Australia
Alma Park East

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    • Day 106

      Melbourne

      February 20, 2020 in Australia ⋅ ☁️ 16 °C

      Last night we noticed signs hanging around the hostel buildings with a warning for people that needed to go to the airport in the early morning. The president of Israel was flying in for a visit and that meant the roads to the airport would be closed between 5 and 7. Our flight was at 8 though so it didn't matter too much, but we did arrive quite early by taxi just to be sure. We had breakfast at an airport café and then waited for the flight. Then we discovered that while Fiji welcomes you with songs and flowers, on the way out they quite literally leave you high and dry. Right before getting onto the plane they stole everyone's water bottles, which was quite mean for a 6 hour flight. Unfortunately our 'window seat' couldn't put the smile back on our face either. But at 12:30 local time we landed in Melbourne, and after 9 days in high humidity and airco's we were able to breathe in relatively normal air, so that made us happy.

      The Melbourne Airport SkyBus brought us to St. Kilda, where we were picked up by Geoff, our AirBnB host for the next 4 nights. He's a friendly guy who also immediately made sure we'd get a transportation pass. Once at his home, we got a tour of the house and got to know that he really doesn't mind sharing everything including his guitars, books and food. Despite being very tired from the journey, our stomachs were begging for some proper food so we walked to the nearest supermarket through the rather nice Chapel shopping street. It wasn't hard to fall asleep after that.
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    • Day 107

      The Australian puzzle

      February 21, 2020 in Australia ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C

      Before going on our world trip we left a goodbye present for our nephew Morris: a puzzle of the world. Australia is one piece of his puzzle, but for us today Australia seemed like a puzzle of a thousand pieces. The locations on our wishlist seemed impossible to combine within budget and time. We were starting to be OK with going a bit over budget knowing that except for Fiji we had stayed below the whole time. But the next problem wasn't far. We learned that single vehicle accidents were simply not insured with any van rental company that had an open office in Alice Springs or Broome before April. So that meant our original plan of three weeks Melbourne-Alice Springs and then three weeks Broome- Perth was simply not possible because Alice Springs and Broome had closed offices. Next we considered making it one big road trip Melbourne- Alice Springs- Broome- Perth. Then we learned that sealed streets between Alice Springs and Broome could very well be flooded until the end of March (explaining why most van rental offices there are closed until then). So if we didn't want to repeat our Fjordland experience from New Zealand, this wasn't really the way to go either. We ended up researching 8 different route scenarios with estimated kilometres and costs. In the end we had one favourite option: 1 week van rental to travel the area around Melbourne, a flight to Perth, 3 weeks van rental to do a round trip north of Perth and then a final flight to either Adelaide or Alice Springs to rent another van traveling the way to the Ayers Rock, Olgas and King's Canyon. We weren't entirely sure about the exact dates yet. So we decided to let it sink in a bit and have a nice evening walk to clear our minds after hours of tough research.Read more

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