Australia, Mate 🇦🇺 : Cruising with the Campervan

December, 2024

Just a hop, skip and a very large jump out of Asia and we finally made it down under to AUSTRALIA, mates! Officially on the other side of the globe, it certainly felt like a world away from where we came from.

It started with a lot of wet, wet, wet and small glimmer of sun as we embarked on a 10 day road trip from Brisbane, Queensland up to Cairns, one of the access point to the famous Great Barrier Reef. We rented a campervan with two other friends and started the 1,700 km+ journey up the eastern coast with lots to see and discover along the way. 

Now, a little somethin somethin about the campervan life. It was my first time living completely out of a vehicle and let me tell you, it is a wild ride! Four adults eating, sleeping, cooking, cleaning up, driving, relaxing, showering, and doing their business in the same live-in vehicle for 10 days…..was a very cozy experience 😂 The crew got close quickly and naturally we became true roadies even quicker. Falling into a daily rhythm we each pulled our weight taking on various roles in and around our new live-in home. Some less glamorous than others, aka disposing of the daily waste, was not the sexiest job on the roadie roster and we may or may not have flooded the van a few times BUT by the end of the 10 days we were campervan queens. No waste or grey water was a match for us.

Just the four of us, our backpacks, the sea and open road stretching for miles, we drove from coastal town to coastal town, sometimes not seeing a rest stop or restaurant for 100 miles. The beauty of the campervan life is that the world is your backyard. You never need to plan too far in advance or worry how you're going to get home at the end of the day as you are always home! Each night we rocked up to a new parking lot, seaside park, beach or quaint town to spend the night and in the mornings woke up to lush nature, a wonderful swim, a rainy forest and even kangaroos on the beach.

And while everyone knows the popping cities of Australia, what I loved most was driving through the small rural towns of only 80 people or more. Everyone was incredibly friendly, always eager to chat, to know where we were from, where we were going, why we were there at all 😂. Some towns were simply a one stop shop with one store/restaurant and nothing else stretching for miles.

One day on our search for a quick lunch, our camper stumbled into a small town and frankly…. the first place we could find food for 100 miles. We were greeted by none other than Granny from “Granny’s Coffee Shop", and in true Granny fashion, she knew just what we needed. We got the OG granny burger, some of the best pickled relish I’ve had and the opportunity to witness the true slow town vibes of rural Australia. It’s these moments in travel when you turn a corner and find the sweetest, simplest and most unexpected exchange that makes you remember a place. For me that was Granny’s Coffee shop, meeting warm people, eating her burgers and of course, the picked relish.

Making our way north we drove through some amazing tropical environments and for the first 6 days it rained…nonstop. I repeat, nonstop. And when I say rain, I mean perpetual downpour, wash you away, soak you to the bone rain. Masses of water just pouring down on you, creeping into every nook and cranny, and just when you think you’re in the clear and you put on dry clothes, psych!, it starts up again. By the end of it all I was just one pool of water, sloshing around the campervan, waiting for the next attack. That’s when we decided, we cannot let this rainstorm rain on our parade and we slipped into the “living in bathing suits” phase of our trip. If you can’t beat it, bathing suit it. We hiked to waterfalls in the rain, swam on beautiful beaches in the rain, cooked in the rain, walked soaking….and no longer cared. Once I embraced it, it was actually incredibly liberating to be poured down upon, soaking it all in (literally) and knowing I had no control over it all. On the plus, the greenery that came from all of the rain was something wonderful.

During our time in Australia, we also came across some really special wildlife spottings in their natural habitat. At Agnes Water we saw thousands of small blue crabs running across the sand and burring themselves deep into the ground. At the Cape Hillsborough National Park campsite we woke up for sunrise to see playful kangaroos and wallabies eating on the beach and looking for mangrove pods. It was amazing to see them out of a zoo, much larger and stronger, hopping around on the sand and living free. On Magnetic island we saw cuddly koala bears snuggled in their eucalyptus trees taking in their daily naps. They were so fuzzy and lethargic, I wanted to climb right up for a quick snug. In the Great Barrier Reef we saw beautiful swarms of colorful fish and a sea turtle that stole the show. We had some magical moments swimming together until I watched him slowly disappear into the deep blue. As dusk began to set in Carins, we were surrounded by thousands and thousands of bats swarming the early night skies. The sheer amount of bats flying together was something incredible to see, they created large dark masses of fluttering wings within in the sky. To sum it up, the wildlife and nature in Australia is really one of a kind.

And with all the good, we also experienced the parts of Australian wildlife that slowly… started… to break us 🤣 the giant spiders, massive frogs, blue stinger jelly fish, buzzing beetles the size of your palm, the sheer magnitude of mosquitoes and the water leeches that found us in a rain forest and latched on for dear life. After pulling 5 leaches off my legs and Gabe waking up with a swollen eye from a mosquito attack (mosquitos: 10 / Gab & Gabe: 0) we were ready for a few days back in the big city.

Sydney soon did the trick and we brought in the new year just north of Sydney on a quaint local island called Scotland Island. With a population of just over 700 people, it had a wonderful small town homey feel. We met local families and joined them on the docks as we counted down…THREE…TWO…ONE… HAPPY NEW YEAR! And as the clock struck midnight, the sky lit up with fireworks.

Fathers and their sons jumped into the ocean together, diving headfirst, welcoming in this new year, new beginnings and all that we hope it to be. I looked around and took it all in. Standing small on the dock, I thought about the big things ahead of us this year. We will soon have a little one of our own asking us to jump with them into all sorts of unknown, but somehow it didn’t feel scary. As the community of Scotland Island celebrated, laughing, drinking and splashing around us, I too felt ready to take the plunge.