[Barts trip of a lifetime!] Ozzy Adventures part 1.

[Bart]

G'day mates!

First of all my sincere apologies for the terrible long delay in updating my blog. I know it must have been hard for you all, but hey! I make it up to you by writing an extra long blog (ooh noo :P) about the first 5 weeks or so (lost track of time again) of my adventures in the Land down Under.

Alright, let's go! At the moment I'm writing this blog from a camping at the Great Ocean Road in Australia. It's our last major stop before we reach the final destination - Melbourne - of our legendary roadtrip through Australia. And by 'we' I mean my brother and Tamara, my travelbuddy and one of the lead characters of so many stories from the beginning of my trip. Tamara decided to go traveling again for a month after spending some boring time back in Holland. So she joined me again in Oz. She's a smart girl!

But let's get back to the very beginning first. I left Malaysia 2 days after Jeffrey and after a flight of 6 hours I arrived in Perth. The capital of Western Australia and the most isolated city in the world. Why would I choose Perth over Sydney or Melbourne as the start of my trip in Oz? Well, I know quite some people from Perth. I met a couple of girls over the years back in The Hague who were working as an au-pair there. We became friends and when the girls left back to Perth they made sure I was welcome at their place if I ever decided to go there! Soooo, there you go... nice and cheap accomodation :P

I arrived at Perth airport damn early in the morning, where Amy was waiting for me to pick me up. The first thing you will notice in Oz is that EVERBODY seems to have a car the minute they turn 17 years old, and EVERYTHING is to far away to walk. Amy also had a car and we had to drive an hour to get to her place. She lives together with her cousin Kaitlin and from the very first minute they made me feel like home. Since the girls were busy with university and work most of the week, I basicly had to entertain myself for the first couple of days. But with the beach around the corner (ok, you could walk this one actually) I had no problem to chill for a few days with a book and some sun! (the locals actually envy me for my tan here - true story)

Fortunately for me, my best mate from Holland - Casper - was in Perth as well, since he was here with his ozzy girlfriend - Abby - for a holiday. Needless to say we decided to meet up and it was awesome to see one of my closest friends after a period of more than 5 months. To make it even better, Casper and Abby were 'house sitting' (looking after a house for a family on holiday) and they invited me to stay with them for a week. Also, I would be able to celebrate my upcoming B-day and invite some peepz. The house turned out to be a big villa with a private swimming pool in the back yard! Awesome! I didn't see any problems in staying there for a few days!

Together with Casper and other peepz, I went to an AFL (Australian Football) match which is extremely populair in Australia. AFL is like RUGBY only totally different, except that the players are still allowed to tackle eachother with brutal force! NICE ONE. A few teams were playing that afternoon and since I had no 'favorite' team, me and Casper cheered for the opposite team all the time, just to piss off all the ozzy people in our seat section! FREEMANTLE DOCKERS KICK SOME ASS WHOOOOOP!

Also we did a short trip up north a couple of days later. A 3 hour drive from Perth and we were in the outback already! We visisted a natual park which is located in the dessert. It's called 'the Pinnacle Dessert' and the place is filled with rocks (pinnacles) in all forms and (funny) shapes lol! Pretty cool to see (concidering it was my first 'dessert' experience after 5 months of jungle in Asia). The only annoying thing where the countless flies which are 'attacking' you the minute you leave the car. The crawl in your mouth, ears and eyes if you stop moving for a few seconds! Arghhhh!!!!

Besides that the rest of my first few weeks I was hopping from beach to BBQ-party and from BBQ-party to beach. I didn't do to many exciting things except for hanging out with the people I met and with Amy and Kaitlin ofcourse. The main reason for this was that my money started to run low, Australia is DAMN expensive and I needed my money for my upcoming roadtrip. I figured it couldn't hurt to try to get a simple job for a few weeks, to kill some time and to earn some money untill my bro and Tamara would arrive. To problem however was that it seemed fairly impossible to get a job for just 2 or 3 weeks without a working-holiday visa. But I dropped my 'Im looking for a job' line to everybody I met at every BBQ-party I came and just when I thought it was a lost case, I got a call from Adam (a cool dude I also met in Holland) who told me I was able to do some 'hole drilling' at the company he was working for. Eager as I was, I accepted without really realising to what I was saying 'yes' to.

That week I stayed at Grace's place. Another former 'ozzy au-pair' from The Hague and the sister of Adam. Gracie was kind enough for me to drop me off at the workplace every morning for a week at 6am! I felt so sorry for her to wake up that early, just for me! But so nice indeed :D (thanks again girl :-) ) And so I started 'operation hole drilling in Australia'. I thought I needed to drill some holes in walls or the floor with big ass machinery, equiped with a manly toolbelt and a helmet. Instead I found myself standing behind a small drilling machine, drilling 11.000!!!!!!! tiny holes in a plate of metal, which would turn out to be an 'air filter' in the end. It was impossible to got this job done by machine because.... they had no machine!! So instead, they used me, the ignorant stupid backpacker with nothing but time on his hands. I worked shifts of 11 hours a day and it took me 6 days to finish the job! But my boss paid my campervan for me, our rental verhicle for our AWESOME roadtrip through Oz. Although the job was - to put it gently - not the most 'exciting' work I've done in my life, I want to thank Adam again to hook me up with this. It helped me out a lot.

Being in Australia is pretty relaxing I can tell you! The first 4 weeks of my stay I haven't seen the temperature dropping below 30 degrees celcius so I figured it would be best to take it easy while I was here :P! People here are usually very polite (they actually stopped at a zebra crossing for me - after 5 months of Asia this was such a surprise again) and everybody says 'no worries'.

Ordering a coffee? 'yeah sure mate, no worries'. Want to take a piss in the restroom of a pub 'no worries champ, it's over there'. Wanna book a campervan?? In my case it was like this:

Me: Good afternoon, how are you?
CamperVan dude: G'day there mate, how are you today
Me: I'm fine thanks, I would like some information about rental campervans!
CamperVan dude: No worries champ, let's see what I have here
Me: Ok, I think I would like this one, I will come back tomorrow, I have to discuss it first with my friends!
CamperVan dude: No worries mate, see ya later... have a good one

It's all so chilled out here! I love it :D

The next day I booked my campervan indeed, and with that it was time for the roadtrip! My bro and Tamara arrived just a few days after my last day 'at work'. I had booked a nice 'Hi-Top' campervan which would be our home for the next 3 weeks. The trip has been legendary so far. We've driven more than 5000 km's already and we've seen mindblowing sceneries and lots of cool things! But I will update you on that topic very soon!

<< to be continued >>

Click here for pics!

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Geplaatst door Bart op Barts trip of a lifetime! op 4/01/2011 02:58:00 PM