Back to reality

After breakfast we went to say goodbye to the nice Dutch couple who were travelling in their campervan. We spoke for a good hour about Australia, their travels, our travels and corona. Then it was time to leave Karijini National Park and make our way south.

After some hours of driving we arrived in the mining town of Newman. After a short visit to the tourist information center ("I'm afraid there isn't much to do here or on the way to Perth" is an exciting conversation starter) we caught up with the news and people after having been without reception for a couple of days. The past 48 hours had felt like a much needed break from all the sadness and worries.

Now however, it was time to face reality again. And reality currently doesn't make us (probably actually no one) happy. For us it is clear that sooner or later our world trip will stop. Lots of questions are popping up in our heads. For how long do we need to pause it? 6 months? 1 year? Is it even feasible to start a worldtrip part 2? How do we fill the time in between? How do we get an income? Does it make sense to apply for a job we would like to have? Or is that impossible and we should just try to find work in areas that are currently looking for people? Parcel delivery, supermarkets etc? Where do we live? All these things just seem so different from how we imagined this year to go. Despite it sounding overdramatic, for us it feels like our dream is falling apart and that left us sad, hopeless and slightly panicking.

Eventually we went to the local camping, which like the one back in Tom Price was also mainly miner accommodation, with the difference that this one still accepted tourists as long as we declared ourselves healthy. Not knowing how long we'd still stay in Australia, hence also not knowing if we had enough clean clothes, we anyways made use of the free washing machine.

Around sunset, we drove up to the Radio Hill as we were told it had a nice view over the town and surroundings. While driving there we noticed lightning in the clouds. No thunder however, and it didn't rain either. The views were pretty great. Back at the campsite all cockatoos had collectively decided the tree above our van would be their stay for the night. At first their loudness was a bit annoying but when they all started sleeping it became cute instead.Read more