My adventure down under

Nullarbor tour

Hi y'all!

Monday I had to wake up at 5.30am, so I would be able to catch my shuttle bus to the airport. I had two flights this day, one to Melbourne and my next flight was to Adelaide. By the time I arrived in Adelaide it was 3pm, so I went into town for a little bit. Tuesday I had the entire day in Adelaide, I still had some laundry to do, so I did that in the morning in my hostel. After that finished I went to the shops, to get some breakfast and lunch. I then walked to the river. I saw an excursion boat and decided to go on a little tour. The guide told us about a prison, that had been turned into a museum. So after the river tour had finished, I walked to the prison. It was really impressive, but also really creepy, since I was the only person in the prison and I kept seeing these big dolls to illustrate things that happened in the prison. After I had finished my self guided tour around the prison, I walked to the St. Peter's Cathedral, where I had a look around and I could put a pin in a big map, so they could see where their visitors are from.

Nullarbor Tour:

Day 1:

Wednesday morning my Nullarbor Tour started. We drove to a little town called Clare, where everyone could buy their last minute things for the tour. After everyone was finished we drove to the Flinders Ranges, where we saw Mount Remarkable. We drove to Alligator Gorge, where we did a walk trough the gorge. We went to Quorn and from there we drove to the campground. We slept under the stars that night, while kangaroos and wallabies jumped around us.

Day 2:

Thursday was going to be a hot day (42 degrees Celsius), so we woke up really early to walk up the Dutchman's Stern. I got bitten by ants for the first time in my life on this walk and it really hurts, especially if you've got twenty ants attacking you on each foot. But once you get to the top, the view is amazing. We saw two yellow footed wallabies from our viewing point. We started driving towards Venus Bay, but once we got closer it started to rain. So instead of going for a swim, we went to Coodlie Park. I had my first bucket shower here, and besides the Huntsman in one of the showers, it was a pretty good shower. We met another tour group, but they were driving from Perth to Adelaide.

Day 3:

Friday started with a lot of rain in the middle of the night. We were going to swim with the sea lions and dolphins this day and before we arrived at Baird Bay the weather started to clear up. We put on our wetsuits and got on the boat. We got to the sea lions after about half an hour on the boat, everyone dove in and it was amazing! The sea lions were so playful, we swam with them for about half an hour before we went to the dolphins. We got in the water and there were like ten dolphins swimming around and under us. It was amazing! This was definitely one of the best things I've experienced in my life so far. After we got out of the water and went back to the sea lions to see if they wanted to play a bit more, in the meantime we had some hot chocolate and a biscuit. The hot chocolate was much appreciated, since I was freezing. After we had lunch, we had to say goodbye to two of our group members, Axel (from Germany) and Avishag (from New York), they were going on a loop tour from Adelaide to Adelaide, so they were joining the other tour we had dinner with the day before. This day the Nullarbor officially started. We had a stop in Penong, where they have the highest windmill in Australia. After Penong we got to Fowlers Bay, where we would spent the night. But before that we walked up the sand dunes, where we went sand boarding.

Day 4:

Saturday we left early, because we were going to drive a thousand kilometers this day. The last thing we did in South Australia was the Great Ocean Bight, which was beautiful. After that we crossed the border and did some time traveling;). On our way to an old telegraph station, we had a quick stop to take some pictures of the view. As I was walking to a better spot, I saw my first wild poisonous snake. It crawled into a cave almost right away. We drove further to the telegraph station, which was covered in sand. After that we drove to a natural blowhole; Caiguna blowhole.

Day 5:

Sunday we didn't have a lot of driving to do, since we drove a long way on Saturday. We drove to Esperance, to Twilight Bay, which was beautiful. It was one of the prettiest beaches I've ever seen. We drove a bit further to get to Le Grand Park, where we would spent the night. It was right next to Lucky Bay, on this beach you'd have kangaroos walking on the beach, which was amazing!

