Australia Summary (so far)

Well, we're way behind in posting our travels on the blog, so here's a brief summary of what's been going on in Australia. We'll come back to this later and post the interesting bits, but just so you guys know what we've been up to....

We fly into Sydney from Christchurch and stay in the Glebe Point YHA hostel. It's reasonably clean, and the staff is quite helpful, but rather impersonal and most of the guests are younger and more party-oriented than either Christina or I. After lots of car shopping, we end up with a 1988 Toyota LandCruiser Troop Carrier. She's not in perfect shape, but the cars have a great reputation over here for durability and reliability. Meahwhile we manage to walk around the Sydney Opera House, see the Botanic Gardens, and satisfy some long-restrained craving for food we just couldn't get in NZ.

After a couple of tedious days outfitting the car, we drive across SE Australia to Adelaide, passing through the Blue Mountains, stopping at a 'High Altitude Botanical Gardens', and seeing our first real small-town bits of Australia.

We spend several days in Adelaide regrouping and getting the front brakes on the car done. After this, we drive up through Port Augusta and into the Flinders mountain ranges. It turns out to be a school holiday week, and the campgrounds are busy! We meet a nice german couple (Lotti and Heike) in Port Augusta, and end up staying in adjacent spots in a couple of campgrounds. They're touring around Australia in a VW bus which they've had shipped over! Given that my first car was a 1975 transporter, I can't resist hanging out and talking shop with Lotti. He's happy to show me the details of their bus' custom setup.

After a couple of days in the Flinders ranges, we drive up through the Gammon ranges, stay a night at Arkaroola - a nature preserve with lots of interesting history and frightening 'hamburgers' - then drive up to Uluru and the Olgas, where we spend a couple of days checking out Australia's most famous natural icon. Then it's on to King's Canyon, Palm Valley, and up to Alice Springs, where we are currently staying and trying to plan out the next few months.