been a stressful few days in Australia. Mainly due to Ben's bag being lost in transit so he has nothing. It's been 4 days now so our chances of finding it is unlikely. Nothing expensive was in there but a few presents are lost and it's more the inconvenience of the clothes, toiletries, adapters etc needing to be replaced. Plus the cost. Of all the places to lose a bag it had to be in the most expensive country! Also the return to Western-ness has been a bit of a shock, not to mention the expense and therefore change of lifestyle.
From now on we are in dorms, subject to scenarios such as drunken French boys coming in at 4am and trying to crawl into an Aussie guys bed who was far from thrilled. I miss quiet sleep.
We also have been cooking all of our own food. Sandwiches, spaghetti bolognese and BBQ'ing chicken skewers and burgers. The 'Kanga Banga's' (kangaroo sausages) are on the menu tomorrow. I hope they're good. Cooking your own food is followed by washing up. I never liked this at home so I'm less likely to enjoy this is a stupidly hot kitchen! The lack of beer from it being expensive has been a sad change as well:(
We haven't really done anything until today. It's so hot here you don't really want to go out away from the air con, even sitting by the small hostel pool is a trial!
Today we went to Crocasaurus Cove where we watched the big crocs being fed, fed some small jumping crocs ourselves, watched a snake eat a rat, lizards being fed, held a couple of different lizards and held a baby croc! All good fun. There was even a crocodile who featured in the original Crocodile Dundee!
Most of our time has been spent trying to plan our next move. Buses to different towns are over £200 for less than 24 hour travel (we thought £18 in Thailand was expensive!) A lot of people buy cars or camper vans to sell on as a cost effective way to travel, particularly helpful if you'll be working and need transport there. For 2 months in Australia it wouldn't be worth it for us. I'd look to share lifts with people but everyone in Darwin seems to be heading to the West coast, which we won't make it to. So, we are looking to hire a campervan. The cost is okish. A bit more than we first thought but manageable if we don't have to pay for caravan sites every night but it's just the price of petrol really that's the issue. We're looking to go from Darwin to Uluru and then to Cairns. There are many stops on the way that we want to see-Litchfield national park, Devil's Marbles, Area 51, Alice Springs to name a few so it seems a good way to do it. It is around 3000km though and we'd allow just over 2 weeks to do it. We're just worried that maybe it'll be too hot or the overall cost may be more than we expected and we'd be stuck for 2 weeks with no choice apart from carrying on.
We're off to get a couple of quotes and hopefully we'll set off on Saturday. If you take away the fear of the cost, it sounds really exciting!