Day 6:

On Monday we did the Le Grand coastal trail. It took us about 2,5 hours and we walked past some beautiful beaches. We had some free time until around 4pm. After that we went to Frenchman's Peak, where we did a walk up the mountain. On our way back to camp, Jodie (our tour guide) spotted a snake on the road, so we turned around so everyone could have a look at it. It was a dead tiger snake. We had to turn around again to get to camp, but the bus got stuck in the sand. We all had to push the bus while Jodie tried to get it back on the road, after a couple of tries we got the bus in the right spot.

Day 7:

Tuesday we got six new people on the bus, they did a loop from Perth back to Perth. We drove to the Pink Lake, which wasn't very pink that day.. While we were driving to the Stirling Ranges, we noticed that the airco wasn't working properly. So Jodie made sure it was going to be fixed the next day first thing in the morning. We got to Mount Trio, we climbed all the way to the top and the view was amazing.

Day 8:

Wednesday morning our airco would be fixed in Albany. It was supposed to take three hours, so in the meantime we walked around Albany. We started a walk up the hill, because the mechanics said it would take an extra hour. That extra hour eventually turned into four extra hours... After we had waited at the top of the hill for an hour, they came to pick us up in three different cars to bring us to the beach where we would have lunch. After three hours at the beach, they finally arrived with our bus, so we could go to our next stop; the Natural Bridge. It was beautiful! After our stop at the Natural Bridge, we drove all the way to Denmark. But on our way, we had to turn around to take a different road because of a bushfire. Our campsite was a bit different then usual this time, the entire entrance to the campground was filled with gnomes. Jodie came up with the amazing idea to put grumpy looking gnomes around peoples swags, so that when they'd wake up the first thing they'd see were the gnomes.

Day 9:

Thursday morning I woke up five minutes before my alarm went off because Donella was freaking out about something. I opened my swag to see what's going on and I see an emu walking between our swags. After walking around for a bit, the emu decided to come to my swag, where it attacked my phone, my hair and my sweater. After these eventful five minutes, we drove to the Diamond tree. It's a 52 meter high tree that you can climb. I didn't climb it though, it was way to high for me. We drove to Hamelin Bay, where we went to see the stingrays. They were really close to the surface, it was amazing! After everyone had taken their pictures, we drove to Margarets River, where we had a wine and chocolate tasting.

Day 10:

Last day of the tour, we drove to Yallingup Beach. Jodie grew up here and she wanted to share this amazing surfers beach with us. We drove to Ngilgi Cave, where we got a tour from an Aboriginal guy. He showed us around the cave and played a didgeridoo. We drove to Meelup Beach for lunch and on our way to Perth we had a quick ice cream break at Simmo's Ice Cream.

At the end of the day our group was going to have some dinner and a drink, as a goodbye.

I had an amazing time and I'll try to upload the pictures tomorrow:)

Cheers!

Reacties

Reacties

papa

In één woord: WOW!!!

Harriët

Lieve Donna, het klinkt alsof je het enorm naar je zin hebt! Ik ben erg benieuwd naar je foto's en real-life verhalen. Hopelijk heb je na deze reis ook nog een geweldige tijd in Australië en hier zijn we al weer aan het af tellen tot je naar Nederland terug komt (toch?... ;)) Ik mis je, hou van je en we skypen snel! Heel veel liefs

Marjolein

Jaaa!! We tellen af tot je weer thuis bent! Maar wat een avontuur! Echt fantastisch!! ;) (En natuurlijk zijn wij hier echt super jaloerss!!) Skypen wordt echt een must binnenkort ;) Geniet ervan! Lots of lovee! xx

Marit

Wauww Donna, het klink allemaal zo mooi en magisch! Kan niet wachten tot je weer bij ons al je verhalen kan vertellen en ons allemaal heeeeeel jaloers kan maken ;) Geniet er ieder geval maar heel erg van! Als je weer een adres hebt stuur ik wel even een leuke brief!! Super veel kusjes vanuit het koude Nederland!

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