The Australian puzzle

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